Language around trans, how it works, how it doesn’t…
| January 16th, 2007[This is Charles] In the long running previous thread on that started out with Amp’s rebuttal of anti-trans arguments, I suggested opening a new thread to refocus and to make the loading time shorter (425 posts and rising, phew!). A huge issue in that thread was the problems of how to talk about trans issues (transitioning, transgender, transexuality, cisgender, …), so I think it might be good to look at how the language works around all this, and what is wrong with the language we use.
I’m going to be lazy, and not do the work I should pulling quotes from the previous thread. Instead, I am going to just post the last comment from the previous thread, as it seems like a good starting point (I hope this is okay with everyone):
BritGirlSF writes:
nexyjo and littlelight - I’d love to hear more from both of you about how you feel about how the language we all use at the moment frames the issues, how it works for you and how it doesn’t. For example, nexyjo said something about not feeling like a woman post-transition even though many other MTF trans people do. How would you define your current gender identity? Or are you not defining it because we don’t seem to have any words that really fit?
I’m not sure if that made sense, I’ll try to clarify if it didn’t. That’s the point I was trying to make earlier, really - our ability to have this conversation is hampered by not having the linguistic tools we need.
January 16th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
The question wasn’t asked of me, but I’ll attempt my own answer. I transitioned almost 10 years ago. Language is an issue, though I have come to some peace with my new pronouns. (I’ve moved from “she” to “he.”) I sometimes wish for gender-neutral pronouns, but I think because they have no context, no cultural buy-in, they feel like they don’t mean anything yet. It’s a chicken and egg problem…until they have meaning, it’s hard to want to use them (feels too much like “it”) and until they are more widely used, they won’t have much meaning.
I am okay with “he” and cringe at “she.” But I do want to be a “he” who can talk about having a period, a baby, and knows what sexism feels like. I don’t mind “transgender” because the “trans” actually feels accurate. I am “across, beyond, and through” gender. I cringe at “transsexual” for a couple of reasons–one is the way it’s associated with “gatekeepers” who seem to want to exclude others. The other is the emphasis on sex. Not only because my gender and identity aren’t all about sex, but also because my particular kind of “transness” is less about sex and body than it is about integrity and gender.
I don’t know it any of that makes sense, since our language is so limited. But I thought I’d give it a try. How would I most like to be known? As Sean, a transgender man who fully embraces his whole life experience and doesn’t find it necessary to hide or choose one side of himself over another.
This comment was written by Sean.Report this comment to the moderators
January 16th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Because I’m addressed directly, I feel like I ought to say this; I apologize if it comes off as a taking-my-toys-and-going-home post.
Honestly, I don’t feel comfortable getting involved in this discussion until the trans people in it actually have our words honored. In the previous thread, most of the trans folk involved dropped out quietly in frustration, and part of the reason is that our arguments and statements were not actually being engaged with. I know I made a number of statements that I was told were in direct contradiction with what I obviously must believe, and even if I argued it, I found much later in the debate that I was still being treated as though I had made the arguments I hadn’t, in reality, made. It didn’t matter if sweeping generalizations and assumptions-without-backup were challenged, because the challenges simply were ignored or were read as the opposite of their content. I have been increasingly frustrated with the kind of conversation going on, and while I’ve tried very hard to be sensible and levelheaded while discussing theories and abstracts that have very real bearing on my actual, flesh-and-blood life, I am discovering that my faculties only go so far. Whether or not it’s considered admissible, proper feminist discourse, my emotions are part of this, too, and they’ve been telling me to back out for a while now.
Until we can respectfully find common ground where different branches of feminist analysis are considered admissible for discussion, where the people whose experiences and lives are being discussed so clinically aren’t shouted down by people who aren’t listening, and where the counter-argument to my argument isn’t, half the time, “Well, you don’t really believe that / don’t really experience that / don’t know any better because you’re impaired / deluded / cannot be considered a reliable source on your own life,” this conversation cannot happen.
At least, it won’t with me in it. I want to thank the people who, while I disagreed with them, were respectful and actually interacted as though this was a conversation. That said, until the terms of this discussion change, it is not safe space, as far as I’m concerned, and with apologies to our hosts, I’ll be discussing these issues elsewhere.
This comment was written by little light.Report this comment to the moderators
January 16th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
little light - I can certainly understand why you feel that way after some of the things that were said on the last thread, but I really hope that I didn’t say anything that made you feel that way.
This comment was written by BritGirlSF.In any case if you want to bow out that’s totally understandable.
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January 16th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
I haven’t figured out how to be a ”he” that can talk about any of that stuff, minus the baby because I don’t have children, without feeling that I don’t have a, well, place. That the total sum of my experiences don’t fit in either category all together, so it doesn’t really leave me room to be anywhere, without censuring myself. I like transgender because it encompasses those experiences, but transsexual irritates me. Because while it’s possible to take on the characteristics that people associate with the opposite sex, the word transexual brings to my mind biological definitions, and the word’s definition can’t include changing someone’s genetics to the opposite side of a spectrum.
This comment was written by ArrogantWorm.Report this comment to the moderators
January 16th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Despite being accused of roasting trans people over an open fire, or perhaps wishing to do so, my purpose in life isn’t telling anyone who is or isn’t real or valid or worthy.
I try to avoid claiming that “identity” is the same thing as “practicing” or “experiencing” because I’ve found that it only creates conflict and confusion. I prefer language constructs like “I’ve identified with girls and women my entire life” rather than “I’ve been a woman my entire life.” I think the former is much clearer and more understandable and less prone to creating conflict.
That it seems like such a huge win to me tells me that it’s probably a much better course of action than pounding ones fist on the table and insisting that one was actually a teenage girl in the Boy Scouts and then later a woman flying jet fighters over Vietnam. The “I was really a girl when I received my Eagle award!” bizzarity is enough to make my head spin and split pea soup come out of my nose. Girls? Eagle Scouts? Would that more young girls had learned how to “secretly” be girls while working towards becoming Eagle Scouts.
I came really close to cancelling this post because this thread has all the feel of so many other trans threads “You can’t say anything that hurts my feelings!” Well, guess what — a lot gets said in a lot of feminist discussions that hurts a lot of peoples feelings. No one said feminism was easy or happy or friendly. For all the complaints about “You hurt my feelings!” I don’t see trans people owning that claiming a person who was raised a boy was “really” a girl hurts the feelings of people who were raised girls. This “You hurt my feelings!” thing goes both ways. Heck, if there were 10 ways to go it would go all 10 of them.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 16th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
What I got out of the thread was that people’s feelings were hurt not because someone claimed they were raised as a girl and a cisgendered woman took offense, but the reasons people’s feelings were hurt was because some other people absolutely insisted that the experiences of some trans folk must be viewed by the light of a specific framework, and if it didn’t fit that framework, it was to be bludgeoned in with a hammer to *make* it fit.
[Fixed your quotes - Nick]
This comment was written by ArrogantWorm.Report this comment to the moderators
January 16th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
….and I’ve messed up the blockquotes once again.
On the other hand, people’s feelings very well could’ve gotten hurt by someone who insisted they were raised female when they were born male, but what I saw was some people saying they did consider or didn’t consider themselves female, even when they were young, not that they were raised female from the get-go. So if I missed it, could you point it out, FCH? Because if I missed that, I probably misinterpreted something else.
This comment was written by ArrogantWorm.Report this comment to the moderators
January 16th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Sean - thanks for responding. The thing that feels wierd (at least to me) about the “neutral” pronouns like “ze” is that they seem very artifical, partly because they’re not in common usage. It would feel very odd to me to refer to someone as “ze”, though I would if they asked me to.
This comment was written by BritGirlSF.The “cisgender” issue is an odd one, though. My instinctive feeling is that pressing for that term to be widely adopted is counter-productive because most people experience their gender identity in a fairly uncomplicated way and don’t much like being asked to identify as anything other than “male” or “female”.
This part of your comment intrigued me.
“Not only because my gender and identity aren’t all about sex, but also because my particular kind of “transness” is less about sex and body than it is about integrity and gender.”
See, I don’t think I understand what you mean, and I think it is partly a linguistic problem. What do you mean by integrity and gender?
If I’m being too nosy feel free to tell me to mind my own business.
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January 16th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
FCH,
While I think that your position on the vocabulary of trans-ness is important, I think that the way you have been treating other people’s descriptions of their experiences is extremely disruptive to the discussion. I am therefore asking you not to participate in this thread.
If you would like to make 1 more comment on this thread, please feel free to do so.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:33 am
Charles,
I think I pretty much said everything I have to say about language in the other thread.
We now return you to your regularly schedule Trans Borg conversation about gender.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 1:11 am
I don’t have a problem with ze, but phonetically, to me hir sounds like ‘here’ and kinda shuts down the connections from my brain to my tongue. I keep trying it out in sentences and it’s like I hear the word ‘here’ and my brain tries to figure out directions to get to somewhere, like on those maps with the big arrows in malls or parks with the teeny little dot that’s supposed to represent where you’re currently at. Like a blasted short circuit. Right after I say hir, mind blanks and scrambles to make some sort of sense from the sounds, but since ze isn’t a homophone of any word I know, I’m fine with it. Hope that makes sense
This comment was written by ArrogantWorm.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 1:14 am
after all these years, i still have no idea what the term “gender identity” means. many trans people tell me that they’ve “felt” like a woman for most of their lives. many others tell me that they’ve “felt” like a man for most of their lives. maybe i’m just too pragmatic for my own good, but i just can’t understand how someone can “feel” like an individual belonging to a class of people they’ve never been a part of.
i’m informed by the “experts” that “gender identity” is defined as the internal sense of feeling like a man or a woman. having never been a woman, and i feel that i can argue that i’ve never been a man (though jewish law would dispute that, as would society in general before 10 years ago), i don’t know how women or men “feel”. i don’t believe anyone has access to another person’s feelings. so the term “gender identity” just doesn’t make sense to me.
fch says:
well, to be perfectly honest, i don’t really identify *with* girls and women. or boys and men, for that matter. i will say that most of the friends i have in my life are men, though i’ve had a few women friends as well. so if i had to choose, i’ll go with the guys to hang with. though interestingly enough, before i transitioned, i more often than not found myself hanging with the women, especially at work. perhaps because the men at my former job all seemed so arrogant. you know, corporate middle and upper management types.
one problem is, many trans people *do* feel themselves to be members of their target sex. so i don’t know that i’d want to disallow their language either.
regarding the search for “words that fit”, i think it’s more a problem with the whole concept of “gender identity”. geez, why can’t i be just me? do i have to pick a label? are we so invested in stereotypes that i need to define myself in a one-word soundbyte, before i’m considered to be a real human being?
well, of course the answer to that, in the context that i have to continue to pay child support and 43% of my son’s college expenses for the next 3.5 years, is yes, i have to pick a label. i have to ensure i’m employable when i go for a job interview and what i look like matches with my legal documentation. but outside that context, in this forum. i’ll have to say that i reject gender, and i reject traditional gender classifications. but at the same time, i want to respect other members of my tribe when they insist on claiming their own gender identity as female or male.
i don’t believe i’ve answered the original question, but i thought i’d check in with my thoughts on the issue.
This comment was written by nexyjo.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 3:25 am
nexyjo - You did actually kind of answer my question, or at least go part of the way to answering it, so thanks!
This comment was written by BritGirlSF.For whatever it’s worth my take is that I’m comfortable with having genders labelled “male” and “female”, I just want people to stop using them as an excuse to shoehorn individuals into tight and confining little boxes. I’m also leaning towards the idea that we need to conceptualise of gender as having more than 2 options. Ie, it’s not a binary, it’s a continuum with lots of potential stops along the way. I guess what I’m getting at (poorly and incoherently…sorry, it’s late) is something that looks more like the Kinsey Scale does for sexual orientation and less like “people are either straight or gay, no other options avaliable”. Why can’t there be lots of options?
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January 17th, 2007 at 4:24 am
Bean - Your theory runs counter to the real experiences of people. Your theory is wrong. Your theory is harmful.
This comment was written by Helxx.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 6:05 am
Ouch. I find myself in the unusual (if not completly typical for me) position of agreeing with fch and bean, at least wrt to two quotes:
“I prefer language constructs like “I’ve identified with girls and women my entire life” rather than “I’ve been a woman my entire life.” I think the former is much clearer and more understandable and less prone to creating conflict.” and
“Frankly, I don’t think this (or any similar discussion) can or ever will be productive. There are those of us who believe that theory should be informed by and inform practice.” (and, frankly, the rest of bean’s comment).
For that reason, I will also not likely engage in this debate here, although I may put up some of my thoughts on my own blog. Maybe. Someday. When I find time.
I have a firm belief that people all experience gender differently. I really hate that any of us would put down another’s experience (I really honor the experience of the Vietnam fighter pilot who says she was a woman; despite not necessarily believing that for myself). And, I hate that relating that experience and how it translates to belief in the person would cause another pain and/or hurt feelings (I completely get how a person not privileged by the “luck” (some of us don’t find it so lucky) of genital formation react negatively to such an assertion). Language is critically important. So is respectful, thoughtful, compassionate discourse. Bean is correct that this happens in many arenas. I don’t know how to change it. Often, as others have done — either by choice or by fiat — I simply excuse myself from the conversation.
This comment was written by Denise.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 7:53 am
Little light writes:
Which words? The ones that you want to use to describe me, or bean; use to create a new identity for *us* because your politics insist that refering to us as women, as female, is somehow disenfranchising to someone else? And then those words are used as a recklessly weak intellectual argument about feminist politics?
No thanks. There is no need for any woman to *ever* have to renegotiate her language to describe herself as “non-trans” or “cisgendered”. That’s complete bullshit. That’s not any different, in practice, then having a bunch of grown males decide for you that because you were born with a cunt you can only like pink and play with Barbies. I’m not seeing, and have not seen, men/males getting this same heat, this same shit, to so carefully police their own language lest they offend transitioners. In fact, what I’m seeing (with the help of Belladame’s screeds) is a totally burying of the political impact of patriarchal norms, an assumption that feminism is responsible for the discomfort of gender, and that once again *women* are the ones that need to make the personal sacrifices to make the greater public comfortable.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 7:58 am
Sean writes:
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 8:09 am
what are you talking about?
[blockquote]
In fact, what I’m seeing (with the help of Belladame’s screeds) is a totally burying of the political impact of patriarchal norms, an assumption that feminism is responsible for the discomfort of gender, and that once again *women* are the ones that need to make the personal sacrifices to make the greater public comfortable
[/blockquote]
The only demand trans people have is that you accept our existance.
This comment was written by Helxx.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 8:11 am
There is no need for any woman to *ever* have to renegotiate her language to describe herself as “non-trans” or “cisgendered”.
Does that mean there is never a meaningful distinction between a transwoman and a genetic woman?
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 8:45 am
Out here in the “real” world, if someone tells me (or I deduce from clothing and appearance and behavior) that she is a woman, I’m perfectly willing to accept that without further question; so also, men. I’m not going to undress anyone to check on this, nor am I going to delve into their histories, surgical or otherwise. Unless I plan to have sex with someone (and I don’t, since I’ve been married 40 years and I’m perfectly content with that arrangement) the details of anatomy are none of my business.
But then I’m not a part of any of these communities, feminists, transgendered, what have you.
I don’t know how this attitude connects with the language debate, or if it does. I’m just pointing out that there’s a big wide mostly accepting world out here where mostly people are thinking about themselves, not about the details of the lives of people they meet, and where most people are willing to accept other people as they are.
This comment was written by Susan.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Which I do. I question the politics that are arising from the larger trans community.
Nick: Why would women need to define as “non-trans” or “cisgendered”? I mean, think about it. You’re then placing trans as the root of meaning, which I think would quite explicitly embed trans in the middle of patriarchal gender. Furthermore, I would say that there are differences between women and transwomen. But “meaningful” differences? Meaningful under who’s paradigm?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 10:42 am
You sort of do. You accept their existence so long as they never say anything that makes you uncomfortable, or define their identities differently from the way you, as the member of the privileged group, want them to define their identities.
Back on the Ms Boards, Rich got plenty of heat about the language he used to refer to trans people. Nor has ANYONE here expressed any offense at you using the word “woman.” The main person expressing offense at other people’s language here is you; you object passionately to anyone in this debate using language other than the language you prefer. Why is that? And what makes you feel you have the right to police the language transwomen and transmen use?
What you’re seeing is completely different from what most folks here, Belledame included, have actually said. When did Belledame — or anyone else who has contributed here in more than a drive-by fashion — say that “feminism is responsible for the discomfort of gender”? Quote the post, please.
Nor are “women” being asked to make some general sacrifice, regarding trans.
I was the one who originally brought up the term “cisgendered” in the earlier post, Q Grrl, and I didn’t intend it to apply to women only. I’m cisgendered as well, and so is Charles and any other non-trans male here. The point of using the term (for me) is partly linguistic convenience - some term is needed, after all (although apparently there is no term you won’t construct as an insult, since you also object to “non”).
The other point is to try and use a term that makes cisgendered people realize that they are positioned in this debate, rather than implicitly dividing the world into unpositioned people and trans people. You have no more right as a cisgendered person to be treated by others as unpositioned than men have a right to be treated by others as the genderless gender, or whites as the raceless race.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:03 am
For that matter, what does “the discomfort of gender” mean in this particular comment? Surely you don’t mean to assert that everyone or every woman or most women feel the discomfort that leads a few people to get SRS, nor the specific resistance these people meet from society at large. But I can’t think offhand of any other way to make sense of what you said.
As for the quote from (I think) Sean: looks to me like they “reify” a real feature of personal experience that society identifies with “gender”.
This comment was written by hf.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:12 am
i can’t speak to the words little light was refering to, but as far as i’m concerned, i understand the words in question are the ones i use to describe myself, my politics, my community, and my lived experiences.
regarding others creating new identities for women, i’d like to point out that i’ve never been able to define my own identity. i was identified as transsexual by patriarchal medicine, and placed in the “larger trans community” by feminists, who have defined my politics for me. so yeah, i totally hear you about being forced to renegotiate language, identity, and politics.
and as far as i’m concerned, my politics say no such thing regarding references to you as woman or female as disenfranchising to others. and this is just one of many examples of how my politics and my community are defined for me, without my input or permission.
i don’t mean to be a stickler for details, but may i ask to what politics you refer, and to what “larger trans community” you refer? because i have no idea who or what you’re talking about.
This comment was written by nexyjo.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Well Amp, your argument falls apart because “cisgendered” is a purely meaningless term, especially if you’re also insisting upon the “trans” in transgendered.
Please don’t refer to me as cisgenderd again.
Positioned how? Like man, woman, and transgendered doesn’t already acknowledge the positioning of folks in the patriarchy? And besides, I was pretty sure the “debate” was between a transgendered philosophy/politics and feminist theory/politics.
I am not arguing legitimacy of personal acts.
You seem to be arguing that we aren’t already positioned and that trans is the bedrock of the new gender paradigm. Which is intellectually, theoretically impossible based on your use of terms, your use of theory, and ***YOUR*** positioning of identities.
Feminism argues that we are all already positioned, against our individual wills, and I am arguing subsequently that transgenderism, as currently defined does not transgress this positioning, and most certainly does nothing but entrench this positioning when making up terms like “cisgendered”.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Amp:
one gleaning of “cisgenderd” from Wikipedia states this:
Get back to me when you figure out how “man” and “woman” are “on the same side”.
Have you decided to just throw out all feminist theory and practice from the last 40 years so that it makes for a more palatable intellectual chew?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:41 am
Gahh. Another 425 posts in the offing.
IRL, I just call people what they want to be called. D’oh! I haven’t had someone proclaim their pronoun was ze or whatever, if they did, I’d require a short pronoun primer so I knew about nominative, possessive, plurals, etc. Then I’d proceed with more confidence. It’s none of my business what’s under their shorts - unless there’s a sexual thing in the offing, and you want to call it off under certain anatomical conditions rather than being offensive in flagrante (oops, sorry to have been a tease, bye-bye….).
I don’t have a problem in using “cisgendered” in the discussions about gender. It seems superfluous otherwise. I don’t have a problem with addressing feminist and gender theory, but recognise that transgendered people have a variety of experiences and that a feminist analysis will be made more complicated by the stories of transgendered folk. Well, life is complicated anyhow.
This comment was written by NancyP.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Because you brought this onto your blog as a means to trash the practice and beliefs of radical feminsm. Because you don’t have an ideological dog in this that can actually hunt. Because of the misconceptions about feminism and radical feminism that you are propogating in order for your blog to look like one of the “good guys”, so that you look like you get it, so that you look like you’re down with the underdogs.
But, yeah, what’s your overall track record with women Amp? With feminists? With respecting those boundaries?
You pick fights, make vague accusations, and then want to label me as the overexcited one who is the only one objecting to language. Er. You know. That’s about as intelluctually dishonest as you can get.
And let’s not get this wrong. I’m not “offended” by anything said here; I’m not offended if folks feel comfortable using some terms to describe their lives. But I’m sure as hell going to pick that use apart when it is used to levy criticism at feminism. If you cannot back up your criticism with terms that have substantial meaning, then you’re barking at just a sliver of the moon.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:47 am
I’m talking about the larger trans community in a class based analysis, much like radical feminism addresses “men” in a class based analysis. I’m talking about the going trends and tendancies that I see on-line and IRL.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Positioned how? Like man, woman, and transgendered doesn’t already acknowledge the positioning of folks in the patriarchy? And besides, I was pretty sure the “debate” was between a transgendered philosophy/politics and feminist theory/politics.
Transgendered people are also, and very often, men and women. Those three categories are not workable.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Qgrrl is being obtuse.
Transgender: incongruence between gender self-image, identity, “brain gender” and the person’s original genitalia
“Cisgender”: congruence between gender self-image, identity, “brain gender” and the person’s original genitalia
The gender is not specified. Two cisgender people can be woman and woman, woman and man, man and man.
The “cis” and “trans” prefixes are used most commonly in chemistry to indicate that chemical moities are on the same or on different sides of a chemical bond with 2D architechture. Chirality refers to the same sort of thing but with bond of 3D architecture, and the two possibilities are dextro and levo (right and left).
This comment was written by NancyP.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:52 am
and another thing, since Amp seemed more interested in trying to snub me then actually read into my reasoning:
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:54 am
And NancyP has little to know working knowledge on how feminists view gender.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:56 am
But “cisgendered” works? Why? Because it neatly wraps men and women up into the same category without all that tricky worrying about how women are socially positioned vis-a-vis men? C’mon now.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Usually discussions here are more courteous.
This comment was written by Susan.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Also piny, if man and woman don’t work because some transgendered folks are men or women, then I guess you could also say that “transgendered” doesn’t work as a category. Which I was partially arguing, again not about individuals and their relationship to their fee-fees, their puchachies, or their brain cells, but about political terminology and theory.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
In the same sense that ‘white’ wraps Bosnian immigrants and 15th generation American citizens of English descent into the same category without worrying about how they’re positioned vis-a-vis each other, yes.
I don’t think that a discussion that focuses on the cis/trans dichotomy must, by its nature, obliterate the man/woman dichotomy. I think that they’re both good and worthwhile discussions to have, but they’re different axises of discussion, and saying, “in this area, you hold privilege,” does not mean that there are no areas in which you lack privilege.
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
But “cisgendered” works? Why? Because it neatly wraps men and women up into the same category without all that tricky worrying about how women are socially positioned vis-a-vis men? C’mon now.
No. Because it describes one particular thing which non-trans men and non-trans women share: the status of not being trans. You may quibble all you like over the particular definition of trans, but there’s nothing invalid about the idea of a category. Cisgendered and transgendered are two categories that exist independent of gender; they do not indicate that someone is or is not male or female, is or is not perceived as male or female, was or was not born male or female, does or does not suffer from misogyny. When, on the other hand, you describe the available categories as “men, women, and transgendered,” you’re lumping all transgendered people into a single category apart from men and women. This is wrong, because transgendered people are men and women. The three categories mostly overlap. It’s like saying, “men, women, and gays.” Transgendered people don’t have gender–presentation, identity, or assignment–in common with each other, so it’s an inconsistent conflation to see from somone so intent on keeping positions under patriarchy carefully delineated.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Also piny, if man and woman don’t work because some transgendered folks are men or women, then I guess you could also say that “transgendered” doesn’t work as a category. Which I was partially arguing, again not about individuals and their relationship to their fee-fees, their puchachies, or their brain cells, but about political terminology and theory.
See my cross-post. It works as a category; it does not depend on those two. You know, it’s not impossible to describe someone as transgendered or not transgendered and also talk about whether they suffer from misogyny as women, or whether they benefit from male privilege as men.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Well Susan, ususally when someone brings out the civility stick it means I’m pretty close to hitting a raw nerve or two.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
How do *you* define “transgendered” piny?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Right! Right! Saying ‘gay straight, or bisexual’ does not obliterate the differences between men and women and how they’re positioned vis-a-vis one another, it just adds to the discussion.
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
[quote]
Also piny, if man and woman don’t work because some transgendered folks are men or women, then I guess you could also say that “transgendered” doesn’t work as a category. Which I was partially arguing, again not about individuals and their relationship to their fee-fees, their puchachies, or their brain cells, but about political terminology and theory.
[/quote]
But this is a discussion *about* individuals. If you cant engage with what people expierience in their real lives then whats the point of your political theory?
This comment was written by Helxx.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
How do *you* define “transgendered” piny?
Transgendered usually means people who were assigned x gender at birth and then at some point in their lives cease to identify with it or be placed within it. It’s vague because that can happen in any number of ways. Some transpeople transition legally, physically, and socially, into another gender; some of those are conventional in behavior and post-transition identity and some aren’t. Some transpeople pass as their post-transition gender and some don’t. Some transpeople trigger incongruity-alarms pre-transition and some don’t. Some transpeople identify as something other than “male” or “female” and some don’t–those beliefs can differ from culture to culture and era to era. There are problems common to most transpeople, and most of those center around the fact that you just aren’t allowed to ever be anything besides what you were assigned at birth, or allowed to have a history that doesn’t match what you seem to be now. That kind of incongruity and officially acknowledged categories seen to represent it–e.g. transsexual–are subject to pretty universal hatred and marginalization.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
None of that answers my question, by the way. I
[1] In my post I deliberately avoided using the term “radical feminism,” because I realize that not all radical feminists agree about trans issues, and I don’t think this issue should be used to trash radical feminism as a whole. I don’t have anything against radical feminism, although there are places where I disagree with radical feminist theory; I consider radical feminism an allied movement to what I believe in.
[2] Sure I do. I have an idealogical dedication to freedom from gender constraints and gender-based prejudices. For that reason, the way Lucky and others behaved, and they ideology they upheld, in the IBTP thread was an attack on my own ideology. My post was in self-defense, in my view; my freedom is not a separate and distinct thing from everyone else’s freedom.
[3] I don’t think I’m spreading a misconception about feminism; I think a significant number of feminists, myself included, see the fight for trans freedom as a portion of the larger fight against sexist ideology and for gender freedom; and see many of the anti-trans arguments as based in sexist and regressive assumptions. I think my post fairly represented that view.
I don’t think I’m “down” with anybody; I’ve never been one of the cool kids, and I doubt I ever will be. What does that have to do with anything.
Ad homs will get you nowhere with me. But please attempt to respect the moderation goals of this blog.
I didn’t pick a fight; you came to my blog, not vice-versa. Nor have I made any vague accusations; my criticisms of what you’ve been saying are quite specific.
Finally, you have, in fact, been objecting to language; do you deny that you’ve been objecting to the word “cisgender”?
I haven’t been criticizing feminism. I’ve been criticizing the views of some particular feminists. There’s a difference.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
thank you, i now understand how you’ve come to the inaccurate conclusions about trans politics and communities. would you estimate that most radical feminists also base their theories and analysis of trans politics and communitites on what they see and how they interpret the small number of examples on line and irl?
i’m curious how you would interpret the validity of an analysis of radical feminism based on what an individual can gather on line and irl, especially an individual who doesn’t have access to radical feminist space irl?
This comment was written by nexyjo.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Or they could actually be trying to be civil, or to keep the discussion from turning into a long rant about how/why so-and-so sucks, or pointing out that civil discourse is usually seen on Amp’s blog.
This comment was written by ArrogantWorm.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
As others have already pointed out, using “men women and transgendered” as your categories is nonsense. There are multiple, overlapping distinctions; “men women and intersexed” is one such distinction, “transgendered and cisgendered” is another.
Failing to include “cisgendered,” or some word meaning the same thing, as a possible category does fail to acknowledge the position of cisgendered people in society. It is for that reason — as well as convenience — that the word “cisgendered” is a useful contribution to the dialog. In my opinion.
That’s not what I’m arguing at all. I’m arguing that transgendered or cisgendered is one of the multiple ways we are positioned in society; not instead of, but in addition to.
I don’t think anyone here is disagreeing with that. However, pointing out that we have multiple positionings in society — not only female and male, but also gentile and non-gentile, rich and poor, white and of color, straight and queer, abled and disabled, transgendered and cisgendered, etc etc — provides a more accurate understanding of the overall picture.
I don’t think “transgenderism” inherantly transgresses the male/female dichotomy. Nor does it inherently entrench patriarchal gender positioning, except in the same sort of way my going along with being identified as male does.
The way some individual transsexuals view and talk about gender does entrench gender, but so does the way some individual cisgenders view and talk about gender. What’s important isn’t if someone is transgender or cisgender, but what the gender ideology they express (and attempt to enforce) is.
Finally, of course, the way some individual transsexuals view and talk about gender does help fight the oppressive gender system. This includes, in my view, many “open” transsexuals who don’t identify simply as male or female, but also as transwomen and transmen, and who use their position to question the simple gender binary system.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Your blog? The blog you sold for cash? The blog that used the voices and opinions of women and feminists to garner that precious blog standing that earned you, what? was it five figures?
And then you decide you won’t specifically say “radical” feminists, but you were pretty quick to let Luckynkl stand in as the spokesperson for feminism. And you claim you weren’t trying to start something.
Ok, fine. I don’t believe you, and much of what I have written stems from how I perceived your posting to be bait and an attack on feminism because feminism can’t quite seem to frame transgenderism correctly.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
1) I don’t think Luckynkl is a stand-in for all of radical feminism, or much of anything else. Didn’t she spend years denying being a feminist at all? I think she represents bigotry, not feminism, and I said so in my post. (Or anyway, I extensively and approvingly quoted Winter saying so.)
2) Luckynkl was far from the only person I quoted in my post. Responding to her hateful bigotry is not something I’ll apologize for, but neither was it all my post did.
Well, if you’re going to assume that I don’t mean what I say, then I don’t see any reason for you to bother discussing things with me. You can have a much better discussion with yourself; first, you state my views, then you can state your rebuttal to my views. (I”d call that attacking a strawperson, but if that’s what you want to do).
But it’s an ad hom attack, and the problem with ad homs is that they’re illogical. Whether or not I’m sincere in my views (and I am, even though you choose to think otherwise), someone other than me might state the same views and be sincere about them. So it’s more logical for you to respond to the arguments, rather than responding by making personal attacks.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Which I’ve done up until the point where you began with your quasi ad homs about my intentions. I’ve put a lot of thought and effort into my words in these past two threads, so it’s rather offputting to see you sum that effort up as an illogical non-response to the arguments.
Because we all know that when you said this:
it wasn’t an ad hom attack and you were actually attempting to refute what I have said.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Q Grrl,
Do you find a division into 4 genders acceptable? Men, women, transmen, transwomen? This retains your objection to lumping men and women into one category of gender (cisgendered), but recognizes that transmen and transwomen are very differently positioned within the gender system.
Personally, I don’t find that division acceptable, as it obscures the “gender as the categories used in the system of sex oppression” focus on the two genders: men and women. I mean, I have no problem with the use of the terms man, woman, transwoman, transman, but I don’t think that they represent a description of 4 gender categories, any more than white man, white woman, black man, black woman describe 4 genders.
However, if we are going to talk at all about people who are transgendered, then we need to be able to distinguish between people who are transgendered and people who aren’t. We can do that by talking about transgendered people and men and women, but this creates confusion and suggests that one can escape from the binary gender system by becoming trans, which is simply not true, and again obscures the “gender as the categories used in the system of sex oppression” aspect of gender.
People in this society are categorized as men and women. No one really gets to opt out. Some people move from one category to the other. Those people get labeled trans. Some people don’t move from one category to the other. Is your position that there is no need for a term that describes that group of people? That that group of people, because it is made up of both men and women, can not be lumped together for any sort of analysis?
There is a second problem with cisgendered, which I think FCH expressed well on the last thread. If transgendered is associated with transgressing against the gender system, then does that mean that cisgendered people are people who are happy with the gender system? Does that mean that people who hate being categorized as their gender, not because they want to be the other one, but because they hate the system of sex oppression that the gender categories are used in, are still just cisgendered?
To my mind, this problem is caused by ambiguity over what is meant by transgendered. Since it is perfectly possible to be both transgendered and a supporter of the gender system, trans and cis gendered should not be viewed as related to the question of whether or not you support the gender system.
The other ambiguity is over whether people who are gender nonconformists are categorized as cis or trans gendered, and whether being cis gendered implies gender conformity. Since, again, it is perfectly possible to be trans gendered and gender conformist, I don’t think trans and cis gendered should be seen to refer to gender conformity.
Trans and cis gendered should only be seen to refer to whether you are (or desire to be) categorized as the other gender from the gender category you were placed in at birth. If you are (or desire to be) then you are trans gendered. If you aren’t (or don’t want to be), then you aren’t trans-gendered. Since you ask not to be categorized as cis-gendered (and as non-trans), is there any way of talking about the fact that you (presumably) don’t want to change from your currently assigned gender category to the other available gender category that you would find acceptable?
Or am I completely off-base?
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I only really half answered this question upthread, and in a bit of a disjointed take-off of Sean’s reply, at that. So I’m going to try a bit harder. Right now, I don’t define my gender identity. For pronouns I rather prefer ‘he’ but there’s experiences in my life that most people automatically exclude as being something that a guy can experience, and vice versa, so I’m not sure I can claim male or female and still have all the criteria needed for people to grasp experiences such as mine in that male/female context. But he works pretty well when I’m out and about in life, and as a pronoun it’s sort of comfy like an old shoe, well worn but falling apart at the seams when it’s closely scrutinized by others.
This comment was written by ArrogantWorm.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
You’re not off-base Charles, but there’s a lot there to address, and you pointed out a few blind spots of mine. I’m not sure I have the time today to address them though.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
I don’t know if this would work or not, but could one problem with the terminology be that it seems too restrictive?
I don’t want to misrepresent Qgrrl, but my interpretation of what she’s saying is that she doesn’t feel like the term cisgendered applies to her because it signifies one who has an aligned gender identity and physical sex, whereas I get the feeling that she views gender as inherently problematic rather than aligned. (My apologies if that’s not what you were saying at all, Qgrrl.)
If transgender is a category that encompasses people who are dissatisfied with their gender identity, and cisgender encompasses people who are not trans, maybe there could be a couple other categories, such as:
Transgender - current def.
Cisgender - one who does not experience significant disharmony between gender identity and physical sex/expected gender
(some other term, or multiplicity of terms) - one who does experience significant disharmony between gender identity and physical sex/expected gender, but expresses it in a different way than transpeople
genderfree - one who experiences no feeling of gender identity at all
This comment was written by mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I have a lot more to say, but am currently moving cross-country. Will be back in a few days, if the thread is not yet dead.
This comment was written by Sean.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
I don’t think that’s all transgender encompasses right now, though. Aren’t ‘crossdressers’ (Oh how I hate that term) considered transgender as well? I thought the majority were fine with their identity. And if a new word was made for the people who felt fine in their identity but exhibited behaviors that aren’t ‘appropriate’ would we need a new word for the issues we face as a group? (since the majority doesn’t bother to learn the difference between us anyway)
The second quote sounds like it’s separating transexuals from other forms of transgressing gendered behavior by means of surgery/hormones, and there’s a bit of a hierarchy in real life as it is.
This comment was written by ArrogantWorm.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
I never thought transvestites were transgendered. They were expressly excluded from the category as I was taught it academically.
“The second quote sounds like it’s separating transexuals from other forms of transgressing gendered behavior by means of surgery/hormones, and there’s a bit of a hierarchy in real life as it is”
I didn’t intend to. I was trying to make space for peopel who are unhappy with their gender, btu who don’t identify as transsexual or transgender.
This comment was written by mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Ah, that would explain it, I haven’t been to college.
This comment was written by ArrogantWorm.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
genderfree has the problem that I don’t think anyone is free of the system of gender. I know that isn’t what you mean it to mean, but it is a term guaranteed to throw red flags all over the place.
I think dividing things out into as many different axes as possible, and then recombining is helpful, so
the 3 I suggested in comment 53 were
gender conformist vs. gender non-comformist
pro-gender vs. anti-gender
trans-gender vs. cis-gender
but I’m sure there are more
genderfree probably gets at another of axis, one relating to gender identification
maybe
gender identified vs. not gender identified
and of course, the originating axes for all the others:
the biological
biologically male vs. biologically female (which could get split out into a bunch of axes)
the gender system
man vs. woman,
which also spawns:
masculine vs. not-masculine, and feminine vs. not-feminine
So I am biologically male, a man, mostly cis-gendered, somewhat masculine, slightly feminine, somewhat gender-identified, strongly anti-gender, and slightly gender-conformist.
I’m sure there are others that one could come up with. I don’t know how useful this sort of splitting is.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
January 17th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
I think the added words were suggested because QGrrl didn’t like being refered to as cisgendered, and a few others didn’t like it either for various reasons. I don’t understand how some claimed it would replace or add to the gender category though, as neither trans or cis is a gender, it describes direction or lack thereof.
This comment was written by ArrogantWorm.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 12:23 am
GL, this is spot on. I get enough of “Is it true that you have the most womanly prostrate ever? How does it feel to know you will always be a mutilated man?“ on my own blog. The last thread evolved into a shouting match, not a dialogue or debate.
Furry, what you say makes a lot of sense. Especially for someone that’s thought a lot about this. But many people live in silence “identifying with girls and women” because we’ve been ridiculed when we expressed it. It’s easy to put your words together for you, because you’re looking from the outside in. But we’ve grown up being told that we are boys and that our feelings aren’t ok.
The words you say are more true, at least for me. I’ve been socialized as a male most of my life. But how I’ve felt and how I’ve lived, are two totally different things. I have said in the past that I felt I was born in the wrong body, but it was because those were the best words I could come up to express how I felt. How you phrased it is more to the point of how I felt.
I know GL, and Nexy here, and I know they are both very strong people. We aren’t delicate flowers that will wilt at the slightest touch. I pass under the radar in my personal life, but for a long time I didn’t . Unless you’ve lived this life, you have no idea the kind of shame and hate that is piled on us. Personally, I’ll debate in some really hostile environments if I think it’s going to educate or illuminate. But I’ve seen enough hate in my life. Try this or this on for size. You’ll get an idea of the kind of hate we face in our daily lives.
When I have this kind of drama in my real life, I have a really short fuse for hate with my online life. I come here to learn and to educate. I come here to dialogue. I come here to share. I come here to explore. But I am not here to look for someone to tell me who and what I am.
I do believe these discussions can and are, at times, productive. I’m always challenging the reasoning of my own thoughts and actions. I know other people have benefited from the conversations as well. I’ve also benefited from the gift of being introduced to some really wonderful people.
Staying or going is a matter of respect and decorum. Reading further down the thread it’s obvious to me that there are two camps. I side with Amp, Nexy and GL. The two folks in the other camp that are on the blog seem to be Q Grrl and mandolin. Mandolin in the last thread and Q Grrl seem to be overly hostile and aggressive. I have enough of that (see above) in my own life. This tit-for-tat aggression does nothing for me.
So on that note…
*poof*
This comment was written by Marti Abernathey.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 1:33 am
have any words that really fit? after all these years, i still have no idea what the term “gender identity” means. many trans people … ■Comment on Language around trans, how it works, how it doesn’t… by …（Google Blog Search: a-blog） http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/01/16/language-around-trans-how-it-works-how-it-doesnt/#comment-228445 I don’t have a problem with ze, but phonetically, to me hir sounds like ‘here’ and kinda shuts down the connections from my brain to my tongue. I keep trying it out in sentences and it’s like I hear the word ‘here’ and my brain tries to …
This comment was written by a-blog馬鹿.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 8:45 am
Hey marti, don’t let the door hit you on you way out. It sucks that a strong female opinion can still be labled overly aggressive. Would it be easier if I were all pansy and passive-aggressive?
Anyhoo, according to this:
I am apparently transgendered. Which I suppose goes back to showing that no matter how you identify internally in regards to your gender, what really counts is how the rest of the chumps see you.
Men tell me I’m just a woman, some transgendered folk call me cisgendered, and some queers will call me transgendered. Funny how I’m the least likely to be able to define the meaning of my being born female and living as such in the 21st century. I guess being a gender radical only counts if you publically announce it, eh?, and then follow the guidebook.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Charles writes:
I don’t think that further dividing gender is going to change anything as long as the premise of gender, as gender, is one of power-over, rightness and wrongness, strenth and weakness. Without addressing that core function of gender, further divisions only tend to strengthen these rather primary functions of gender. And further, how are transmen and transwomen “very differently” positioned within the gender system? Most trans-narratives do not differ vastly from the experiences of women I know, as far as discomfort with gendered expectations and how gender inhibits personal autonomy and expression. The only major difference is the internal narrative of individuals who claim an identity and label of transgendered. The external realities, however, appear nearly parallel.
Language is symbol. If we simply choose different symbols, or more symbols, without changing the root of the symbology, what have we gained?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Hi Charles,
The axes system makes sense.
Hi AW,
Apologies if my linguistic stab in the dark gave offense.
This comment was written by mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Marti,
I’ve been respectfully asked not to participate in this thread. I will ask you (and anyone else who might feel the urge) to respectfully refrain from quoting my posts here. I think it’s unfair that you can take my posts, then respond to them and I can’t respond back.
I’d also like to ask the mods to delete any quoted material of mine that shows up in this thread in the future.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 9:47 am
You know what would be really great? Not being agressive at all !. Imagine that.
This comment was written by Helxx.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 9:48 am
You are ignoring what people are saying. Reiterating your own political view that dont have any grounding in the real world and now are just abusing people. Give it up omg.
This comment was written by Helxx.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Call me a trannie, and let other people form their own opinions of me and the person. Easy. =)
This comment was written by Sarah.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Well, if Charles and Q Grrl, et al can avoid getting distracted by the chaff, I’m fascinated by the conversation. I am possibly even learning stuff.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Well Helxx, with all due respect, I’m being opinionated, not aggressive. Which was my point about women with strong opinions.
Is this not a political blog?
And who exactly am I abusing? The folks that are calling me names because I’m expressing my opinion? You know, like marti who hasn’t even participated until he/she felt the need to give me the smake down for being “overly” aggressive. Riiiiight.
I truly understand the need to preach to the choir from time to time; to rally the troops, solidify political expectations. But this? Why are folks participating on a thread about “language around trans, how it works, how it doesn’t…” and then contributing only to call differing opinions “overly aggressive” ? I’m trying to explain the loopholes I see in that language, and for that I’m the bad guy. I mean gal. Oh hell.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Marti’s post was about hate and this thread, the other one and the one IBTP have just been attacks on transsexuals and the agenda of the larger transsexual community (whatever that is).
Its just attack, attack, attack - an excuse for discrimination and exclusion of transpeople.
This comment was written by Helxx.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Language Around Trans, How it Works, How it Doesn’t….
This comment was written by It's MzMartiPants to you!.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Huh? WTF? what discrimination? what exclusion?
Have you read anything I’ve written?
If I criticize the Black Panthers or ActUp! for their politics, am I likewise discriminating? Excluding?
Christ on a fucking crutch.
Do you have anything, **ANYTHING**, to add about the language used in transgendered politics?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 11:32 am
so how to we address the premise of gender, as gender? what specific actions would you employ to change the premise of gender as gender? we can point out the problem and cite specific examples of how the problem manifests (i.e. trans ideology and language only works to enfore gender as gender), but that doesn’t help to change the current status quo. granted, identification of the problem is key, but where do we go from here?
and since this thread is about the trans, what recomendations would you suggest to help those of us who are trans, who are unable to function in our current society, if transitioning is not an option?
This comment was written by nexyjo.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Not you, but others in this thread have accused the larger transsexual community of attacking feminism and by extension attacking women. You have been attacking the posibility of even discussing the priveledge cisgendered people have over us by decrying even the use of words that distinguish trans and non-trans people.
All these attacks just give succor to the janice raymodds and luckynkls of the world.
This comment was written by Helxx.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 11:54 am
That’s what I don’t know. I don’t think any of us have really seen that yet. That’s why I’m so hesitant to bring on new terms that look progressive but might only be masking the deeper issues.
My personal belief is that transitioning is always an option. There are obviously at least two aspects of every person’s lives: the public and the intensely private. Private choices are often made in order to cope. Since each of us, for all intents and purposes, has only one shot at this thing called life, I’m all for making private choices that enhance the individual’s quality of life. I get argumentative when I see private choices being promoted as a group solution to a society-wide problem (in this instance, gender). I am the same way about women’s shelters and their relationship to feminism, or abortion clinics in relation to feminism. Neither one *is* feminism; it is a feminist or woman-centered response to a greater social ill (male violence against women; inadequate birth control; rape) that feminism itself is currently incapable of “fixing”.
For all intents and purposes, I myself have lived the transgendered life. But 20 years ago we were called baby dykes and we just did what we did. I am the crossdresser, down to my socks, underwear, and shoes. I have shaved my wirey-ass, beardy sideburns on a daily basis. I have been called “sir” so many times I don’t react anymore. I have been chased out of women’s restrooms by young and old alike. I didn’t identify with the concept of “woman” until I was in my 30’s. Until then, I was just Q. Almost everything I do is masculine in nature. My interests, my hobbies, my competitiveness. Every silly gender test I take scores me quite high on the masuline side of things, including, apparently, my brain.
So why don’t I identify as trans? Why don’t I take that on? I suppose the great part is that I think it’s more subversive to remain publically a “woman”, as I present “woman”, and to fuck with expectations that way. And because, as I now enter middle age, my relationship with my physical body is changing. I’m more mellow with it; less concerned about the girl bits than I am about the slowly healing rotator cuff and the knees that hobble me every morning.
And because feminism is the only politics that has ignited a passion in me to fight. I don’t do queer politics, I’m leary of trans politics. Not because they are wrong; they don’t speak to me; they don’t speak to my experience.
So, yeah that brings me back around to Amp’s criticism of my criticisms above. I see that point he made/makes. I still feel passionately that there is something not-quite-right about trans-politics and some of the terminology used to represent that politics. Does that make trans wrong? No. Not any more than being a heterosexual married female with multiple children.
We do what we do. It comes under the microscope though when we try to pass it off as revolutionary.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Helxx,
I don’t think you are helping this discussion.
If you don’t have anything to add besides attacking Q Grrl, please stop participating.
Q Grrl,
Its going to take me a while to respond as I am very busy.
What I meant by transmen and transwomen being very differently positioned is mostly a nod to the idea that I hear from many people, trans and non-trans, that what sex you are raised as, even if you don’t internalize it as being the gender you are, matters, and matters a lot, so if you are raised as a boy, but then become a woman latter in life, that is a very different experience from being raised as a girl and then becoming a woman. I agree that trans people are still, as piny pointed out, men and women and that the gender system operates on those two genders, not on any additional ones.
And thanks for comment 76. At least for me, having a better understanding of your background makes what you’ve been saying at the theory level much more comprehensible (and not in a “oh, now I understand why you think like that” way, but in a “oh, now I understand what you mean” way).
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
thank you q grrl, for your excellent response. i always have a better understanding of a position when it’s framed in the context of a personal narrative.
i don’t know that i’ve ever considered the trans experience as revolutionary, or at least my trans experience. perhaps because of the recent developments in medical technology, it now appears revolutionary. or perhaps i’m not understanding how you’re using the term “revolutionary”.
could you expand on the specifics of what leads you to interpret trans politics/ideology/experience as being positioned as revolutionary?
This comment was written by nexyjo.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Well, this is basically where the snake comes back around and bites its own ass. I see trans politics/ideology as *potentially* revolutionary when paired with feminism as either a complimentary notion or as a critique of feminism. I’m not saying that trans needs feminism; I’m saying I am critical of trans as revolutionary when held up in either of these manners next to feminism. Which might need clarifying, but I too am short on time right now.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
i’d agree. frankly, i never thought that trans was in the same category as feminism, at least how i understand the two terms. feminism is an ideology, a political stance, a way of analyzing and understanding how the world works, and how it oppresses people.
on the other hand, trans is, at its root, a way to address an individual’s personal struggle to improve their quality of life. it’s a survival technique. it doesn’t attempt to analyze our culture.
and while the personal may be political, i never saw trans as being political in any way.
This comment was written by nexyjo.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
I wasn’t making a statement about anyone’s identity, it was a question concerning Mandolin’s suggestion.
This comment was written by ArrogantWorm.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Hey nexy and Q Grrl,
Thanks for having an interesting discussion in the middle of all of this. I happen to particularly agree with both of your most recent posts. And quite honestly I think we ought to be challenging the idea that trans people are “inherently revolutionary” somehow, not only because it’s a false notion of revolution, but more importantly to me, because it can and has actually harmed trans people who are engaged in a primary struggle for survival at various levels of existence. I don’t want to politically prioritize survival over revolution… but maybe we have to at least at the personal level, right? A lot of first-hand experience tells me this too, from working with people who have to put getting food and shelter before anything else, to folks who have a whole lot of their own strife to work through before they can make meaningful contributions to community struggle. I think that Andrea Dworkin quote that was floating around recently about trans people being in a state of “primary emergency” that has to be addressed.
Anyway, if I had to give the briefest of snapshots, that’s where I’d say “trans” is at. A long way behind a lot of other struggles. Decades, at least. A long way from being able to provide any kind of revolutionary credentials; still trying to get the supply lines working before ideas for marching orders can really even be drafted. (Not to say that that shouldn’t be happening too, and has been lately in some blogs.) I do think there’s such a thing as “trans liberation,” and that it can have greater goals than simply personal comfort or playing hopscotch with categories drawn in indelible chalk. I just think it’s a very young thing, even though trans people have been around for a long time. And I think part of the confusion here is that “trans” is seen as some sort of political choice, rather than as a people, arriving in the world through a set of experiences unchosen, who have only lately begun to wake up to a whole bewildering set of consciousnesses that demand new analysis and new interconnection with existing takes on patriarchal power and other forms of oppression. I think there is a lot to learn, potentially — from the raw experiences of trans people, is a good place to start, since there hasn’t really been much that I’d consider really worthy of being called “trans liberatory theory.” The surface has barely been scratched; we are still in the 0th wave.
This comment was written by Holly.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
I wanted to add one thing, which is that the first time I ever encountered the notion of trans people somehow being inherently revolutionary or deconstructing of gender, it was actually because a bunch of young trans people were complaining about how bogus they thought this idea was, and that it felt like a ridiculous or onerous expectation / label / automatic assumption simply for having a certain kind of gender. Obviously those people (not all of them interested in revolution or dismantling oppressive systems, at least at the time) had encountered that idea about trans people elsewhere, and I think it was stemming from a certain kind of liberal-arts-college objectification of trans people’s lives. I’ve only rarely if ever seen that sort of take on “trans” coming out of the mouth of a trans person, and never in a communal discussion, but maybe I just move in particular circles.
This comment was written by Holly.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
>In fact, what I’m seeing (with the help of Belladame’s screeds) is a totally burying of the political impact of patriarchal norms, an assumption that feminism is responsible for the discomfort of gender>
Uh. Not even close. What I am saying is, being a feminist -or- a woman is really not a justification for turning around and kicking the next person/group down the ladder. And that “patriarchal norms” affect ALL of us, in related -but not identical ways; I don’t happen to agree with a monolithic “Class Woman,” that’s quite true; but that’s also true for a lot of cisgendered (look! i said it again!) women who find themselves at one or another crossroads. And also what others said wrt “theory” and “lives.” And “cisgendered” is not an antonym for “woman;” do you really feel that your identity as a woman is so threatened by that concession? Really? Because I don’t, and I do not understand why it is such a big damn deal for so many people apparently, that is true, no.
It’s not just an academic question of words here; you ought to know that, QGrrl.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
ftr, i don’t think anyone or anything is “inherently” revolutionary, or anything else.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
…you know, as long as we’re opening up vocab, at some point i wouldn’t mind really examining what everyone thinks is meant by “patriarchal.” it’s gotten a bit…reified, for my tastes, i think sometimes.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
i think it’s probably possible to talk about various trans political movements as complementary to feminism. But i also think, as was said above by nexy and others, that the primary problem people seem to keep running into is that “trans” is not ONLY or even necessarily political; you know, sort of like “gay” is not ONLY or even necessarily political. as i am understanding it, at least. that is my frame of reference, admittedly.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Yeah, that’s why I try to avoid just saying “the patriarchy.” With the way our brains seem to work, I think it slips over too easily into a shadowy faceless international council of male elders, or something. When really, it is the faceless AND extremely abstract interlocking system of rules, restrictions, hierarchies and legitimized violence on the basis of gender that we ought to be think about. I think. Sorta. Maybe.
I’d also like to posit that maybe the problem with “cisgendered” is that it implies that anyone who’s not “transgendered” is “happy with gender” at least on a personal, and maybe on a political level? On the other hand, it seems like there are plenty of people in these discussions who are comfortable with that word, and who also would not describe themselves as “happy with gender” at all, so maybe there is a different take? I can’t speak for those people, though. Or maybe it’s our language that is turning things into binaries (does every person have to be either “trans” or “cis”? that would certainly be screwed up) when they don’t have to be. I blame Latin. And brains.
This comment was written by Holly.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
>For all intents and purposes, I myself have lived the transgendered life. But 20 years ago we were called baby dykes and we just did what we did. I am the crossdresser, down to my socks, underwear, and shoes. I have shaved my wirey-ass, beardy sideburns on a daily basis. I have been called “sir” so many times I don’t react anymore. I have been chased out of women’s restrooms by young and old alike. I didn’t identify with the concept of “woman” until I was in my 30’s. Until then, I was just Q. Almost everything I do is masculine in nature. My interests, my hobbies, my competitiveness. Every silly gender test I take scores me quite high on the masuline side of things, including, apparently, my brain.
So why don’t I identify as trans? Why don’t I take that on? I suppose the great part is that I think it’s more subversive to remain publically a “woman”, as I present “woman”, and to fuck with expectations that way. And because, as I now enter middle age, my relationship with my physical body is changing. I’m more mellow with it; less concerned about the girl bits than I am about the slowly healing rotator cuff and the knees that hobble me every morning.
And because feminism is the only politics that has ignited a passion in me to fight. I don’t do queer politics, I’m leary of trans politics. Not because they are wrong; they don’t speak to me; they don’t speak to my experience.
So, yeah that brings me back around to Amp’s criticism of my criticisms above. I see that point he made/makes. I still feel passionately that there is something not-quite-right about trans-politics and some of the terminology used to represent that politics. Does that make trans wrong? No. Not any more than being a heterosexual married female with multiple children.
We do what we do. It comes under the microscope though when we try to pass it off as revolutionary.>>
Okay. I see where you’re coming from a bit more, then Q Grrl.
Well, look. You are saying that xyz should come under scrutiny when people try to pass it off as “revolutionary.” Which, in a political context, I would not argue with. I hadn’t seen the transpeople who were actually doing this here, but admittedly i still need to go back and read much of the first part of this thread and a chunk of the other; maybe i missed something. i’ve never heard that from any of the transfolk i’ve known irl. anyway:
so, yeah.
but then see you say that -your- decision to not transition is because it “feels more subversive” not to do so.
Which, and then you go on to say that this doesn’t make anyone else’s decision right or wrong; that transitioning, queer politics, trans politics, don’t feel right for you (but it could for others)…okay, fine.
But where I’m stuck i guess is:
1) we critique the positioning of being transgendered/transitioning as “revolutionary;”
2) you are saying your decision to not transition is more subversive, which correct me if i’m wrong, but i see as in the same category of “revolutionary.” iow it was a -political- decision. and, one which you feel is…well.
if you were only arguing with people over whether transitioning or not transitioning was more of a subversive/revolutionary act, then i would understand.
but, as i’m seeing it, a number of the transfolk in this thread aren’t really seeing it that way at all; they aren’t trying to be more subversive; they’re just trying to, you know, live. Which is political, even subversive i suppose, enough in itself, in this woild. anyway it strikes me that a lot of trans politics isn’t simply haggling over identities but about trying to y’know -survive,- thrive even; these are related, sure, but not the same, it seems to me.
someone correct me if i’ve gotten that wrong.
but, if that is the case, it doesn’t really seem fair to more or less drag them into an argument as though that were the main or a major consideration for -everyone,- you know, a deliberate choice to be more “subversive.”
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 18th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
I am a cisgendered woman who has no problem being referred to as such for ease of communication. I don’t feel that it makes me ‘woman-modified’ or anything of that nature. Still, and pardon me if someone has already covered this as I’m short of time to go right through this thread again, why wouldn’t the opposite of transexual be cisexual rather than cisgender? Would that solve some of the problems under disussion or am I missing something since this seems like too obvious a solution. :)
This comment was written by cicely.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 12:11 am
Here’s another personalized take on it.
I move around the world looking like a pretty unremarkable 20-something woman with orangey-brown skin tones, black hair, and features that mark me as not-white. The latter section would be more remarkable if I didn’t live in a major metropolis with all sorts of people from many different ethnic backgrounds. I’m trans but nobody really notices this; I don’t go out of my way to look or act feminine either, but I get by just fine. I get slightly more “hmph, dyke” looks and comments than “hey baby, you want some company” ones. That suits me just fine, even though as is probably obvious to most readers of this blog, it would be a lot more pleasant and sap a lot less of my personal energy if I didn’t have to hear any of it.
There are a lot of things in this world that try to suck away our personal energy. That push us that much closer to burnout. Some of them we deal with every day in order to get a paycheck, or to work for causes we’re committed to, or maintain relationships that sustain us. Others are just fucked up bullshit in the world.
I’m sure I could have made some choice or other differently, back somewhere in my past. I could have cut my hair shorter; sometimes I want to. (Actually, I just did… but it’s only chin length and spiky in the back, not real short.) I could talk differently, walk differently. I could try to grow facial hair, fail miserably because it’s not in my blood, and glue some on. A lot of these things would, at a personal level, bring me into conflict with gendered norms more than I already am. They would also expose me to more bullshit that sucks away my energy and time, and in some cases, real physical danger.
We have to pick our battles. I have to ask myself, and I have… this point of conflict with the systems that try to regulate me, is this one important to me? Do I feel it strongly, personally, as something that defines me, so that I must fight this to maintain my will and existence as someone who makes her own choices, without buckling? How important is it?
Is it important enough to be worth losing energy that I could put elsewhere? That I could put into supporting work on immigrant rights, the anti-war movement, prison reform and abolition, protecting queer and trans youth from police brutality, keeping trans women from being abused by government institutions? That I could put into supporting my friends who do these and other kinds of work? That I could put into stablizing my own life, which is a fucking mess a lot of the time and oh shit it’s almost tax time already what am I going to do, so that I actually have more ability and energy and coherence to lend to struggles that need me?
When the answer is something that defines me, then the answer is yes, I will put up with bullshit. I could have it easier (in some ways, defintiely not others) if I plucked my eyebrows, wore lipstick every day, dressed up, was nicer and more feminine towards straight guys I have to deal with in work situations and elsewhere. If I didn’t seethe and spit at computer salesmen who try to patronize me. But me, personally, I’m not willing to do those things. It would compromise me. I have other friends whose personal integrity, when it comes to what they’re willing to put up with, puts them way further out on a limb than me. It hurts them. But I have tremendous respect for what they have to go through. And because of that and other reasons, I try to save some of my energy for them, too. In addition to actually putting myself on the line, in some cases physically, to protect their well-being.
You could read a lot of this post as something that could have been written by any number of women in any number of situations, about subversion, personal choices, putting yourself out there, respect you have for those that do AND those that don’t. If you’re tight with people who take different kinds and amounts of abuse in this world than you do, then this isn’t hard to understand. And in this case, this story is about being trans and making the same choices about how to move through the world as anyone else. It’s not *that* much different, and if it’s worth investigating more, maybe we ought to ask where it is, and why we think so.
This comment was written by Holly.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 2:07 am
You know, maybe it’s just me, but I strongly suspect that the only thing implied by “cisgender” is “we need a way to refer to people who are not transgender that isn’t awkward, clunky and 10 paragraphs long”.
This comment was written by BritGirlSF.I’m not getting why the term is so offensive to anyone. I don’t get the sense that anyone trans is saying that men and women are just like each other, or that their experiences are the same. I haven’t seen anyone say that.
Maybe I’m being obtuse here, but I just don’t see why my sense of identity, or anyone else’s would be threatened by someone using a term that pretty much seems to exist purely for clarification purposes.
Also, about the idea that just being trangender isn’t a revolutionary act - well, no, it isn’t, mostly becuase for most people it seems to be more about how they relate to themselves than anything else. The thing is, not everything that everyone does has to be a revolutionary act. Some actions are neither revolutionary nor anti-revolutionary, they’re effectively neutral.
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January 19th, 2007 at 3:27 am
I suspect that people who are offended by the term cis-gendered have probably mostly heard it used by people (trans or non-trans) who take the position that the trans in transgender refers to transgressing gender, by people who view being transgender as a radical act in relation to the gender system (with the implication that it is the radical act in relation to the gender system). Cisgender is then, by implication, all the people who don’t transgress gender, who are not radicals in relation to the gender system.
Notice that most trans people on these threads have shown no attachment to the term (comments like “I wasn’t at the meeting where that term was decided upon” abounded when Q Grrl first objected to the term).
I don’t think that there are any people in these threads who hold those views (trans-ness as inherently radical), but I do know a few people in person who hold those views, and I think it was from one of them (who is himself non-trans) that I learned the term cis-gendered. That makes me suspect that it is a common term among people who take that view of trans-gendered-ness.
There is an implication to making [not being transgender] a marked category that suggests that people in that category haven’t been thinking about their relation to gender categories or that they are comfortable with the gender system, in the same way that talking about the characteristics of whiteness is a way of getting white people to think about being white, about their position in the system of race, rather than just thinking of themselves as unmarked people, unlike Black people or Asian people. Since plenty of non-transgendered people (and particularly many feminist non-transgendered women) have been thinking about and working on gender issues for a long time now, that implication carries a threat of obscuring all of that work, and of denying their own established identities in relation to gender.
I think that having a marked term for people who aren’t transgendered is useful, and I’ve always thought of cisgendered as a kind of cute term (just for the use of the obscure cis- prefix to match the trans- prefix), but I can understand why (possibly for reasons specific to who typically uses it, and possibly from its inherent implications) Q Grrl and others hate the term and consider its use extremely suspect. I think it is definitely a term that needs to be used clearly and with circumspection, so that its implications are controlled.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Wow, what great posts - belladame you ask some very good questions, especially in regards to my comments about me identifying as women, etc. etc. I have a pile of work to do this a.m., but will try to address those questions and comments this afternoon.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Ok, I lied. I have to post this while it is fresh in my mind.
I never considered transitioning, it was never a framework for me. I think because I spent so much of my childhood and my 20’s being mistaken for a boy/man, that ultimately it was quite refreshing to embrace “woman” as a category that applied to me. I know that alienation of being the freak, the outside one, the one who everybody looks sideways at because you just can’t seem to get your social cues right. It got to a point in my 20’s where my own mother was highly hesitant to introduce me to people because as she said “you look like a teenage boy”. And it wasn’t just that I looked like it. I oozed it. Hell, ATF tried to bust me for purchasing beer - the guy almost crawled away to his car when he saw my drivers license.
So for me the most politicized concepts that crossed my mind were that all the bullshit about “being a woman” that I had never, ever, ever been able to live up to or master was just that: bullshit. I recognized, mostly through feminism, that there are so many women like me - and so many men too, on the opposite side of the spectrum (hell, my brother for example, who is also gay), and that we had been really psychically crippled by asinine expectations from outside ourselves.
Well, there’s probably more to say, but now I really have to get to work.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 8:13 am
>I don’t think that there are any people in these threads who hold those views (trans-ness as inherently radical), but I do know a few people in person who hold those views, and I think it was from one of them (who is himself non-trans) that I learned the term cis-gendered. That makes me suspect that it is a common term among people who take that view of trans-gendered-ness.
There is an implication to making [not being transgender] a marked category that suggests that people in that category haven’t been thinking about their relation to gender categories or that they are comfortable with the gender system…>
Charles, that makes sense.
thing is…well, you know, at the risk of re-opening yet another point o’contention, just more for a point of reference for my own sake, i am relating this to my own frustration with the eternal Sex/Beauty Wars w/in feminism. because, i keep hearing similar sorts of arguments from people, something like,
“Listen, I don’t care what you do, just don’t try to tell me it’s so -revolutionary- to (dress up femmey, do sex work, have sex in xyz way)
and, at least for the latter two, like you, Charles, I am aware of -some few- people irl who do kind of do the uber-hip thing, in that other regard, i mean: my leathersex is sooooo transgressive.
but y’know, i just look at that as kind of, more annoying people who still haven’t quite gotten past the adolescent stage of “lookit me! I am EDGY, dammit!” there are many many ways to do this. as Holly notes, it’s sort of energy draining to be doing that all the time, as an adult in this modern and complicated woild.
and, it’s really incredibly frustrating when (for example) online, I’ve just read a whole bunch of people sneering at “fuckbots” and “fun feminists” and making all sorts of to me really oversimplified, overgeneralizing-from-the-personal-or-even-hearsay, and often insulting/warped statements about people who do BDSM or sex work; and then, when someone else comes in with,
“Well, that’s not -my- experience, and here’s how:”
the response is, well, see above:
“Look, no one is telling you what to do! (Radical, etc.) feminists are not oppressing you! Just don’t try to tell me you’re so -subversive.-/call xyz *feminist*”
and, it’s sort of well? crazy-making? i find. because,
1) as far as i can see, -no one *in that discussion* has said this, *I* certainly haven’t said it, I don’t personall do xyz to flip off The Man or say (wearing lipstick, BDSM, whatev) *is feminist.* I do get defensive when other people say in pretty much so many words that doing these things is UNfeminist, among other, nastier terms, because, well? first of all, i feel that the “don’t tell me shaving, giving head, blahblah is FEMINIST” is projection, pretty much, which is aggravating enough to deal with in itself, because casual onlookers may just read that and assume that that is indeed an argument that has been made here, when in fact it has not; and, too, if you just finished saying blahblah (that I do) is UNfeminist, and you don’t do blahblah, even if you add the “but, i’m not the Queen of feminism” thing, it’s still basically pulling rank. which, you know, coupled with the some people saying snide nasty things about (people who do xyz) and yah, people do tend to get defensive.
and then i come away from it incredibly irritated and also feeling like i’ve just been down the rabbit hole, and wondering slightly if indeed maybe i’m losing my shit and in fact i said what i’m sure i didn’t say, or at least maybe it doesn’t all boil down to a “but, she started it!” and then i have to go lie down for a long while.
All of which is a very convoluted way of saying: I sympathize with the people who have been asked–I did see this in the last thread at least, I’m sure of it–to “justify” themselves in a political context, particularly when it’s something as fundamental as being trans. It’s annoying enough when it’s something like “wearing lipstick,” when the lipstick wearer is, once again, simply, wearily trying to say, often IS saying in so many words, “look, I’m just as feminist as you, ‘k? I don’t think wearing lipstick/whatever in itself is feminist OR unfeminist; i do think the CHOICE to do it is part of feminism, yes; i’m not attacking your choices in that regard here, so can you lay off finally, please?” It’s not fair, the *framing*; it puts people on the defensive and then attempts to shame them for being defensive, as though what they’re saying in self-defense is actually an attack.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Eh, the thing with ATF was in my 30’s actually. 33 I think. I still looked like an underage male.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 8:14 am
I totally know how you feel. I mean, black people are the same way. You try telling them to change the way they describe their experiences and suddenly you’re some sort of “racist.” What’s with disempowered minorities anyway?
This comment was written by Les.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 8:28 am
Q Grrl–okay.
Well, where I’m coming from is, I’m gay, but present as quite femmey; I “pass,” you might say. It’s just who I am. Always have been. But I do connect the TG thing to being gay as well; in, I suspect, a different way than you relate them. The way I relate is, it’s really frustrating when -other people- try to define you (general you) and tell you who you are and who you can’t be and basically just -use- you for their own political purposes. I find. And I expect that’s equally true for people who are not coming from my own experience.
What I am understanding wrt some feminists’ objection to …being transgendered? other people being transgendered? various transgendered peoples’ self-definition(s)? is, subtly or overtly (more overtly elsewhere, but i do feel like i’ve been picking it up in these recent Alas threads, is that they seem to feel that they, the TG and especially TS people, are–somehow–redefining “womanhood” when they lay claim to it themselves.
I…just don’t get this. I’m beginning to get -maybe- an inkling of an idea of how that might seem more fraught, personally, if calling myself a “woman” had been challenged as much as it seems to have done for say you, Q Grrl. otoh, i’ve also seen fairly conventionally presenting “feminine” women (though they swear they reject such categories, i’ve seen them physically; no one’s telling them to get out of the ladies’ room, okay) making the same arguments. That it’s somehow a threat to…well? “Women born women.” And to feminism, and to the whole project.
I don’t get it. I really don’t.
And, too, I suspect at this point I, too, am arguing with people who aren’t here right now, and composites of various arguments i’ve been in in the past, and that is frustating all around.
but, so I’m wondering, Q Grrl, if whether you personally are objecting to “cisgendered” because you don’t -feel- “cisgendered” as other people here seem to be defining it; in other words, that what’s being taken away from you isn’t so much your identity as a woman as your life experience of having your own gender questioned; like, “you haven’t suffered like I’ve suffered.” Am I sort of circling the airport, here?
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 8:29 am
…IOW, that “cisgendered” seems to be being used as “gender congruent with one’s birth sex” (as opposed to “transgendered”). and you’re saying you’re NOT that (gender congruent with your birth sex), and you aren’t “trangendered” either, and that that is annoying you, because you feel erased?
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 8:37 am
“gender congruent with one’s birth sex as mainstream society defines/sees it,” i meant, there.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 8:44 am
Ok, can somebody please explain to me, perhaps slowly and small pieces what objection anybody has to the word “cisgender”? I am completely mystified and may require a long explanation, perhaps repeating several points in different ways.
Is it a problem of binary oppositions? I mean, I don’t think anybody is trying to say that all cisgender people experience gender in the same way, just that their gender variance is within certain (fuzzy) bounds.
Or is it a problem of inclusion? Trans* can refer to a wide variety of experiences from people who get SRS to folks who cross dress to many other types of gender variance. It’s easy. If you say you’re trans, then you are.
Is it the fuzziness of the bounds? All categories have fuzzy boundaries and are inherently artificial. This doesn’t throw the categories into question, it just reminds us that they aren’t ‘natural’ but rather are tools used by people to describe things. (_Women, Fire and Dangerous Things_ is an excellent book about categorization theory.)
(I hate to bring this up as a possibility . . .) Is it a refusal to examine privilege? People who identify with gender norms have an easier time with gender issues than trans people. Hypothetically, saying that you wish you had been misidentified as male (for example) is like saying you wish you had an eating disorder. Unless you’re trying to say you’re also trans, then I’m afraid you are speaking from a lack of experience. Men do have privilege in patriarchy, but it’s also a privilege to be perceived as you perceive yourself. Comparing which is better is like comparing sex and class or sex and race. These comparing *isms contests go around in circles and never seem to go anywhere except to piss off people who fit in multiple categories.
There exists something called “passing privilege” which is when a person convincingly comes across as normative within a particular category. People who can pass as men have certain privileges over people who pass for women. It’s important to remember that not all MTFs successfully passed for men. Those who did were denying a fundamental part of their identity.
Our hypothetical protagonist, who wishes she could also pass for male and deny a fundamental part of her identity does have agency in this regard. She could falsely claim that she was ftm. Usually, hormones are enough to pass. She could transition until she passed for male. If she choses not to, then it seems an implicit recognition that passing as your self-identified gender is more valuable than access to male privilege.
So anyway, back to the point, what’s the problem with having a term that means that living as your chosen gender happens to mean living as the gender you were identified at from birth? I’m confused.
This comment was written by Les.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 8:44 am
>like, “you haven’t suffered like I’ve suffered.”
…i meant, maybe that’s how you’re hearing certain transgendered folks’ arguments. if that’s overstepping, feel free to ignore; i was extrapolating from vaguely parallel experiences which probably aren’t relevant here, as such.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Or is it a problem of inclusion? Trans* can refer to a wide variety of experiences from people who get SRS to folks who cross dress to many other types of gender variance. It’s easy. If you say you’re trans, then you are.
I think it actually might be a problem of over-inclusion. Trans* or transgender refers to a lot of different things besides just experiences not fitting in with gendered systems. It’s associated with various political efforts by various groups. Personally I think that stuff should be considered separately, since no way is there any single or even globbed-together politic or ethic that unites all people with “trans experiences.” But the associations are there, and I can understand why some people object to the word being applied them. Some people might say that Q Grrl is transgender, based on her experiences. But throwing her into that category against her will would erase her own agency, political choices, and way of seeing things.
I have other friends (Jack of Angry Brown Butch is one) who identify as transgender butches and as women (and were assigned female at birth). It is a large word, but not one that should just be plastered on everyone; if people have objections they should be heard and heeded, and there may be alternatives. One that I’ve seen people use is “gender non-conforming,” maybe just as a less loaded alternative that doesn’t say anything inherently about transitioning, or subscribing to a certain view of the world, signing up for particular political causes, etc. But then, I also don’t think “trans” in general should imply subscribing to a certain view of the world.
This comment was written by Holly.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Les,
I asked that my words not be used in this thread. I sincerely wish you’d honored my request.
If Charles wishes to delete this post, so be it.
The comment of mine you quoted had nothing to do with telling The Tranz how to act, or even that they should or shouldn’t be offended. It has everything to do with theoretical work being hard. It can be very emotionally difficult to be up against theories that challenge everything one knows about themself, or in the case of feminists and feminist theory, everything they know about feminism.
It isn’t enough that trans people (By the way, I don’t mention this because I don’t think it’s relevant, and I do think it’s a form of special pleading when The Tranz talk about being part of The Tranz, but I changed sex about 10 years ago. All of the “You can’t understand!!!” is very painful for me to read because I do understand. I simply don’t agree with that person because thanks to some really great women, some of them radical feminists, and others being garden variety “feminists” who don’t use fancy labels, I have a different understanding of my own life that is VERY empowering and actually makes a lot more sense than anything I ever learned from The Tranz) are offended when people — and I admire the hell out of Q Grrl — say that whatever it is they are doing isn’t all that “transgressive” or “feminist” or whatever. Feminists on the other side of the argument become offended when people such as myself time and again tell them that there is no monolithic “Male Socialization”. They continually deny that they aren’t experts on being raised from boyhood to manhood, but instead keep using “Feminist Analysis” to figure out what boys do or don’t do, or are taught, or whatever.
Radical Feminism really doesn’t have a framework for dealing with non-gender-normative males, and I think their handling of non-gender-normative females is sloppy and lazy. The best the radical feminist brigade can come up with is this “failed male” thing, but “failed males” are still some kind of “male” and still get thought of as having “male socialization” by them. The socialization received by feminine males, and I’m speaking from first hand experience here, is just horrible. I scare people in real life when I talk about growing up. I show them scars on my body and a lot of them gasp. Feminine boys are BRUTALIZED. I play a game called “My life as a mirror” — what was my life like in the years prior to transition that I’ve lived since.” What I can say is that the 11 years since I took my first estrogen pill are a permanent vacation in Disney Land compared to the 11 years prior, which was more like Dante’s Inferno. Something is wrong with how Radical Feminism understands transsexuality and feminine male socialization if being a 40-something year old transsexual woman is that much incredibly better than being a 20-something presumed-to-be-a-big-fag guy. Of course, now I’lll be accused of playing “You haven’t suffered like I’ve suffered!”, when I’m not at all about that, I’m just saying, until radical feminists find a way to integrate being beaten, raped and shot at into their concept of “normal male socialization”, I’m going to find their analysis of “male socialization” pretty damned inaccurate.
See? What’s the point? If I say “I think that transsexuality is socially constructed based on rigid beliefs about gender”, I’ll catch it from The Tranz, and if I say “Patriarchy tries to kill boys who can’t conform, and no one has an obligation to be your martyr”, I’ll catch it from the RadFems. Why bother? Much easier for me to just be this femme dyke that most people think is straight and a lot of straight guys my age would like to bed.
What I can say about “cisgender”, and I know the man who coined the term and was “around” when he did, is that it really does assume to much. First, it divides the world into “transgender” and … “cisgender”. There are a lot of people, and especially a lot of feminist women, who utter reject the concept of “transgender”, but by appearances and the Transgender Standard of Existence, are “trangender”. Q Grrl is a great example of that, as are some former lovers of mine (I have a thing for tomboys and butch women). Many of my ex-girlfriends are women who pass for men fairly easily. They don’t think of themselves as “transgender”, and all but one of them have said they would never, ever consider changing sex. Even the one who talked about changing sex wouldn’t ever do it — she just has this fantasy about being a six year old boy and running around shooting cap guns at whatever. But “transgender” wants to suck them into it’s swirl and make them also be “transgender”. They aren’t — they are just women living women’s lives.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Whoa. I’ve never thought about that. I mean, I have ontological reasons for not thinking “cisgendered” is a valid term, but damn, I never looked at the more personal aspects. Maybe it has been a subliminal defensiveness.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 10:23 am
God-DAMN this is a good discussion.
I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who’s taking part in it, because I feel like I’m learning a hell of a lot.
Really, thank you all so much.
Okay . . . back to listening.
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 10:34 am
“I’m wondering, Q Grrl, if whether you personally are objecting to “cisgendered” because you don’t -feel- “cisgendered” as other people here seem to be defining it; in other words, that what’s being taken away from you isn’t so much your identity as a woman as your life experience of having your own gender questioned ”
FWIW, that’s what I was trying to get at when I suggested some other terminology to get at the experiences of people who don’t identify as trans- but whose experiences aren’t really cis- either.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 10:45 am
why wouldn’t the opposite of transexual be cisexual rather than cisgender?
It would, but I think this discussion is mostly using transgender rather than transsexual. The problem with transsexual is that it’s a medicalized term that doesn’t include all trans-identified people: I for example am not (at least according to my most recent psychiatrist’s report) transsexual, but I am transgender.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Re: what Mandolin just said, that is also what I was trying to get at when I said:
We shouldn’t be subscribing to a worldview where everyone is either “trans” or “cis” and there is no room for anything else, any more than we should be doing that with “man” or “woman.” I don’t think a lot of the people on this thread who are comfortable with “cisgendered” for themselves were thinking that way. But this IS very much a problem with language and the human tendency to categorize… and some of our tendencies, as outsiders, to resist what feels like getting shoved into a category.
This comment was written by Holly.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 11:53 am
using “cisgender” as a polar opposite to “transgender”, in my mind, is just as troublesome as using “man” as a polar opposite to “woman”. biological entities are funny that way - the diversity of life refuses to be easily categorized into two clean and distinct groups. yet, human beings seem to gravitate toward binaries, perhaps because it allows us to better understand our world.
otoh, how is a better understanding of the world achieved by separating the world into binaries, when those binaries are inherently false?
This comment was written by nexyjo.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
I just want to delurk for a second, on the way between stuff I’m doing today, and say, well:
This comment was written by little light.Thanks, Q Grrl. In both of the conversations here, whatever our disagreements, I really appreciate what you’re bringing to the table here, and it’s good for me to read.
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January 19th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Just swinging by on my way out the door (yay weekend!). I didn’t get a chance to respond today, and I really need to.
Belladame, damnit, you threw a wicked curve ball my way. I must drink a wee drop of Glenfiddich and ponder, and then ponder some more.
Little light: thanks. That means a lot to me.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Must get work done…
This is an impressive discussion, and I want to thank everyone who has been participating.
Les,
Your second comment is good enough that you can stay in this thread for now, but your first comment was way out of line. Even if FCH was an active participant in this thread, it would still have been out of line. This is a hard enough discussion with out the addition of free snark.
FCH,
I really liked your response to Les.
This comment was written by Charles S.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Glad to be a part of this.
and thank you, to Q Grrl as well as FCH.
i’ve come into this with my own preconceptions and hasty generalizations and too many arguments from elsewhere conflated into what’s on the screen now, too, i realize.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
in a way, this strikes me as sort of roughly parallel to, you know, “queer” versus “gay,” (and SGL and some others): the various arguments about essentialism versus uh whatever the other term is, constructivism?? that can’t be it. anyway, alla that;
and this -has- been a great discussion.
i think maybe a lot of the hostility and confusion -here,- you know, is that…
well so like this here has been a very I want to say “high-context” conversation (term from playwriting days, means i guess roughly what some feminists mean when they say “advanced feminism,” except i hate that term, speaking of language; means “the people talking already share a lot of assumptions and experiences, enough so that the really basic shit doesn’t have to be spelled out because it’s taken for granted.”)
but it’s coming in the greater context of, like, there are and have been all these discussions where there’s been some really appallingly ignorant and bigoted shit flung about, and not nearly enough to counter it in the greater ’sphere, on the whole, much beyond “well THAT’S wrong, at least” once it’s gotten to you know that level of total noxiousness. but beyond that…
so, yeah.
like to go back to my parallel, which would also be more my own point of entry, frame of reference, okay: say we’re having this high-context discussion about the subtler points of queer theor(ies) and how it does or doesn’t work for various people in the “room,”
but first of all, not everyone knows who everyone is, and people are snarly and defensive because they’ve just come off a bunch of encounters–possibly including some right in that very same room–where some yahoo has been all like, “Well! I just don’t agree with that lifestyle!” or even “I don’t care what those disgusting perverts do, just keep it away from me” and maybe an ex-gay or so, or someone who -knew- an ex-gay and is sharing the good news: “you know, you don’t HAVE to live that lifestyle of darkness, I know, cause…”
…if you see what i’m saying.
anyway, i think this is getting into meta-meta-meta at this point, so i’ll stop here, and: yeah. That. (goes back to read more)
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
>See? What’s the point? If I say “I think that transsexuality is socially constructed based on rigid beliefs about gender”, I’ll catch it from The Tranz, and if I say “Patriarchy tries to kill boys who can’t conform, and no one has an obligation to be your martyr”, I’ll catch it from the RadFems. Why bother? Much easier for me to just be this femme dyke that most people think is straight and a lot of straight guys my age would like to bed.>
I see.
so, tell me: did “queer” also not work for you? or do you only see that in terms of defined sexual -desire,- not so much gender identity? or are there other objections? I know that i have heard a number of radical feminists object to “queer theory” (the ones i am thinking of at the moment have been decidedly unsophisticated at best about what queer theory really is, but i’m sure they are not the only representatives of this POV); and I know a lot of other people object to the word, whether or not they engage deeply with the Talmudic subtleties of the academic theories, for various other reasons as well (some POC i understand perhaps see it as too white-centered; some lesbians and other women feel it’s become shorthand for “gay men;” some people like to be more specific; some older generation gays and lesbians simply find the personal associations too painful).
personally i tend to think of that term as a handy umbrella for “not normatively gendered and/or sexually oriented/expressive in this our heteropatriarchalbinarygendered world,” but y’know, i do try to call other people what -they- want to be called, as much as possible (it is harder when speaking in generalities than to the individual, obviously).
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
January 19th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Original post: Comment on Language around trans, how it works, how it doesn’t… by … by at Google Blog Search: pass it
This comment was written by Spy cam sex.Report this comment to the moderators
January 20th, 2007 at 3:46 am
FurryCatHerder,
I responded to your comment before I read that you asked not to be replied to. But I’m glad I did. Thank you for your reply. I agree with everything you say. I’m sorry I didn’t understand the context of your earlier statements.
This comment was written by Les.Report this comment to the moderators
January 20th, 2007 at 4:05 am
Binary oppositions (often) do indeed suck and there are often people left out of them. However, this is an issue with categorization in general. I think that categorization is still valid for purposes of reasoning and argument, but it’s imperative that those using them remember that they’re constructed. I like to think of categories in terms of poles or attractors. Most of a population is centered around two (or three or N) attractors, but there are outlying populations that aren’t near the poles. We can still talk about the populations near the poles, but we have to remember that the people farther away from them still exist and still have valid experiences.
This is related to why I love the word “queer.” It’s a great way to talk about people lurking away from the poles of normative heterosexuality and leaves those folks free of the categories and poles within nonheteronormative spaces.
I think a very important thing for all categories including genders, trans*, queer, etc is to remember that people have agency and can self-identify. If people want to put themselves under a label, that can be very empowering. But forcing somebody into a category is suck. (There are privilege-related exceptions to this, but in general …)
This comment was written by Les.Report this comment to the moderators
January 20th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Belledame222,
“Queer” would never work for me. I”m a white-picket-fence kinda gal. In some parts of the country, my picture is on every half-gallon container of vanilla ice cream.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 21st, 2007 at 5:41 pm
If I might delurk and make a quick observation …
The problem that Q Grrl seems to have with ‘trans politics’* - that the experiences and oppression of gender-variant people who do not identify as trans, or who only partially or problematically ID as trans, are sometimes erased by trans politics - is, I agree, a problem. But I don’t at all see this as a problem with ‘trans politics’ in specific - it’s a problem with identity politics as a whole. When an anti-oppression movement is based around a single identity or a small set of identities - here, trans/transgender/transsexual identity - I’d argue that it usually ends up alienating and hurting people who don’t identify in that way but face identical/similar/related oppressions.
I’m a somewhat girly pre-testosterone FtM transperson, and I’ve been called both ‘dyke’ and ‘faggot’ plenty of times in my 18 and a half years worth of life, and I do not doubt I will be called both again. I am neither a butch lesbian nor a femme gay man, but my gender oppressions are intimately bound up with those of people from both groups - among many others - and I must, for my sake and their’s, reject identity-based activism or theorizing which impedes solidarity, coalition-building, and empathy with them. My oppression is certainly different from people who are dykes and/or fags - but my oppression also differs from other effeminate transboys who frequently-but-by-no-means-always pass (some of whom are also dykes and/or fags), because all oppressions are intersectional, so even people who would name their genders in a way similar to the way I do, do not share my exact background and thus are not oppressed in exactly the same way as I am.
*I don’t know that Q Grrl used this exact term, but using ‘trans’ by itself as a noun bothers me.
This comment was written by solvent.Report this comment to the moderators
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Well, the weekend didn’t clarify things; it only muddied the waters. I’m going to start with belladame’s and Holly’s statements and then, against all my fears of using anecdotal stories to prove theory, I’m going to tell my story. Or at least my story of gender.
so, to begin, belladame gets the ball rolling:
so I’m wondering, Q Grrl, if whether you personally are objecting to “cisgendered” because you don’t -feel- “cisgendered” as other people here seem to be defining it; in other words, that what’s being taken away from you isn’t so much your identity as a woman as your life experience of having your own gender questioned;
And then Holly aptly notes:
So, both of these statements really sat me back down on my ass — only because I’ve been glossing over them for a long time, and I’ve been assuming they weren’t relevant. But I think I’ve been wrong. So, I’ll tell my story, in the hopes that it brings clarity, if not to others, than at least to myself.
The day I was born was the first instance. My mother, through the years, loves to remind me of this day, the first, when the medical resident took me, newborn and newly cleaned, from the nurse and brought me over to my mom, saying, “Well Mrs. Ellett, you have a *fine* baby boy!” Almost immediately afterwards, her more experienced and less excitable OB/Gyn said “that’s not a boy; that’s a girl!”
My mother’s laughing(but kindly) retort after each telling of this story has always been: “Oh, Suzy! You’ve been confused ever since.”
Fortunately, by the time I was 12 or so, I could firmly retort: “no, I’m not confused. Just everyone else is.”
But is was the major running theme of my childhood. At 3 or 4, I was riding my tricycle down the block with my brother who was then 6 or 7. Some smart-ass neighbor kid called out, “Hey, you should have been the boy and Andrew the girl!” Because of course, my brother was not masculine, did not like the boy things, and I was and did. The smart ass kid had a point. That was a small awakening at a tender age.
The next slightly larger awakening I had was when I was six. It was the early 70’s, summer time, and I was riding my bike without a shirt on. I had no problem with this, but an older neighborhood boy did. He grabbed my handle bars, making me stop abruptly, and demanded to know if I was a boy or a girl. I paused for a milisecond. I knew I was shirtless. I knew I had shoulder lenght hair. I knew if I said “girl” I would get the ever-loving shit knocked out of me. So, calm as can be, easy-peasy-pie, I looked him square on and said “I’m a boy.” He left me alone, but his memory was long. Years later, in junior high, he had dropped back a grade and our paths crossed in a major way. He dubbed me “Man-girl”, a name that stuck for two years. The emphasis being on “man”, not “boy”, with all the courseness and bruteness that “man” represents to young adolescents on the cusp of puberty. He spat on my bicycle seat every day for a year - and he still itched to beat me up. Fortunately, I avoided that.
Other instances were less frightening, more amusing. There were the girls on thier bikes giggling at me as I delivered my newspapers (age 11) - when I asked them what they were lauging at they said: “hee, hee! You look like a girl!!” There were the many luxurious summer days spent riding BMX bikes with my crew, building tracks and jumps in the woods, and then the never avoidable moment of male bonding, when the track was complete and all the guys got together to piss at the same time, in a tightly bunched group, into a communal hole in the ground. They would invite me, having forgotten during our work and play together, that I was a girl. I appreciated the invite though. There was the new kid on the block who saw me fall on my bike’s top tube, and him eagerly commiserating with me that I’d just “racked my balls”. After regaining my composure, I quibbled “I don’t have balls.” Fifteen minutes later he and I were screaming at each other across the cul-de-sac, him *insisting* that I had balls, me insisting that, indeed, I did not. I’m still not sure I convinced him.
And this was how it was for me: I had no problems with me being a girl, others really had no problem with me being a girl; it’s just that it was easier for everyone to think of me as a boy. Really, sometimes I think it was just a matter of economy. Hell, even my dad called me “George” for a while because I was so tomboyish. But I was a regular mix-up, if not daily, then at least several times a week, and I got good at not reacting, not responding, letting the person figure out their mistake on their own, or just going along with it. In high school I normalized out a lot more, had long hair, visible boobs, and what not. It was my 20’s that brought the gender spectre back full round.
After I came out at age 21 (1988), I did all the typical baby-dyke things: I cut my hair, I bought rugby shirts, I had Levi’s 501’s, and work boots. I loved it. I loved the overt masculinity, I loved being able to re-embrace my tomboy nature and to remake it into something sexy and transgressive. Which worked all fine and dandy for the other lesbians, but with which the larger public had much, much trouble. Now I wasn’t a cute six year old. I was 5″7, 155 lbs, muscled, with a crew cut, flannel (yes, folks, flannel!), and the ubiquitous work boots. I chewed tobacco, drank beer like a fish, played pool, and flirted with women. Unknowing men in busy airports would casually follow me into the women’s restrooms, assuming I was a guy, rushing back out with quizzical looks on their faces as I continued on. Old ladies and young girls would scream at me in the very same restrooms, demanding that I leave, insisting that I was in the wrong place. I would recall these events to my friends, telling them of my urge to flash my boobs at these women and girls, but always with the resignation of knowing that even had I flashed them, they would ultimately say “Why, I’ll be damned, that boy has tits!”
[and for reference, if the link info will work, here’s a photo of me at age 25: http://us.a2.yahoofs.com/users/43da6c4ez55b0b132/4966/__sr_/2a5b.jpg?phw_QtFBT4oyKfuN
And it didn’t help either that at about this age, mid 20’s, I started wearing mostly men’s clothing: oxfords, chinos, wingtips, wool blazers, boxer shorts (haven’t gone back to women’s underwear since). I loved it, I loved that I could be masculine - as femininity just didn’t suit me well - it felt false, awkward, and like a lie.
And so I went about my life pretty content, no longer worried about gender, never really having thought about it per se, but having had to deal with it. I felt comfortable enough with how I presented to the world, and I was confident with it. Until the local transgendered community started growing and asking me rather strange and personal questions.
At this time, in my early 30’s, I was roommate with Alison Martlew of the lesbian band The Butchies. Those of you who have gone rounds with the MichFest argument and like punk and riotgrrl might be familiar with The Butchies becoming the poster-girls for transphobia for a while for their decision to play MichFest. But the local reality wasn’t about MichFest, it was a lot more intimate and personal. The local queer scene looked up to the band and expected support for the growing presenence of FtM’s in our community. They expected Alison and myself to be just like them: playing at being butch until we figured out that we were trans. Or rather that’s how it felt. Al and I felt ostracized; we felt as if we were expected to transition, to come out again as trans; we felt like others were looking at us as as if we were in denial about our gender and our bodies. And we felt that we couldn’t be loyal to both women centered lesbians and the FtM’s who hung with us. We felt like we were expected to choose. And so we chose to remain as us: visibly butch women (or soft butch) who had no desire to reinvent ourselves for the sake of gender. And boy howdy, that didn’t go over well.
And to be honest, I really resented it. I resented it for the reasons that belledame and Holly wrote above. I didn’t go through my childhood and 20’s, and the concomittant dance with other people’s confusion, just to have my own queer community start making the same damn assumptions: that it was/is me that is confused, and not them. And simultaneously I was also finding feminist theory that I had not been exposed to before that was, finally, the only thing that resonated with my experience of the outside influential nature of gender. I didn’t accept the local trans kid’s claims that they felt their gender was wrong, that they could change it. Hell, my whole experience of gender had been that it was the perception of the beholder that defined it, all contrary proof otherwise be damned!
Anyhoo, this is rambling. And I must work. I’m sure I could/should flesh out my reasons for disliking what I see as trans politics, even while I completely understand the urge/need to transition.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:58 pm
i’m wondering if your feelings were in response to a bunch of insensitive asshats who really had no idea what their actions and words would result in, or if these people really represented (or continue to represent) what we have come to call “trans politics”. and i ask this because in the circles i travel, which being comprised of many trans people, i see as part of the trans community, we make it a point to keep transition and identity a personal decision, and encourgae those people who are being themselves in what ever “themselves” may be, to continue to be themselves in any way they feel that it suits them. (sorry for the clumsy wording - i’m having trouble articulating today.)
certainly, there are trans people who feel *everyone* must fit into existing gender molds, i.e. male or female. but many of us support the idea that gender, as it currently exists in our society is harmful and counterproductive. many of us work to end it, as best we can. so i guess i’m wondering who decides what “trans politics” are, and who gets to decide who determines these politics.
This comment was written by nexyjo.Report this comment to the moderators
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Oh, I’m sure they were asshats to some degree; also very young with the lovely aesthetic judgementalism that’s popular with youth.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 22nd, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Hey Q Grrl,
That’s definitely and unfortunately not the first time I have heard a story much like yours. I have good friends who are butch, very much female and who identify as women, who have had shitty experiences where people assume they’re trans, or “going to be trans.” And I have friends who are trans guys who felt pressured in exactly the opposite way, to “stay female” even though ultimately it was a choice of survival for them. Heck I have several friends who were rejected by some parts of the trans-masculine crowd for not being butch enough to be a FTM. None of these is acceptable in my book — nor in the opinion of the people I call friends, family, community, the organizations I work with, etc, that all of these people belong to. So fortunately — for my own sanity, too — there are spaces in the world where these assumptions don’t prevail and where people aren’t constantly trying to stuff you into another, yet smaller, more specific box that you can’t get out of.
It is sometimes hard to talk about in fiery blog discussions where some people are attacking “trans” as some sort of nebulous, general, and all-encompassing concept, but I do think there are communities and spaces and even “support groups” that try to enforce certain kinds of hegemonic, oppressive ideas about gender on trans people, as well as people who don’t fit into “trans” but who don’t conform to mainstream gender norms either, such as yourself. A lot of people have been hurt by this kind of thing, and it burns me up and hits me really close to home, and I try to speak out against it.
This is part of why I try to talk about “gender coercion” as a particular type of what people refer to more vaguely as “transphobia.” People insist you have to do something, must be something, because you look a certain way, because they “know” you’re really this gender or that gender, because you have this mark on your birth certificate, because you name is this or that. They try to shove you in a box. Your story is totally full of examples, especially full of ones that point out why “coercion” can go in either direction — boys screaming at you that you must have balls, women upset at you for not looking like you’re supposd to be in the ladies’ room, all the way to your really immature sounding queer scene that acted like it knew better how you felt about your body and gender than you did. It’s all coercive; it doesn’t allow for self-determination, and certainly not for the kind of careful self-determination, taking into consideration all sorts of influences and social pressures and ramifications, that trans people, gender non-conforming people so often need to be able to consider in order to make healthy choices about our lives.
Years ago people finally started to understand that gay people weren’t “inverted,” gay men actually being “like a woman” and vice versa, just because of love for members of the same sex. Now people are finally starting to hear, on television even, that trans people aren’t necessarily attracted to members of the opposite sex either, even though you often hear “but if you’re attracted to men, why wouldn’t you just stay a woman” and vice versa, even from gay people who ought to know better! The lesson is that these aspects of gender, sexuality, etc aren’t necessarily linked, but a lot of these things seem to be stuck together in people’s heads.
And like the post about Ugly Betty points out, people are still assuming that gender expression is linked to gender and/or sexuality — feminine people must be “girls” at some level, and attracted to men, or at least to more masculine people. Masculine-looking people must be more man-identified, probably enjoy masculine things. Mainstream culture finally grasps the idea that there are masculine gay guys who prefer other guys; but any masculine woman is still assumed to be gay, or a serious anomaly. And you don’t have to throw a rock far to find these idiotic assumptions in the queer community either, about butches and femmes, about what kind of things you’re supposed to do and people you’re supposed to date. All of this stuff is a straitjacket: if A gendered-thing, then B gendered-thing should accompany it! Sets of interlinked rules. And it’s all coercion.
I’m kind of off on a tangent now. But my point is — this kind of bullshit is harmful to a lot of people, and what’s more it divides people who shouldn’t be divided. I don’t see why we all shouldn’t be opposing coercive standards of gender in all our communities, whether you’re talking about sexist stereotypes or pressures around being trans or automatic assumptions about whether the butch can fix the car.
This comment was written by Holly.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:22 pm
eh, I’d write more here and respond, but I’m having a little, minor, psychic schism over this right now. Le sigh.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:05 pm
People have the right to be accepted for who and what they are, and to have their own statements about themselves credited. This includes gender and sexual preferences, but also includes a lot of other qualities as well.
However complex political or other situations makes that acceptance in practice, it is in fact a very simple concept. As Q Grrl’s story illustrates.
This comment was written by Susan.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2007 at 1:10 am
that’s really the bottom line, isn’t it. and in many ways, so many people engage in gender coercion, don’t they. and these gender coercionists transcend every group, and we even do it ourselves, if we’re not very, very careful. even some radical feminists could be accused of it, when they say that trans people shouldn’t modify their bodies - that they should be themselves and expand the definition of their own born gender. yet, in a world without gender, or without gender coercion, surgically or chemically modifying ones body wouldn’t be seen as having anything to do with gender, but rather, as a personal choice and as an expression as ones self.
yeah, i’m all for working together to end gender. problem is, how do we achieve that goal? there’s plenty of analysis that speaks to how destructive gender can be. so what steps can we each take, in our every day lives, that will put an end to it?
This comment was written by nexyjo.Report this comment to the moderators
January 30th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Charles revisited the transgender/feminism debate, this time centering on the “Language Around Trans, How it Works, How it Doesn’t….“ Little Light said: “Honestly, I don’t feel comfortable getting involved in this discussion until the trans people in it actually have our words honored. In the previous thread, most of the trans folk involved dropped out quietly in
This comment was written by Transadvocate Blog.Report this comment to the moderators
February 18th, 2007 at 9:55 am
“There are things that are visible from a cross classed experience that are not visible from a uni-classed (Heh fuck “cis-gendered) experience. Feminism needs this. Social constructivist radical feminists (a redundancy) have large insights into but are limited by what is visible to a uni-classed individual.”
Oooops, one more thing. When I speak of a cross-classed experience, I am explicity not speaking of trans interpretations when I used “crosss-classed”, expressly because trans identity/ideology obscures becoming it’s own framing and set of interpretions which obscure the things that would be of value to feminists.
In saying this there is an important distinction being made that has already been alluded to here. Reassignment doesn’t necessarily suggest, a trans identity, community, culture, poltitic or idealogy…. at all. I deeply appreciate that distinction having already been made in this thread and recognition of yet another horrendous dimension of trans politics/culture, explicitly they way it attempts to annex people lives.
This comment was written by Minerva.Report this comment to the moderators
February 19th, 2007 at 5:58 am
nexyjo writes:
The “gender” of which radical feminists speak isn’t the same “gender” of which Tranz speak. They aren’t even related.
And given the ways in which radical feminists interrogate and criticize cosmetic body modifications of all forms, I think that believing radical feminists will ever view cosmetic body modification is naive.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
February 21st, 2007 at 8:21 am
I think the main way in which the language of “trans” doesn’t work is that it places two different concepts in opposition to each other in a way that people who fall victim to each of the two phenomena find difficult to reconcile with each other. I think that if either feminism or transgender/transsex had a different word besides “gender” that the language aspects — basic communication — would be less intractable than it presently is.
Another way in which language doesn’t work is that both “sides” of the debate have a vested interest in their arguments being more persuasive than the arguments of the other side. The central theme — what is gender, how does it affect us, what can we do about it — of each position stands in opposition to the other’s. The importance of gendered classes within feminist discourse is paramount, but gender as a class structure does not work with many people who view themselves as having a body problem, and not a socially constructed class problem. The importance of gendered bodies, behaviors and modes of self-expression within transgender discourse is likewise paramount, and the belief by those within transgender/transsex communities that these aspects of gender are “real”, does not sit well with many feminists.
It is clear, to me at least, that “gender” as used by feminists is about the construction and maintenance of hierarchies based on sex, and it’s been my observation that this is a real and valid concern and one worthy of much work. It is equally clear, to me at least, that “gender” as used by transgender/transsex people is about the social enforcement of the rules by which the feminist “gender” is maintained. These two concepts of “gender” are related, but one is a system of oppression and the other is an outcome of the enforcement required to maintain that system of oppression. Without one the other would not exist. Without rules and expectations and system of punishment and reward, there would be no “force” behind gender as a hierarchical structure. And without the hierarchical structure, there would be no need for rules in need of enforcement on the bodies of those who are unwilling or unable to conform.
The lesser set of problems — meaning, there is a far bigger set of problems having to do with dehumanization, victim-stancing, victim-blaming, etc — arise because the solution to “gender” within a feminist context is the dismantling of those social structures, which is a very long term goal that will likely take several more generations to sort out. To an individual, multi-generation solutions provide little relief, and thus I believe that most people with “gender problems” tend to be a bit more impatient than feminists would prefer and might view “I’m not anyones martyr” as a suitable response, if they are even willing to accept that the problem is one of society and not one of some piece of tissue in the darkest recesses of their brain informing them that their sex is wrong.
It is this conflict in timelines — eradicating sex-based power structures over the course of many generations versus eradicating ones personal experience of profound discomfort and social rejection over the course of a few months or years time — that seems to breed the most conflict. That sex change works to reposition most who undergo sex change into a class more suitable for themselves is undeniable to someone whose been through the process. Expecting that approach to be given up is extremely unreasonable. Getting feminists to understand this would be a huge accomplishment. That sex change does nothing, and offers nothing, for those affected by sex-based hierarchies for those who would prefer not to undergo the radical changes associated with sex-change is likewise undeniable and expecting women who are affected most by sex-based hierarchies to all change sex and derive the benefits of maleness is absurd. Not that it would necessarily be doomed to failure as it would certainly make figuring out who is “really” a man and entitled to all the perqs that brings much more difficult. I just don’t see the human race surviving the wholesale changing of sex by the entire female population. Getting transgender/transsex people to understand that the messages about “wrongness” are a result of gendered classes existing in the first place would likewise be a huge accomplishment.
Enforced gender structures are the cause, transgender and transsex are one of the effects.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
April 2nd, 2007 at 6:47 pm
[...] Julie (some time ago on Alas) Feminists on the other side of the argument become offended when people such as myself time and again tell them that there is no monolithic “Male Socialization”. They continually deny that they aren’t experts on being raised from boyhood to manhood, but instead keep using “Feminist Analysis” to figure out what boys do or don’t do, or are taught, or whatever. [...]
This comment was written by Feminist Critics.Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
[...] on the flip side, many people who would be considered men and women based on their “identity”, that is, how they see themselves, their biology, that is, how they would fit into a classification based on whether they produce eggs or sperm, and their social standing, would also fit under this definition, while they would not consider themselves trans. . [...]
This comment was written by » trans defined.Report this comment to the moderators