Mandolin Responds to Seelhoff: Gender Is a Constellation.
| July 30th, 2007In her response to Barry’s cartoon, Seelhoff writes, “To compare radical feminists to the Religious Right is propaganda, it is a smear campaign, it is disingenuous, and it is transparently and hatefully misogynist.”
I disagree.
In some discussions of transphobia, I’ve seen radical feminists say things like what makes a woman is her ability to bleed and have children. Here’s one such comment, made by Sally C on I Blame the Patriarchy.
“Knowing that someone is a woman does not tell me anything about her fate, but it does tell me she knows what I know about what it’s like to bleed.”
I am a woman-born woman who experiences problems with mensturation and fertility. Sally C goes on to call women “the tribe that bleeds.”
I do not bleed.
What galls me about this logic — apart from the fact that it’s bad, as no one proferring this definition means to exclude me from being a woman (my existence is being ignored/erased, rather than repudiated) — is that it’s extremely similar to the logic, the specific logic, that I hear from the religious right who also claim that a woman is defined by her uterus and reproductive capacity.
I don’t know what defines woman. As commonly phrased, it is a boring and irrelevant question, as has been acknowledged. It is attempting to take a semantic concept — woman — and reify it in a way in which it can not be reified. The truth is that the concept woman is complicated. It is not binary, it is not either/or, it is not on/off.
When we add the concept of gender, the whole of it becomes even more complex.
The question of womanhood is interesting for class analysis. But we should always expect there to be outliers. There are children with ambiguous genitals. There are XX infants that develop with male external genitalia and uteruses. There are infants whose gender identity does not match their physical bodies. There are women who can happily don male clothing and live out a masculine life — and there always have been. Equally, there are women who could never bear that. I am not part of “the tribe that bleeds,” but I am feminine. I abhor the oppression of women, but I want to live as one.
My external genitalia can tell you certain things about me. It indicates likelihoods and probabilities. It indicates that I am part of the class that is likely to undergo sexual abuse or harassment, although I have been fortunate enough to live most of my life free of these things. It indicates that I probably was urged toward the arts and social sciences, instead of the hard sciences. It indicates I was probably touched less often as an infant than my brothers were; it indicates that I am likely to be paid .76 on the dollar compared to men in my profession.
It indicates these likelihoods, but it does not make them fact. I am an individual. Some probabilities apply. Others do not.
The idea that biology bleeding creates women is part of an essentialist stance — a stance that is shared by many sectors of the religious right. It reduces my varied experiences to the fact of my blood or lack thereof: an inadequate measure.
Sex is a continuum, with most people falling to one side or the other. Gender is a constellation.
I am feminine, and I am sexed female, but I do not bleed.
I have never been raped. I have never given birth to a child. I have dominated class discussions. I have been oppressed. I have been a bully. I have endured undesired sexual contact. I have slapped a sexual partner. I have come top in my class in math and science, as well as english and history. I have used my privilege to make asinine comments about other women to try to gain favor in social power structures where I was floundering. Equally, I have ridden on top of other structures.
A transwoman may have a different set of experiences and privileges. Yes, she will have been raised with some version of male privilege — although, if the women I know are any indication, the male privilege they will have received will have been much closer to my memory of childhood than my fiance’s. They will have been bullied and abused for being too feminine, and sometimes treated as though they were girls because their sense of femaleness was present even when they were male-bodied. A transwoman I know well wrote female characters in our creative writing classes; where other men were petted and praised for “daring” to cross gender lines, her cross-gender writing was never highlighted; it seemed more easy and realistic than her male narrators.
A transwoman and I are different. She will have to struggle to overcome the male privilege of her childhood. But we are not different like on and off on a flipped switch; we have both had our turns at oppressor and oppressed.
More, we are not totally defined by our childhoods. How I act now affects my life. Someone raised with male privilege can repudiate it in part, if not in whole. A transwoman will have an easier time rejecting the social aspects of male privilege, as she likely will cease to be accorded them. Internally, she may struggle with ghosts of old experiences. But her childhood is not the whole of her experience. She will continue to be shaped.
Your rejection of her is based in biological essentialism and binary thinking. Your argument shares traits with segments of the religious right, who also view gender as binary and physically based. These are similarities. You may shudder under that comparison, but it remains. It’s legitimate to compare things that are similar.
True enough, that comparison doesn’t continue to hold true. Radical feminists are not like the religious right when it comes to acknowledging and fighting against the oppression of female subservience in the home. But the comparison does not need to be true in all points for it to be legitimate; it only needs to be true at the point of comparison. No one is claiming that radical feminists and the christian right are wholly indistinguishable. The only claim is that on the single point of transphobia based in biological essentialism, both transphobic radical feminists and transphobic christian conservatives sound the same. Transphobic radical feminists and transphobic christian conservatives are united in the biological essentialism that leads them to the bigotry of transphobia.
A note to commenters: I am locking this to feminists only. I would like this to be a safe space for radical feminists who are interested in seeking dialogue, and also for transsexuals. If it’s acheivable, I would like Daisy and Nexyjo to feel safe in the same discussion. Please avoid saying things like “this exemplifies everything that’s fucked up about radical feminism” — that’s incendiary and unfriendly. Please also don’t mistake my own positioning; I often agree with radical feminists over people who identify as sex-positive. While I don’t necessarily believe that oppression of women is the original oppression (I don’t see how such theories can ever be proven), I do have a number of philosophical points of connection with radical feminists, as well as great respect for radical posters here including (but not limited to) Bean, QGrrl, Bonnie, Ms. Xeno, Pheeno, and Ginmar.*
However, bigotry against transsexuals is intolerable to me. I have a close transsexual friend who avoids most feminist blogs because of the nastiness that happens in threads like these. I refuse to support the kind of hatred that pushes people like her, already subject to isolation and bile from the rest of the world, closer to despair or suicide. Please remember we are discussing real people and real people’s lives.
*My apologies if any of you don’t identify as radical. I’m making some guesses.
July 30th, 2007 at 5:10 am
Let me be 1st to say…Thanks. You explicated what is not that easy to explain. That cartoon hit a nerve. As a conscientious objector in the war tween the sexes–and as a pre-op trans-neuter–I got the sense that both characters were just looking for a scapegoat. I think that feminists, heck, all Minds, need to quit thinking they need scapegoats.
This comment was written by Angiportus.Good point about the probabilities.
Trying to tell someone else what they are–”assigning” a gender or what have you instead of watching them pick one–is the nadir of arrogance. How important is “knowing what it’s like to bleed” in the whole scheme of making an identity? In learning to shape oneself not just be shaped?
And imposing binarism or dualism (what is the diff tween these, someone help me here) on someone who has always sensed they are outside that whole continuum is a Procrustean sham.
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July 30th, 2007 at 6:18 am
Well said Mandolin.
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July 30th, 2007 at 6:22 am
Seelhoff Responds to Mandolin’s Irrelevant “Response” to Seelhoff
You, Mandolin, start off with a long tirade about the fact that some women don’t bleed. This is supposed to be relevant to any of the issues around transgender precisely how? This is relevant to anything I’ve ever written precisely how?
This comment was written by Women's Space/The Margins.…
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July 30th, 2007 at 6:41 am
[…] Over at Alas, they’re still debating the hilarious cartoon Amp drew the other day. A certain set of radical feminists believes that his comparing them to certain conservative Christians is misogynistic. Unless they believe that any man daring to critique a woman is inherently misogynist, I’m afraid I don’t understand their position. […]
This comment was written by Are Radical Feminists Happy? « Tiny Cat Pants.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Yes, yes Heart. Mandolin’s post is completely irrelevant to everything you’ve ever written about transfolks.
Male-to-female transsexuality/transgender is really about men’s rights. It has nothing to do with feminism. As such, as feminists, just as we oppose men’s rights, in general, we oppose this manifestation of men’s rights as well.
Where have I read that? Oh, yes. http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/anti-radical-feminist-pro-mens-rights-propaganda/
From the comments on the same post:
I, for one, am not interested sharing restrooms with men, regardless of its popularity in Europe, so color me mostly unconcerned from the ge-go.
Given the context, I can only believe that “men” in this comment refers to MTFs.
… and trans-politics, and trans-activism is a full-on patriarchal one, and a woman-hating one, and its ultimate goal is the continuing subordination of women. Full stop. End of story.
No transphobia or prejudice there.
Feminine women and feminine men are not situated remotely similarly.
Once again, transwomen are “feminine men”. A comment cheered on by Heart.
And, as far as threads on womensspace in which trans comes up, this is one of the nicest I’ve seen there. But still, MTFs are undercover spies seems to be the prevailing attitude here. MTFs are not women and their goal is the subordination of women. None if this is challenged by the blogger or community of regular commenters. It is accepted and encouraged. But there is no transphobia here.
The sad thing for me is that I think that radical feminism is spot on in many things, that radical feminists serve an important function that other strains of feminism don’t address… yet I encounter this type of prejudice in so many of the radfem blogs that I’ve read. It is so odious that it makes me hesitant to read those blogs - blogs that I could learn a lot from if I could deal with the hatred.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 9:10 am
And continuing on, because my mind is so scattered…
If “transwomen are men” isn’t gender essentialism, what is it? And isn’t this precisely what Mandolin’s post was about? Gender essentialism and who spouts it?
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 10:11 am
I just want to go on record as saying, two replies of mine on that thread were deleted (censored). I responded to what Heart asked me, and then my reply (as well as the trackback to my blog) was censored, which I don’t think is playing fair. I was polite, civil and used no profanity. She just didn’t like what I said.
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July 30th, 2007 at 10:12 am
And hey, PS: I am a radical feminist, too.
This comment was written by Daisy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 10:39 am
“And hey, PS: I am a radical feminist, too.”
I know, but I’d already used you as an example when I said I wanted, ideally, for both you and Piny to feel safe. :-)
Heart’s behavior on that thread was abominable — from her ultimate sanction of fat-phobia in which she prefers to criticize fat feminists who objected to bigotry, to her complaints about policing female feminists while censoring and sneering at Daisy, to her lies about this thread in which she claimed that many feminists stood by and watched misogynist comments be hurled at her (when in fact, the comment appears second to last in the thread, and appears to have been immediately repudiated by the blog owner).
This is not to mention her laughable contention that it’s not insulting to refer to transpeople as Frankenstein’s monsters.
And to generalize to her community more generally, I am amused/appalled that we are so easily derailed by the topic of bathrooms. The ERA, Trans Rights — is there any social good that the spectre of a unisex bathroom can’t stand in the way of?
I really do applaud Heart’s attempts to shed light on and stop violence against women. However, she’s a bigot. She was a bigot when she sanctioned people going after Little Light with spurious and ridiculous charges of plagiarism. She was a bigot when she lied by claiming that Bitch, whose performance at the Dyke March was cancelled recently, had been singled out only because she played at the Michigan Womyn’s music festival, when in fact Bitch was expelled for comments that sound like they were drawn straight from Barry’s cartoon.
She’s a bigot who has thrown an arsenal of bad and dirty arguments into her bigotry — lies, misrepresentations, veiled insults, outright insults, and fear.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 11:41 am
i think this resides at the heart of the matter. i agree that i am different than, say, my two sisters. the issue, i believe, is how am i different, and how significant is that difference. an individual’s (or group’s) perception of those answers would govern how transwomen are treated, as far as their sex and gender are concerned, and their status in our society. at best, it’s a very complicated situation.
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July 30th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Heart claims she has not said “who is a woman and who isn’t.” Well, if that’s true, what is the problem?
Heart and several people at MARGINS complain that the pomos are deconstructing what womanhood is, and consequently making “woman” as a discrete category disappear. Okay, then how about WE DEFINE this category? I asked her what definition she is adhering to, and then she claims she has not said “who is a woman and who isn’t.” Sounds like Heart is the one deconstructing WOMAN out of existence, or assuming everyone JUST KNOWS what it is.
1) If Heart cannot define what a woman is, there is no basis for the name of her blog WOMEN’ S SPACE (and who is that, exactly?). Since at least one bio-male (I assume he is, anyway) posts there, it must be code for “space for people Heart likes.”
2) If Heart cannot define what a woman is, how can she adhere to the Michfest policy? She must have changed her mind on that, yes? Since we can’t decide who to leave out (based entirely on “who is a woman”), we might as well throw the doors open and let Motley Crue in, too.
3) If Heart cannot even define who a WOMAN is, what exactly is supposed to be the problem with the transpeople? No category of woman = no such thing as transpeople OR women.
Heart’s claim (in that thread) that she “hasn’t said who is and is not a woman” simply MAKES NO SENSE, keeping in mind her previous comments on the matter or what she claims her politics are. Totally irrational and illogical.
This comment was written by Daisy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
I am a feminist.
Although I do not embrace the term “radical feminist” any longer, I do respect and agree with many aspects of radical feminism.
That said, the discussion of Daly’s Dr. Frankenstein/Frankenstein’s monster analogy at Women’s Space offended me greatly, as did the nod of approval and justification of fat phobic comments. Please forgive the plug for my blog here, but I did write about this last Friday if anyone’s interested:
http://bastantealready.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-ignorant-art-thou-in-thy-pride-of.html
I gave up attempting to post at Women’s Space some time ago as I found it a very frustrating experience. Thank you for providing a hopefully neutral space to discuss this matter, Mandolin.
This comment was written by Kim.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Why is it that on this blog and a number of Amp’s friends’ blogs, radical feminism becomes Just What Heart Says? There are numerous radical feminist authors (bloggers included) who discuss the radical feminist position on gender/biology/transitioning in similar AND different ways as/than Heart does. Simplifying the radical feminist approach to understanding gender and how gender relates to the physical body to “Get a load of what Heart’s sayin’ now!” is unfair to just about everybody involved, including Heart.
And you can’t just say, “Well, they are free to post here and tell us how they really feel!” because despite any little caveat you put down about how this is a “safe space” for radical feminists, it only takes reading a few comments to see that it quite obviously is NOT. But we’ll see how this goes.
I’m a radical feminist. Part of why I’m a radical feminist is that I don’t believe in gender essentialism AT ALL. I believe that gender begins the moment the doctor says “It’s a…” and remains something to be challenged and criticized throughout our lives. Not by upholding gender as some fun thing we can all perform, but by challenging its very purpose - to create and control classes of people. If you don’t agree, that’s cool, let’s just agree to disagree. I’ve read enough pomo stuff to know all the arguments about why gender is the best thing since sliced bread but I’ve looked around and not so much see a world where that dynamic plays out so you won’t change my mind. I figure I won’t change yours much either.
I don’t identify as trans, though I’ve tried very hard over the past 10 years or so to understand to the best of my ability how transgender fits in to my own person understanding of the politics of gender. I’ve come to a place where I feel comfortable reconciling it with my own understanding of my gender, my radical feminist politics, and my understanding of my friends’ experiences who are trans.
Beyond that, this radical feminist doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about or discussing transgender politics because I personally see the merit of radical feminism being a no-holds-barred attack on the Patriarchy. I’m not convinced that transwomen have much relative power in the Patriarchy, so the pragmatist in me focuses on what I see as women’s true enemies.
I only mention this because the discussion here, so far anyhow, has been an extremely myopic one. Heart is one radical feminist doing her best to make sense of a really shitty world. Mary Daly is one radical feminist doing her best to make sense of a really shitty world. Shelia Jeffries is another. Regardless of your interpretation (which may be spot-on, or may be way off-base) about how they as individuals feel about actual transgendered persons, I don’t think any one of them has personally hurt a transgendered person, denied a transgendered person her/his rights, or made the world a worse place for transgendered people. Yet a lot of the really violent assholes out there whom Heart and Daly and Jeffries and other radical feminist rail against DO A GREAT DEAL to hurt lots of people because of gender transgressions.
But reading about radfems here, you’d think we want to take away everyone’s birthday and then go eat a bunch of babies.
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July 30th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Amber,
I’m not speaking for anybody else on this thread, but I was responding directly to Heart’s post (trackback at #3).
Which radfem blogs do you recommend? I’m always happy to read blogs that I haven’t come across yet.
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July 30th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Amber,
I appreciated your comments about fat-phobia on heart’s thread.
I think you’re holding up an unfair standard about what constitutes oppression. We acknowledge that it’s a problem when people say bigoted things about women, e.g. all women are stupider than men. It’s likewise a problem when people say bigoted things about transpeople. Racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia are not solely about putting a cross on someone’s lawn or murdering a transsexual. They are also about calling them “nutjobs” and calling them fake and problematizing their bodies, all the things that contribute to a transphobic culture.
It’s similar to fatphobia, in a way. In heart’s and littoral mermaid’s threads, Sis didn’t literally beat up any fat person or take away their birthday. But she did other fat people, she did imply that our morality is lesser, and she used the cultural fear of fat as a weapon against fat people. That is fatphobic, though it is less so than forbidding fertility treatment to fat women as has happened under the English health care system.
This post isn’t all about heart; it also quotes Sally C. I didn’t quote them specifically, but Pony and Luckynckl and several other people behaved appallingly on the IBTP thread that is linked in this post.
The previous thread also included a lot of quotes from people who are not Heart. Still, Heart is standing at the front line as a bigot in this situation. When the nasty transphobic shit happens, she’s usually somewhere around — arbitrating in the IBTP thread, or accusing Little Light of plagiarism, or whatnot. When I read back through the last 20 entries on her blog a few weeks ago, a good many of them took unrelated issues and turned them into rants about transsexuality. She’s being active on this issue; she’s acting as a lightning rod, and therefore she gets some amount of attention.
This post is about transphobic radical feminists, as I believe the cartoon was. There are radical feminists who are not transphobic. I named a few of them above.
But when transphobia coincides with radical feminism, that’s not okay, just as it’s not okay when fatphobia coincides with radical feminism. The argument that the weight women carry is different than the weight men carry, and therefore it’s okay to mock men for being fat, rings very untrue to me as a fat woman. If weight can be used to make summary judgment about people’s moral weaknesses, then my gender is a very thin protection. That argument, which I disagree with, is an attempt to use radical feminist politics to justify bigotry — and it’s a manifestly poor argument. I feel the same about the attempts to justify transphobia via a kind of radical feminist logic. It’s bad logic, and the resulting bigotry is unacceptable.
That doesnt’ mean the rest of radical feminist thought is bad, or that everyone’s radical feminist thought is bad. It only means that those particular strains of logic are bad.
–
I appreciate your overture, in particular the attempt to have a discussion even if we’re going to disagree. I hope to offer this in the same spirit.
I agree that people begin receiving gender training at birth, based on how other people classify their sex. Some people tell me that their gender training has always felt at odds with their physical sex, and I believe them. The crap they have to go through in order to change is really monumental; I have a great difficulty believing that they’re trying to manipulate me in order to colonize my space. I want to listen to what they’re telling me about their experience of gender, not dismiss it or insist on repeating to them what everyone else has since the doctor declared them to be “b0y” or “girl.”
I also agree that privilege can be a problem. When I’ve confronted the transwomen in my life about that, they agree. All the transwomen I know are feminist. Of course not all transwomen are just as not all women are, but the ones I know are. They understand that having been raised with male privilege poses a problem, and needs to be addressed. But I am willing to support them in their struggle to solve it, just as I hope that other peopel will support me in my attempts to become a better and more fair feminist by ridding myself of prejudices about class and race that are a barrier to my being able to fully support all women.
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July 30th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Amber, you’re right that it’s not fair or right to equate radical feminism with the ideology of Heart and her regular commenters, no matter how often they purport to speak for radical feminism and boot radical feminists who don’t agree with them as not-actual radfems and dominate many online radfem conversations.
This, however?
I call bullshit. You’re really saying theorists like Janice Raymond, people who run organizations like Sheila Jeffries, participants in discussion after discussion like Heart don’t have an effect on the way the world treats trans people? People who argue for the barring of trans women from domestic-violence shelters don’t make the world worse for us? People who want us Out of Feminism, who shout down speakers who advocate for our rights, who argue that we ought to be locked up in mental institutions or barred from public bathrooms, and who write popular books I hear quoted over and over again by people all over about how monstrous and vile we are have never, ever hurt us, denied us our rights, or made the world less safe for us? We should just turn our attention to other people who wish us harm because those people are supposed to be in the same movement we are, and are above criticism for not being as bad as someone else? Really, their assertions and actions do nothing to contribute to the sanction those “violent assholes” feel in doing us physical harm? Their desire to eliminate our shelters, in feminism, in the queer movement, and so on, from those other oppressors should get a free pass because they don’t like the assholes they’re throwing us on the mercy of, either?
I’m sorry, no. No, these people don’t constitute all of radical feminism. Criticizing them, by the same token, doesn’t mean universal-radfem-bashing. And criticizing them is not off-limits just because this world isn’t perfectly easy for them, either. Do other people have more power in this society? Of course. Do I believe that Janice Raymond, or Heart or Lucky for that matter, would do any better by me than some fundamentalist neoconservative in office if they had access to governmental authority? Hell, no.
You know, I’ve never had a conservative or fundamentalist come after me personally and try and denigrate my work. I can’t say the same for radical feminists as a group. Explain to me again why I should ignore that.
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July 30th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Or, you know, what Mandolin said.
I don’t have any hostility to radical feminism in general, myself; there’s a lot of it I admire, and a lot of radfems–some of the commenters here, for instance–that I’d stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any day. But that’s not going to keep me from having a problem with the transphobia that crops up regularly in radical-feminist circles. It’s not a universal problem, but that doesn’t make it not a problem.
This comment was written by little light.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I only mention this because the discussion here, so far anyhow, has been an extremely myopic one.
How were my posts on Heart’s blog myopic? I came here to have a discussion, because as I said, I was CENSORED there, for no reason at all.
She disagreed with me, is the only reason I was censored. Unfortunately, she did not even grant me the courtesy of telling me exactly why my posts were censored, and I had been posting there. I think if someone has been friendly on your blog, the least you can do is say hey, “this post is a no-go”, instead of automatically accusing them of conspiring with your enemies (or worse, of BEING one of them).
Not by upholding gender as some fun thing we can all perform, but by challenging its very purpose - to create and control classes of people. If you don’t agree, that’s cool, let’s just agree to disagree.
Not “we can all perform”–but we DO all perform. No choice involved.
Amber, when people see you or talk to you on the phone, do they need to ask you what gender you are? If not, you are performing gender, too. Otherwise, no one could tell.
I am all for radfem discussions of the issue, as long as everyone keeps in mind that WE ALL DO IT, not just the transpeople. So do you, so do I, so does Heart, so does Sheila Jeffreys–the last time I checked, SHEILA is a gendered name.
I have recently realized that for some reason, radfems think (and so did I) that somehow we are “gender-exempt” and have no original sin when it comes to gender expression. But in fact, we all participate. Just as we all participate in capitalism, whether we in fact go to McDonalds or not. We can try to figure out how much we want to participate, in what ways (I won’t go to McDonalds, for example, maybe you do), but that does not mean we don’t all participate in capitalism some OTHER way. Gender and capitalist participation is not a choice in this culture.
The transpeople are not doing anything that you and I do not do. Once I got this basic concept (and all props go to Piny!), then I was able to understand what is happening with transpeople.
I admit that it’s very difficult for me to understand all the feelings transpeople have, and in fact, there is plenty I still don’t get. Lots of stuff on trans websites still aggravates me considerably, and if I see another “I’m more womanly now, because I cried at the end of Gone with the Wind!” blog post, I might shriek.
But I DO get that we all do it; I am not exempt. (And I just posted about a movie that made ME cry!)
Therefore, I can’t stand on my pedestal as somehow “gender-free”, pointing my ideologically pure finger at the gender-collaborators.
This comment was written by Daisy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Wow Daisy, good point and great post.
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Oh, absolutely.
A few summers ago, I was doing research for a story I’m writing that is a science fictional metaphor about transsexuality. I went to a bunch of sites and read transwomen’s journals and a good number of them had this kind of thing. “I get along with women, because women are naturally more nurturing.”
No, no, no, no, no.
I went to my transwoman friend who had just recently come out, and I cagily presented my evidence to her. Without using so many words, I said, “This is why I’m uncomfortable with transsexuality! See?”
And she said, “Wow, yeah. That really sucks.”
Because she knows it sucks.
That strain of thought, held by some transsexuals, sucks. That biological essentialism sucks a lot.
My friend explained a bit of the historical context to me: that transwomen were often denied the care they needed if they didn’t pretend to be uber-feminine. Sexist psychologists said, “How can you really be a *woman* if you don’t want to wear high heels? You must be lying. You’re really a man. Women want to cook.” So they donned high heels and glossed their lips with make-up and pranced in heels and said, “Ah, oui! Now I am a woman!” And the sexist psychologists said, “Oh, okay then, quacks like a woman to me.”
I’m sure there’s something to be said here about reactive identity formation, in the same way that some theorists believe that some gay men become very feminine because they have to create a solid break with the masculinity of heterosexuality in order to be comfortable with their own homosexuality. A transwoman may feel the need to establish clearly that she is not a man, and the way the culture suggests she should do that is to take on all the trappings of femininity that many feminists criticize.
Another thing I personally bear in mind is that I have more practice living as a woman than new transwomen I know. I understand how to signal “I am a woman” without sending all the signals at once. I understand the complicated dance of how to make myself just acceptable enough that I don’t get harrassment and abuse — for instance, I am outspoken and fat, and I wear an armor of makeup to get through the day. I’m not in love with that need, but it makes it infinitely easier for me to accomplish the other things I need to do — like write and teach — the sum of which will hopefully in totem make up for the damage I do by conforming to gender roles. A transsexual woman does not have as much practice as I do with that dance; she’s still finding her way through the steps. Like adolescent girls who are new at practicing sexualized femininity, she may overshoot and shower herself in droves of glitter and makeup and high heels. Dressing up has been denied her in a male-identified childhood, and preening is fun. Consequently, she may gorge for a while. The reslut is not what I like, but it’s understandable.
I really, really, really dislike the biologically essentialist rhetoric that creeps into some transsexuals’ self-descriptions, such as what Daisy quoted above. But, as she points out, it’s easy for me to find that kind of rhetoric in the writing of female-identified women, too. It’s slightly more buried, but no less essenitalist.
I don’t believe that transsexuality requires an essentialist dogma, any more than woman-born womanhood requires one. The feminist transfolk I know, like the femininst womenfolk I know, struggle against this model. They know the measure of womanhood is not the number of tears shed at a schmaltzy movie.
Transsexuality is infinitely more complicated than the “I’m a woman, because I’m a nurturer” model of thinking would imply. I think it appeals because it’s simple — easy for all sides to look at gender as a binary, instead of a complicated thing that radiates in many directions, and to require people to be congruent in one way or another.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
The implication of Amp’s cartoon is not, however, that “transphobia AMONG radical feminists is bad” and that’s pretty clear. It implies that radical feminists hate transpeople just like the Religious Right hates transpeople. Either Amp wanted to construct a big stawman that radfems would have no hope of beating or he hasn’t read much radical feminist theory about gender and the body. I’m doubting the latter. But whatever. I don’t really care about the cartoon.
Certainly, some people’s categorizations of transwomen as “nutjubs” is totally unacceptable, at best, and fostering of a dangerous culture toward transpeople at worst. Unfortunately, one can be any kind of feminist and still act like an asshole sometimes. And I won’t deny that sometimes radfems say things like that and chalk it up to their radicalness rather than their own particular ire over certain issues. But it’s unfair to read something like that and then generalize that it is radical feminism, which gets done here, on this blog, all the damn time.
Which was really the purpose of my post above - to say hey, there are some subtle and even more profound diffrerences among radical feminists on this issue, even in our interpretation of each others’ words. I just don’t see the point of getting in to any of the “No-it’s-not-transphobia” / “Yes-it-is-transphobia!” details of those differences, because I don’t think it’ll really get anywhere. And I do see the merit to getting that side of the debate out there - I really do - but does it deserve the constant attention it gets? You’d think it’s all we radfems ever talk about.
And finally, because I think it illustrates my point, I just want to say that even the fat-phobia issue in Heart’s thread is one that obviously you and I ultimately interpret differently. I think Sis used to post there under a different name, and if she’s who I think she is then I think her insisting to use those words have less to do with her being genuinely fat-phobic and more to do with how she chooses and understands language in general. Realizing that there may be very real barriers to her understanding how her words affect others makes it easier for me see that for it really is - not just fat-phobia (though her words were, indeed, insulting) but just a situation where I tried to bring a necessary perspective to the fat comments, but because of Sis’s situation, it just couldn’t happen.
I was initially hurt by Heart’s and others’ handling of it, and I doubt I’ll post to that conversation again, but I also look at this from the POV where Heart tries really hard to balance a blog where all women-centered-women feel safe to communicate with each other while also dealing with really heated topics where POVs vary greatly. Add to that that not all commenters come to the party with the same communication abilities and it puts Heart is a tough spot to be fair to everyone. Knowing Heart the way I do, and given her stellar track record of speaking truth to fat bigotry, I’m of the mind that she’s not at all condoning fat-phobia but rather trying to manage a situation where there are no perfect choices for a moderator to make.
And that’s where I come from with Heart’s political writing on the trans issue, too. I have read Heart so many times, both in public and private settings, that I am more than willing to give her the benefit of the doubt about the transphobia thing. In recent years I’ve seen Heart go to the floor defending Lynn, for god’s sake, when even the most vocal trans-advocates were calling for her head. So given what I know of her, I am confident saying that Heart is no more transphobic than any of us is transphobic and “bigot” is hardly a word I’d use to describe her. But now this is turning in to a post defending Heart, and that’s not really something I want or need to do.
This comment was written by Amber.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
And I just am not up for discussing my thoughts on gender vis-a-vis transgender, gender performance, oppression, etc., because I know these are things that we all feel really strongly about and they’re also areas where we obviously disagree significantly. I dont come at this from an I’m Right and You’re Wrong vantage, so I’d really like to agree to disagree on that stuff and all. I’ve seen enough of these “discussions” to know that nothing gets accomplished, people just end up feeling invalidated.
So little light and others - I’m not ignoring your comments or questions, I just don’t want to get in to it.
This comment was written by Amber.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Amber,
I appreciate your having taken part in the conversation to the extent that you were comfortable.
It sounds like we have some common ground, at least. I agree that the nutjob comments are unacceptable, and that there are radical feminists whose critiques are not of necessity transphobic.
Thanks again for taking the leap of trust to post here, and you’re welcome in whatever capacity you prefer.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Threads like this remind me of when I went to Catholic Highschool. Very academic debates about whether I, as a queer person, had a right to exist.
I’m done engaging homophobes and transphobes. They can have all the discussions they want, I don’t care, I don’t want to hear about it. I’ve graduated and gone on to college.
If I were a radfem, though, I would be upset. Because some outspoken bigots have made dedicated feminists like me run screaming from anything having to do with them.
You’d think the shared experience of being on the losing side of a gender-binary would be enough, but . . oh, I don’t care.
This comment was written by Les.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Mandolin, great post. I appreciate your insights!
Amber, do you think it’s good for Heart to ask someone direct questions and then refuse to print their answers, but instead censors them? When Heart engages in this behavior with self-defined radical feminists like me, who have posted on her blog but have changed their minds or come to different conclusions, that is NOT feminist solidarity, that is power-tripping and cult-0f-personality. And BTW, no one subscribed MORE to the Heart cult-of-personality than LYNNE, who was obsessed with Heart and basically doing Heart-in-drag, if you’ll pardon me for saying so. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and Heart was flattered, until it turned into stalking.
I very much respect the work Heart has done. I have learned SO MUCH from her blog. Just today I forwarded her post about the Lesbian 7 to folks who are spreading the word. I have similarly forwarded countless of her posts to other feminists. She is a gifted organizer. But that doesn’t excuse Heart using her power of organization to hurt people, to imply some women are not the pure feminists she is, and some women ain’t women at all. (Or something.)
Myca, thank you.
This comment was written by Daisy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
[The first paragraph of this comment has been removed at brownfemipower’s request. –Mandolin]
and heart has defined what a “woman” is–she had a list up a while back where she very clearly defined on her terms what a “woman” is–and surprise, most of it was based on a shared experience of violence–if you’ve had your feet bound, been forced to veil, been prostituted etc etc etc.
This comment was written by brownfemipower.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
“i’ve never read any trans blog say they are “more womanly” because of X or more manly because of Y.”
I haven’t encountered it in the feminist blogosphere, personally. I did encounter it when I did a search just on blogs that were tagged transsexual. Many of them were outside the United States. This was summer 2005.
(I know you weren’t saying it never happened. I’m just trying to give context.)
“and heart has defined what a “woman” is–she had a list up a while back where she very clearly defined on her terms what a “woman” is–and surprise, most of it was based on a shared experience of violence–if you’ve had your feet bound, been forced to veil, been prostituted etc etc etc.”
Thanks. I’ll have to dig that up and take a gander at it.
(Immediate objection: So, men who’ve been prostituted can claim the title woman? Interesting.)
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
I have a lot more to say about this post (which is awesome in so many ways, thanks Mandolin!) later… but I just wanted to say, that stuff makes me want to shriek too. And for more than one reason — I mean, imagine if you not only had to read those posts, but on top of that, you were aware that some people (present company excluded, I believe) would point to that kind of thing and say “see, this is what trans women think being a woman is about” and oh yeah, YOU’RE A TRANS WOMAN. It’s really enough to drive you insane, because if you share space with stereotype-wielding people who define womanhood as crying about Scarlett O’Hara, sometimes they try to convince you, as another trans woman, that you definitely ought to feel that way too! It’s lovely. Has sent me running screaming from more than one website — like Mandolin says, not in the feminist blogosphere, and not amongst trans people who have more progressive or feminist consciousness, but… oh yeah, it’s out there.
And I mean, you don’t have to look TOO far out there before you find some kind of culturally-hidebound pressure on any and all women that insists womanhood is about chick flicks, but trans stuff is so fraught with potentially illegitimacy to begin with, that it gets extremely stressful very fast, and a little more difficult to just “pshaw” at.
This comment was written by Holly.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
I agree that sex and gender are not binary. I wouldn’t even say it’s a continuum. It’s more like a web where different people occupy different space without a scale tilting one way or the other.
This comment was written by Elaine Vigneault.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Thanks, Mandolin. I wasn’t expecting the level of consideration I’ve received, so I’m glad I posted as well.
Daisy, I don’t follow the comments at Heart’s blog that much and I honestly don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. It sounds like it’s between you and Heart though, and so I guess you’ll have to ask her. Just because I value Heart’s blogging doesn’t mean I have an opinion about every relationship she has with every commentor on her blog. Nor could I even begin to have an informed opinion on whatever she’s choosing to do with your posts there.
And after posting the thing about Lynn, I realized it’d be twisted to implicate Heart as the bad-guy. Which so wasn’t the case at all, given the situation. Nor did Heart have anything at all to gain (and she had quite a bit of face to lose) from it. But that brings us around to the fact that this argument hits most of us at a really fundamental level. I accept that many of you are not willing to give Heart and other radfems even an inch of consideration on this issue. And I’m certainly not willing to paint Heart and radfems with the transphobic brush, either. So there you have it, I suppose.
Shall we just keep going ’round and ’round? Amp posts a cartoon… Heart et al are put on the defense… Alas bloggers post responses… Heart posts more responses… Amp posts another cartoon? Is that how feminist change is made?
This comment was written by Amber.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
[…] Pay No Attention To That Radical Feminist Behind The Curtain Still on that cartoon, are we? I thought it was beginning to calm down, but no, the rightous outrage against Amp’s cartoon is still coming on strong from certain circles. Well, circle. Mandolin wrote a post titled “Mandolin Responds to Seelhoff: Gender Is a Constellation.” Link located here […]
This comment was written by Pay No Attention To That Radical Feminist Behind The Curtain « Opopanox.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Holly,
Thank you.
Amber,
This is what I feel about the situation:
I’m not sure where the solution is exactly, but it seems to me that it will involve adjustment of theory. I do not believe that radical feminist theories about gender — even the ones that are often used to hurt transpeople — are incompatible with a positive acknowledgement of transsexuality.
I think the theory needs to be discussed. This is my first attempt to provoke that conversation, although that’s not the post’s only goal. You’re right that this post has a confrontational air, and I respect that it’s not a place where you want to talk. Sometime in the next couple days, I’ll post about the adjustments I’ve made to my own theories of gender and sex. With luck, that will feel like a more comfortable context to you, or to other people put off by this post. Or, even if people don’t want to have the conversation directly, maybe if both sides don’t talk directly, but instead read & think and then later post deep examinations of theory in their own spaces, the collaborative aspect of conversation can still happen in slow motion. I strongly believe that radical feminist theories and gender theory that is supportive of transsexuality are compatible, if people look at them in the right frame.
However, I also firmly think that no progress will be made on the issue without people calling out the problems and conflicts in the first place.
(For the record, I have been blogging on this site for about 2 months. I’m relatively new to the feminist blogosphere, so I’m not someone who’s reacting to Heart with years of baggage or anything. I read her blog for a while, but I was put off by several of her stances, including what I feel is transphobia, long before I ever spoke to Ampersand about her. I can see why I come off as being part of “Amp’s camp,” and I do often agree with him. But I’m not sure I slot into the personal dynamics in quite the way that it might appear if people weren’t familiar with my history [which there’s no reason why they should be.])
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Daisy, I don’t follow the comments at Heart’s blog that much and I honestly don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
Well, since it’s linked in the first three words of this post, I assumed you had read it, since you are DEFENDING her behavior in that thread.
My bad. I just assumed you had a clue about what you were defending. I stand corrected.
And I refer you to what I said earlier about the cult of personality. You just reflexively defend Heart, without bothering to read the thread that started the problems THIS time?
Hm.
This comment was written by Daisy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
I thought you were talking about being censored in the comments? I did read that post - in fact, I just skimmed it again and did a search for you name to see if I missed something. Your name shows up in the comments, which I said I don’t follow regularly, nor do I remember (or have an opinion on) what each person said.
And I’m not defending - reflexively or otherwise - Heart’s “behavior” in that thread. Are you talking about my trying to empathize with why she sided with Sis about the fat comments? Giving someone the benefit of the doubt isn’t the same and defending them, IMO. So “cult of personality”? C’mon. Just because I don’t vilify Heart when she doesn’t do what I think she should doesn’t mean I’m about to drink the koolaid.
And the tone of your post is really not anything I’m interested in dealing with here. Once I’m confronted with that level of sarcasm, it’s clear that any further attempt at dialogue is pointless. I’m willing to just let you “win.”
ETA: Thanks for the clarification, Mandolin. I look forward to reading your future posts.
This comment was written by Amber.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
I do not believe that radical feminist theories about gender — even the ones that are often used to hurt transpeople — are incompatible with a positive acknowledgement of transsexuality.
They could at least accept it as a practical strategy. It seems almost self-evident to me that letting transpeople reveal themselves openly would help gender equality in America. Now, I could be wrong about this, but see Chapter 2 (the parts about fear of outsiders) and Chapter 5 (p177-179) here. (Of course, transsexuals do not exist to help John or Jane Doe at the expense of their own safety.) The objections I’ve seen concern a hypothetical society where “right-wing authoritarians” already accept transsexuality somehow, which seems irrelevant to this practical argument.
This comment was written by hf.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Amber, my apologies for oversensitivity, but I just feel very dissed by that crowd. People were very friendly to me there, and now they aren’t. Suddenly won’t answer emails, etc.
I’m pretty fed up.
This comment was written by Daisy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
I think you’d be surprised at how many radical feminists *do* understand transsexuality as a way of dealing with gender oppression. The radfems I admire most acknowledge that the constraints of gender don’t often jive with individual’s identities and that the more people who outwardly challenge gender, the better. I think where radical feminist politics and transgender politics start to diverge here is where radfems say “Abolish gender completely” and trans-advocates say “Just fuck up the gender binary.” And, of course, the radical stance that there can never be “gender equality in America” because the issue is gender itself, not simply the ranking of one gender over another.
But anyhow, I’m wary to get into that here and I’d like to read Mandolin’s up-coming posts on where she see the radical feminist position on gender being compatible with transgender politics.
And hey, Daisy, no worries. I can understand how things get really complicated and the ‘net isn’t exactly the most conducive place to hash out issues like this. I think it fosters a lot of hostility among otherwise righteous, peace-loving folks, myself included.
This comment was written by Amber.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
I meant, working to ensure that transsexuals can go wherever they like without hiding their history would almost certainly reduce rape and general violence against women.
This comment was written by hf.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
This illustrates part of the problem quite nicely. Transsexuality is not a strategy for dealing with gender oppression– it simply is.
While I am a feminist, and I do want to fight injustice, this has nothing to do with my being transsexual. Well, the transsexuality has raised my consciousness, but other than that– nope.
I guess these are my biggest pet peeves with cissexual (particularly radfem) critiques of
transsexuality:
1) I don’t feel my existence should be critiqued (although my personal philosophies are fair game)
2) They often don’t jive with my experience– I’m a lesbian and tomboy, both qualities that society insists are masculine yet I’m a transsexual woman. Don’t ask me to explain why– I can’t (and shouldn’t have to).
Although it’s just as valid to claim that transsexuals reinforce the gender binary by insisting on identifying as either men or women. It really depends on what trans-advocates you’re talking to.
BTW, I appreciate the discussion and excellent posts, and love the fact that things have been pretty respectful thus far.
This comment was written by eastsidekate.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
To clarify the post above, I think many people think that transsexual women go:
“Only girls get to do A, B, and C and boys have to do X, Y, and Z… but, I want to do A, B, and C, and I hate X, Y, and Z. I want to be a girl!”
For me it was more like: “I want to be a girl! What?!? You mean I can’t do A and C, and have to do X and Y?!? This just gets worse and worse!!”
This comment was written by eastsidekate.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
I think that’s where most of the discord lies. Transsexuality isn’t my way of dealing with gender oppression. Keeping what little style I have regardless of what sex it’s viewed as wrt clothes, mannerisms and behavior is, as is spouting off at the mouth and insisting on equality.
This comment was written by arrogantworm.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Mandolin:
…I do have a number of philosophical points of connection with radical feminists, as well as great respect for radical posters here including (but not limited to) Bean, QGrrl, Bonnie, Ms. Xeno, Pheeno, and Ginmar.*…
Hey, thanks, Mandolin. Even though I’m not a real Rad Fem. I just play one on TV. :p Six or seven months always seems to me like a century in internet time, so it’s nice of you to mention me in the same breath as folks who are still regular posters.
I’m following this thread with much interest, and have enjoyed your earlier contributions as well.
Cheers.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2007 at 4:51 am
Amber wrote:
It’s been a very long time since I have read much radical feminist anything, so I’d like to ask, as a point of information, if someone can point me to something to read that will explain how “abolish gender completely” does not express a utopian wish to eliminate not so much diffrerence itself, but what I will call, for now, the categorization of difference.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2007 at 5:14 am
Trans women are like radical feminists are like Christians are like atheists are like pagans are like trans men are like Communists are like Libertarians. Basically, it goes: the least stable members of any subcultural grouping are the loudest and most vehement about their points. Because a stable (Christian, pagan, Communist, trans person) writes cogent blog entries sometimes and spends the rest of their life living it; and an unstable one spends their whole life writing incoherent or ridiculous blog entries and then defending them TO THE DEATH!
It takes a long time to catch onto the principle emotionally and not stereotype people. I am still working on this.
—
Re: Heart saying she hasn’t said who is a woman and who isn’t — wow, what a crock. That or she means the definitions aren’t made by her, which they aren’t; they’re made by the patriarchy. Great boss to be serving without question, eh? I’m going to stop now before I start being childish.
This comment was written by A.J. Luxton.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2007 at 6:37 am
Re: Abolishing gender completely, I think this is another place where some radfems and some gender wonks (for lack of a better term) are using different definitions. I’d claim that you can’t abolish gender completely; as gender is a description of how one expresses one’s self, even ‘plain’, ‘neutral’ or ‘non’ are genders. What radfem I’ve read suggests that gender is itself a system of oppression (feel free to help me out here). In many ways, when we all talk about gender (or transgender, let alone transsexuality), I think we’re talking about very different things. It makes life hard.
This comment was written by eastsidekate.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2007 at 7:25 am
Points taken, arrogantworm and eastsidekate, re: transsexuality not being a strategy to oppose gender oppression. But therein lies the problem and one that I doubt any amount of discussion could ever remedy, regardless of the level of civility. And it’s not even a “problem,” actually, or it doesn’t really have to be. We just come at the issue from different angles. The way I understand gender is fundamentally different from the way some of you do. And at the end of the day, I really don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I don’t think there’s this one right answer about how gender & oppression work that we all have to agree upon. Or even *try* to agree upon.
My understanding of these issues comes from my own lived experience, first and foremost, and then from reading a lot of books and articles from all schools of feminist thought - not blog posts. For those of you who have said you won’t give radical feminism (or any kind of feminism) the time of day because you dislike what you read on blogs, I really have to say you’re just doing yourself a disservice, not radical feminism. Blogs are notoriously dicey things, IMO, and while a lot of good comes of them, I really wouldn’t count of them for a theoretical foundation of what a particular vein of feminism stands for.
Richard Jeffrey Newman, my inference from your post is the gender = difference (and therefore is a good thing), which is another point I disagree with, fundamentally. I believe gender stifles difference. That comes from my own experience as a girl, a woman, and a lesbian dealing with what gender has meant for me. Additionally, Shulamith Firestone’s book, Dialectic of Sex, helped me think about gender and biology much more critically. I wouldn’t categorize her work as “utopian” so much as critical or polemic theory, but lots of people put it in the utopia category. Sounds like you find that sort-of “poopy” so take or leave Firestone as you see fit. Other writings come to mind too, but I cannot recall their names or authors… there’s a really good one about sex being an attribute of gender with a great analogy that I cannot remember. It’s likely up on the the Feminist Reprise site (www.feministreprise.org).
And anyways, because there are these really fundamental paradigm differences, do you really think any sort of worthwhile discussion could be had? I’m of the opinion there cannot be. How can you discuss the worthiness of bread when everyone’s has varying - and often opposing - understandings of yeast, water, flour, and nutrition?
This comment was written by Amber.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2007 at 8:14 am
The thing is, these are both political positions, aren’t they? And I don’t think trans people have one unitary political position on questions like “is gender an oppressive system? should it, ideally, be eradicated?” Most trans people would probably say no to both, just like most people in general would. Most human beings feel just fine about reinforcing the gender binary in their everyday lives and don’t bother theorizing about it; trans people always have a more “troubled” / illegitimized relationship to gender as a system, and struggle to live and thrive despite that — but that doesn’t mean we all oppose it, or that those of us who do have a problem with it regard it in the same way.
I guess what you’re talking about though, Amber, is “trans-advocates” meaning people who advance certain kinds of progressive and/or feminist theories that are understood to be informed by and in support of the struggles of trans people? Even in that sentence, there is plenty of room for differences of opinion; just for starters, in the “informed by and in support of” part, where there are bound to be a lot of different voices and experiences to be heard, some of which are very quiet or silenced.
When you write stuff like this:
I am reminded of past discussions in which part of the “trans-advocate” position has been described as being pro-gender somehow — that gender is positive, that it’s a good thing that gender can be performed, etc. I’m not sure exactly where this comes from. It also reminds me of assumptions that all gay people must be incredibly pro-sex and obssessed with sex, because gay people tend to be politicallly supportive of freedom of sexual orientation, without discrimination. It’s a little different of course, but in my experience, although many trans people greatly value the freedom (since it is so often punished and restricted) to freely express their gender, they don’t necessarily think gender, as a system, is the greatest thing since sliced bread. In fact, I think Riki Wilchins put it best when she said something like “I don’t transgress gender — in fact, I experience gender as transgressing all over me.”
I tend to agree. As a trans person (and a trans-advocate) I experience gender as a particularly oppressive system not only because the world treats me like a woman, every day, but also because I’m trans and I simply don’t fit into the expectations of a gendered world. When my trans-ness doesn’t come up, I deal with straightforward misogyny and sexism. When it does come up in one way or another, I’m completely rejected out of the system, not even a mass-produced slave, but a defective mess that according to some, ought to just go back into the incinerator. Or to put it another way, would I rather be raped or beaten to death today?
This is not intended as a whine-fest or a more-oppresseder-than-thou speech, I’m just trying to explain that yeah, I do think gender is an oppressive system designed to exploit women for the benefit of men — and of course there are those of us who the system considers complete garbage not even suitable for exploitation, too. (And that doesn’t just mean trans people, either, but a lot of “unsuitable” women.)
I do think that the world would be a better place if there were no gender-binary, because it’s been designed from the ground up as an oppressive system. But it’s where we go from there that I think the disagreements come in. Trans people’s lives are often critiqued as “not sufficiently working to dismantle the gender binary” — without doing ANY comparison with equivalent groups of non-trans people, who somehow evade critique for doing a lot the exact same things, to gender yourself in the face of a gendered world that punishes the insufficiently gendered. Even if we agree that gender is oppressive and would ideally disappear, there are a lot of questions where people have misgivings; almost all of us, unless you manage to live entirely outside of mainstream society, struggle to fit ourselves into gender somehow, right now, at this moment. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a deal with the devil. But it’s also a form of expression, expression which has adapted and evolved in order to help people survive and get by. This gets back into the territory of “lipstick wars” and so forth, but I don’t think any of this is irreconcilable. People who are oppressed by gender do what they have to in order to survive and thrive and in many cases, struggle. Sometimes this does end up being on the backs of others, and I never think that should be immune to critique. But it’s also less than productive to tear people down for making these choices — especially when so many of the same choices made by others are left unquestioned, default, naturalized, invisible.
Also, why, if gender=difference, is difference automatically a “good?” My reading of RJN’s post was that he’s asking about whether “eradicating the gender binary” means, as people often assume it does, that everyone needs to look exactly the same a la “THX 1138″ or whether the real ideal is something where what we call “gender” now is no longer used as a basis for oppression. My understanding of it is that if gender were totally eradicated, we just wouldn’t call differences between people “gender differences” anymore. They wouldn’t be significant any more than whether your earlobes are attached or detached are significant. If this concept seems alien, that explains both why people envision armies of clones during discussions like this, and also points out that we are talking about a practically post-historical epoch, as some radical feminists describe it (I’m thinking of some passages from Dworkin, in particular).
Anyway, I don’t think there are as huge gulfs in the basic premises as you might think there are, Amber. There isn’t one “trans politics” any more than there’s one “feminism” although I would be very curious as to what assumptions you thing are automatically entailed when someone identifies as “trans” or “trans-positive,” when someone decides to transition somehow, etc. Some of them might be assumptions that I wouldn’t find necessarily true, but some of them could be right-on and provide keys to further discussion and teasing-out of these issues. Littoral Mermaid posted some things she believed to be true, although her blog is down right now and I don’t remember exactly what they were… but recall thinking she was definitely right on some counts. Do all trans people believe that gender “exists” in some essential way? Not necessarily, but that doesn’t change what we have to deal with w/r/t our genders.
This comment was written by Holly.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2007 at 8:25 am
Amber:
No, actually, I don’t think gender=difference and that gender—if by gender you mean the masculine-feminine binary defined withn patriarchy—is therefore good. My question about what it means when radical feminists say they want to eliminate gender entirely arises out of what may be more a semantic than a substantive difference, which is why I want to read up on it.
My own understanding of the word gender and how it is, or can be, used is shaped by my training in applied and theoretical linguistics, where the term grammatical gender is another term for noun class. We are mostly familiar with languages that, like Spanish, Hebrew or French, have either two noun classes (called, generally, masculine and feminine) or, like English, none. But there are languages that have five, twenty and, if I remember correctly, there is a language that has something like 30 or 40 noun classes. And also, if I remember correctly, there is no theoretical limit on the number of noun classes a language might have. (Noun classes can be defined in many ways: all long and round things, for example, might have the same grammatical marker, while flat and round things would have a different marker entirely.)
I am not trying to draw a precise parallel between lingustic and social structures here, nor am I suggesting that we ought to think of human genders using the notion of grammatical gender/noun class as a model. I am trying to suss out if my initial, highly skeptical response to a position that says “eliminate gender” is due to a substantive disagreement with the position itself, or if I am reacting to a discipline- or context-specific use of the term gender that excludes the usage I am more familiar with.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2007 at 9:28 am
Holly, thanks for your thoughtful response. I agree with some of it, disagree with some of it, and take significant issue with some of it. I realize that I may very well be making some assumptions, both in the language I choose and in the conclusions I draw. I think we all have to do that when talking about things like gender, which have such profound class implications but also demand close consideration to individual experience. I’d like to think I’m realistic enough to regard my assumptions as assumptions. I believe that I can understand transgender to a certain degree without believing that I’ve got it all figured out, or that my understanding of it is in any way the ONLY way to understand it, or that I won’t think about it differently tomorrow.
RJN, thanks for clarifying, really, because I absolutely have a better idea of where you’re coming from. I don’t think you’ve got the foggiest as to where I’m coming from, but I haven’t given you much to work with. Firestone said it better than I ever could, as did a heap of other radfems out there.
And I really cannot keep saying “There’s no point in discussing this, so let’s agree to disagree” when I continue posting responses. So I’m going to go my way now and let y’all go yours. I look forward to reading your future posts, Mandolin!
This comment was written by Amber.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2007 at 10:09 am
I’m with Amber– I don’t see the makings of a productive discussion. Not only do some of us not agree on definitions, but I’m also unwilling to concede that the merits of genders are debatable. I view gender the same way I view sexuality– as something completely separate from personal politics or philosophy. If we were to jump straight to a discussion of how radfem theory views gender, or how transsexual identities should be valued, I’d have nothing constructive to say. It’d be like arguing with me on which is the true religion– I wouldn’t necessarily be right, but given my posture, it’d be absolutely impossible to prove or disprove any of my claims.
True, it is theoretically possible to be in a diverse group and have a discussion about transsexuality without deconstructing or critiquing genders, but it just doesn’t happen.
This comment was written by eastsidekate.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2007 at 10:30 am
i’m adding my voice to eastsidekate and arrogantworm regarding trans as a response to gender oppression. from my perspective, trans is often positioned as some kind of political or social entity to compare with radical feminism or even christianity. people choose radical feminism or christianity because they believe in and support the ideas and beliefs those groups are based upon.
trans is nothing of the kind, at least for me. i didn’t “choose” to be trans, regardless of my choice to transition. i *am* trans, just like i’m american, or white, or english speaking. i chose to transition to improve the quality of my life, not because i believe in some sort of “trans theory”.
the whole “trans vs rad fem” is a false dichotomy.
This comment was written by nexyjo.Report this comment to the moderators
July 31st, 2007 at 11:15 am
when people see you or talk to you on the phone, do they need to ask you what gender you are? If not, you are performing gender, too. Otherwise, no one could tell.
I think this is a really important point and bears repeating. Gender is not a solely internal thing - it is made up of internal feeling, outward expression, and the assumptions of the audience (i.e. everyone else). Little Light did a wonderful post about how in a very short period of time her gender changed, meaning the audience responded to her in different manners and using different pronouns, multiple times during a very short period of time. Gender isn’t a soliloquy, it’s an ensemble act, and I think that’s something which gets ignored on all sides.
US culture does not have more than two genders; in fact, one could argue US culture has one gender and a “not that” gender by the way masculine and feminine traits have been shifting to exclude each other over the past fifty or so years. This is not a system open to flexibility. I personally think the only way to make it a system that IS open to flexibility (and thus multiplicity, diversity, etc…) is to have people who are visibly breaking down the walls.
XX women who identify as female can do so by adopting traits traditionally coded as masculine without ceasing to identify as female and a woman. Ditto for XY men who identify as male. But to do so is an additional act; both groups of people can get away with closing their eyes and pretending they are “normal” and anyone who differs enough to cause themselves distress are just abnormal or doing it to themselves.
Transgenders and genderqueer, by their simple existence break down these walls. Femme men and butch women, by their simple existence, call into question the experiences of XX female women and XY male men as universal.
Like the resistance many self-identifying white people have to identifying themselves as part of a racial group that isn’t normal, XX female women and XY male men have the same ability to make their experiences transparent and universal and get applause. This is not a thing to be admired, in my opinion.
Re: different definitions, I think this is a critically important point. If I’m talking about apples and you’re talking about oranges, the pie we want to make together is going to be a mess.
Personally, I consider the genetic code to be one aspect of personal, sexual identity (XX, XY, XXX, XXY, etc…), the designation of gender (male/female/other) to be a second, and the cultural expression of gender to be a third (man/woman/other).
The parens indicate an interesting bias on my part, so I’m leaving them that way but pointing out the order IS biased.
This comment was written by Deoridhe.Report this comment to the moderators