Cicely: Change of Mind re WBW Space
Cicely has posted this explanation of her change of mind about whether it’s right to exclude trans women from women-only spaces (or create cis women-only spaces) on the MWMF forum. She also gave me permission to repost it here:
I used to support WBW space at michfest on the grounds of shared girlhood – i.e. this being space for people like myself who have been perceived and acted upon in the world as female from birth and throughout our lives up to and including the present. In fact when I left these boards approximately two years ago in disgust at the way trans women were spoken to and about by some, I wrote to the effect that I didn’t want to be associated with a women’s event that provided a haven or pulpit for these excesses, but also that I would support the right of WBW to claim the space for as long as it was wanted.I’ve felt obliged since then to take a very close look at the origins of my thoughts and feelings on this issue and that’s where I’d like to begin to explain why I’ve changed my mind. This is my own personal journey which may or may not resonate with anyone else here. I’m hoping it will.
It was very easy for me to buy into the WBW concept based on the understanding that trans women were not like me. I was a self-identified lesbian by the time I was eleven years old in 1965 and in my early twenties during the 1970’s I became an active feminist. From that time I spent many years socialising mostly with other lesbians who were feminists, and huge amounts of time and energy discovering, noticing, analysing, talking about and protesting male socialised and politicised behaviours including male egocentricity, male entitlement, male centredness (male is normal, female is default), male on female aggression and violence and so on. I read studies and watched documentaries – such as the one that demonstrated how teen-aged males, when given a written test which they failed, typically came up with external reasons or excuses for their failure (the neighbours had the music up loud so I couldn’t study properly; it was a trick question) while teen-aged girls typically took personal responsibility for their failure.
It made sense to me, with what I’d learned and experienced, that someone who’d been perceived and acted upon in the world as male from birth could have very little to no conception of the accumulated effects of sexism and misogyny on women like me. It starts early, some say from the very moment of birth, if not sooner. Male socialisation also starts early. And then, for trans women who’d transitioned later in life, what about the advantages and privileges they’d had access to in things like skills training, education, good jobs, good income etc, while they’d been perceived as male? It all adds up to a very different experience of the world, and that’s before even considering the fact that apparently some trans women aren’t very successful at looking or sounding like cisexual women, and some either can’t afford to or choose not to have SRS, so that they are literally women with penises. Overall, I thought these could be very big gaps to bridge. I felt it was more than reasonable that WBW, feminists – and lesbians in particular (because I’ve always regarded michfest as a primarily lesbian event) – should have a space in which they didn’t even have to think about these issues, let alone confront them, because they were not about them and not about their lives.
You’ll notice I’ve written ‘them’ and ‘their’ lives, not ‘me’ and ‘my’ life. The reason for this is that my support for WBW space had always been support for other cisexual women’s desire for it. I have personally never felt okay about excluding trans women from any women’s space I happen to be in and the reason for that is probably that if it’s a social space, she’s likely to be a lesbian. Where else is she to go? I don’t think it’s up to me, and neither do I feel any desire to put limits on where a lesbian trans woman can seek community, friendship, sex or love. My approach would be to take individual trans women as I find them in person, as I do all women. However, despite the fact that I’d never had a personal commitment to or a need for WBW space, I didn’t feel that I could speak for all women. I picked a side in the broader debate around michfest because I felt I had to, and then that the right thing to do was to support the group I was part of. (Of course, I was referencing my own supporting and one-sided beliefs, so that was pretty easy. My original question, once I started asking myself questions, wasn’t even ‘are these differences real or the whole story?’ – it was, ‘what should we do about the differences?’) When I think about it though, I was inconsistent. I now understand that I hadn’t thought about the issue very deeply or broadly or from any different perspective because, frankly, I hadn’t needed to. (This is the most basic cisexual privilege.)
When I was considering going to michfest and first came to these boards I was thinking about the festival as the oft-quoted ‘one week in the woods’. I could support that for those who wanted it or felt they needed it, especially as most other women’s festivals in the US, as I learned, do welcome trans women. On the other hand, the Lesbian Space Project in Sydney which collapsed after a decade of bitter and polarising debate was about purchasing a building for a permanent space excluding trans women. While I wasn’t in Sydney participating in the debate, I was always opposed to that idea. Clearly though, there’s a relationship between the two. Thinking through that connection over time I came to the conclusion that the problem is the WBW space concept itself. (Also, I no longer use ‘WBW’ at all. Where appropriate I refer to myself as a cisexual woman, meaning that there is no dissonance between my mind map of the sex of my body and my actual body sex. I understand that not all trans women or trans men experience their transexuality in the same way, but many do describe it as this kind of dissonance, and I take them at their word.)
Obviously the transexual female experience is not the same as the cisexual one (though the differences are not as clear-cut as I once believed), but the questions I eventually asked myself included these:
Is total exclusion of trans women from a festival celebrating the diversity of women an appropriate way to deal with the differences between cisexual and transexual women? After all, we accommodate every single one of our other differences, including those that impact dramatically and permanently on our life paths and often make it difficult for us to understand each other – differences like race, class or ability – all of which involve privilege or lack thereof.
When a trans woman is experiencing life as we do 24/7, what is the purpose of focusing on her often difficult and painful history to the point of actually using it to make her unwelcome anywhere among us today?
Is the acknowledgement of cisexual female experience necessarily diminished because trans women, overwhelmingly outnumbered, are in our company? (Is the acknowledgement of lesbian experience diminished because a minority of heterosexual women attend michfest?)
How does it make feminist sense that a cisexual, heterosexual, Christian Fundamentalist woman would be welcome at michfest, even though she’s unlikely to want to come, while a lesbian trans woman who is a feminist and does want to come, is not? (I’ve seen this written on these boards – and also that transphobic women are welcome which, of course, is self-evident.)
How can an otherwise self-proclaimed trans-allied cisexual woman’s support of the boundary at michfest be explained in isolation from support of WBW spaces, temporary or permanent, elsewhere in the world? I doubt that she would deny that ‘right’ to cisexual women who cannot, for whatever reason, attend michfest. It follows that WBW spaces would ideally be available to all cisexual women, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances. All cisexual women should be able to ‘get away’ from trans women.
How can a group of people so large that it’s made up of approximately 50% of the world’s population be considered an ‘affinity group’? I’m inclined to suggest that WBW spaces be welcoming only to women with an openly stated and personal investment in them. Now *that* would be an identifiable affinity group, but it would sell fewer tickets! Michfest thrives on attendance by women who don’t or won’t make a stand one way or the other, women who are blindly or otherwise exercising their cisexual privilege not to have to.By the time I arrived at the michfest boards (late in 2004 I think), I had not read ‘The Transexual Empire’, had rarely if ever heard the feminist argument that transexuality is about nothing but gender roles – and further that the right and feminist thing to do from that position is be a different kind of man or woman in the body one is born with, thereby challenging patriarchal gender roles – and hadn’t expected to see women of michfest making that argument as dogmatically as some do. I’ve never agreed with it and it’s not my intention to engage with it in this thread. I’m addressing myself here to women who consider themselves trans allies, who are not in the habit of ascribing meanings and motivations of transexuality to trans women that stand in opposition to trans women’s understandings of their own lives and experience, but who have reasons similar to my own as outlined above (either for themselves or in support of others) for supporting the boundary at michfest. I appreciate that there are trans women as well as cis women who support the boundary for reasons of respecting difference, and in fact the support of a few trans women on these boards helped validate my own position at the time.
So, what happened?
At the time I left these boards someone had posted a link to ‘Alas, a blog’, which I clicked on and discovered the blogosphere. I hadn’t known of its existence before then. Over the past two years I’ve had the opportunity via the blogosphere to hear the voices of many, many people, quite a number of whom are trans women. I realised that in real life I have met exactly three trans women who I knew were trans, and spoken to none of them in any depth about their lives. On one occasion, which is now over a decade ago, I took my prejudices along with me, and when she and I (both of us lesbians and feminists) had a small political disagreement I privately considered that she had argued in a ‘male’ fashion, that she probably learned to believe in the rightness of her opinions as a male, and finally, that she’d got her university degree while she was a he, and possibly with a level of encouragement often reserved for the males in a family. I didn’t deny her current womanhood or her lesbianism, but I did consider her to be something I most definitely was not i.e. an ex man. My almost automatic response to the situation, because of my beliefs, was to silently ‘other’ and dismiss her, rather than just agree to disagree. I didn’t think I was wrong to do that at the time. It made sense to me. It doesn’t anymore.
I no longer assume that trans children – female or male – receive gendered messages from society in an uncomplicated fashion. I no longer assume that a trans woman who transitions later in life was not a trans child. I no longer assume that because a trans girl or trans woman’s femaleness was/is not visible (and so also not ‘official’), it was/is not a female experience of the world. I no longer assume it’s appropriate to think of trans women generally as ex men, regardless of the lives they lived while being perceived as someone they were not. I no longer assume that every trans woman has benefitted in any meaningful way from having had a male body.
I have not seen evidence of specifically male ways of thinking and/or communicating among the many thoughtful, sensitive, articulate and feminist trans women I’ve had the pleasure of reading and learning from over the past two years. That has proven to be a nonsense.
The ultimate question about the michfest boundary is whether it’s intended to be inclusive of cisexual women or exclusive of trans women. The answer very much depends on where you’re standing. I’ve come to believe that the intention is different for different women who support the boundary, but that in practice it’s certainly exclusive of trans women and as such, discriminatory.
It’s my opinion that if you accept that trans women are women, it’s not good enough to say trans women are too different, they make you uncomfortable, so you don’t want them in any particular women’s space. Anti-discrimination legislation isn’t designed to pander to people’s feelings of comfort. It’s designed precisely to challenge and even override them when they deny other people their equal rights. Asking or expecting individual trans women or all trans women as a group to agree to participate in discrimination against themselves (or agree that what they experience as discrimination actually isn’t), is not a reasonable request, and one which can never in practice be satisfied. Either this conflict will go on indefinitely, or it will be resolved by removal of the boundary.
I live in hope that the festival will go on, and become welcoming of trans women.
cicely is awesome :)
Trin
February 4, 2008 at 6:53 pm
This is a wonderful piece of writing.
Book Girl
February 4, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Yeah, I agree. Cicely’s talked a lot about this over the past few months since I met her online, so I’ve really been looking forward to it.
I love her for saying this:
Lisa Harney
February 4, 2008 at 8:04 pm
The people who need to hear it most will just stick their fingers in their ears and yell and yammer instead, but I’m still glad she wrote it.
I don’t know; I figure that since there is such pervasive sexism in the world, it’s an act of bravery for a male-born person to go through the process and identify as female, one that proves there’s something really worthwhile in femaleness.
GreenEyedLilo
February 4, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I’m not sure if it’s bravery as such, but I do agree that there’s something really worthwhile in femaleness and femininity. I like being female, even though I don’t always like how I’m treated because I’m female. Although it’s not that I made some kind of rational choice that being female is superior to being male so much as my brain kept saying that my body should be female, and once transitioned, everything that was wrong felt right. Well, most everything.
It’s kind of peculiar how one of the reasons certain feminists attack trans women for transitioning is that they claim to hate being women when they’re actually saying that they hate how women are treated, but they’re either conflating the two ideas.
Lisa Harney
February 4, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I’m inclined to suggest that WBW spaces be welcoming only to women with an openly stated and personal investment in them. Now *that* would be an identifiable affinity group, but it would sell fewer tickets!
That’s a wonderful articulation of something I’ve been trying to figure out how to say for ever. It’s a perfect counter to the arguments about boundaries, silencing, etc. Go and gather in your rarefied atmosphere, but don’t try to claim 51% of the human race is with you in that bigotry…
A.J. Luxton
February 5, 2008 at 2:33 am
This is an astonishing statement, and so well written, so clearly spoken from the heart with the intent to communicate, not just berate, that even if her conclusions were otherwise I would be inclined to give them no little weight.
gorgonqueen
February 5, 2008 at 11:31 am
[...] that nagging feeling is validated by a real gem of insight. Lisa at Questioning Transphobia reposted a piece written by Cicely that was originally written on the Michigan Women’s Music Festival message boards. It’s [...]
Feministe » Reconsidering “women-born-women” space
February 6, 2008 at 1:18 am
Thankyou all for the kind words, and I really, really hope this proves useful.
Great idea to start talking about cis-women only spaces, Lisa! Much less cumbersome than ’so called WBW spaces’, which is as far as I’d got, and puts what needs to be put front and centre…
cicely
February 6, 2008 at 6:42 am
[...] been judged necessary for me to try to give this morning. Demanding more immediate attention is an essay by Cicely, reposted on Questioning Transphobia and originally posted on the aforementioned Michigan [...]
Xyre » Transphobia and women-only spaces
February 6, 2008 at 10:27 am
Thank you for writing this. It’s producing some discussion. :)
Lisa Harney
February 6, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Thank you Cicely, this is really awesome; I added it to my trans* 101 link list. ^.^
drakyn
February 6, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Hey Lisa. I’ve been reading your blog for awhile, but this is my first time commenting here. Thanks for posing Cicely’s wonderful essay from the Michfest board. Her words are a perfect example of a written version of what other folks are thinking but won’t say out load. Many feminist women struggle with questions around transphobia, but are too afraid to deal with them head-on, as is true with every form of oppression-based bigotry. I know that I was one of those women, not that I don’t still struggle with these questions.
You know, I think women’s transphobia entails a lot more than just either fear of male violence-intrusion or naked prejudice. For many women, transphobia—whether directed at transwomen or transmen—is deeply rooted in misogynist self-hatred, as anyone who’s visited the Michfest boards can attest to. The noise that self-hatred creates in one’s mind takes a while to work through, and it literally requires you to step back and see what the hell’s going on. That’s exactly what I had to do, and my process of coming to terms with my misogyny and transphobia was very similar to Cicely’s.
For example, the tendency toward deep misogyny, racism, and biological determinism from many white “radical” fems is why I had to stop calling myself a “radical” feminist. After attempting to engage white rad-fems and being dismissed and condescended to one too many times (online or in-person), I was finished. Aligning myself with bigotry wasn’t okay anymore.
Yolanda C.
February 6, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Thank you for your comment – I’ve seen a lot of misogyny in the transphobia, but I haven’t really tried to dig it up and deconstruct it, and since a lot of it isn’t explicitly stated, I’d probably be throwing in a lot of assumptions as well.
I do think that a lot of the explanations given – like fear of “male intrusion” or prejudice against naked trans bodies – are deeper than that. You can see the more bigoted posters shift goalposts over and over to protect the heart of the issue and avoid addressing it directly.
Lisa Harney
February 6, 2008 at 8:15 pm
I know I keep bringing it up, but the Bernice Johnson Reagon piece that firefly and bfp were talking about a little while back–I was stunned to see that it was written in 1981. Much more so that very likely she wasn’t actually thinking of transfolk at all (I had at first assumed she must be, because of the Michfest business), but it fits so perfectly. Coalition politics, indeed.
bfp’s thread last year about the parallels between the “unwomaning” of WoC and of transwomen was also apt.
belledame2222
February 6, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Nice one, Holly, Drakyn and Xyre! It’s great to see the the linking and the conversation.
I’m not sure what to make of the fact that there’s been no substantial response to the original post at michfest. I was kind of expecting flame-age, but no, nothing! I don’t feel disappointed, because I’m not sure how much of a productive conversation could take place there and maybe others are aware of that as well. I’m wondering what else the silence might be saying though. Any ideas?
cicely
February 7, 2008 at 7:04 am
I am thinking: it’s the closest thing to a “you’re right, my position is indefensible” you’re going to get from some people.
belledame2222
February 7, 2008 at 9:49 am
to wit: a) they don’t have an answer b) they’d rather it just go away quietly, which won’t happen if they engage it.
belledame2222
February 7, 2008 at 9:50 am
I think dirt i talking up most folks’ thoughts–she does that with pretty much any forum she posts on. She’s been kicking around LJ for a long time now. She got banned from lesbian for transphobia and biphobia (and started her own comm for twuu lezbians), got banned from feminist, banned from stupid_free (snark comm), and I think her m(ale)2f lesbian piece got her banned from womensstudies and genderoutlaws. So many people were reporting her LJ for hate speech and copyright violations she started up a blog to put all her screencaps up on.
And lately she’s been tag-team trolling with her gf Dieks (SP?)–they just sit there and reply to each other’s comments or gang up on someone.
drakyn
February 7, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Many compliments to Cicelies thoughts. Thought her posts, I still saw divisions in framing. There were the dichotomies of transgendered and cisgendered, a dichotomy creating a false homogeneity on this population who is populated by constructs of gender as opposed to life realities. It seemed to me that the result of that framing is still an “us- them” dichotomy and it’s an odd dichotomy because since gender is a social construct changing across time and location, one might ask how anyone can be transgendered actually transgendered at all. One may wonder, outside of that overly simplified model how anyone could be truly transgendered at all.
It seemed to me there were some very meaningful insights about the messages internalized by the children, departing from the “empty human” approach of feminism which began when Skinner was the be-all, end-all and has not been re-examined. I don’t think that people occur in a vacuum or that there are massive disparities between one’s internal life and how they manifest themselves overly as Cicely seems to suggest. I think the child with a cross classed identity is a valid phenomenon, having made the same choice everyone does about their respective membership in one of the two binary gendered classes. But I do believe they manifest it. Janice Raymond herself recognized so much diversity that the classification was meaningless but then said, “I choose to ignore it.”
I think some of the people designated as members of this population are natural members of the women’s community because of the lives they live and do not differ from other women. I think others who have led unremarkably male lives and then announce they are women, midlife having filled their lives with socially male experiences are not women. I would say the same thing about trans-identified individuals and those that chose to be anatomically male. The trans movement demands a certain kind of magical thinking which says someone’s life and choices must be overlooked where it seems to me that their life choices and especially what they do when agency is achieved is the most telling of statements. With full agency did they make a beeline for treatment or did they enter into male institutionalized relationships insuring that they would be seen as men? This group cannot explain what it is that constitutes them as women as they have often followed a hyper-masculine life and do internalize the values, often highly misogynistic ones. Women still remain “the other”. This individual’s life experiences are radically different from the child Cicely described. There is a lifetime’s of evidence that late transistioners fully internalized the socialization of their original assignment. They have followed every male prescription, enjoyed every male privilege and taken advantage of it and yet feel totally entitled to women’s spaces making inadmissible any questioning of the basis of that entitlement. Noting these disparaties is forbidden. Since there is little actual substance to trans ideology, noting these impossibilities evokes standard dismissals of “transphobia” or “bigot”. No actual examination is actually permitted because if it were the non-sensicalness would immediately become apparent.
One can’t help but notice other tell-tale markers in the movement which could be, “all I have to do is to take some pills or get some shots and I’m a woman.” It’s an approach based in mechanics to attain an appearance. Once the appearance is attained, that’s all there is. There’s nothing more implying that women’s lives and women’s have no substance or internal lives, which in itself could not be more male.
As for the festival, I do not believe that it is a place for trans-identified people, trans-culture or for the imperialism of “trans-education” . We are there to celebrate our lives as women. As for the silence of the board, women there are tired of these “revelations”. As sensitive as Cicely’s post was there are intersections discounting women, those not going through reassignment and a small portion who have.
Michelle
February 7, 2008 at 2:27 pm
O.o.
at first I read that as
“tag teaming with her team of Daleks”
which sounds about right.
BAN BABY BAN
she must be winning hearts and minds at a rate of knots tho’
belledame2222
February 7, 2008 at 2:32 pm
>>#
#
A.J. Luxton said,
February 5, 2008 at 2:33 am
I’m inclined to suggest that WBW spaces be welcoming only to women with an openly stated and personal investment in them. Now *that* would be an identifiable affinity group, but it would sell fewer tickets!
That’s a wonderful articulation of something I’ve been trying to figure out how to say for ever. It’s a perfect counter to the arguments about boundaries, silencing, etc. Go and gather in your rarefied atmosphere, but don’t try to claim 51% of the human race is with you in that bigotry…
>>
nod. yeah, that.
belledame2222
February 7, 2008 at 3:47 pm
*still needs to watch Dr Who and Torchwood*
I am sad that tv-links.co.uk was taken down–thats how I watched tv shows like house and heroes.
drakyn
February 7, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Hey, if you’re coming back here after reading earlier, check comment 20.
I will try to respond later, but I don’t have the time at the moment.
Lisa Harney
February 7, 2008 at 5:12 pm
So, Michelle, lesbians who pretended to be straight–taking advantage of het privilege wherever they could (marriage, having biological kids with a male partner, etc) should also totally be excluded from lesbian space. Ditto with lesbians who didn’t realize they were lesbians until later in their life (or who went into denial). After all, they aren’t twuu lesbians since they haven’t experienced a twuu lesbian life.
On the “Gender is a social construst meme”:
1. Yeah, how each society labels and separates and assigns roles to each gender is a social construct.
2. You have yet to prove that identifying as x or y group is also a construct.
3. If it is, so what? It seems real to us and most likely that will not change in this life.
4. Some trans*folks identify as another sex; for those folks gender is only secondary and/or may be caused by identifying as that sex (this is my theory on why my gender is ‘man’–I knew “boys have weewees and girls have peepees” and since I was supposed to have a penis I internalized the same gender as many assigned-male boys did).
As trans*ism is an internal thing, we aren’t going to get very far if you believe the patriarchal, heterosexist, cissexist, etc. BS that the medical community used to spew about us (that many folks like Janice Raymond believed when they theorized about us) about being pathological liars. Seriously, look at the fucked up standards and shit they used (and some doctors/therapists continue) to make us do. Like trans*woman had to be super femmey and the doctor had to think she was worth a fuck or two before she could get any hormones or surgery.
Now, why would most of the older trans*folk either not transition until recently or fit patriarchal norms? Hmmmm, I wonder…
drakyn
February 7, 2008 at 5:38 pm
“So, Michelle, lesbians who pretended to be straight–taking advantage of het privilege wherever they could (marriage, having biological kids with a male partner, etc) should also totally be excluded from lesbian space. Ditto with lesbians who didn’t realize they were lesbians until later in their life (or who went into denial). After all, they aren’t twuu lesbians since they haven’t experienced a twuu lesbian life.”
As you say there is no connection between sexual orientation and the phenomenon called transexuality. By your own admission, your analogy is vacuous,. What is true about lesbians, and heterosexual women is that we have not lived as men and announced ourselves to be men.
There is another aspect of lesbian you do not understand. Lesbians have established our own set of definitions on who a lesbian is. One thing men and trans do not understand is that “lesbian” is not simply two women sleeping together. It is a culture and a standpoint. It is not defined by men. It’s defined by women.
“On the “Gender is a social construst meme”:
“ Yeah, how each society labels and separates and assigns roles to each gender is a social construct.”
Of course it is. But my discussion is not about roles at all. It is the constitutive experiences had by women that contructs women in this society. It’s about what’s inside based on life experience. It’s not about having participated in society saying you are a man and participating in men’s institutions where women are less than you and are subordinated to you.
2. You have yet to prove that identifying as x or y group is also a construct.
It is very much a construct and an artifact of patriarchy, The binary class system is exactly an artifact of patriarchy. That’s why “transgender” is purely an artifact of patriarchy. The entire understanding is a male perspective derived from the way men
understand both “gender” and the world.
3. If it is, so what? It seems real to us and most likely that will not change in this life.”
Well the infrahumanity of women and blacks seems real to misogynists and racists. The trans movement and the power it has mustered is a magnificent validation of the way male dominance can actually shape and construct social reality.
But let’s talk about what seems real. Someone having lived as a man for decades having a normal male life does not have the experiences that women have. You also ignore the choices they have made. in this society men are rarely ever held accountable for thier choices, which is another fundamentally male aspect of the transgender movement.
4. Some trans*folks identify as another sex; for those folks gender is only secondary and/or may be caused by identifying as that sex (this is my theory on why my gender is ‘man’–I knew “boys have weewees and girls have peepees” and since I was supposed to have a penis I internalized the same gender as many assigned-male boys did).
From that I would imagine that you think sex as we know it is bedrock? All of the signficances around sex are constructions again by male dominance. “Identify as” is no altar. I can identify as a cabbage but that does not give me leaves.
But there is no such thing as gender. I’m not questioning your manhood. I’m not interested in men. I am questioning the presence of men in women’s spaces and by men I mean people who have lived as men and said they are men. So you are safe.
Go flex your muscles.
But let’s talk about weewees. Women would not choose to have weewees. People with weewees do not have the same set of bodily experiences that people without weewees have.
“As trans*ism is an internal thing, we aren’t going to get very far if you believe the patriarchal, heterosexist, cissexist, etc. BS that the medical community used to spew about us (that many folks like Janice Raymond believed when they theorized about us) about being pathological liars. Seriously, look at the fucked up standards and shit they used (and some doctors/therapists continue) to make us do. Like trans*woman had to be super femmey and the doctor had to think she was worth a fuck or two before she could get any hormones or surgery.”
Of course that’s silly. I never said it wasn’t. But here’s the thing. Those stories are trumped up. The fears are plumped up like pillows to support men who say they are women. But the trans movement is a movement of entitlement. These men are of course entitled to women’s spaces without any concept that they relinquished that because of their own choices. They are victims. They aren’t responsible because they are “wbt”. (The devil made me do it.)
Now, why would most of the older trans*folk either not transition until recently or fit patriarchal norms? Hmmmm, I wonder…
Now I think that’s a totally worthwhile question. I say it’s because they weren’t all that uncomfortable living as men which is yet another aspect of them that is swept under the rug, I’d say that they are their choices, rather than some mysterious internal thing divorced from any overt manifestation. No one is allowed to examine their claims versus their behavior or their biographies. That’s sacrilege on the altar of trans.
The only resort that the movement has is to resort to ‘bigot” and transphobe in this fantasy movement that is had at the expense of women.
It’s mostly heterosexual women that support them (Cicely noted as the exception.)
It doesn’t make any difference to me about a man’s internal life while they deny women’s internal lives. We are supposed to deny our own experience OF them (transphobia) and honor their internal experiences trumping our own experience of them while pretending they didn’t make the choices they made and had the privilege they have. That is about as male and entitled as it gets. I used “have” because they have the choice of staying married which women are denied.
Michelle
February 7, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Michelle, from reading your comments, I can see that you’re fairly ignorant about trans people, which is excusable. But you’re also using that ignorance as justification for bigotry, which is not. That is, you have misconceptions and outright falsehoods about trans people, which you assert to be true, and then claim that any denial from trans people proves it’s true, because we “refuse to allow examination.”
You’re drawing a false conclusion – you say that gender is a social construct and then imply (and later explicitly state) that it cannot exist. Of course, government is a social construct, as is school, and MichFest. Social constructs aren’t fiction, they’re real. They may change from society to society, but the fact remains that within that society they exist.
You’re also asserting an untested assumption, that the idea of identifying as a man or a woman is socially constructed (rather identifying as a man or a woman and taking on the trappings of that role – which are socially constructed, as any perusal of anthropology can determine). There is no evidence that people identifying as men or women is itself a social construct – and in fact, you can find evidence throughout history of cissexual men and women who clearly articulate their identification as men and women. If you dig a bit deeper, you can also find evidence of male-bodied people who identify as women, female-bodied people who identify as men, male- or female-bodied people who identify as some variation of both, and other combinations.
You’re also trying to shift the point from the fact that transsexual people are about changing their physical sex to making it about changing their social construction – which, of course, changing physical sex does do, but that’s not quite the focus. You’re also implying that your definitions for words like “gender”, “woman”, and “man” are the only proper definitions, and when someone else uses them differently, they must be interpreted in the context you apply. This becomes a matter of convenience for your argument, because you then accuse someone who uses woman and female (or man and male) interchangeably of talking about changing a social construct which you’ve already decided does not exist. This is not exactly an honest approach, because you’re imposing your language on someone else and using your language to demonstrate that they’re wrong. You’re not attempting to understand their language, or why they use the words they do.
Further, you’re asserting that you understand concepts of social gender better than people who have:
* Lived in both roles
* Who have spent much of their lives examining their own sense of sex and gender before deciding to transition
* Had to grow up with the ineradicable sense of being one sex, while their body is the other sex, and treated like they’re the other sex.
You then go on to talk about how trans people cannot understand womanhood or lesbianism, while at the same time defining trans experiences, even though there’s no possible way you can understand our experiences better than we do.
And of course, living in a patriarchal, misogynist society that defines trans people as less than dirt has nothing to do with any trans people – men or women – choosing to transition later in life. Just like living in a heteronormative, homophobic society has nothing to do with any gay men or lesbians trying to live straight lives before finally accepting their orientation and moving on. You say this isn’t the same thing, but it is directly comparable.
On the contrary, this is silencing. This argument is used repeatedly to dismiss trans people’s narratives – that we demand unquestioning acceptance and that we refuse to examine our choices. I’m sorry, but you have no idea what we go through to examine and justify our choices. You do not know how much resistance we receive from friends and family, and what psychiatrists – from whom we need to receive recommendations for hormonal and surgical treatments – ask of us. You do not know how, due to psychiatrists defining what “true transsexualism” meant (and for trans women, that definition was incredibly sexist), we had to negotiate that sexism in order to get treatment we needed so we could go on with our lives.
You instead assume that we just never question, and don’t let anyone else question. I’m sorry, but everyone questions us, interrogates us, demands us to justify our validity only to say we’re not valid (and never intended to grant that we are valid).
And do you know why that is? Because the people who do the questioning have cissexual privilege. Society’s designed to benefit them over us. It’s just assumed that cissexual is the norm and transsexual is the other. Do these sentences sound familiar? They should – it’s how black lives in relation to white, how woman lives in relation to man, and how gay or lesbian lives in relation to straight. Hell, in many ways, it’s how bisexual lives in relation to straight, gay, and lesbian.
First, misogynistic values are not a contraindication of womanhood, or Ann Coulter would be out of the club. That’s a false dichotomy. Second, as I explained above, societal pressure is against transition, just as it is against coming out as gay or lesbian. You know of gay men or lesbian women who have had to deal with rejection from their families? Who have been kicked out of their homes to live on the street? Who have been forced into counseling or even institutionalized in the past? It’s exactly the same thing for trans people, except that stuff like the institutionalization? A friend of mine was institutionalized and subjected to ECT 16 years ago because she’s a trans woman, and her parents did not want to allow her to transition.
Lynn Conway – agree with her views or not – tried to transition at an early age, and her parents basically forced her not to, hence her later transition. That’s a story I’ve heard more than once, too. Never mind those who get into a relationship and feel as if they have to set aside their need to transition in order to be faithful to that family. You may feel that it is glorying in male privilege, but I don’t think it’s fair or honest to reduce it to that. After all, closeted gay men and lesbian woman also stay in marriages and retain heterosexual privilege, even though it would be healthier for them to end the marriage and come out of the closet.
No, there’s no evidence of that at all, or are you claiming to be able to psychoanalyze people just on the basis of a brief summary of their lives?
Most of the late transitioners I know describe childhood experiences and feelings similar to what I felt, which was that I knew from an early age. There is no part of my life when I did not feel I was a girl. The difference is that they found coping mechanisms, or perceived responsibilities, or social pressures, or familial pressures, that convinced them to try not to transition. But you just look at them and say “They lived as men for a few more decades, so that means that they’re completely indistinguishable from actual men.” Which is again like saying “They lived as straight for a few more decades, so that means they’re completely indistinguishable from actual straight people.”
Are their experiences different because they lived that life? Yes. Is that really a good reason to deny them their personhood and identity because of a few generalizations? Not at all.
This is really an unfair assertion – again, you’re psychoanalyzing based on generalizations, and not really looking at what we say about ourselves. When I went into transition, I knew that womanhood was more than pills, surgery, and a dress. I knew it would take time – time for the hormones to reshape my body, time to save the money for surgery, time for the electrolysis to finish, and I knew none of those things would make me a woman. I would be treated as a woman by those who saw me, because my body looks the part (and is the part, at this point). I knew that socially, there were differences, although knowing and living them are two different things. It’s one thing to know that men might harass you, it’s another thing to have an employer ask for a blow job in exchange for a ride home.
And most trans women realize this, even if they don’t know from the beginning. Yes, there are some who insist that surgery is what makes them women, but they’re not necessarily the majority, nor do they speak for the rest of us. And, I’ll point out, I recently criticized that point of view. Actually, more than once on this blog.
This is a false dichotomy, kind of. You see, trans- is not an exclusive identification. I identify as trans, but I also identify as a woman and as a lesbian. I have other identities, but they’re not relevant here. I would want to attend the festival because I’m a woman, and it’s af festival for women. I do not want to attend the festival because I have a transsexual history, even though that’s why I am socially accepted as a woman.
And, honestly, if there are seminars and workshops and other events in the festival for women of color, Jewish women, women with disabilities, and so on, I don’t see why a festival open to trans women should disallow workshops and such for trans women. It’s another experience some women have, why exclude it?
It’s incredibly vacuous of you to make the claim that trans women do not understand lesbian culture, and I disagree that lesbian culture is defined by women. It’s defined by one particular group of women – lesbians. Attempts to define lesbian by non-lesbian women brought us to political lesbianism, which amounts to straight women who choose to be celibate coopting the name, lives, and experiences of lesbian women. Something I never see radical feminists complain about. Odd, that.
That’s not even a legitimate comparison. After all, cabbages don’t start lives as human fetuses and grow into cabbages, nor do human fetuses start as cabbages and grow into humans. On the other hand, a human fetus is by default female, and differentiates into male with the addition of testosterone. Most everything you need for a male or female body exists in any given male or female body. Sure, if you somehow prevent a fetus from using testosterone (CAIS), you won’t get ovaries, but that’s because of the Y chromosome. You could probably use stem cells to grow ovaries, eventually.
Even though they no longer live as men and no longer say they are men.
Anyway, I addressed your comment that gender doesn’t exist above. Would you like other social constructs? Police are a social construct. Law is a social construct. Families are a social construct. Misogyny, transphobia, racism, ableism, and classism are social constructs. Money is a social construct. Time is a social construct. Work schedules are a social construct.
You can’t dismiss something just because you define it as a social construct. That right there is magical thinking.
It’s not a mysterious thing, nor is it divorced from overt manifestation. You know about closeted gay men who are hardcore homophobes, right? Don’t you think trying to present a masculine identity to the world is an overt manifestation? Many of these trans women spend periods of their life wearing women’s clothing secretly as an outlet. Isn’t that an overt manifestation?
The problem isn’t that you examine their claims. The problem is that you dismiss their claims and call it examination.
But this argument – that late transitioning trans women (or any trans women) deny women’s internal lives – is not based on anything but your own prejudices. You’re ignoring trans people’s actual narratives and substituting a convenient story that makes it easier to dismiss them as women.
As for the choice of staying married, yes, that is a minor privilege. I say “minor” because usually, transition results in an acrimonious divorce, and often results in the mother getting custody of the children. True, some trans women remain married to their pre-transition spouses, and that is a testament to the strength of their relationship. It’s also an artifact of how the law works, and if anyone wanted to challenge those marriages, I expect that they’d be easily annulled. I also question holding the fact that the law allows this against any trans women (and what about trans men who transition and can remain married to their husbands?), because it’s not a construct we placed in the law. It also assumes that trans women in general don’t care about same-sex marriage, and it ignores that a transitioned trans woman who has had surgery cannot marry another woman, and even marrying a man can be succesfully challenged and annulled.
You’re working from a lot of misinformation and assumptions about trans lives.
Lisa Harney
February 7, 2008 at 8:03 pm
You’re drawing a false conclusion – you say that gender is a social construct and then imply (and later explicitly state) that it cannot exist. Of course, government is a social construct, as is school, and MichFest. Social constructs aren’t fiction, they’re real. They may change from society to society, but the fact remains that within that society they exist.
Yes, they are social construct. But the trans claim is that gender is real and that people are natural object called transgendered.
“You’re also asserting an untested assumption, that the idea of identifying as a man or a woman is socially constructed (rather identifying as a man or a woman and taking on the trappings of that role – which are socially constructed, as any perusal of anthropology can determine). There is no evidence that people identifying as men or women is itself a social construct and in fact, you can find evidence throughout history of cissexual men and women who clearly articulate their identification as men and women. If you dig a bit deeper, you can also find evidence of male-bodied people who identify as women, female-bodied people who identify as men, male- or female-bodied people who identify as some variation of both, and other combinations.
Since civilization has began there has been two political classes, one called women and one called men. The classes are delineated along lines of social power. It is the power that constructs gender, not gender that constructs power. It is the power differential that make the markers of sex so all important. Your arguments are also anglicized. I believe in Hispanic countries the two classes are referred to as Mujeres y Hombres? You’ll hear me say several times in this that I don’t care about who people identify. I care about the life they have lived and I’ll elaborate on that later.
“You’re also trying to shift the point from the fact that transsexual people are about changing their physical sex to making it about changing their social construction”
But for the men who call themselves women, they have been constructed as men. Their experience base, as well as their pursuits have been socially male. They may change their physical sex all they want. There is no surgery that changes their life experiences. Has it ever occurred to you that lesbians just don’t want to share space with people who have lived as men? That we don’t care about their secret inner lives, that we just don’t want to be with people who have been members of that class and who have had the experiences that they have had?
“ – which, of course, changing physical sex does do, but that’s not quite the focus. You’re also implying that your definitions for words like “gender”, “woman”, and “man” are the only proper definitions, and when someone else uses them differently, they must be interpreted in the context you apply.”
You would have me adopt trans usages which is a set of distortions which implicity ignore things that are relevent. In other words, trans-speak is not descriptive of lived lives and lives experiences it is a set of glosses. So if you are suggesting that your glosses are valid, I believe that’s totally in the question.
“This becomes a matter of convenience for your argument, because you then accuse someone who uses woman and female (or man and male) interchangeably of talking about changing a social construct which you’ve already decided does not exist.”
You aren’t really changing anything. Central to your ideology is the dependency on gender as a natural reality. It’s not. It doesn’t occur in any other location on the phylogenetic scale other than in human society. And across human societies it is not a constant. In the Sierra Leone, a female is not a woman until she under goes female genital mutilation. That’s a social threshold for a class membership.
“This is not exactly an honest approach, because you’re imposing your language on someone else and using your language to demonstrate that they’re wrong. You’re not attempting to understand their language, or why they use the words they do.”
You’re right. I am not internalizing a very specific set of distortions and glosses.
“Further, you’re asserting that you understand concepts of social gender better than people who have:
* Lived in both roles
* Who have spent much of their lives examining their own sense of sex and gender before deciding to transition
* Had to grow up with the ineradicable sense of being one sex, while their body is the other sex, and treated like they’re the other sex.”
Actually I’m not. I’ve met people who have gone through reassignment who totally reject trans ideology. They too reject what you are saying. They have an understanding and conclusions that is quite different from what comes out of the trans movement. But it is interesting that above you resort to “social gender above” because that’s exactly what it is. Unfortunately the trans movement has been very successful in propagating what is a very superficial understanding. In the 1400s the social realities were that the earth is flat and the universe revolved around the earth. One could be burned at the stake for suggesting otherwise.
“You then go on to talk about how trans people cannot understand womanhood or lesbianism, while at the same time defining trans experiences, even though there’s no possible way you can understand our experiences better than we do.”
I don’t think I’ve defined your experiences. I have said that they are not a departure from patriarchy and instead are reliant upon structures that oppress women. Just because you have experiences, does not mean that you understand them. It only mean that you have experiences. There are things that I do understand. I know that someone can’t go through life participating clearly as a member of one of the two gendered classes and pretend that choosing to participate has no significance and that somehow inspite of that participation they are the same as people who have been situated and positioned quite differently.
“And of course, living in a patriarchal, misogynist society that defines trans people as less than dirt has nothing to do with any trans people – men or women – choosing to transition later in life.”
I’m not advocating that they be treated like dirt. To slide into that, would be a diversion from what I am saying. I am saying those people are not women and should not be in women’s spaces.
“Just like living in a heteronormative, homophobic society has nothing to do with any gay men or lesbians trying to live straight lives before finally accepting their orientation and moving on. You say this isn’t the same thing, but it is directly comparable.”
Women develop identities as women at about age age two. We do not live men’s lives and suddenly admit that we are women. You may invoke all the phobias you wish, but it’s your argument that has problems. You argument is making the person’s life insignificant. But there is another problem here. You are implying an essence. “A is really an object called a woman.” There are no essences and middle aged men, don’t have the experiential background that women do. They have an experiential background and standpoint of men. In fact, after transistion you don’t refer to yourselves as women but transwomen so you yourself are othering yourselves to women.
“The trans movement demands a certain kind of magical thinking which says someone’s life and choices must be overlooked where it seems to me that their life choices and especially what they do when agency is achieved is the most telling of statements.”
On the contrary, this is silencing. This argument is used repeatedly to dismiss trans people’s narratives – that we demand unquestioning acceptance and that we refuse to examine our choices.”
Wait!!! I am referring to people who have called themselves men and who have led the lives of men often taking wives. That is their narrative. That’s the narrative they want to have ignored and to pretend that they did not live as men.
“I’m sorry, but you have no idea what we go through to examine and justify our choices. You do not know how much resistance we receive from friends and family, and what psychiatrists – from whom we need to receive recommendations for hormonal and surgical treatments – ask of us. You do not know how, due to psychiatrists defining what “true transsexualism” meant (and for trans women, that definition was incredibly sexist), we had to negotiate that sexism in order to get treatment we needed so we could go on with our lives.”
How is it sexist to call men who have chosen to live men’s lives men? I’m not familiar with the term “true transexual”. Are you saying there are true and false transexuals? The people who choose to keep their penises?
“You instead assume that we just never question, and don’t let anyone else question.
I’m sorry, but everyone questions us, interrogates us, demands us to justify our validity only to say we’re not valid (and never intended to grant that we are valid).”
I would submit the following. The “us” you refer to does not exist. People who have had cleft palates normalized do not aggregate or define themselves as cleft plate people.
You do convey your feelings and they seem deeply felt and your feelings are deep and sincere. I think one of the problems of your movement is that in that you homogenize yourselves when you aren’t really homogenous. I’m sorry that young people are subjected to what you describe. I’m also sorry that they are subjected to this way of understanding themselves. But I’m also sorry that men are given access to these things and then feel entitled to spaces where women go to be together and away from men. Your movement has filled our spaces full of men and now women have no places to come together because they are filled with men and worse yet people with penises.
“And do you know why that is? Because the people who do the questioning have cissexual privilege. Society’s designed to benefit them over us. It’s just assumed that cissexual is the norm and transsexual is the other. Do these sentences sound familiar? They should – it’s how black lives in relation to white, how woman lives in relation to man, and how gay or lesbian lives in relation to straight. Hell, in many ways, it’s how bisexual lives in relation to straight, gay, and lesbian.”
I think you have aggregately brought a lot of this upon yourselves out of a very faulty but successful poltic. If you are going to foist old men upon the world as women, if you are going to attempt to assert that these men are somehow mysteriously women I don’t think you are accepting any responsibility for the way you are treated. I think the assertion is absurd.
With full agency did they make a beeline for treatment or did they enter into male institutionalized relationships insuring that they would be seen as men? This group cannot explain what it is that constitutes them as women as they have often followed a hyper-masculine life and do internalize the values, often highly misogynistic ones.
“First, misogynistic values are not a contraindication of womanhood, or Ann Coulter would be out of the club.”
And few women are as male identified as Ann Coulter. Completing the sentence I don’t think you are acknowledging the source of misogyny. But it’s not limited to misogyny. It is the male perspective and way of understanding the world that is not a universal but that permeates the trans way of apprehending the world.
“ That’s a false dichotomy. Second, as I explained above, societal pressure is against transition, just as it is against coming out as gay or lesbian.”
So? What it was more important to conform and be a man maintaining male status. There is a pressure to maintain something? What?
“Lynn Conway – agree with her views or not – tried to transition at an early age, and her parents basically forced her not to, hence her later transition. That’s a story I’ve heard more than once, too. Never mind those who get into a relationship and feel as if they have to set aside their need to transition in order to be faithful to that family. You may feel that it is glorying in male privilege, but I don’t think it’s fair or honest to reduce it to that. After all, closeted gay men and lesbian woman also stay in marriages and retain heterosexual privilege, even though it would be healthier for them to end the marriage and come out of the closet. “
Embedded in these argument are the essentialism of “really a man” or “really a woman” and I say that simply staying in place shapes and constructs them. There is no standing still. If they waited around as a man… they are shaped in to men. Certainly they don’t have the life experiences women do and that’s what makes a woman.
Women still remain “the other”. This individual’s life experiences are radically different from the child Cicely described. There is a lifetime’s of evidence that late transistioners fully internalized the socialization of their original assignment.
“No, there’s no evidence of that at all, or are you claiming to be able to psychoanalyze people just on the basis of a brief summary of their lives? “
I don’t need to be in their heads. They lived as men. They said they were men. They did not live the lives women do. You do not understand that some women do not want to be around people who have lived as men absolutely regardless of their internal lives.
“Most of the late transitioners I know describe childhood experiences and feelings similar to what I felt, which was that I knew from an early age. There is no part of my life when I did not feel I was a girl. The difference is that they found coping mechanisms, or perceived responsibilities, or social pressures, or familial pressures, that convinced them to try not to transition. But you just look at them and say “They lived as men for a few more decades, so that means that they’re completely indistinguishable from actual men.”
I hear you. But when I listen to them, their perspectives and where they position themselves and the way they understand women, is not the way women understand ourselves. Women remain the other to them and I have never seen one have anywhere near the centrality that women have.
“Which is again like saying “They lived as straight for a few more decades, so that means they’re completely indistinguishable from actual straight people.”
I reject this argument as apples and oranges. There is still an embedded “really a woman” there while they lived and related to the world as men. You do not understand that merely living as a man shapes them into being men.
“Are their experiences different because they lived that life? Yes. Is that really a good reason to deny them their personhood and identity because of a few generalizations? Not at all.”
They are people. They just aren’t women and should not be in women’s spaces.
“One can’t help but notice other tell-tale markers in the movement which could be, “all I have to do is to take some pills or get some shots and I’m a woman.” It’s an approach based in mechanics to attain an appearance. Once the appearance is attained, that’s all there is. There’s nothing more implying that women’s lives and women’s have no substance or internal lives, which in itself could not be more male.”
“This is really an unfair assertion – again, you’re psychoanalyzing based on generalizations, and not really looking at what we say about ourselves. When I went into transition, I knew that womanhood was more than pills, surgery, and a dress.”
You did yes. I accept that. But apparently you didn’t live as a man.
“I knew it would take time – time for the hormones to reshape my body, time to save the money for surgery, time for the electrolysis to finish, and I knew none of those things would make me a woman. I would be treated as a woman by those who saw me, because my body looks the part (and is the part, at this point). I knew that socially, there were differences, although knowing and living them are two different things. It’s one thing to know that men might harass you, it’s another thing to have an employer ask for a blow job in exchange for a ride home. “
Men are awful aren’t they?
And most trans women realize this, even if they don’t know from the beginning. Yes, there are some who insist that surgery is what makes them women, but they’re not necessarily the majority, nor do they speak for the rest of us. And, I’ll point out, I recently criticized that point of view. Actually, more than once on this blog.
“As for the festival, I do not believe that it is a place for trans-identified people, trans-culture or for the imperialism of “trans-education” . We are there to celebrate our lives as women. As for the silence of the board, women there are tired of these “revelations”. As sensitive as Cicely’s post was there are intersections discounting women, those not going through reassignment and a small portion who have.”
“This is a false dichotomy, kind of. You see, trans- is not an exclusive identification. I identify as trans, but I also identify as a woman and as a lesbian. I have other identities, but they’re not relevant here. I would want to attend the festival because I’m a woman, and it’s af festival for women. I do not want to attend the festival because I have a transsexual history, even though that’s why I am socially accepted as a woman.”
If you were to attend as a woman and not trans, I think you should go. But it is not a trans festival and I think do not think the dichotomy is at all false. You see, i think trans is mutually exclusive with woman. Woman is a set of experiences and an identity. The identity is not trans, it’s woman. The experiences are not having lived as men, but women. Using a woman’s experience and identity as definitive – I would say that trans and woman are quite mutually exclusive identities. Trans has a different embedded significance in this society and if that’s your identity your experience is not going to be the same as a woman’s.
“And, honestly, if there are seminars and workshops and other events in the festival for women of color, Jewish women, women with disabilities, and so on, I don’t see why a festival open to trans women should disallow workshops and such for trans women. It’s another experience some women have, why exclude it?”
Who should go? Crossdressers? Tranvestites? Seventy year old men? People with penises? This is part of the problem your movement has because your movement has lots of people who are clearly not women and who have no lived experience in common with women which is what the festival celebrates. It is a festival for women not trans. The workshops man be diverse aspects of women but they are about women and not trans.
There is another aspect of lesbian you do not understand. Lesbians have established our own set of definitions on who a lesbian is. One thing men and trans do not understand is that “lesbian” is not simply two women sleeping together. It is a culture and a standpoint. It is not defined by men. It’s defined by women.
“It’s incredibly vacuous of you to make the claim that trans women do not understand lesbian culture, and I disagree that lesbian culture is defined by women. It’s defined by one particular group of women – lesbians. Attempts to define lesbian by non-lesbian women brought us to political lesbianism, which amounts to straight women who choose to be celibate coopting the name, lives, and experiences of lesbian women. Something I never see radical feminists complain about. Odd, that.”
Actually radical feminist do complain about that. But again there are assertions of objects there. You’ll notice that my delineation of lesbian was cultural. Your is one of objectification all through what you say. There are lesbian objects, gay male objects, trans objects. Assertions of essence creates objects and that’s why trans must resort to magical thinking. Object-ness is magical patririarchal thinking.
I don’t think “transwomen” understand lesbian culture because of their standpoint as transwomen. Note that I am not saying this is true of all people who change classes. This is a statement about the individual with a trans identity.
But I hear you and it sounds to me as if you ‘get it’ as if there is an ‘it’ to get. Please know this is an effort on my part to create some space for you.
“That’s not even a legitimate comparison. After all, cabbages don’t start lives as human fetuses and grow into cabbages, nor do human fetuses start as cabbages and grow into humans. On the other hand, a human fetus is by default female, and differentiates into male with the addition of testosterone. Most everything you need for a male or female body exists in any given male or female body. Sure, if you somehow prevent a fetus from using testosterone (CAIS), you won’t get ovaries, but that’s because of the Y chromosome. You could probably use stem cells to grow ovaries, eventually.”
You are mistaken here. It’s not because of a Y chromosome. Along with the SRY, a mullerian inhibiting factor is produced. When that is blocked ovaries are produced and this has been demonstrated in mice. So it’s not at all chromosomal. But my argument has not been a biological one.
My argument has been based on the effects of life experience. I do not doubt your experience but I am saying that many of the people whom you would call women are not and never will be. That’s the whole problem of politicizing this. Because it has been politicized you have accepted people who aren’t women and are calling them women.
“But there is no such thing as gender. I’m not questioning your manhood. I’m not interested in men. I am questioning the presence of men in women’s spaces and by men I mean people who have lived as men and said they are men. So you are safe.”
“Even though they no longer live as men and no longer say they are men.”
Yes.
“Anyway, I addressed your comment that gender doesn’t exist above. Would you like other social constructs? Police are a social construct. Law is a social construct. Families are a social construct. Misogyny, transphobia, racism, ableism, and classism are social constructs. Money is a social construct. Time is a social construct. Work schedules are a social construct.”
This is all true but I’ve never really seen a police person call say that they have “policeness.” I’ve never seen a ballerina say that she is really a police person inside.
Race is a social construct. Racism is not. Law IS a social construct, constructed by men and need to be eliminated as it is based in power-over. Misogyny is exerted on women and is not a construct althugh its foundations are constructs and was created by men. Money is a construct that needs to be eliminated. Almost everything constructed by men needs to be eliminated. Work schedules are not purported to be parts of nature and people do not claim they are work schedules. Our understanding of time appears to be a construct but it is also real. The universe does not occur all at once. Time is actually a shared agreement. Families are a set of relationships that conform to patriarchal prescriptions.
“You can’t dismiss something just because you define it as a social construct. That right there is magical thinking.”
I talk in terms of specifics and not somethings. I’ve been very specific that gender is a social construct and trans says that they ARE the construct and vehemently they insist that they have that construct. These constructs are oppressive to women and they are insisting upon and making real the very forces that oppress women evidencing absolutely no care of their impact upon women.
“It’s not a mysterious thing, nor is it divorced from overt manifestation. You know about closeted gay men who are hardcore homophobes, right? Don’t you think trying to present a masculine identity to the world is an overt manifestation? Many of these trans women spend periods of their life wearing women’s clothing secretly as an outlet. Isn’t that an overt manifestation?”
No. I think it’s shaping. I think it is exactly shaping and I think it constructs them. I think that they lived as men and their life experiences and understanding of the world is the way men understand women. I think effectly they are men because of the choices they have made and because of the choices they have made they should not be allowed in women’s spaces because people who have chosen to live as men are men.
“The problem isn’t that you examine their claims. The problem is that you dismiss their claims and call it examination.”
I’m not the least bit interested in their claims. I am interested in the lives they have lived.
It doesn’t make any difference to me about a man’s internal life while they deny women’s internal lives. We are supposed to deny our own experience OF them (transphobia) and honor their internal experiences trumping our own experience of them while pretending they didn’t make the choices they made and had the privilege they have. That is about as male and entitled as it gets. I used “have” because they have the choice of staying married which women are denied.
“But this argument – that late transitioning trans women (or any trans women) deny women’s internal lives – is not based on anything but your own prejudices. You’re ignoring trans people’s actual narratives and substituting a convenient story that makes it easier to dismiss them as women.”
Actually I think you are dismissing their narratives in your fervor to call them women.
“As for the choice of staying married, yes, that is a minor privilege. I say “minor” because usually, transition results in an acrimonious divorce, and often results in the mother getting custody of the children.”
I think the mother should get custody. She bore the children. Men contribute a couple of nanograms of DNA while a woman’s body is inhabited for nine months.
I also wouldn’t call it a minor privilege when lesbians can’t bring partners into the country and cannot maintain a relationship with partners outside of the country.
“ True, some trans women remain married to their pre-transition spouses, and that is a testament to the strength of their relationship.”
It’s a fucking male privilege.
“It’s also an artifact of how the law works, and if anyone wanted to challenge those marriages, I expect that they’d be easily annulled.”
The law works to benefit men just as it does here. If a married man decides to go through reassignment he is allowed to maintain his male privilege. He is permitted to maintain a state sanctioned relationship that women cannot have. Marriage to a woman is a uniquely male privilege.
“ I also question holding the fact that the law allows this against any trans women (and what about trans men who transition and can remain married to their husbands?), because it’s not a construct we placed in the law.”
I am not concerned about men. I am concerned about women.
Michelle
February 7, 2008 at 10:52 pm
>>>The law works to benefit men just as it does here. If a married man decides to go through reassignment he is allowed to maintain his male privilege. He is permitted to maintain a state sanctioned relationship that women cannot have. Marriage to a woman is a uniquely male privilege.
You are an ill informed idiot. I cannot be arsed to reply to the rest of your blatherings – Cecily and Lisa have been more than patient with you. But as a point of fact, in Australia where I live a trans woman cannot have the gender on her birth certificate or passport changed without having her marriage annulled. I don’t imagine it is any different in places in the US where there are gay marriage bans.
The law works to create trans bodies as illegible, outside the bounds of legality, and hence suspect and vulnerable to violence by those patriarchal institutions such as law and police that are apparently so kind to trans women still. Being the “wrong” gender from your passport is one of the signs of a terror suspect, in case you weren’t aware.
So you say a trans woman maintains male privilege, right? Except it’s legal in a great many places to discriminate against trans people in terms of employment, denying housing because they are transgendered. Or maybe you’re talking about the magic avoidance of violence? OH WAIT that occurs too. This is if you’re “out” as transgendered.
OR maybe you are lucky enough to be seen as a woman as you move through the world, in which case you’re subject to the same inequity any woman receives. Do you still get male privilege then, beamed from the Patriarchy headquarters direct to your Y chromosome? Except trans women have the added bonus that exposure as “really” male brings with it the same risks of discrimination and violence that being an out transperson does. Trans women have been and continue to be murdered for that.
That male privilege fruit basket should be arriving any day now…
So maybe you’re just talking complete rubbish.
queen emily
February 7, 2008 at 11:21 pm
As someone who, according to you and yours, had a “female childhood” (whatever that means) I have to say that it was really rather like most of my cis*male friends. My parents didn’t get me video games so I could focus on my studies (then when I’m at a friends or boarding school I spend a lot of my time on them anyway) and they wanted me to do well in school and go to college and get a good job. Marriage and kids were for my thirties (young marriages don’t last in their opinion)– though they wanted me to date to prove I wasn’t gay (lol). Yep, sounds almost exactly like a ton of my cis*male friends–save for the boarding school bit and thats only because there was one about an hour from my house.
As I currently don’t have a lot of T in my system I also don’t have a lot of muscles; as I am a geek I don’t care much about them. Sorry, your oh-so witteh comment failed (much like the rest of your comments actually…)
And as a man I’ve got no interest in going into women’s space (as I am mostly gay, I have no interest in peeping either); I do have interest in making sure my sisters in trans*ism are welcomed where they belong–in womens’-space.
“Women develop identities as women at about age age two.”
LOL, you think trans*women are any different? They, for whatever reason, form their female/woman identity then spend the rest of their childhood being told they are wrong and are a boy. Obviously, most folks would cave to this sort of pressure and do as they’re told. The few that don’t generally get kicked out, beaten, raped, killed, etc.
So they do what any cis*girl-raised-as-a-boy would do, pretend as hard as she can to be a boy; if she’s been traumatized enough she’ll be the best boy/man there ever was so that no one will ever question or ridicule her again.
If some unethical person went and had an infant girl raised as a boy (had her go through male puberty and everything) and she eventually transitioned back to female/woman, would you let her into women’s-space? Would it matter at what age she transitioned to female? Remember, she’s lived her whole life being seen and treated as a male–anyone watching would think she had happily taken in male privilege and socialization.
And wow, you totally proved you didn’t read a thing I said–just cherry-picked for quotes.
Would you find it easier to understand if I used small words? Or 1337-5|>34|< ?
Meh, I already went through this exact same idiocy/ on my “Watch your language” post–unless you actually say something new or intelligent I’ll probably just ignore you.
drakyn
February 8, 2008 at 12:37 am
Oh yeah, you never really proved that gender identity is a social construct. Anthropology proves that how each society defines and labels and sees gender is socially constructed (though still quite real to that society), but you haven’t proven that identifying as a gender is a construct. or, if it is a construct, proven how that person’s gender identity isn’t real to them.
And I don’t know about you, but marriage is pretty minor compared to a job or a place to stay. I know I’d rather have a roof over my head and a way of earning money than a state-sanctioned marriage. having all three would be nice, but i know what two I’d pick over the other if given my druthers.
drakyn
February 8, 2008 at 12:47 am
I’d also like to add that marriage is heterosexual privilege, not male privilege, and that while it is possible to maintain that heterosexual privilege while transitioning into a same-sex marriage, it’s really only one privilege as compared to the many ways that trans people are discriminated against. It’s also not a “privilege” that all trans people retain access to in that form.
Describing it as male privilege as regards to trans women retaining their marriages simply renders trans men invisible in one more way in these discussions.
Lisa Harney
February 8, 2008 at 12:53 am
“You are an ill informed idiot. I cannot be arsed to reply to the rest of your blatherings – Cecily and Lisa have been more than patient with you
Your ableism is noted as is your name calling as it the elevation in your response.
“ But as a point of fact, in Australia where I live a trans woman cannot have the gender on her birth certificate or passport changed without having her marriage annulled. I don’t imagine it is any different in places in the US where there are gay marriage bans.”
Here, fifty year old men married to women do get their papers modified after surgical reassignment and thus maintain their male privilege. If women cannot be married to women and they stay in the relationship, that are still living as men, ie legally married to a woman. Furthermore they continue to receive tax advantages that women living with women do not have.
I think it quite appropriate that the state forces them to give up male privilege where you live. By the way, I do not support the idea of marriage for anyone.
“As someone who, according to you and yours, had a “female childhood” (whatever that means)”
You have misquoted me and have put words in my mouth. If you do a search on this page you will find that you are the only one here to use the phrase you have attributed to me.
“I do have interest in making sure my sisters in trans*ism are welcomed where they belong–in womens’-space.”
Even with their male privileges? And I am sure you are talking about people with penises too? They should not be in women spaces because they are not women. Having penises, they can claim their male privileges at any moment. “Sadie” the head of camp trans, used his male privileges to bring a woman partner into the country something women cannot do.
““Women develop identities as women at about age age two.”
LOL, you think trans*women are any different?
My answer to this is complex, something alien to transland. There are people assigned as males who do develop female identities at age two and I think they are legitimate. But what is generally expressed is the sentiment, “I figured it out when I was eight”. I don’t know what it is that they figured our, but the ones I see to be legitimate were saying that when they were saying they were girls as soon as they could talk. Remember I do not homogenize the population you identify as trans.
“she’ll be the best boy/man there ever was so that no one will ever question or ridicule her again.”
Because of this they should stay out of women’s spaces because they have been socially constructed into men and their experiences are socially male.
“If some unethical person went and had an infant girl raised as a boy (had her go through male puberty and everything) and she eventually transitioned back to female/woman, would you let her into women’s-space?”
Infant girls don’t go through male puberties.
“Would it matter at what age she transitioned to female? Remember, she’s lived her whole life being seen and treated as a male–anyone watching would think she had happily taken in male privilege and socialization.”
Yes. It would matter. It would totally matter. If this person lived as a man after agency, they should not be allowed into woman’s space. You are still positing some magical force inside them that is independent from their behavior. That’s silly.
“Oh yeah, you never really proved that gender identity is a social construct.”
First of all, I don’t get into “proof” contests with men because it’s a game because they control the rules of evidence. It’s a game men play. So baiting for proof is something I do not respond to.
But I can answer your question about gender. Males and females are equally different but in society they do not have equal power. Differences in power, differences in the way they are valued are social and not biological. Gender is a system of political power and has nothing to do with how a person behaves.
I do believe there are gendered components in our identities. But, I also know it an artifact of the binary gendered class system. Even so, I also believe that someone having an identity, who continued to live as a member of a class after attaining agency becomes socially constructed as a member of that class. In other words, I don’t think middle aged men should be allowed into womenspaces.
Lisa Harney:
“I’d also like to add that marriage is heterosexual privilege, not male privilege.”
Lisa, here is what I wrote:
“Marriage to a woman is a uniquely male privilege.”
I made no general statement about marriage. I clearly wrote that marriage to a woman is a male privilege.
Michelle
February 8, 2008 at 6:37 am
Sorry, but that’s just sophistry. Marriage is heterosexual privilege. By picking out trans women who remain married to women, you’re narrowing the focus specifically to delegitimize trans women.
It’s also a pretty weak argument when you consider how marriages tend to go post-transition, as well as all the other ways in which society marginalizes and punishes trans people. I mean, sure, not being forced to divorce is nice. But compared to the opportunities for unemployment or murder?
Lisa Harney
February 8, 2008 at 3:21 pm
“Sorry, but that’s just sophistry. Marriage is heterosexual privilege. By picking out trans women who remain married to women, you’re narrowing the focus specifically to delegitimize trans women.”
This is OK with me because they are not women. Married men have said they are men. There is no basis for calling them women.
“It’s also a pretty weak argument when you consider how marriages tend to go post-transition, as well as all the other ways in which society marginalizes and punishes trans people.”
I think that’s really extraneous. The only people are are permitted to marry women in this society are men. I’ve been talking about specifically about late transitioners. That they are marginalized in other ways does not aleter the fact that society only privileges men to marry women. This means they have said stated they are men. No one forced them to get married or enter into a male patriarchal institution which is an official way of saying that women are other to him. They did this by their own free will. The interesting thing is that after having done that, they still feel entitled to call themselves a woman and worse, to be in women’s spaces. There is no concept that saying they are men and entering into a patriarchal institution begates any claim that they are women (except in trans-land of course.)
Michelle
February 8, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Oh, god. Look, if they’re legally considered men and marry a woman, that’s heterosexual privilege. If one transitions and don’t divorce, that’s not male privilege. If it were possible for late-transitioning trans women to marry other women legally after changing their sex, your argument would make sense.
And no, the fact that trans people are so heavily discriminated against isn’t extraneous. I don’t care that you’re only talking about late transitioners – you’re just drawing a very familiar line.
Why don’t you stop using pseudonyms for once?
Lisa Harney
February 8, 2008 at 4:38 pm
>>>Your ableism is noted as is your name calling as it the elevation in your response.
Oh wow, you sure responded to the substance of my comment. I certainly know nothing about disability issues, thank you for pointing out that bias of mine. And certainly it is not as though you called me ableist to avoid anything resembling an engagement with such minor things as discrimination and violence, let alone any of the institutional power legal issues regarding psychiatric and medical treatment that transpeople without disabilities share with people with disabilities (like those are two distinct groups?)
Allow me to write your next comment for you:
maleprivilegemaleprivilegemaleprivilege
Maybe if you say it enough, it will actually mean something to trans women in the real world, instead of whatever rad-fem wonderland it is you appear to be living in.
I don’t believe you’re arguing in good faith, I’m done with this thread.
queen emily
February 8, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Because little useful discussion is happening, I’m closing this thread for comments. Apologies to everyone here for letting things get this far.
You can still discuss Cicely’s post at Feministe.
Lisa Harney
February 8, 2008 at 5:25 pm