Abolishing Gender
On multiple occasions, when sucked into one of those soul-destroying conversations with anti-trans radical feminists about whether trans people actually have the right to alter our bodies, I’ve read a variation of this argument:
I get worried when academics and activists spend so much time discussing performativity, the possibility of multiple genders, and ways transgendering and crossdressing (before you get all up in arms–Im not equating these two) challenge gender studies and how we can create art and literature exploring genderbending, etc. etc. etc. What ever happened to the radical stuff–analyzing gender as an inequality? What ever happened to changing social structures such that people can be happy and healthy in the bodies they’re born with? What ever happened to the dreams feminists had of one day no longer having gender and its shackles?
It just seems to me that at base, trans is about not getting rid of gender. It seems to be about maintaining masculinity and femininity, when you cut to the chase. While I’m no authority on the issue, I have yet to see trans organizations or really any trans theorists and activists calling for an abolition of gender itself. I hope I’m wrong.
This is a perfect example of what I mentioned in my I Blame the Porno-iarchy post about how some feminists talk about utopian goals and neglect practical solutions. Or more specifically, how they tend to impose utopian goals on those whom the goals would affect most.
But this goes beyond that – beyond the insistence that since feminism supposedly has this goal to end gender, that all trans people everywhere must also want the same thing. That trans people must somehow fit into feminist theories about what gender is and why it exists. Per these theories, womanhood doesn’t really exist, therefore making it impossible for trans women (but not cis women) to be women. Cis women get to exist because they were born female. The reason that gender doesn’t exist is because it’s a social construct.
Social constructs include, but are not limited to: laws, governments, national borders, police powers, marriage, religion, families, property, citizenship, loyalty, love, money, cities, states, and nations. Few would argue that any of these things do not exist – people may question the basis of their existence, but the fact is that existing as a concept does not make these things imaginary, for good or ill. Similarly, gender is not imaginary. Gender is real, and part of our everyday life, again for good or ill.
This is also an incredibly patronizing attitude: The assumption that there is something inherently more valuable about not wanting to change your body than there is about wanting to change your body. That trans people would welcome a world where transitioning would never happen. That if we change our bodies, they are somehow no longer the bodies we are born with.
When they tell me these things, I feel like they’re trying to show me the true light of civilization, that perhaps they believe that transitioning is a prison that trans people are forced into. That society’s demands require us to transition, because we don’t behave like the sex we’re born into. And that when the glorious revolution comes and destroys the binary, then these demands would no longer exist, and we could exist as we truly should be, free to express ourselves without kowtowing to the oppressive medical profession.
Or in other words: This utopia that radical feminists describe to me is one in which people like me shouldn’t exist, that being trans is the result of living in an immature society. That my ability to transition, to stop living as a male, stop being seen as a boy, and start living as a woman, was anything but personal liberation for me.
Elizabeth McClung makes a similar point about disability:
Regardless of what newspapers constantly print about wheelies or people with illness or disability, I am not “Wheelchair bound”, nor am I “bound by my disease” or “bound by disability.” And I am NOT “House bound.” I say that because today, while I went down to the video store on the off chance they had released Supernatural Season 3 early (they do sometimes if it is a long weekend). The person denied that and wondered why I didn’t call and then said, “Oh….that’s right, you like to go outside.” Spoken to me as if I was some rare and unusual form of human or odd for a person with a disability.
I’ve seen multiple people with disabilities make the same point, and I have to wonder why cis people seem to see trans people as trapped by gender in a similar fashion.
But this is a cis privileged perspective: We’re asked to participate in a revolution that would (so they believe) erase us. We’re asked to put our lives on the line for a utopian ideal that is not going to come to pass. We’re blamed for reifying the gender binary despite the fact that there are six billion men and women who reify the gender binary without the need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on hormones, surgery, electrolysis, etc. It’s a cis privileged perspective that by stepping outside of cisnormative society and crossing that line – going from man to woman or woman to man – that we’re reinforcing cisnormative society.
It’s also a cis privileged position because it places “no one ever transitions” as the ideal state for society. That this ideal society is one in which “everyone is cissexual.” It erases people who are different from the norm, treats them as part of the norm, and expects them to comply. I find the idea of such a society highly oppressive.
I also wish that feminists who talk about the social construction of gender would spend some time examining the social construction of sex. And yes, it is socially constructed even if you remove trans people from the equation. Decades of surgery inflicted upon intersex infants should make this clear.
Edit: Right after completing this post, I followed a trackback to Coilhouse, and found a discussion relevant to this post.
Also, I forgot to link these two posts by rioTgirl along similar lines.
Edited to remove a problematic comparison
*cheerleading occurs*
I transitioned mtf (for reasons largely relating to gendered body dysphoria), but have a relatively gender-fluid/queer/neutral identity (which now leaves me with occasional snippets of dysphoria going the other way but nothing like the soulcrushing crap I went through before), and in some ways it’s been a big deal for me trying to defend the idea that I’ve still got a gender to some “anti-gender” genderqueer people, not because having one is particularly important to me (in a completely hypothetical and meaninglessly imaginary world where gender doesn’t exist, I could also in an entirely theoretical way be happy), but as a matter of integrity and honesty: I have a conscious sense of not fitting in to the male/female binary; it would appear that that quite clearly gives me an unusual place in the gender system, rather than none at all.
Foibey
August 30, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Holly at Feministe and NexyJo have both described similar experiences.
And I always wonder why the answer is to abolish gender, instead of acknowledging that sex and gender can exist in a limitless range of combinations. Why can’t we have an ideal future of gender where you can be any gender, any sex – and have user-defined genders and sexes – instead of just pushing toward an androgynous ideal where no one is really different from anyone else? Or rather, no one is perceived as any different?
I’m glad you liked, btw. I felt unfocused writing this, which made me wonder if it was just a meandering mess. :)
Lisa Harney
August 30, 2008 at 11:53 pm
I often see people in these discussions who advocate the complete abolishing of gender, and the idea truly terrifies me. Thanks for posting a logical, reasoned argument against such nonsense. If only everyone who discussed these issues was as eloquent as you. ;)
Allie
August 31, 2008 at 12:11 am
What terrifies me is the idea that this genderless society is presented to me as if I’d want it. Like I’m some kind of gender troglodyte who’s hopelessly mired in society’s imposed gender binary, and if I could only be freed, I wouldn’t want to change my body.
I’m trying to figure out what’s sacrosanct about bodies that they should never change. This isn’t just a trans thing, either, but a disability thing. If my body is considered inferior because I took hormones, electrocuted my facial hairs, and had surgery, what does that say about people who are living with disabilities? Is a blind person inferior? Is a person in a wheelchair inferior? Who judges that unaltered bodies are the only bodies worth having? What about people with disabilities who had surgery to improve their mobility?
Lisa Harney
August 31, 2008 at 12:23 am
“What terrifies me is the idea that this genderless society is presented to me as if I’d want it.”
Perish the thought — everyone might end up looking like the asymmetric becoiffed hipster androdyke community.
Not that there’s anything wrong with asymmetric haircuts and hipsters particularly (I had one for a fairly long time, and some of my best friends are hipsters!). Just that that’s what a cultural imperative of androgyny did to the queer women’s scene, and it’s pretty miserable getting chucked out of queer bars for not fitting into that.
Foibey
August 31, 2008 at 12:32 am
Not to mention it doesn’t feel much like there being no more gender, shades of butch and femme still creep into that community all over the place. It just makes gender even more of a ridiculous tightrope.
Foibey
August 31, 2008 at 12:33 am
Yeah, I love asymmetric becoiffed hipster androdykes, but I also love butches and femmes and women who don’t particularly fall into those categories.
The core issue I can’t get over is how this utopian ideal asserts that trans people shouldn’t exist at all, and how we’re supposed to want this shift.
Lisa Harney
August 31, 2008 at 12:39 am
I think this is perhaps just a more academic-sounding (or perhaps -mired) way of saying “i don’t believe you; you don’t exist.”
because, from your paragraph presenting the argument: “What ever happened to changing social structures such that people can be happy and healthy in the bodies they’re born with?”
That is just denying transsexual people our own existence. I am not happy and healthy in that body. That is why I needed the medical interventions I have needed. I don’t believe in coercive gender, and transsexual and transgender people getting whatever bodily changes we need is very much in line with my beliefs about non-obligatory, and non-coercive gender.
Anything else is just cissexist, and not even very veiled cissexism at that. I mean, scrambling for ways to assure trans gender/sexual people don’t get what we need–as you point out, that’s just cissexist. It’s the idea that trans people are so threatening that we shouldn’t/don’t exist.
I *like* gender. I don’t like sexism, patriarchy, oppressive and punitive gender norms. I have very painfully felt that I wish my transsexualism didn’t exist, but no amount of anything has changed that it does exist. Transitioning is not a moral issue and is indeed ethically neutral.
I like gender. I like femmes and bears and genderqueers and drag queens and androdykes. I like trans people who embody cisgender norms and I like trans people who don’t embody cisgender norms.
While I was farting around finishing a women’s studies minor in college, I took a History of Gender class. We read a lot of great books and covered a lot of ground. By the end of the course, my seatmate/best friend and I (going through our droll Butlerian period) had figured out that what our professor wanted us to realize was just what you said–sex is socially constructed as well. From the second we get our designation based on innie or outie status at birth, this reified. So I suppose cissexual people reify sex. Isn’t that interesting.
jayinchicago
August 31, 2008 at 1:08 am
You know, I recognize that it is possible that my gender (man) is entirely caused by social constructions and that in a post-gender world I would have no gender (or a different gender). Whether or not this is the case I will never know and personally don’t see the worth in trying to figure that out (personally).
But I know that my maleness is internal and is only socially constructed insofar as any male’s maleness is constructed. I know, in the very fiber of my being, that I am male and that I need certain medical treatments to make my body match what I feel should be there.
“I often see people in these discussions who advocate the complete abolishing of gender, and the idea truly terrifies me.” Me too.
“Why can’t we have an ideal future of gender where you can be any gender, any sex – and have user-defined genders and sexes – instead of just pushing toward an androgynous ideal where no one is really different from anyone else? Or rather, no one is perceived as any different?”
That is my gender utopia. And because it is 4am I really want to make a crayon analogy, but i will resist. Even though an infinite box of crayons would be awesome.
drakyn
August 31, 2008 at 1:13 am
Jay,
I agree that it is, but the ways that it’s phrased have been driving me up the wall for the past few weeks, for all of the reasons I mention in the post, plus a few I forgot to include.
Pointing out how cis people reify sex is only interesting inasmuch as it’s a response to the criticism that trans people reify anything – or as I put it on Coilhouse earlier tonight,
Which, yeah, I didn’t say sex specifically, but I think the point applies to sex and gender in this context.
I also really dislike the “can’t you be happy with the body you’re born with?” line, because it’s so othering. As if we somehow exchange our bodies for new, possibly alien and probably dysfunctional bodies (just think how often people talk about mutilating a “healthy, functional male/female body” – reproductive freedom is only for some people).
And I agree with you on gender – I love it.
Drakyn,
I would love an infinite box of crayons.
I should have emphasized in the post how this argument imposes the weight of responsibility for creating a post-gender utopia on trans people now even though such a utopia will probably never exist, as if we have no right to self-determination if it conflicts with someone else’s political agenda.
Lisa Harney
August 31, 2008 at 1:17 am
i wonder if they’ve actually bothered to understand performativity as something that isn’t an analogue of say, draq, something you put on and take off at will? that would mean both reading beyond the intro to ‘gender trouble’ and wading through ‘bodies that matter’, but i think often it’s easier to go ‘performativity? oh like a drag queen yeah?’ than being an intellectual academic.
anyway, gender as a sometimes useful generalisation, and as many genders as there are individuals, to quote her and deleuze poorly, and neither of those propose a revolutionary genocide of trans* as a step towards utopia.
frances
August 31, 2008 at 2:03 am
Well, duh, obviously trans people are the single thing standing in the way of a post-gender utopia!
I dunno, while these ideologies are hurtful to trans people, I dare say most non-trans people wouldn’t want to live in a post-gender society either. I’m especially thinking of my (non-trans) femme friends–of course they get painted with the reifying gender brush, too.
Perhaps it’s immature to bring this up, but I have a non-trans femme friend with whom one of the first things we bonded over was our exaggerated horror over this post-gender dystopia idea. It involved lots of “oops I smashed your gender” jokes.
anyway.
Yeah, I mean the whole reifying thing–it’s (again immature) a reaction, a “but you started it!” response–who started flinging around that word. It wasn’t trans people.
All joking aside, any sort of implementation of a genderless utopia would just push trans people back underground–back where maybe they want us anyway.
jayinchicago
August 31, 2008 at 2:14 am
There’s two halves to the trans; there’s the body and the social dysphoria. One’s related to sex and the other’s related to gender. It seems to me that trans people transition to varying degrees with each form of dysphoria, so saying that abolishing gender ignores the fact that trans people transition for the body and ignores the social construction of sex, as you say.
Why don’t these people argue for the abolition of sex? Arguing for the abolition of one, but not the other, doesn’t seem to make much sense.
(I hope that makes sense. I’m not sure I’m being quite on-the-point here…)
z
August 31, 2008 at 2:17 am
Frances,
Given how often I’ve seen trans people compared to minstrel performers in blackface, I’d say that many don’t.
Sort of random aside: I find it sad that trans women (specifically) are compared to actors in blackface when cis people predominantly portray trans people in the media.
True, that, Jay.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that only trans people would be harmed by such a society. I think a large number of people would be harmed. I linked Harrison Bergeron for a reason, after all.
z, it makes sense. I don’t know why they don’t talk about sex as a social construct at all when gender as a social construct is barely comprehensible if you maintain that sex is simply a biological fact or talk as if sex should be irrelevant to gender.
Lisa Harney
August 31, 2008 at 2:23 am
i keep on coming back to the realisation, when considering the hypothetical abolition of gender, that gendered roles have existed since records, religion, and art began, and it spans civilisations, countries, cultures e.t.c.. name me one society that doesn’t practice gendered roles. it’s so deeply entrenched in our society that the call to abolish it outright is tamtamout to suggesting that we abolish gravity. furthermore, as sex and biology *are* real, and gendered roles are simply a social outcome of the differences between them, it also follows that any current system we do abolish (let’s presume we can) would only be succeeded by a new socio-cultural system built upon generalised sexual characteristics (which, uh, is gender).
this isn’t to say that gender in it’s current construct is healthy to the long term survival of our species (i don’t believe it is, but that’s a long and rambly point), but the idea that we can develop a society where it holds no value at all is naive.
and this is just considering the argument dispassionately and outside of a trans perspective. i’m using logic, so.
alma cork
August 31, 2008 at 2:30 am
bums, this bit should have been expanded to,
i keep on coming back to the realisation, when considering the hypothetical abolition of gender, that gendered roles have existed since records, religion, and art began, and it spans civilisations, countries, cultures e.t.c.. i’d also argue that, if gender were such a lie and were not so important to our social structure, then it wouldn’t be so absolutely prevalent. but it is, and that begs the question of *why*? because the prevalence of such a system in human socio-cultural behaviour must suggest that it is either a) unaviodable, or b) confers some great advantage to the survival of our species.
alma cork
August 31, 2008 at 2:35 am
Great post, Lisa. As an academic, I must say that academics, as a group, are generally quite arrogant about their beliefs in general, assuming that their vast understanding exceeds that of everyone else. I have met many pleasant exceptions, but on the whole, I find it true. (I am not immune from the issue, and try to question myself whenever possible.) I would cast the problem as theoreticians gone mad. It’s not only the gender abolitionists who cause problems for trans people, but also gender essentialists, who want trans people to embody their own hopes and fears about gender. It’s a double bind – either I’m too pretty, or I’m not pretty enough. (For pretty, substitute any other stereotypically feminine quality, and the argument is the same.) I think we need less focus on theory about transgender or transsexual or transvestite or transwhatever, and more on the practicalities of living a trans life. I don’t care whether my “condition” was caused by hormones in the womb, genetics, my early home life, or the moon. It doesn’t matter whether I am really a woman, believe I’m a woman, or act like a woman (or a man). Whether I like to tease my hair or wear skirts, or should like to do so, are irrelevant. The important issue is how I am treated as a human being by my society, Theoreticians, hands off my identity!
As an example, this past week there was an article in The Observer, a New York paper, called The Second Most Beautiful Girl In New York, about a trans woman, Jamie Clayton, who lives a normal, rather pedestrian life, but who gets asked out a lot, and yet cannot find love. The author made the point, based on the interview, that it is unfortunate that trans women are often viewed as an object of lust, but rarely of love. A number of the comments made by readers, mostly from people who appeared to be familiar with trans issues, bemoaned the fact that her beauty and femininity were mentioned in the article, and suggested that her looks should be ignored. Others berated her for being too plain, debated whether she wore the right clothes, and brought up the issue of intersex and chromosomes. After reading all this, my feeling was that, between the gender deconstructionists and the gender essentialists, there is no room left to see this woman as a human being deserving of simple human dignity. She is too pretty and wears too much makeup, or she isn’t pretty enough and needs a makeover. Gosh, let the poor woman be herself! Let her make her own choices and mistakes! Theory kills.
Dr. Jillian T. Weiss
August 31, 2008 at 5:27 am
“should never change. This isn’t just a trans thing, either, but a disability thing. If my body is considered inferior because I took hormones, electrocuted my facial hairs, and had surgery, what does that say about people who are living with disabilities? Is a blind person inferior? Is a person in a wheelchair inferior? Who judges that unaltered bodies are the only bodies worth having? What about people with disabilities who had surgery to improve their mobility?”
As someone who did, OMG THANK YOU. I’ve made this point over and over in discussions like this… that if trans women are “male-to-constructed-female,” am I “disabled-to-constructed-able-bodied?” (Well, not quite, the surgery isn’t that good.) Do I suddenly become Voltron because I had hip surgery? Disregarding that Voltron is kind of cool, I’m not a “construction,” I’m a person.
“I have a conscious sense of not fitting in to the male/female binary; it would appear that that quite clearly gives me an unusual place in the gender system, rather than none at all.”
Yes, THIS. If gender went poof tomorrow, I’d still want my body to be slightly different but not very. I’d still kiss like what formerly got called a boy. I don’t think I’d magically feel more comfortable at all.
Trin
August 31, 2008 at 7:11 am
“There’s two halves to the trans; there’s the body and the social dysphoria. One’s related to sex and the other’s related to gender. It seems to me that trans people transition to varying degrees with each form of dysphoria,”
Also, yeah, that.
Trin
August 31, 2008 at 7:13 am
To me the rad fem theory on abolishing gender doesn’t make sense on a basic logic level. I recognize that much of what we all do is influenced by the kyriarchy, but are they such nurture over nature that they don’t think any part of our identity exists outside of that?
My utopia is where gender (along with race, sexual orientation, ability, etc.) is stripped of value judgments. People get to keep their identities and we just stop think that any identity is better/more normal/more valuable than any other.
Kristen
August 31, 2008 at 9:19 am
A little late to the comment game here, but I just wanted to say amen! And the comparison to the “colorblind” flavor of racism is well put.
Daisy
August 31, 2008 at 10:08 am
Trin, I had your argument in mind when I wrote that.
Alma, yes, I’m almost certain I agree with what you just said. :)
Jillian, yes, this here:
Theory’s constantly trotted out. Untested theory. Theory that rests on a bed of assumptions and biases against trans people, and then when we don’t measure up to the theory, we’re held responsible for this. As if it’s our fault that the real world isn’t a neat, tidy place where everything you want to believe is true.
Daisy, yes. And I am so suspicious of any claim that erasing people’s identities is the way to eliminating sexism, racism, etc.
Lisa Harney
August 31, 2008 at 11:42 am
I think that’s a really great point about people leaving “sex” intact in favour of “gender.”
Indeed, the angry defense suggests that the sexed body is a more touchy subject for many feminists than gender. In one sense, it’s actually unintentionally really telling that they say “gender is not real” because it relies on the notion assigned sex IS real (and unchangeable), and *that’s* why trans women are illegitimate.
Unsurprisingly, this dovetails neatly with a transphobic notion that trans women are really men, and trans men really men. You know, the idea that gets us killed.
Actually a number of the feminists at my university who were supportive of me being genderqueer or third-gender suddenly got very freaked out when I decided to transition.
Cos hey, one’s “subversive” and one’s conservative. And which one again generally leaves the sexed body, not to mention legal, linguistic and social categories, largely intact again?
queenemily
August 31, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Oh wow. Absolutely loads to think about here. Not sure if i’m up to a coherent response, but i’ll try…
I think, in part, it depends what you think “gender” is, and what you think “abolishing gender” is. I often talk about “abolishing gender”, but what i generally mean is abolishing all the harmful assumptions about gender that push people’s lives into boxes and categories that they didn’t choose to be in – all the stuff that says, for instance, that if you have a penis then you MUST be A, B and C and if you have a vagina you must be X, Y and Z – the stuff that associates things with your sex that seem utterly arbitrary and unrelated to sex in any way to me (eg, what colour and style clothes you wear, what kind of work you like to do, what sexual positions you like, whether you like sports, what you like to eat and drink, etc…)
I mean, in my ideal world, i don’t think that there would be such things as “girl clothes” and “boy clothes”, but all people would be free to wear whatever clothes they wanted to (or indeed not to wear clothes at all). There wouldn’t be “boy names” and “girl names”, because what genitalia a child is born with would be as irrelevant to what name the child gets given as what colour eyes the child has – but anyone would be free to choose or change their name, as often as they wanted to, or to have many names. There almost certainly wouldn’t be differentiated male and female pronouns (lots of languages don’t have them), there would be no “standard” configuration of a family or a long-term relationship, etc – which seems pretty similar to the utopias other people here have posted, BUT, i find it hard to imagine there being such a thing as “gender identity” in that utopia, because there would be no social constructions linking sex and the-things-currently-regarded-as-gender…
Some of this may be due to my complete outsider viewpoint as a person who, as far as i know, honestly seems to have *no* innate gender identity whatsoever, and therefore i really don’t, and never will, know what it’s like to have one firsthand… i dunno. I can grasp “brain sex” (as in, my brain needs X combination of hormones and body configuration to function optimally), and i can grasp the purely-socially-constructed stuff-we-call-gender, but i find it really hard to understand the stuff that seems to be in the middle ground of those things in a lot of people’s identies…
shiva
August 31, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Also, the disability analogue, brilliant. This whole “you should accept and not alter the body you were born with” thing? Utter bullshit, IMO. Yes, i can see where it comes from (reclaiming and developing love and acceptance for bodies which have been denigrated and treated as “inferior” by those who rule), and that’s all good, but no one, absolutely no one, has a right to tell anyone else that the choices they make about their body are immoral or “unnatural”. Bodily autonomy is the absolute most vital and central thing for *any* liberation movement, IMO (what *are* you free to do if you aren’t free to do what you like to yourself?)
(I posted about this the other day, most recent post on my blog…)
And something that just struck me – i wonder if one problem is the rather ambiguous and meaning-blurring term “gender dysphoria”. Cos there’s the “fundamental dissociation with and inability to accept living in this body” thing (which perhaps would be better off being called sex dysphoria?), and then there’s the “can’t fit into this gender role” thing (where “gender role” may include stuff to do with physical appearance, which blurs things a bit more) – which latter is what it looks to me like a lot of radfems think all “gender dysphoria” is – and if that’s what all “hender dysphoria” is, then it does kind-of-logically follow that the solution to that would be abolishing the social constructions of gender. Whereas, of course, the fact that sex dysphoria exists means that, even in a society entirely without social constructions of gender, there would still be people who need to transition physically (even if they don’t change their social role).
What’s fucked up is that, currently, people have to change their social role to be allowed to transition physically – which comes back to the bodily autonomy vs medical patriarchy/paternalism thing (which is obviously also faced by disabled people, in different but parallel forms)…
(I hope i’m making sense here – i’m a bit nervous about being seen as essentialist, which i’m not trying to be…)
And what queenemily said (x-posted)…
shiva
August 31, 2008 at 12:35 pm
And i need to write about how “equality” doesn’t mean “absence of difference” (thanks for reminding me).
I read a really good, if provocative, post about that with regard to race recently. Unfortunately i can’t remember where. (edit: it might have been a review of a TV documentary, actually.) Basically saying that anti-racists trying to deny that there are any physical or mental differences between humans from different parts of the world actually gives racists ammunition to say “that’s blatantly not true because of [difference X], so the anti-racists are lying”, when a *truly* anti-racist position would be to say “[difference X] exists, but so what? How does that make someone a more or less valuable person?”…
sorry for serial commenting…
shiva
August 31, 2008 at 12:43 pm
What I’m curious about is:
What value does abolishing gender entirely have over a gender diversity approach?
Lisa Harney
August 31, 2008 at 12:57 pm
I think it depends what kind of category you think “gender” is (and this, i think, is where i struggle due to not really having one of my own). Do you mean how people present themselves, how they see themselves in terms of emotions and personality and stuff, how they relate to others in (sexual and/or non-sexual) relationships, how others percieve them, or what? All of which seem to me not to be tied together by anything meaningful, and to be… kind of bundled together in “packages” that don’t really have any non-arbitrary rationale for the packaging… if that makes sense – why have any “standard” packages, if everyone can have whatever combination they want, and no one fits any of the bundled options perfectly anyway?
(I suppose what i’m saying is, if gender diversity is taken to its true logical conclusion – ie, everyone has hir own combination of choices, then how is that different from no gender?)
I will very freely concede to this involving things i Just Don’t Get, because of my own cognitive limitations, however…
shiva
August 31, 2008 at 2:10 pm
What i want is infinite diversity in infinite combinations, and it seems to me that if you have that, then there can be no social constructions that say “X, Y and Z aspects of a person go together, but can’t go with A, B or C”…
shiva
August 31, 2008 at 2:13 pm
(I suppose what i’m saying is, if gender diversity is taken to its true logical conclusion – ie, everyone has hir own combination of choices, then how is that different from no gender?)
In one you cannot have a verbal identification, as I understand the concept. If you made up a name for yourself and the people who you perceived to be like you (based on whatever qualities you so choose, pick anything; people who snore loudly, lets say) you would be identifying a behavior, which becomes an identifying trait in plural form, though I think I phrased that incorrectly. People name traits, people name damn near -everything-, doesn’t matter what it is, as a people we love labels. Not for what they ‘allow’ someone to do or necessarily for who they identify with, but for their simplicity in identification. (I think it hinges heavily on the fight or flight response, m’self). At any rate, anything that’s named that the bulk of people have could be a replacement for ‘gender’, and I assume, sex as well since so many people use it interchangeably when arguing for this Utopian Society. You’d have to erase difference to erase labels, I’m quite sure. But I doubt it would stay, this no labels business, because if we’re getting rid of ‘male’ and ‘female’, someone is going to come right along, rather quickly I suspect, and rename them since it’s arguably one of the most visible traits, ignoring rate of error. Or Hair color could be the new gender, maybe. Legs? No, that wouldn’t work either, still differences, bound to be named and distributed. Only the differences are named so thoroughly, I think it’s why there’s ‘normal’ and then ‘other’. Everyone knows what normal is, but other? You’d have to ask for a label to find what kind of other a lot of the time as all differences aren’t readily visible. The bridge o’superfluous connection (seems to me) goes both ways. Even if we managed to – not – name sex, the differences would still be there body wise. Hence the still transitioning in this new Utopia. Which, funnily enough, – still – being told all trans people won’t exist in this brave new world, pun not intended.
Anyway, when the error of naming is noticed to be too high (in general) to make a label work, things get reclassified. Language is in a constant flux. But some people are insisting on being stubborn asses and ignoring why the labels aren’t working for some people.
Expanding labels let’s you call yourself whatever you feel yourself to be, or lack thereof.
A.W.
August 31, 2008 at 4:45 pm
….Not to say that all labels are named for a collection of traits, just that collections of traits will bring identifying labels. A lot of the time, labels are named for the traits one wishes to associate with themselves and who they consider other people like them to be. And then there’s the ‘H experienced ——- with so and so, I heard M had the same experience, do they have something in common? Yes? Alrighty then, so let’s attach hearsay and dreams to M’s descriptions in lieu of actual representation, whatever it is! Doesn’t go quite like that, but you get the idea.
~ Coughs ~ <3 the diversity in infinite combinations, though! ‘jes don’t think the lack of labels will be feasible, I apologize if I was preach-y, tend to indulge in excess examples.
A.W.
August 31, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I just think the people who bleat about wanting to “do away with gender” are 99.998% of the time utterly full of it, besides the utopian business I mean. Okay, so: you first. Insist on no longer using gendered pronouns for yourself, or use the “wrong” one. Demand the “M” or “F” get taken off your gov’t issued identity. Refuse to go into any bathroom that’s gender segregated, or insist on going into the “wrong” one. And for some people (hi, Blanche!) be sure to get rid of all your long flowy skirts and hair; maybe you can’t get yourself to the point where people start “sirring” you, but at least make the effort, damn it.
Oh, gee, not gonna happen? That’s not what you meant when you said “do away with gender?” “Huh.”
belledame222
August 31, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Oh, of course, it’s just yet another way to tell trans people that they don’t want us to exist.
Lisa Harney
August 31, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I find it interesting, given how common the “accept the bodies you were born with” is, that accepting the minds we were born with is apparently a complete no-no. Again, it’s not just trans people, see also the “curebies” wrt autism and how sick it’s seen as being if someone doesn’t want to turn neurotypical.
Nick Kiddle
August 31, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Right.
And believe me, reading blogs about autism was painful for me because how familiar everything was.
I also question this notion that altering my body means it’s no longer the body I was born with.
Lisa Harney
August 31, 2008 at 6:19 pm
“I find it interesting, given how common the “accept the bodies you were born with” is, that accepting the minds we were born with is apparently a complete no-no.”
Ah, but there’s a clause (isn’t there always =/ )to the “accept the bodies you were born with”. I’d add “as long as they resemble Us, if you’re missing limbs or have extra digits, ambiguous anatomy, an odd nose, even little scars will do, come right in”. It’s expected that people will get every treatment for something that they can, with no account of if they’d want it or not. The amount and variety of shows wrt getting rid of those ‘unsightly little facial scars’ are huge. Don’t do much for the ego, either. Get a small scar on your face, half an inch say, in a noticeable spot and it seems like people zoom in (if they’ve the funds) to smooth it out. The setup’s incredibly hypocritical. How’s it go, “Good for me, but not for Thee? You’d think it would be the other way ’round, having a minor change be discouraged (where’s that Accept your body? I can’t hear youuuuu….) but no.
A.W.
August 31, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Sorry I’m late to the party, but I’ve been busy this weekend. Anyway, alma cork said a couple things that kind of bothered me and that no one else has addressed.
“furthermore, as sex and biology *are* real, and gendered roles are simply a social outcome of the differences between them, it also follows that any current system we do abolish (let’s presume we can) would only be succeeded by a new socio-cultural system built upon generalised sexual characteristics (which, uh, is gender).”
I have a problem with such a passive construction of gender roles as flowing from biological differences in sex. It ignores the social construction of sex that Lisa mentioned in the OP and leads us back to the fabulous cis-privileged essentialist position of “biology is destiny” which again erases the reality of transpeople.
“prevalence of such a system [of gender] in human socio-cultural behaviour must suggest that it is either a) unaviodable, or b) confers some great advantage to the survival of our species.”
I am really leery of the latter suggestion because this sounds like the typical muddle of evolutionary psychological thinking that all species-wide behaviours have some advantage to them. Applying this sort of logic to species-wide physical characteristics, we end up with reasoning that the vermiform appendix must convey some survival advantage when even Darwin claimed it to be a vestige which does no such thing. Thus, the mere claim that because creating gendered socio-cultural systems is a species-wide behaviour that this creation must therefore convey some survival benefit must be met with more than a little skepticism.
Lucy
September 1, 2008 at 7:08 am
A.W. – i don’t want to do away with labels altogether, and i agree with you that having some degree of labelling is inevitable, and not necessarily a bad thing (see Jane Meyerding’s article “Why Label?”, with regard to the labelling debate in neurodiversity). What i don’t want is prescriptive labels – so “male” and “female” as value-neutral descriptors of body types (maybe even of cognitive styles) i have no problem with, just not the whole prescriptive “if you have this body type, then you should do A, B and C and like X, Y and Z” shit…
Belledame: i think there are other ways to work against the gender binary than by making yourself a martyr. For example, with the toilet/”bathroom” issue, if i were to go into the female-labelled ones, i would be causing offence, distress and violation of privacy to women, and probably even putting myself at risk of (plausible) rape accusations – which i don’t think it’s fair to ask someone to do. But i do know several venues (in the “alternative”/DIY scene) which do have gender-neutral toilets, and i have noticed that make people think “yeah, why do we segregate toilets by gender?”, which, although a very small thing, is showing up the absurdity of that sort of shit. And govt ID etc… well, in the UK, there is a movement to resist the introduction of ID cards, which trans and queer groups are heavily involved in for exactly that reason.
(I know you’re probably not aiming that primarily at me, but i did kind of feel the need to respond…)
“I find it interesting, given how common the “accept the bodies you were born with” is, that accepting the minds we were born with is apparently a complete no-no. Again, it’s not just trans people, see also the “curebies” wrt autism and how sick it’s seen as being if someone doesn’t want to turn neurotypical.”
Fucking good point. More of that (utterly unsustainable, if looked at even slightly more than superficially) Cartesian mind/body duality bollocks.
Of course, the disability movement can also get stuck in the “accept the body you were born with” trap – condemning disabled people who have operations to increase (one aspect of) mobility, for example – which is just as anti-choice as its opposite (although probably rarer). And i would *also* support people’s right to change the minds they were born with (through taking psychotropic drugs, neurosurgery or whatever), if they genuinely want to, cos cognitive liberty goes both ways too (yeah, being anti forced drugging actually doesn’t mean wanting to take the drugs away from people who choose to take them)…
shiva
September 1, 2008 at 9:30 am
Hey Lucy,
I’m taking on your first point, although I’m up for expanding on exactly where the interaction between biology and social behaviour begins and ends (and, in a nutshell, my feeling is that it’s *complex*, and possibly impossible). Additionally, maybe I’m using different definitions here, because I presume the social construction of sex to be very closely linked, even reliant, on the idea of gender as a social system. I don’t think this has to be cisessentialist at all, either, as long as you keep on reminding yourself that cissexualism is not the norm, just the avarage (and, you know, never trust an avarage).
But’s that a vacuous reply while I really think about it.
Really, it’s your second argument that I’m refuting, mostly because you talk about ‘gendered behaviours’ and analogise them with a redundant biological organ. The comparison simply doesn’t fit, because when a behaviour becomes redundant the only evidence of it resides in art, records, and religion (*coughs*). Furthermore, it’s not like the appendix actually takes part in the bodies activities in a pointless fashion: it doesn’t. It sits there, unused. But we still use gender. Hell, it *plauges* trans-people. If it’s not so important, then just answer me why?
I still hold that if gender were useless then it would not be so damn prevalent, which is not to say that gendered systems cannot as diverse as anything else (even so far as to allow individuals who experience no personal sense of gender).
In short, I utterly fail to agree with your closing sentance on a very fundamental level.
Sorry if my words come across as a bit pretentious by the way, but it’s kinda the way I write.
Alma Cork
September 1, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Hey Alma,
Good points and much I agree with. I tend to agree with a friend of mine who sees sex and gender as a complex, intertwined, and mutually reinforcing socio-biological system where the biological is overwhelmingly interpreted through the social lens of gender and gender is justified by appeals to biology. If that sentence actually makes sense. Anyway, I do think that the existence of established gender variance in societies (eg, hijira and two-spirit people) complicates the normally simplistic cis essentialist position.
Could you expand upon your thought on how cissexualism is not the norm, just the average. I’m not understanding, though that may be me being tired at the moment.
I certainly grant your point about gender not being a useless thing. If nothing else the very fact that I hold that I have a gender proves that to me. My complaint is really with using arguments that appear to be based on evolutionary psychology. I have multiple issues with the field of evolutionary psychology, thus my problem with the assertion you made. If you wish we can go into that, but I’m afraid that doing so will wander far afield of the topic here.
Oh, and no worries about being pretentious. As I think may be obvious by now, I suffer from the same problem.
Lucy
September 1, 2008 at 5:29 pm
The idea that cis is the norm implies that anyone who is not cis is the other. However, gender variance is as normal as being cissexual.
It’s just that most people are cissexual, hence being the average.
Lisa Harney
September 1, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Shiva,
You asked a question, I tried to answer it. Was the question rhetorical? Sometimes I miss those.
A.W.
September 2, 2008 at 12:41 am
In other words, I wasn’t disagreeing with you there, just answering the question. ;/
A.W.
September 2, 2008 at 1:01 am
Lucy,
Pretty much, yep.
I’ve got to admit, I don’t know a great deal about evolutionary psychology. I’m kinda just riffing on educated guesses with my own philosophy (i’m a plant biologist by trade, with a smattering of statistical and spectroscopic knowledge. so that might explain stuff). I’d be intrested in hearing your reservations about the subject though and I think you can contact me through my blog if you want to chat (the e-mail on this message is an old dead one that i don’t remember the password for. bad, i know, but i was too lazy to set it up to redirect to my used one).
On averages and norms, what Lisa said. Normal is a rather loaded value judgement that isn’t really possible to quantify, while average is a mathematical quantity, which doesn’t neccessarily mean most common anyway.
Alma Cork
September 2, 2008 at 1:28 am
Alma and Lisa,
Ah, good, I did understand it and agree with it. I rebel by royally using myself as the norm and othering non-queer cisfolk. It’s kinda fun.
And, Alma I get in touch with you via your blog once I drag my butt home from my Labor Day vacation. :)
Lucy
September 2, 2008 at 10:15 am
I have been lurking around the Michfest boards lately and they really are having a ball talking ABOUT trans* while (literally) telling trans* to “shut up”. There was one point someone made there along the likes of MtF WBT don’t spell “womyn”…. that Trans* will never actually be “Womon”. I thought… wow what a load of Binary crap, I wonder if someone will call her out… the group that’s doing the greatest share of the Trans* blame and shame game joined in with their own “womb envy” comments.
So much for Gender Warriors…
rioTgirl
September 3, 2008 at 9:11 am
Also.. what is it with the Gender Bianry and ONLY the Gender Bianry? I know and read comments from loads of RadFem Lesbains who are more than happy to other, accuse, shame, or just be downright crappy to Bi wimin, Stone Femmes, “gay wimin”, queer gals.
They are taking a position of lesbian/straight and anyone who IDs as both/neither is “just” a PT lesbian, or a “damaged hetero woman using Dyke energy”.
They are also pretty active with proping up the Sex binary by failing to address intersex in anything other than “it’s so rare” .
rioTgirl
September 3, 2008 at 9:19 am
If you post to the MichFest forum, just be sure to mention “cis” a lot. The nastier they are about trans, the more cis they need to be.
There’s a few people there who post in good faith – Bint Alshamsa is one, and a few others have called dirt, diek, etc on their garbage.
I know they love to insist that intersex is rare, but it’s not really any more rare than being trans is – it’s just that intersex people are often rendered invisible.
Also, I think they view intersex as being a “blame free category” beyond the person’s control, while they view being bi, being trans, etc. as being a choice someone makes. This is because they’re big ol’ hypocrites.
Lisa Harney
September 3, 2008 at 10:06 am
[...] Amy is oppressed by trans people. And she falls back on the nonsensical “bodies we were born with” argument (hint: Amy, no, your cissexist assumption that altered bodies are less valuable [...]
Money, Mouth, Etc. Part 2 « Questioning Transphobia
September 4, 2008 at 1:42 am
[...] In this paragraph, you establish that you consider the rabidly anti-trans actions taken by feminists since the early 1970s to be rhetorically equal to trans people’s reactions to that violence. To being forced out of feminist spaces, to being denigrated as “surgically/chemically altered men,” to being equated with serial killers and rapists, to Janice Raymond’s call to commit cultural genocide upon trans people, to being described as “Frankenstein’s monsters” by Mary Daly. That trans people’s reactions to all of this hate speech, to all of these exclusive actions, are somehow on the same ideological ground as the insistence that trans people should not exist. [...]
Oh, Amananta « Questioning Transphobia
September 27, 2008 at 6:54 pm
[...] yes, in one sense trans people wouldn’t exist in my utopia. But in another sense, it’s the distinction between trans and cis, the rigid wall that would [...]
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October 2, 2008 at 12:08 am
[...] Abolishing Gender « Questioning Transphobia "Per these theories, womanhood doesn’t really exist, therefore making it impossible for trans women (but not cis women) to be women. Cis women get to exist because they were born female. The reason that gender doesn’t exist is because it’s a social construct. [...]
links for 2009-01-31 « Shut Up, Sit Down
January 31, 2009 at 2:30 am
[...] Abolishing Gender « Questioning Transphobia But this goes beyond that – beyond the insistence that since feminism supposedly has this goal to end gender, that all trans people everywhere must also want the same thing. That trans people must somehow fit into feminist theories about what gender is and why it exists. Per these theories, womanhood doesn’t really exist, therefore making it impossible for trans women (but not cis women) to be women. Cis women get to exist because they were born female. The reason that gender doesn’t exist is because it’s a social construct. [...]
links for 2009-02-23 « Embololalia
February 23, 2009 at 11:08 am
“Why can’t we have an ideal future of gender where you can be any gender, any sex – and have user-defined genders and sexes – instead of just pushing toward an androgynous ideal where no one is really different from anyone else? Or rather, no one is perceived as any different?”
I know I am late to this thread, but in doing some research, I came across this comment, and it troubled me. Many of us who are seeking to abolish gender think that the reason it should be abolished is because it isn’t a helpful organizing category for human DIFFERENCE. That if we were truly honest, there would be as many genders as there are human beings, and when we try to say “there are two types of humans, men and women” or even “there are 20 types of humans, _________” we deny the diversity of humanity. Doing away with gender wouldn’t mean we are all the same, just that we aren’t grouped by these limiting boxes that say certain body parts or personality traits or styles of dress go with certain other body parts or personality traits or styles of dress. We would have, as feminists have struggled for, an infinite range of ways of being human, because we wouldn’t have an assumption that human traits must group into gender categories. It is the complete opposite of pushing everybody into an androgyny.
FSGinger
June 11, 2009 at 8:48 am
All I can really say is that if it’s not about you, it’s not about you.
I was responding to a certain category of transphobic argument (usually advanced by cis feminists and queer theorists). If your argument for the abolition of gender as a category does not at any point include the notion that this is a desirable state for trans people because the abolition of gender means we’d never want to physically transition, then it’s not really about what you want to do.
The post is about using this argument to not only delegitimize an oppressed group, but placing the burden for accomplishing a utopian goal on the shoulders on that oppressed group. Saying that the oppressed group (trans people) has a greater responsibility to the revolution to attack gender, even if it means that trans people who would transition live deeply unhappy lives. That the few hundred million trans people alive on Earth are both more responsible for the maintenance of the gender binary and more responsible for putting an end to the gender binary than the 6 billion+ cis people.
So when you say
you include “physical transition” among the infinite ways of being human, I’m right there with you.
Lisa Harney
June 11, 2009 at 10:32 am