Transphobic Tropes #1 – “Really” A Man/Woman
So, one of the more wearying things about being trans is having the same arguments over and over and over. The same tropes recur again and again. And again.
I’m going to start with the biggie – that trans people are“really” a [whatever gender you were assigned at birth.]
This is the belief that however we identify, whatever we do to our bodies, we will always really be the gender we were born as. It is irrelevant how trans people feel about ourselves, or how we look, or how we are received by the people in our lives.
You are, supposedly, one gender once and forever. It’s immutable, and whilst you can change the outside shell, you cannot change the inside.
This is, as those familiar with feminist and queer theories, an extremely essentialist viewpoint. Our genders are lies, falsity, deception. What matters is essence, which is apparently carried on chromosomes. Or something. It’s unclear, because it slips from biology to the social (the rad-fem argument about “shared girlhoods”), but it is, always, ultimately an ontological argument about gendered being.
It’s nevertheless tremendously effective, because it appeals to a cis-sexist biology (one that ignores the tremendous gender variation across nature … see Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution’s Rainbow for more on this) as a way of legitimating denying trans experience.
It denies us the capacity to grow, change, to self-define, to have agency of our bodies and our lives. It denies our identities.
More than that (as if that wasn’t enough), it is this notion, that we are “really” a different gender, that puts trans lives at risk.
For example, this case in Sydney in 2006, where a stealth trans woman was outed to her boyfriend by police.
“After being released from custody, he broke into Ms Fell’s unit, yelling: ‘You didn’t tell me you were actually a man – I’m going to smash you.’”
Because it “makes sense,” see, to an awful lot of cis people that transness is deception, that underneath is the “real” other gender.
This is why, when trans people are featured in the media, our “real” names and pre-transition photos are inevitably used at some point, as if to say, oh no, you are not the person you say you are.
Well, I am a woman, because I say I am. Because that’s how I feel. Because I live my life as a woman. Because I am seen, by those who aren’t blinded by the “really” a man argument, as a woman. There might be a biological basis to my transness, but it’s ultimately irrelevant to me.
I am really a woman, because I am really a woman.
And this ties into the use of involuntary outing as a threat or weapon. Trans people are often not out as trans, not because we’re trying to hide something, but because when people know we’re trans many tend to flip their shit or just treat us as subhuman.
Real ID’s going to cause serious problems for American trans people – as if “no match” letters from Social Security hadn’t already.
I can think of a few other cases where the “trans panic” defense was clearly a lie. Cases where a guy had repeatedly gone to a sex worker in the “trans” part of town or where someone had been in a relationship for months before the murder. It’s just ugly.
Lisa Harney
16 Jul 08 at 2:11 am
I felt a variant variant of this kind of transphobia in some feminist groups (and I don’t talk about the “you’re a man so you can’t go to woman-only space” which is a bit different), where I had the impression of being accepted as a woman… as long a I agreed, but that voicing a disagreement about something (in that case prostitution, which usually brings heated debates) caused “well, we can see you’re actually a man” kind of remarks.
Elly
16 Jul 08 at 3:40 am
Yeah, a trans person’s gender is instantly discreditable, and anything can discredit it, whether it’s not knowing about a specific accessory or using the wrong tone or having the wrong politics, we’re held to a standard that cis people are not.
It’s really infuriating. :(
Lisa Harney
16 Jul 08 at 3:51 am
Oh yeah.
And I think that “really” I talked about lurks behind that, because for a trans person to be atypical for their gender is “proof” of being *really* a [whatever]. Ie any butchness for a trans woman is taken to be her “real” masculinity showing through, rather than a specifically female form of masculinity.
Otoh, if you *are* gender normative, then you can always be accused of “trying too hard,” being tools of the Patriarchy etc.
So we’re continually placed in double binds that suggest our genders are illegitimate.
queenemily
16 Jul 08 at 4:36 am
And it comes from people who aren’t usually into gender stereotyping as well. One minute they’re saying “there are no male and female roles, only human roles” and the next they say “but liking babies is such a female thing to do”.
Nick Kiddle
16 Jul 08 at 7:16 am
Yup.
See also, “there’s no such thing as gender… you sound like such a MAN!”
queenemily
16 Jul 08 at 7:29 am
“What matters is essence, which is apparently carried on chromosomes. Or something. It’s unclear, because it slips from biology to the social (the rad-fem argument about “shared girlhoods”)”
Yeah, THAT. I always want to ask these people “which is it?”
And I’m still waiting for some kind of answer to “but what about the trans children who ARE raised as the gender they know themselves to be?” Usually when people aren’t struck silent, the answer is some sort of protest about delaying puberty as some sort of scientific tampering/”mutilation”… but aside from that, it seems to reduce the “shared girlhood” people to stammering, only to go back to barking “you need a GIRLHOOD to be like me!” again moments later.
Trin
16 Jul 08 at 7:54 am
Which always completely baffles me, because usually when these people describe their girlhoods to me, they’re not all that recognizable to me, and I’m not transsexual so supposedly I should grok the girlhood deal.
But… well. I can’t say I was never negatively impacted by sexism, or anything, but when they describe just *knowing* how people looked down on them for being a girl… well, my childhood was pretty different. The only limitation that bugged me was that I knew there was a difference between boys’ and girls’ bodies, and I wanted to know what it would feel like to do things with the other body, and was sad I’d never know.
I don’t know why it was never an EnormoDeal to me. Maybe where I grew up. Maybe something like Bem’s notion of “gender aschematicity,” and never really feeling like the fact that I was a girl meant anything. Maybe that I was androgynous enough that I sometimes got “he”‘d, and coasted through childhood on the precarious privilege given to the maybe- or almost-boy. I don’t know. I just know that people’s accounts of the way sexism fundamentally shaped their girlhoods don’t always resonate with me.
So… the shared girlhood stuff that seems to rest on how scared and hurt and vulnerable girls are, and the healing from girlhood’s old wounds… well, it doesn’t really resonate with me. I’d expect that many a trans woman had a much more angsty, butting-headfirst-into-patriarchy, girlhood than I did.
And that I could learn a lot from that.
Trin
16 Jul 08 at 8:02 am
“Yeah, a trans person’s gender is instantly discreditable, and anything can discredit it, whether it’s not knowing about a specific accessory or using the wrong tone or having the wrong politics, we’re held to a standard that cis people are not.”
Lisa,
I remember when I was very first meeting activists for trans rights, and listening to them and hearing what they had to say. One trans woman said something that has always stuck with me, talking about that whole “you said/did this, therefore your maleness is showing through” thing:
“Things that ciswomen are admired for (such as being strident with their opinions, not backing down, sticking to their guns) trans women are criticized for. For a ‘real woman’ to break through the social conditioning that keeps her quiet is awesome and makes her worth respecting and emulating; for me to do the same is merely proof that I ‘still’ act like the dominant class.”
Trin
16 Jul 08 at 8:07 am
Well I can beat that because I am, in fact, a man *and* a bitch.
A little while ago I got this message at a blog where I’ve been known to post sometimes:
The problem is that men are perceived as shouty and domineering. You have a very shouty and domineering person at [blog name]. Real women are not shouty and domineering. If women are shouty and domineering, then they are perceived as bitchy. So you have a bitch on board. Can someone pleeeees act with a little more decorum? Because I’m not seeing a woman, I’m seeing very man-like behavior. Excrutiatingly man-like. Look at the behavior, not the label. It’s a man!!
Man-bitch? Pfft…
Pass the cis privilege, please.
Helen G
16 Jul 08 at 8:39 am
“Otoh, if you *are* gender normative, then you can always be accused of “trying too hard,” being tools of the Patriarchy etc.”
I think this is globally true, but it also depends on the milieu (and maybe on how you are seen). I know that in a progressist group I also lived quite the opposite, where being tranny was so subversiiive that I got no negative remarks when wearing quite “feminine” stuff, which wasn’t the case of, e.g, a cisgender female friend.
This was quite weird by the way, they looked quite enthusiast at me being trans’, but not one of them made the effort to remember that I wanted to be called “she”. Probaby it is the “reaylly a man” thing again: I was a man, so wearing a dress and fishnet stockings was ok since it was “challenging” what a man would wear, but I couldn’t expect to be called “she”.
Elly
16 Jul 08 at 8:49 am
Elly: Yeah, I’ve noticed that “challenging” thing too, actually. As far as I can tell, that’s part of what’s going on when some people get all nutty about “butch flight” and the like, too. People (who are often not gender variant themselves) want gender variance out of other people because it gives them something to think is cool, or fits with their theories about how gender norms get chaaallenged, maaaan…
which is actually rather insulting to people who, whether they’re trans men OR the supposedly “challenging” butch women, may be far less interested in taking on the system than in feeling comfortable in their daily lives.
Trin
16 Jul 08 at 9:42 am
Guh, I hate that “really” stuff. It reminds me of the people who try to tell me I’m “really” Christian, I just don’t know it yet.
I think the expectation that ones basic nature (being trans, being gay, being whatever) “naturally” leads one to want to take on the system is ultimately a really harmful one. That the system must be taken on is very true, but that can destroy a person’s soul, I think, if it becomes the sum total of their self-identity due to that being emphasized by everyone. I remember Little Light mentioning in one of her posts a while back about the importance of tending to the soul and spirit in activism – that it’s so easy to get caught up in the ideas we think are important that we neglect the people, including ourselves (at least that was what I took from it).
One of my favorite shows had one of the characters saying they weren’t comfortable with soft sciences, and her best friend replying, “But people are mostly soft.” I think that also carries the idea that most people just want to live their lives, not be poster children for a given movement; that essential humanity.
Deoridhe
16 Jul 08 at 10:29 am
I hate that when the birth names are used. It is absolutely beyond disrespectful. They don’t call a heterosexual married woman by her maiden name unless it’s absolutely relevant, to give one example.
I also really can’t see why those cops in Sydney would out Brigitte Fell, except that they’re complete assholes. Maybe that’s just it. I remember when a good friend of mine who is trans met her husband for the first time. He really sparked to her. He was a friend of my Ex-Boy’s. Another friend of Ex-Boy’s said, after the two had been dancing and talking for a while, “Hey, you know she’s a dude, right?” His shins had to be bruised for weeks, because several of us kicked him hard to shut him up. But it really upset me that he felt the “warning” needed to be given. My friend has never been stealth; it’s just that she wanted the guy to know other things about her first! Thankfully he was more open-minded than Ex-Boy’s other friend.
GreenEyedLilo
16 Jul 08 at 11:10 am
Trin:
“I’d expect that many a trans woman had a much more angsty, butting-headfirst-into-patriarchy, girlhood than I did.”
At least some cis women, too, at least ones that I’ve talked to. Like you say, one’s experience of girlhood can’t possibly be universalized.
Speaking for myself, I did indeed have quite an angsty, butting-headfirst-into-patriarchy, girlhood. The details, I think, differ from those of many cis girls, in that the patriarchy — using the school system as its tool — tried to force me into boyhood and doing rigidly-defined boyhood things, and punished me severely for refusing to do so.
Also, having Asperger’s and being Jewish played into the oppression I experienced (one reason why I’m liking the word ‘kyriarchy’, lately). But I’m supposed to ignore those facets of my being in the sake of Universal Girl/Womanhood, and then I’m banned from said UG/W’hood.
gallinggalla
16 Jul 08 at 1:14 pm
Lilo: Had that dude said that to me, I would have spit in his face. G-d, that is just f-ing awful.
Yay for bruising of shins.
gallinggalla
16 Jul 08 at 1:15 pm
I’ve had some exchanges on this at the MWMF forum last year – pointing out that I had to deal with being punished constantly for being too feminine, and dealing with teachers, parents, and other students basically abusing me for not being enough of a boy, in addition to dealing with the fact that I soaked up the social signals aimed at girls while trying to hide inside the social signals aimed at boys, and was told point-blank that none of this was really oppressive because males can’t be oppressed.
I have trouble seeing my childhood as anything but a girlhood, and being abused for being too girly. I mean, I don’t know how often that happens to other girls, I really don’t, but it’s what happened to me.
Helen G, yes – exactly. I’ve received the same kind of lecturing elsewhere.
Trinity,
There’s a progression – radfems don’t want to accept trans women – but what about trans women who were raised as girls? What if you have a woman who was raised as a boy – forced to live as a boy? What if you have a woman who was not only raised as a boy, but was forced to undergo testosterone treatments to get a deeper voice, facial, hair, etc. Would these people be acceptable?
I hate to focus just on the trans women who transition before puberty because even if they say “They might be okay” you’ll still get “But those who transition as adults are men forever and always.” There’s always the arguments now that those who transition late in life do so out of a sinister desire to benefit from male privilege as much as possible beforehand, so as to be wealthy with an awesome education or whatever.
Lisa Harney
16 Jul 08 at 6:31 pm
Also, Lilo, there’s a whole subset of this transphobic trope (I think, Em might handle it separately) where so-called friends think its up to them to out you to everyone against your will.
I’ve rarely been stealth to friends because of this. I mean, I never chose not to be stealth, but friends who knew chose for me.
Lisa Harney
16 Jul 08 at 6:33 pm
“I hate to focus just on the trans women who transition before puberty because even if they say “They might be okay” you’ll still get “But those who transition as adults are men forever and always.””
Yeah, very true. As if women’s lives were “well, I’ll just get all this money from my cushy job, and then become me when I retire.”
Just makes me want to ask, well, how many cis women they know who’d be willing to live as a man for years and years *just* to get those jobs or that money. Yeah, there have always been women who posed as men to get ahead in sexist societies, but really, the idea that women can want to take on and off male privilege, and that when they transition is proof of this makes me want to go “Uh, and exactly how many years did you spend binding your breasts to get the really cushy promotions?”
Trin
16 Jul 08 at 8:32 pm
True. Of course, you have people like Heart who will make full-blown declarations that trans women are privileged over cis women and that society treats us better – or at least, not worse than cis women. She also says that trans men don’t really ever experience or benefit from male privilege.
It was in that Robin Morgan post, the one that slyly implied that little light wasn’t giving proper credit.
Lisa Harney
16 Jul 08 at 9:11 pm
I may not have had a typical boyhood, but I definitely didn’t have a girlhood.
My parents were fine with me being a bookworm “tomboy”. I got books and science kits for gifts; a few relatives gave me china dolls and pink sweaters, but we just took them back or stuck them in a drawer (and, magically, my mom would suggest a trip to the bookstore).
Like many boys, I leaned to disassociate and/or hide/ignore my emotions though. Not just from internalizing the “boys don’t cry” meme, but from the teasing (which was “caused” by being smart/pedantic and having a speech problem).
I look at the radfem accounts of a girlhood and I never experienced any of it. I was never made to feel bad or inferior because I was assigned female. Yeah, I was picked on and made to feel inferior a lot as a child. But it was very directly from first my issues with pronouncing practically every human sound (r, k, wh, and g are a few of the sounds I was completely unable to make) and later because I was smarter than them and not afraid to show it (the smart male-assigned kids were also treated just as bad). I was teased for other stuff to, but again none of it was gendered.
I hate it when folks out me. >.<
One friendly acquaintance felt the need to explain me to his parents (who I’ve never met). And one former friend (turned out to be a rapist asshole) outed me to everyone. For instance, I was down in the game room and an almost complete stranger comes over and starts asking me about whether I’d had hormones and surgery–turns out he’s actually a really sweet gay gamer, but I didn’t know that then.
Once the former friend introduced me and the rest of our friends to his date by our orientations and, in my case, trans*-status. “that’s drakyn, he’s a gay tranny, thats his boyfriend and he’s bi…”
And there were people that he outed me to who were dangerous–another one of his friends was an abusive date-rapist too.
And later he went around telling folks I wasn’t really a guy, that I was just trying to get attention and/or crazy.
He’s one reason I was stealth at the grocery store I worked at. It was wonderful being seen as just another guy by my coworkers. With my friends, it took awhile for me to trust that they see me as a guy. But with my coworkers, I didn’t have to trust them or anything but they still saw me as a guy.
drakyn
16 Jul 08 at 10:14 pm
Helen, I sound like a man now too! :P Ohhh, I thought you meant the octaves.
Off topic, menopausal observation: Jaclyn Smith on SHEAR GENIUS has a really low voice now.
Daisy
17 Jul 08 at 4:58 am
It doesn’t surprise me that outing by “friends” is a subset of this. I’d like to see that entry.
Drakyn, I can see where that would have been a really liberating experience for you.
GreenEyedLilo
17 Jul 08 at 8:17 am
I think there’s another interesting subset of “real” woman/man-ness within the trans community itself in regards to transitional status and intent to transition, and even post-transition the behaviors and bodily choices made. The community/blogosphere that I end up in a lot assumes that if you’re not transitioning, you’re not trans enough. Being non-op seems to be somewhat generally regarded as a step to being pre-op, and not an actual option for trans identity.
Also, with Thomas Beatie, I saw a lot of queer/trans comments that even if he identified as a man, he was betraying the queer/trans community by choosing to give birth and go public about it. I say queer/trans specifically because the spaces were mostly queer non-trans folks saying things about the trans community, but trans folks were chiming in with this too.
quiteneil
19 Jul 08 at 11:27 am
Oh, and also I’d like to say that I’m really excited about this transphobic tropes series!
quiteneil
19 Jul 08 at 11:27 am
quiteneil: Being non-op seems to be somewhat generally regarded as a step to being pre-op, and not an actual option for trans identity.
I’ve heard this called ‘trans snobbery’, I’ve seen it entirely too often for comfort and I really have no time for it. Transsexuality is not a status symbol and transitioning is not a competition. I did what I needed to do to survive; in my case that included surgery to help reduce my gender dissonance to something much more manageable – but that’s what was (is) right for me and i wouldn’t dream of judging others by it, or stating that it’s The One True Way. By my reckoning, that would be as dangerous as it would be naive and foolish.
Also, with Thomas Beatie, I saw a lot of queer/trans comments that even if he identified as a man, he was betraying the queer/trans community by choosing to give birth and go public about it.
I beg to differ with the queer/trans community, then (we have a community, now? ^_^). Thomas Beatie didn’t ‘betray’ anybody, what a daft thing to say – he also did what he needed to do, and good for him. If anything, I was disappointed that society in the wider sense chose not to take the opportunity to discuss – for example – the difficulty the media had with the idea of a pregnant man, and the scare tactics used reporting the pregnancy – and, indeed, attitudes to pregnancy generally.
And agreed – Queen Em and Lisa are providing a valuable community service with these tropey gems. Definitely a worthy venture, and thank you both!
Helen G
21 Jul 08 at 12:31 am
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‘Also, with Thomas Beatie, I saw a lot of queer/trans comments that even if he identified as a man, he was betraying the queer/trans community by choosing to give birth and go public about it.’
The thing is, he exposed the fact that in some locations, a trans man can get his birth certificate changed without being sterilized (clearly) or having genital reconstruction. Non trans people are often really clueless about which documents contain legal gender and how to go about changing them. It seems likely that exposing the fact that not all transsexual people have genital reconstruction and/or get sterilized would cause an outcry to make those rules stricter, and not more lenient. And among other things, that sets up a system where you can buy your legal gender changes, but only if you can afford them. And genital reconstruction options especially for trans men are by some considered unacceptable for their pricetag.
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