Transphobic Tropes #3 – “Reifying Gender”
Moving on steadily. Hope you’re all enjoying these posts, though it feels a bit weird to not have an accompanying rabbit picture. Here’s another one that gets regular thrown at trans people, particularly by radical feminists.
Basically, it’s the notion that, by medically transitioning, we reify gender—which is something that feminism is supposed to be destroying.
This is a particularly stupid line of argument, that it nevertheless has had enough traction to convince enough people it’s worthy of repeating. And repeating. Usually, it’s tied to an argument that trans people have the most retrogressive of personal presentations.
So, reify.
From dictionary.com
1. to convert into or regard as a concrete thing: to reify a concept.
2. To regard or treat (an abstraction) as if it had concrete or material existence.
Ok, got that? Trans people (and ONLY trans people) treat an abstract concept—gender—as though it were real. This was an idea promoted, for instance, in Lacanian psychoanalyst Catherine Millot’s Horsexe, where she says:
“The male [sic] transsexual, who claims to have a woman’s soul in a man’s body, and who often demands correction of this ‘error’ through surgery, is perhaps the only believer in a monolithic sexual identity free of doubts and questions”
Those poor dupes, they actually believe in gender.
Everybody else presumably, particularly any kind of cis feminist, has a suitably ironic take on gender. Which is why you’d fight so hard to stop people from changing it. Cos it doesn’t exist. Except it kinda does, enough for you to deny mine.
Generally, my response to the reifying trope is, of course, “as opposed to practically everybody else?”
Why is this critique not applied more strongly to gender normative straight people, or Lacanian academics or crunchy radical feminists for that matter, all of whom gain more and risk less from their gender presentations?
Trans people who identify as male or female do reify categories of gender, in so far as we fit one category or another.
However, depending on our appearance, we do not necessarily fit easily in them, and even if we do, we can be instantly removed from said category as soon as we’re outed. Suddenly, we’re de-gendered, “really” a man or woman.
I mean, it’s all so fracking seamless, like suddenly every Patriarchy-loving person around us goes “phew, they’re not gender non-normative, they’re actually the other gender. And that reconfirms the binary.” Seriously, what? People, liberal feminist people, got really really mad at me transitioning when they were ok with gender non-normativity.
And remember the legal problems I pointed to with transitioning—the law treats gender as though it were real, and guess what? We often have a precarious legal standing. Who’s reifying what, exactly?
Cis people reify gender categories even more strongly. Because, beginning in a category, and not only staying in it but actively defending its boundaries against trans people is fucking reifying it.
I mean, you’re treating the abstract concept of gender as real, as something worth defending against intrusion or defection (ie the “butch flight” idea).
Tell me again how if you draw a boundary against transitioning or even genderqueer states you’re not reifying a category yourself? You’re strengthening the category boundaries. There’s nothing very unusual about that, but it’s patently ludicrous that this critique be only and ever applied to trans* people.
Trans people who transition break the notion that gender is a once-and-forever deal, and this problematises gender categories–and through what grounds they might be constructed–far more than any radical feminist throwing-off-the-shackles-of-Patriarchy dissension.
And that doesn’t mean that our genders are somehow less real than cis genders, because even if you hold to some social constructivist position (which is where this idea stems from), a construct still exists. It’s not something that only those poor deluded trans people believe in.
Yes, many of us identify as a gender, and modify our bodies to fit that. So what? If that reifies gender, then cis people reify it more.
On this topic: I’m always mystified that trans people supposedly reify gender, but feminists of a certain stripe tend to be the ones who want separate spaces for women.
I mean, wouldn’t it make sense if they said “spaces for the sort of people that get oppressed with this fake category that needs to not exist, because we’re all healing?”
Or rejected the spaces entirely because gender needs to be smashed/uprooted?
It’s weird to me. “Woman” has to be nothing but a marker someone else gave you, and not only that but a marker that makes you less-than… but then you have to rabidly defend that you’ve been given that marker, because it’s precious and no one should take it away.
I can’t make sense of that. It just makes my mind go ow.
And the thing is… they’re so keen on the idea that “woman” means NOTHING BUT “second-class citizen under patriarchy.” Well, if it does mean that, why call yourself “woman?” Isn’t that kind of… a slur at yourself, if ALL it means is that the social system considers you of lesser worth?
But instead they celebrate their womanhood on the one hand and claim gender needs abolishing on the other. Whaaaaaaat?
Trin
21 Jul 08 at 7:40 am
This is one of the easiest to debunk yet most entrenched fallacies about trans people, coming from cis people. I have various ways of thinking about this myself–but really, non trans people have plenty of gender too, and they benefit from cissexualist privilege (being ‘x’ assigned and ‘x’ identified). So, yeah, really who exactly is reifying gender?
on the other hand, i don’t see anything wrong with “gender”–just the coercive, punitive way it is enforced in society. I can imagine a world where this wouldn’t be so, and it wouldn’t come from destroying gender.
another thought is that many trans people, if they ‘medically transition’ or not, don’t particularly identify themselves within binary gender anyway.
jayinchicago
21 Jul 08 at 8:35 am
Something else I want to say is that I am no more male gendered (or subconscious sexed) now than I was prior to my medical and social transition.
jayinchicago
21 Jul 08 at 8:42 am
Jay: Yeah. It’s very rare* that I see radical feminists living their lives in such a way that they make a serious commitment not to reify gender. Some dress more androgynously than feminine women do, but I sure don’t see them voluntarily making themselves so gender-ambiguous that they invite “What the fuck is that?” comments, violence for being clearly gender variant, etc. And I sure don’t see people responding to the pronoun “she” with “gender is a false binary that needs to be done away with.” One would think there’d be a LOT more radical feminists who insist on being pronouned as “ze” if they really were interested in not reifying gender.
*where by “very rare” I mean I’ve never seen it at all
Trin
21 Jul 08 at 9:58 am
“on the other hand, i don’t see anything wrong with “gender”–just the coercive, punitive way it is enforced in society. I can imagine a world where this wouldn’t be so, and it wouldn’t come from destroying gender.”
also, yes, THIS.
Trin
21 Jul 08 at 9:59 am
So, yes, Certain Radical Feminists, if you are so committed to destroying the gender binary, then LIVE TO YOUR COMMITMENT, dammit!
GallingGalla
21 Jul 08 at 10:08 am
Who was it on some radfem blog that said we were reifying gender by changing our names to something that fitted better? I was like “OK, I’m going to arbitrarily rename you ‘Fred’ and if you complain, you’re reifying gender.”
And wanting to have an M on my driving licence, that was another one. I’d be happy to have no letter at all, so it looks like it’s the DVLA that’s reifying gender in this instance.
Nick Kiddle
21 Jul 08 at 12:05 pm
I think it was Polly who said that the only real reason we change our names and/or gender markers is to reify gender; and that safety and attempting to avoid discrimination weren’t valid reasons…
drakyn
21 Jul 08 at 4:21 pm
I also don’t see a problem inherent in gender.
I see problems with linking gender identity with values, hierarchies, specific roles, specific attributes, etc., but I don’t think that gender identity has to be linked to these. I think that eventually we can disconnect gender identity from hierarchies and gender/sex roles and this rigid binary.
drakyn
21 Jul 08 at 4:24 pm
Lisa, I found something that might interest you, check your email. (((kisses)))
daisydeadhead
22 Jul 08 at 1:46 pm
I love you, Daisy! (((kisses back)))
I think “reifying gender” is a pointless complaint, and as Em points out, one that is unfairly and almost exclusively aimed at trans people. We’re held to standards of gender that no one else must meet – and if we meet them too well, we’re bad. If we don’t meet them well enough, we’re bad. It’s a minefield of double-binds.
But, I categorically reject anyone who accuses trans people of reifying the gender binary who also identifies as a man or a woman. Who uses gendered terms to describe anyone or anything (like gay men and lesbian women, or even gendered pronouns). Who has a feminine or masculine presentation. If you do those things, you’re already complicit in what you’re accusing trans people of. Get over it. Spank your inner moppet. Do whatever you have to do to get over people having a gender presentation.
Lisa Harney
22 Jul 08 at 3:47 pm
oh yes… yes, yes, yes!
here because you were one of the only sane voices in that spiralling blame-fest over at Twisty’s, and i’m glad i clicked through. in digging about the interwebs trying to educate myself on being a good trans ally, i stumbled across mAndrea’s transphobic screed, and spent the whole time thinking, “Gosh, this sounds all wrong, and not terribly feminist to boot, but i can’t put my finger on it.” what luck, finding you later in the same day.
“I think it was Polly who said that the only real reason we change our names and/or gender markers is to reify gender; and that safety and attempting to avoid discrimination weren’t valid reasons…”
yeuch – and THEN claim total blindness to cisgendered privilege. huh?
silver
22 Jul 08 at 9:11 pm
While I understand that in some cases those kind of criticisms can “hide” transphobia, I think this post is centered around a certain kind of critics from a certain kind of feminists, and I don’t think that it should be generalised that saying “transitioning is reifying gender” is necessarily transphobic.
E.g, you say:
“Because, beginning in a category, and not only staying in it but actively defending its boundaries against trans people is fucking reifying it.”
Personally, I had some heated yet interesting discussions with feminists who were critical of “transgender” but did absolutely not “defend gender boundaries”, eg., one explained to me that i was somehow indeed “reifying gender” because I already was a woman and hormones and SRS would not make me more, that she understood why I needed to do it but that ideally, I should avoid it.
I mean, I don’t really agree, but if that is transphobic, well, let’s say that it’s the kind of transphobia I can handle.
Elly Rouge
23 Jul 08 at 2:51 am
Well, to be honest, a vast majority of trans women are exactly like that. You’re not going to tell me that the phrase “woman trapped in a man’s body” was invented by the radfems? In fact, if you want to talk essentialism, I’ve yet to see a trans person explain their condition (which they shouldn’t have to) without resorting to some degree of monolithic “gender-doesn’t-change” kind of argument- usually a quite large degree. “I was born this way” is what it all, in the end, boils down to. Vide the herculian push to accept the scant scientific evidence for a hardwired gendered brain as a done deal, by most transsexuals on the internet, whether they are affiliated with a certain group or not. Most transwomen seem to realy, really want to find proof that their transition was not a choice, but a biological imperative, imposed on them by nature, before birth even.
And then, there’s the matter of teh Operation. They call it a “Sex Reassignment Surgery” and that’s what most people who have it, have it for. To most transwomen, srs is “surgery to make you a woman”, or “correct a mistake”. The mistake being that a woman was born with a penis- horror of horrors! In the world of rigid sex and gender, men are born with penises, women are born with vaginas. Anything else is an abomination, worthy to sacrifice one’s sexual and reproductive health to the blades of the patriarchy in order to “correct” it.
If you really listen, the transsexual narrative is by and large that of a “feminine essence”. The average transwoman, doesn’t seem to know the difference between sexed bodies, and gender roles. Male, female, man and woman are two things, to her, not four. And many, too many! transwomen, believe that their bodies are female because their gender is woman, and that neither can be really changed, only “corrected”. But of course, that’s our favourite shiboleth: internalised transphobia, isn’t it? Trans people can’t really exist, shouldn’t exist, only men and women can and should, and everything else must be treated by specialised doctors. Tsk. Transgendered body? What transgendered body? We neuter the transgendered body- just in case it reproduces and spawns more freaks like itself! Pew!
So, uh-huh. We do reify gender. We deify it. I don’t even see why that’s an actual accusation (except that you’re all reacting to it as if it was, so the radfems keep hitting you with it as if it was). Most people do exactly the same, like you say. That should be enough of an argument: there’s no reason to do without binary gender. No matter what feminist theory says, gender fits most people fine. It’s the theory that needs changing, in this case. Not the people who suffer from it.
Stassa
23 Jul 08 at 7:38 pm
That’s actually a more relevant quote to my point, sorry. :/
Stassa
23 Jul 08 at 7:43 pm
Did the “woman in a man’s body” come from trans people, though, or did it come from doctors? A lot of the essentialism seems to come from doctors refusing to treat trans people who don’t experience and describe their gender in a way the doctors approve of, so we end up with a choice between an essentialist charade and denial of necessary treatment. And then, to add insult to injury, radfems and other critics use the way we were blackmailed into acting as proof that it’s really all about stereotypes and shallow understanding of gender.
Nick Kiddle
24 Jul 08 at 8:51 am
“A woman trapped in a man’s body” doesn’t really strike me as a medical term. I don’t claim to know where it originated (and I’d like to know), but I don’t think it’s one of the doctors who coined it. In any case, the doctors don’t really think we’re women (or men), they think we’re delusional. So they wouldn’t use such a term, that may be construed as a qualification of our chosen gender, right? And in fact, they don’t- srs is supposed to be a treatment for “gender dysphoria”, which is “a feeling of being in the wrong body for one’s own gender”. Not “surgery to correct your anatomical sex to match your real gender” or whatever we ourselves may say.
And I don’t agree we were blackmailed into accepting the essentialist fallacy. It takes two to tango. At some point, enough trans “patients” told their doctors that they hated their bodies because they didn’t match their identities for the doctors to pretend to believe it and enshrine it in “gender identity disorder”, “gender dysphoria” and all that bull. That’s not the doctors fault- it’s the patients own.
But like I’ve said elsewhere, why would a woman hate having a man’s body? Why would there be dissonance and incompatibility? It’s this feminine essence narrative again, whereby you need a “feminine hardware” to run the “feminine software” or the system crashes and you have malfunction, malfunction, abort, abort.
Stassa
24 Jul 08 at 12:37 pm
On the contrary, Stassa, the doctors held all the keys and guarded all the doors. You had to tell the doctors what they expected to hear or you’d be rejected. For many trans people, transition is a matter of life or death.
This wasn’t a relationship where both sides had equal power. One side had a raft of assumptions and prejudices about what men and women should be like, what the transsexual narrative should be, and had the power to deny hormones and surgery. The other side needed the hormones and surgery. In that situation, “it takes two to tango” is not just wrong, it’s downright offensive.
Lisa Harney
24 Jul 08 at 3:15 pm
Stassa, why don’t you *ask* some trans people why they are transitioning, instead of *assuming* that we’re all “women/men trapped in men’s/women’s bodies”?
Because I’m not trapped in any goddamned thing. This is my body, I like it, I want to make it better, and I’m choosing to take hormones to do that. My body has *always* been a female body, even if everybody else, in their confusion, saw my body as male.
Read this.
Jeez, I hate it when trans* people throw transphobic tropes at trans* people.
gallinggalla
24 Jul 08 at 5:29 pm
Jeez I munged the link.
Read this.
gallinggalla
24 Jul 08 at 5:32 pm
Well, it’s kind of like blaming trans people for the SOC and DSM definitions not being under our control.
That is, victim blaming.
Lisa Harney
24 Jul 08 at 6:32 pm
Exactly lisa and GG. i was reading the History of How Sex Changed and trans*folk had to beg and plead doctors to help them.
Eventually, some found that certain narratives got them better results and they communicated this through magazines, letters, etc (until the internet).
But a lot of early trans*people learned about medical transition by combing through medical journals and things like that. Those journals of course presented what the doctors saw as worthy of being helped, so of course those trans*folks said what they knew the doctors wanted to hear.
The only trans*folk that were able to speak out about transitioning and being trans*, were those with the narrative the doctors wanted. So when trans*folk could find books about them, they were again presented with The Trans Narrative.
Anyone who spoke out was denied medical transition. Which for some of us, IS a death sentence. Personally, social transition is more of a stopgap measure until I can start medical transition. Though “trapped in the wrong body” does not describe my feelings, I can understand how someone could describe it that way to ignorant cis*folk.
There was no language to describe our feelings. Trans*folk had to create this language and a lot of the early language was clunky and somewhat incorrect. As feminist, queer, and trans* theories and activism evolved so did our language.
drakyn
24 Jul 08 at 8:53 pm
Try to convince some non trans, male-identified men to have surgery to get vaginas and vulvas. Convince them to have boob jobs. *then* we can talk about this “body stuff” from a level playing field.
I honestly don’t give a damn if I am “reifying gender” or not–but the vast majority of people whose bodies and gender identities match in the cissexual way certainly are not off the hook for this either, are they? they claim to be born that way too–should we criticize their “narrative” for their cissexualism?
jesus, this stuff is not that hard to understand.
jayinchicago
25 Jul 08 at 11:55 am
Good post there – so true.
Certain individuals who hide behind ‘radical feminist’ as an excuse for their bullying personalities are behaving like power-crazed, empire-builders who are so arrogantly in love with themselves and their narrow-minded theories that they think they everyone else should bow and scrape to their idealized, new world order. Of course, everything will be perfect when they get rid of the wretched ‘patriarchy’ and supplant it with their new, radical, pure as pure regime, won’t it? So many happy, smiling, sunny faces I see before me – because they all know what’s good for us, don’t they?
Well…reality check…it’s never gonna work! And you know why? They’re trying to obliterate trans people’s identities and, worse than that, are trying to replace our identity and community with the one that they are insisting that we should have. That’s one of the main reasons they remind me of brutal tyrants who try and destroy and totally obliterate the national identities of the people in the countries that they invade.
Have I got news for you, trans-smashers – it ain’t gonna work. From what I can see, people don’t like it when you try to destroy and erase their identity – whether collective or individual, and…they resent it even more when you try to impose one upon them that you decide is appropriate for them. Taking away a person’s identity and their friends, loved ones is probably the worst thing you can do to someone – and that’s exactly what certain pretend-freminists are trying to do here.
I’ve got one good thing to say about them, however. Who said bigots are un-imaginative as these ones have a talent for being exceedingly paranoid!
HelloKatty
26 Jul 08 at 12:39 pm
P.S.
Q. What’s the difference between a trans-hating radfem and a male chauvinist bigot?
A. A degree in Gender Studies?
HelloKatty
26 Jul 08 at 12:47 pm
Stassa, I keep thinking about what you’ve said, but I can’t make it square with my own experiences. See, I’m pretty cool with my body, apart from the whole estrogen messing with my head thing, but the one thing that drags me down is the fact that the body I have gets me misgendered. But if I want to live in the world as a man, I have to convince doctors to give me various things, starting with a letter saying “yup, Nick is a dude”. I don’t think trans people planned this state of affairs; I think it comes from the general assumption that transition is a scary thing that must be controlled and kept in place, and some professional has to give the OK before anyone gets to change their gender marker.
So the doctors have power. They get to say “yes Nick, here’s a letter saying you may change your gender marker” or “go away and live as a woman”, according to whatever half-baked ideas they have about gender. I already got told I was just confused about my sexuality because real trans men want to sleep with women, and I have this recurring nightmare where I’m honest enough about my relationship with my body that the doctors say “no, you aren’t suicidally dysphoric enough, go away and live as a woman”.
Nick Kiddle
27 Jul 08 at 4:59 pm
Lisa, your description is incomplete: “the other side” (who needed the hormones) also had “a raft of assumptions and prejudices about what men and women should be like”- the same ones as their doctors in fact, which is why they asked the doctors to change their bodies to fit societal expectations of male and female. That has led to the concept of transsexuality as an “abnormal” personality type, a “disorder” where the sex/gender combination in transpeople is “wrong” and needs “correction”. And sure, transpeople have played the biggest part in that. Don’t buy snake oil and there will not be no snake oil salesmen.
That argument, that “we were forced to lie to transition” only holds any water in those countries in the world where there is organised medical treatment of transsexuality: a few countries in Europe and the commonwealth (and Iran, apparently). In most of the rest of the world, trans people do not, as a rule, approach a doctor to begin transition. I believe the same is true for a large number of American women of colour. There are positive and negative results of that, but the fact is, those women don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to become women. They don’t have to construct a narrative that corroborates their societies concepts of gender and sex and the limits of what is healthy and what is pathological to justify their transitions- like western transpeople are “forced” to do. And yet, they transition just fine. I doubt there’s any use offending anyone, I understand this is a matter that causes some consternation, but I can’t accept “I was forced to sell out because I just had to reap the rewards” as an excuse for anything.
Galling Gala:
I’ve asked many, many trans people that question, or I’ve read their accounts where they try to explain it anyway. From my experience, yes, a vast majority do believe exactly that, though they’ve come up with much more elaborate turns of phrase, over the years- “my brain has a female body map which is at odds with my body’s male development”, stuff like that.
I’d like to ask, how has your body always been “female”? I’d appreciate a honest answer- I believe that the only reason you would make such a statement, is if you could not accept that a male-bodied person can be legitimately female-identified. But I’d like to hear what you have to say.
As for the accusation of transphobia, I am proud to be trans, I love my beautiful transgendered body, and I can’t see how it can be made any “better” with hormones or surgery or whatever. Prettier, more fuckable, maybe- but, better? I’m trans and that’s OK, I don’t need any corrections or cures. Now tell me- where am I being transphobic?
Oh. And I ain’t nobody’s sideshow freak. So not a monster, really. Sorry.
Nick:
Yeah, I know- the doctors have power. It’s the power you give to them and sorry for sounding so awfully Che Guevara, but it’s the truth. See what I say above, about people in other places than the States or the UK transitioning without getting any diagnoses from doctors. That’s how I did it- in fact, before I got on the net and read about “GID” and “Gender Dysphoria” and “GICs” and stuff, it had never even crossed my mind that I needed to see a doctor for anything, except for surgery (can’t well do that on my own).
Of course that causes other problems- for example, I was told to get crazy high doses of hormones by an older transwoman, who wanted to get back at me for being thirty years her younger. So I agree that we do need care- what we don’t need is treatment. I don’t see enough transpeople asking for it though. I see plenty asking for corrections and cures, and being upset about who’s on the DSM-V commitee on GID. They should be being upset that there is such a thing as GID and a commitee to define it in the first place.
Stassa
28 Jul 08 at 2:00 am
Sorry, got more to say.
Nick, I’m reading what you said again. I hear you and I can’t blame you for doing what you have to, but this is not a case of goose and egg. Someone started the whole body hate thing, and it can’t have been the doctors: they were just reporting what their patients where saying, they didn’t make all that “gender dysphoria” crap up. But the patients sure did. I understand that, back in the day of Harry Benjamin, you had to come up with something or the doctors would simply assume you were crazy. But of course, they still do to this day. And nowadays, there’s plenty of trans activists around and a lot more visibility for LGBT people, and a lot more understanding of the issues. There’s the modern concepts of human rights that make it crystal clear that gender identity and sexuality are not medical issues, but personality characteristics that everyone must be free to chose for themselves.
So, today there’s no excuse for sticking with the gender dysphoria story. We can actively claim our freedom to chose to be however the hell we want to be. That the doctors need to help with care, so that we don’t hurt ourselves with hormones and knives, that’s another thing altogether. We are entitled (like everyone) to the highest possible standard of medical care, so doctors can assist us with our choices, to assure a good quality of life- but that’s as far as they can be allowed to go. And yet, like I said above: nobody every says those things, not loud enough. Nobody complains that gender identity issues are still in the medical books, while sexuality is out. Nobody seems to mind that we’re branded “disordered”. So, even if there was less complicity by transpeople in the past, today there’s noone else to blame but ourselves if we have to lie and weasel ourselves through the hoops: it’s our fault and it’s getting worse all the time.
Also, you don’t hate your body and I don’t hate mine. But how many transpeople have you met who love theirs? How many say they hate it, because they think they have to? I think we have repeated that mantra, that we hate our bodies, for so long that we’ve come to really believe it. There’s too much self-hate and pitty in transpeople and too little pride and I don’t see how’s it gonna change if we keep defending the gender dysphoric narrative- whomever it was that first spun it. We gotta stop spinning.
Stassa
28 Jul 08 at 2:51 am
OK, correction: the doctors did make “gender dysphoria” up- but the raw materials, the self-hate and suffering for being born in the “wrong body” came from the patients.
Stassa
28 Jul 08 at 2:55 am
I agree with you Stassa, but I would not “blame” trans people who are happy to be considered as mentally ill and consider that e.g. surgery is absolutely totally indispensable to be a woman; mostly because maybe I would think the same thing if I had not met the right people when I was asking myself questions.
I think it is really important that LGBTI groups make a stand against psychiatrization, not only because one day maybe DSM will change that, but also to show to show another vision of “transness” than the dominant vision. (And I don’t know for other countries, but I was happy that last year there was, the same week-end, marches with some hundreds of activists in Paris, Madrid and Barcelone for de-psychiatrization; and I hope it will be more extended this year)
Oh, and about body hating. I personally do hate my body. I know that this is some kind of internalised transphobia and so on and I try to work on it, but it is difficult.There are some places (i.e., some LGBTI events) which helped me a lot (where you are not judged, where you can see different kind of bodies, etc.) but there is not enough and there is still a long way to go :/
Elly
28 Jul 08 at 6:22 am
Stassa, it is transphobic to say that all or most trans*folk medically transition because of self-hate, psychiatrization, because we can’t be a man with a female body, we want to be prettier/better/fuckable, etc.
There are internal reasons for some of us needing to medically transition.
For me, knowing that I need a male-assigned body came long before realizing I’m a man. I know and accept that there are women with male-assigned bodies and men with female-assigned bodies, but that doesn’t mean I personally don’t need to medically transition.
I do not hate my body, but that doesn’t get rid of the body dissonance.
I am not “trapped in the wrong body”, but my body did develop wrong according to some deep part of my self.
There is a difference and it is more than just semantics.
No, I don’t hate my body most of the time and I certainly love it some of the time. But it’s like theres a high pitched whining in the background of a song; I can ignore it, but theres this constant annoying and painful feeling that gets in the way of my enjoyment of the song. The song itself may be beautiful and lovely and wonderful, but that whining sometimes ruins any enjoyment. And it doesn’t help when you tell me to ignore that whining or that the whining isn’t there because you don’t hear it; I still hear it and it still mars the song for me. You’re welcome to enjoy the song, but I’m going to use a program to go in and remove the offending whine so that I can enjoy completely.
And if we want to medically transition safely, here in the US and some other countries, we need a doctor to do bloodwork and to prescribe the hormones and perform surgeries. (you trans*women can easily order anti-androgens and estrogens online, but T is a controlled substance)
Moreover, many of us need doctors’ notes to legally transition. Here in the US, those little M/F gender markers on our various IDs control and play a large part of our lives. We can’t get a job if we are a woman with an M. We may not be able to fly, or we may ‘just’ have to submit to extensive questioning and searches if we are a man with an F.
getting pulled over by the police, renting an apartment, getting into a bar, signing up for college classes, and buying certain cough syrups are other things in which that little M or F may play a huge part in.
drakyn
28 Jul 08 at 1:59 pm
There’s too much victim-blaming in your posts, Stassa. When you have two groups of people – one group who needs something and the other group that has the power to grant it, the power dynamics are unequal. When the group who needs tends to fall into depression and attempt suicide at a very high rate when they don’t get it, and the group who has it has narrow definitions of who gets it, people will do what they have to for survival.
And yes, it is a matter of survival for many people. It was then, it is now. Your statements about how it’s different in the rest of the world is a red herring – first, it did go down this way in the US, Canada, and almost certainly parts of Europe. Second, even in countries where it’s easier to transition, trans people are typically seen as less-than everyone else. In some places where transition is easier, legal recognition as a member of your new sex is nearly impossible to arrange. Or Iran, where I believe legal recognition is available, but the anti-trans prejudice runs deep enough that I’ve read statements by at least one Iranian trans woman that she fears for her life.
This simplistic “US BAD, EVERYWHERE ELSE GOOD” argument you’re making isn’t helping – it’s just confusing the basic issue, which is that you’re saying trans people are responsible for our own oppression, that those men and women who jumped through the hoops the doctors put up in order to transition were sell outs, and that if only they’d held their ground…what? They’d continue living in their own personal hells in protest that the doctors wouldn’t let them out of that hell without the right stories? That if they’d tried to stand their ground and said “I will assert my womanhood, but not within your narrow sexist definition” that it would have made a difference?
Just how do you propose that people who largely don’t have any power in this regard in the immediate sense, who are living in a state of personal emergency, exert power to change things for everyone? Haven’t some of the trans people who did transition under those conditions try to get things changed later?
You need quotes?
Emphasis mine. Never mind the complaint that trans people who aren’t on your page are “self-pitying” and have “too little pride.” Yeah, those aren’t insulting in the least…
Do you want me to dig up your quotes from the DSM-V thread as well? You had some good trans-blaming in there, too.
Lisa Harney
29 Jul 08 at 3:45 pm
I think we need to separate the collective from the individual.
Individually, I totally understand the need from people to “get accepted”, even if that needs surgery which you don’t really want (and I don’t say it is always the case, but there is some real pressure to have surgery and hormones once you’re a trans person), even if that means not being seen as a trans anymore.
Collectively, I think it is not a good strategy. We need visibility, and we can’t get it if trans’ people are not seen as or even claim they are not trans. That does not mean blaming people who go this way, but collectively work to get more trust, more pride, more courage to be able to be visible.
To make a maybe bad comparison with rape, of course it would be stupid and wrong to blame a victim because she didn’t defend herself. But it is another thing to collectively learn to defend ourselves.
And as for the doctors, I personally have absolutely NO problem when trans people tell what the doctors need to hear, and I did. The problem is when they believe it. And one more time, it is not a question of blaming them, but allowing them to receive another vision than the mediatic/psychiatric one.
Elly Rouge
29 Jul 08 at 4:48 pm
Stassa, I don’t have to justify my existence to you, not when you are questioning my legitimacy, demanding that I “prove” that I always had a female body when you don’t bother to even understand what the f*ck I mean by that, and damned near accuse me of lying.
F*ck off.
gallinggalla
29 Jul 08 at 6:27 pm
“So, today there’s no excuse for sticking with the gender dysphoria story. We can actively claim our freedom to chose to be however the hell we want to be.”
Yes we can, if we choose not to go down the medicalised model, but there’s risks as you well know. We can take hormones and hope for the best (she says, having spent the weekend having tests because my doctor suspected I had a blood clot).
If you want proper medical care, then unfortunately medical and psychiatric models are intertwined in many countries like the US or Australia. There are loads of trans people who want GID removed – including the local trans activist group here – but that’s not just going to happen overnight.
The diagnostic category produces the narrative, and shock horror the power imbalance means over time you internalise some or all of it. My psychiatrist flat out told me he’d had another patient who’d identified as genderqueer and wouldn’t get hormones til ze identified as a binary man. Give me the narrative OR ELSE.
I mean, why do you think people wanted a better DSM committee? Cos we’re so happy with the status quo? I mean, really, what the hell.
And there’s other concerns, where some trans activists think that we need some kind of category, not cos we’re soooo in love with being pathologised, but so that you can have it covered by insurance. You know, the stuff you need to get that proper medical care.
queenemily
29 Jul 08 at 8:51 pm
I think there should be a clause of Godwin’s Law, about the use of the term “transphobia”. In fact, I think I’ll make it up right away: Goblyn’s Law of Internet Conversations: “stop stretching the damn term or it’s gonna break and you won’t have nothing left to throw to whomever you disagree with.”
No, “transphobia” does not mean “everything I disagree with, since I’m trans and what I don’t like is transphobic”. Transphobia is getting a can of zippo oil thrown on your back and set alight for being a freak with a dick and boobs. Transphobia is being human garbage fit only to be fucked for small change. Transphobia is throwing away any chance of a future you may have so you can be an illiterate, VD-infected trans whore from the favellas because you had the audacity to want to be a pretty girl. Transphobia… you get the picture. Just disagreeing with some obsucre point of your convoluted intellectualising is not transphobia.
And no, claiming that western transpeople have fucked up and delivered themselves to the hands of their doctors because they didn’t have the guts to stand up against the very sexism that was destroying their lives, or because they didn’t have the maturity to understand they were not “women born into men’s bodies”- that’s not transphobic. Yeah, I think transpeople in the west have a lot to answer for. I think they should stop being ashamed of themselves- ourselves- in the way they are today, that they should be proud, and open and visible. And that, is the exact opposite of what transphobia means.
Lisa:
What, is that a trick question? Are you seriously asking me whether I think it would have made a difference if you had tried to protect yourselves from being disappeared into nothingness? Seriously? Well, then in all seriousness, yes I think you should have done so then- back in the sixties when, when the women’s movement was standing up, when the gay movement was standing up, when the civil rights movement was standing up, when all the fucking world was standing up and trying to bring on change. If you’d done it back then, you wouldn’t be in the mess you’re in right now.
And since you didn’t do it then, you should do it today, when there is much more understanding of all the issues, because of all the standing up that was going on back in the day. Today, like I said, you have no excuse. Today, human rights law is fighting on our behalf, to establish our right to own our identities and our bodies, against any attempt to medicalise our choices. Today, there is no excuse to keep your heads in the sand and keep doing things like they did them sixty years ago.
QueenEmily:
Oh yes, I know that argument. It says “I’m sick and I suffer so pleaaase give me money to have a sex change or I’ll hold my breath until I burst”. Despite what I may think about the ethics of such an argument (I always complain that people who are not on the same page as me are “self-pittying” and have “too little pride”, and that’s very unfair of me, throwing a tantrum because you’re not given your hormones is sooo self-respectful) do you seriously think that it convinces anyone?
We can claim insurance coverage for transition much better if we are sincere and honest- with ourselves first and with authorities and health organisations next. Transition is not something we do on a whim. Taking hormones and surgeries are not some sort of cosmetic procedures. There is a heavy cost to pay, socially and psychologically, for choosing a new gender identity and it cannot be dismissed as fancy. Providing care for the people who decide to undergo such procedures so that they can realise their gender to the extent that medical science and modern technology permit, is the minimum that can be done to allow them to live their lives with dignity and respect. All those are valid arguments, they are not based on self-pitty, shame or self-hatred and they have the potential to sensitize a lot more people than “I’m sick, cure me of myself” can. After all, plenty of people are sick and need a cure for something. Why should they stand by our side when we look like we’re trying to jump the cue and take away the funds they depend on?
Besides, you may miss the point but sliding further down the medicalisation slope is going to end very badly- already you see the results of thinking of transpeople as “disordered” in Zucker trying to force kids to conform to their assigned gender- before they grow up and become trannies!! Heaven forbid! At some point, someone is going to figure out that “curing” transpeople of their transness in childhood (or even in the womb!), is more profitable than funding their transitions. That’s not a happy thought. We don’t want to go there. I don’t want transpeople to sleep with the dinosaurs.
Stassa
31 Jul 08 at 3:41 pm
QueenEmily. I meant this argument.
‘scuse.
Stassa
31 Jul 08 at 3:45 pm
Oh, another thing. Drakyn and Lisa, what I said about how transpeople do things in other countries, you got that wrong. It’s not easier to transition in other countries, it’s easier to begin transition. I did say that it’s a mixed blessing. In most cases it means you end up being a 16-year old prostitute with a butt full of injected silicone, or something nasty like that, which will end up turning much nastier in the future. “If we want to medically transition safely” we need proper medical care in all of the world, not just in the US. The difference is that in (most of) the rest of the world people don’t go asking their doctors to legitimise their gender identity and that means that the doctors have much, much less power on them. Which is why I’m accusing the western transpeople (and that’s leaving the transPOC out of the equation) of submitting themselves to the patriarchal sexism of the doctors: that’s not the only way to transition, so it’s no excuse that they had no other option. In fact, I think the “only option” argument is the red herring here. Western people don’t ask their doctors aid to transition, they ask them to give them their scientific stamp of aproval to their chosen gender. Like, you know: “the doctors said I’m eligible for srs!!! I have it in writing! See?” And so on.
Stassa
31 Jul 08 at 3:56 pm
[...] they have to do something about changing their bodies. And that right there lies the crux of the “reifying gender” argument, that by changing gendered bodies you are making something that is not real [...]
Transphobic Tropes #4 – “My Theories Are More Important Than Your Experience” « Questioning Transphobia
9 Aug 08 at 8:03 am
[...] 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 [...]
Abolishing Gender « Questioning Transphobia
30 Aug 08 at 10:43 pm
@Stassa
Living in a european country and knowing how the system in most countries work, am asking why you are outright lying about that. It’s equally possible to get hormons in the US than most european countries, but when it comes to legalize your sex you still have to give psychological proove -and proove that your neutered in most countries.
I find it quite insulting that while you have a valid view of your body, you outright exclude, that for the most of us body dysphoria is a big point. Making my expieriences, that are obvieously widely shared a lie?
Sarah
Sarah
15 Sep 08 at 12:11 pm
It’s odd– I’m a radfem myself but I don’t see eye to eye with these supposed anti-trans redfems, because I think bodily sex and gender identity are different things. There are two -typical- bodily sexes, and some people might look at themselves and say “hey that’s not me”. There are countless ways to describe your gender identity, however, and well… yeah… I do think gender in general is bullshit but only in so much as that is is compulsory. I think many radfems take issue with the fact that cis and trans people alike, but much more so trans people, have to act or look an especially gendered way in order to avoid violence. This isn’t a trans person’s problem, it’s a problem of compulsory gender. There’s plenty of room for trans people in -my- radical feminist utopia, I would hope.
Kelsey
29 Jun 09 at 4:50 pm
[...] fit. You are not “failing” anyone by fitting into societal roles that are comfortable. It is not your job to break down the binary/patriarchy/or anything else. If you want to, go for it, but you have no obligation to do anything for cis people just because [...]
Trans 101 « Binary Subverter
23 Nov 10 at 10:50 pm
[...] may not fit. You are not “failing” anyone by fitting into societal roles that are comfortable. It is not your job to break down the binary/patriarchy/or anything else. If you want to, go for it, but you have no obligation to do anything for cis people just because [...]
Trans 101 « a genderqueer transition
22 Dec 10 at 2:45 pm
[...] lot of people write off trans-specific medical treatments as medically unnecessary cosmetic procedures that wouldn’t be needed in a “feminist world&#… or a Christian world or any other kind of perfect world—and insurance companies by-and-large [...]
the lazy way out « 13(BZ)
22 Sep 11 at 3:34 pm
i am offended by transgender people because their choices are built on the claim that there is something ‘it is like’ (eg unique qualia) of being a particular gender.
my only experiences unique to being a woman, stem from the contrast between what i really am (a human being; part of a complex gender spectrum and with a complex sexuality), and what society expects of me.
i cannot see any difference between my personal experience of gender stereotypes and anyone else’s (men are subject to unrealistic societal expectations too), so why am i not the same as a transgender?
please, don’t take any offense at my arguments. i don’t wish to upset anyone, or deny anyone any choice or privelege which i have as a cis. i just have philosophical interests in the nature (or nurture) of gender experience.
Amy
5 Aug 12 at 8:31 am
You have literally no reason to be offended by transgender people, and especially not on the basis of our choices.
Your offense is based on an inaccurate view of what trans people are like and what we choose, as well as apparently categorizing things that are not choices as choices.. I wrote this post to explain why I needed to transition, and it has little to do with “women are like this, men are like that” and everything to do with my own health and well-being.
If you find it offensive that people are taking actions to take care of themselves, it’s probably best to flog that dead horse somewhere else, instead of trying to get trans people to validate your opinion.
I am not sure why you are focused on your personal experience of gender and making sweeping claims as to what that means, I assume, in relation to trans people’s experiences of gender. It seems to me that you’re coming at this from a position of ignorance of what it is like to be trans, and imposing your own experiences on the idea of being trans. However, experiences of being trans are different from experiences of being cis in particular ways, and it strikes me as particularly poor argument to dismiss those differences for the sake of announcing how offensive you find trans people to be.
It’s too late. I do find your arguments offensive. Why? Because you come here to explain that what you think are transgender people’s choices offend you, spend two more paragraphs explaining your misunderstandings about being trans to justify feeling offended.
Trans lives are not a matter of philosophy or grounded specifically in the nature or nurture of gender experience. The report Injustice at every turn shows that transgender people experience rampant discrimination in every area of life, and that approximately 41% of transgender people attempt suicide as compared to 1.6% of the general population. What this means is that there is considerably more distress and emotional pain associated with being trans because of discrimination and often because of trying not to transition than you seem to realize.
Being trans is not a philosophical choice, and being trans isn’t a theory about the nature or nurture of gender experience or development. It’s a very real thing that a lot of people have to live with, just like apparently we end up living with the fact that ignorant cisgender people are more likely to believe their own misapprehensions about who we are and why we transition than they are to actually talk to trans people and find out who we are and why we transition.
I am not trying to condemn you, and if you feel offended at anything I said, keep in mind that the very first sentence in your post was that you are offended by the existence of people like me because of your assumptions about our choices. How would you feel if someone came into any kind of online or offline space of yours and told you that your existence offended them because of an arbitrary difference between who you are and who they are?
Lisa Harney
5 Aug 12 at 7:46 pm
thank you for this very clear, yet complex post. As an older person, I’ve missed many of the more recent debates around gender and sexual identity (I don’t know the Millot book, for example), and I appreciate being brought up to date in such a lucid, nuanced, and generous way. thank you again.
Stephanie Barbé Hammer
1 Oct 12 at 2:41 pm