I want to talk about modification – how some treatments women use are considered to be real and others fake, and why.
What I mean is, cis women take hormones and have surgeries that are considered to not negate their sense of womanhood, but trans women’s are always signaled back to some mythical “origin” of a Platonic ideal of cis maleness. I have even seen people argue with a straight face that intersexed women’s vaginaplasties are real (because they are correction), but trans women’s are fake (because they are creation).
But matter doesn’t care if you took the pill or estradiol, a body with a certain estrogen level is a body with a certain estrogen level. You don’t get a free pass from blood clots, migraines and breast cancer to name just a few because you are supposedly “not a real woman.”
So
even though we exist, trans women are considered to be not be “biologically female” in the same way, not real–and there is
real political consequences to that (up to and including death, frankly). What I want to underline is that this is a metaphysical claim, an
ontological one (that is, a category of
being), not a “reflection” of “biology.” Any change to a trans woman’s body is somehow made into a threat to bodily integrity – but not to our own, but rather an imagined cis male body’s integrity, which is suggested to be somehow obscured. So when cis people ask questions like “is that [assigned name] under there?” as though my body were a costume, it is a “real” cis male imagined to exist, one which is presumed to still exist… and not that the material which makes up my body developed one particular way rather than another.
But matter is
always developing and changing, it has no “real” telos (that is, end trajectory) and no natural, inherent meaning other than the ones we assign to it. This is what I was getting at in my
Five Axioms post, where I said that:
A penis is not inherently male, a vagina is not inherently female. If she has one, a trans women’s penis is female. Similarly, if he has one, a trans man’s vagina is male. Therefore, “female genitals” do not automatically exclude a penis, and automatically include a vagina. An analogy would be the changing fortunes of the word “marriage”–where “marriage” once implicitly and only referred to heterosexual relationships (as it continue to in many parts of the world), with the introduction of gay marriage in some areas this is no longer strictly the case. So it is with “male genitals” and “female genitals”–an overwhelming majority does indeed have one kind, but this does not apriori exclude the alternate configurations of some trans people.
“Male” and “female” are broader, fuzzy concepts that include all kinds of things – including genitals, body shape, skin depth, facial hair and body hair, hair softness, fat distribution, voice pitch, chromosomes, the social experience of being treated as your sex, and so on. Many of these are presumed rather than known–is there a genital check for day-to-day life? How many people do you know who’ve had a karotype to check to make sure they are indeed XX or XY? It is ridiculous to suggest that genitals are necessarily only and solely determinative of gender, when many trans people share so many of these as to go un-noticed in their day-to-day lives. Clearly, “male” and “female” precede any given genital/body configuration and therefore must include the totality of body expressions in those groups
In other words, the way we talk about “male” and “female” is always a selective and partial cultural process which is simply the sedimented power to categorise. Philosopher C. Jacob Hale puts it nicely when he says that “gender intelligibility and gender unintelligibility are effects of relative gender power and powerlessness. The normative sex/gender/sexuality regime privileges itself with an appearance of obviousness.” In other words, the apparent obviousness of these cissexist ideas is an effect of the fact that 99.5% of people are cis and describe the world in cissexist ways.
Thus, cis women’s use of hormones and other body modifications is elided and does not negate their identity as women, because it is considered to be “enhancement” and hence not to threaten the morphology of the imagined body. In contrast, trans women need a shrink and an endo to access those same hormones, and will still be ungendered and negated by the cis public at large anyway. The history of psychiatrists and doctors worrying more about the 1% of potential cissexual “regretters” than the 99% who are not is long and torturous, and Lisa has written about it many times. But to make clear the imbalance: my cis female partner didn’t even need a blood test for the exact same hormones as I am on.
To summarise: most people consider some modifications/treatments to be legitimate steering of development (and hence not “fake” even though they are modifications of the body), and others decidedly not (ie trans treatments), and we ground these supposed firm distinctions in discourses of “biology” and the natural. But this is simply cissexist ideology at its purest. This is also political terrain, which means it’s contestable.
I was thinking about this very thing just last night. Well said!
L.
13 Oct 10 at 1:49 pm
This is a great post! At least from my philosophy/theory geek perspective. =)
In some ways the parallel between gender and race is useful here. Contrary to our conventional cultural understanding of race, there is no underlying metaphysical “essence” that determines one’s race. There’s no identifiable genetic profile for racial or ethnic groups, and it’s impossible to identify discrete racial groups in any other way. And like gender/sex, race is a constantly changing social construct that is in fact loosely tied to biological morphology. But again, the distinctions break down under closer inspection and no discrete groupings can be made. But in spite of this the conception of racial categories and the characteristics that are supposed to accompany them are incredibly persistent and saturate our cultural framework.
Sometimes it makes me wonder if humans are just predisposed to cling to these categorizations and binaries that we impose on the world – as if it makes it safer and easier to deal with if we simply ignore the complexity and fluidity that’s actually there. But then there’s the fact that these constructs and categories always accompany hierarchy, and continually shift to serve its ends. That makes it seems a lot more insidious to me. We’re not addicted to binary/categorical thinking. We’re addicted to privilege and power.
Rachel_in_WY
13 Oct 10 at 3:52 pm
This gets close to two of the ideas that held me back from transition.
One of these ideas was that transition was superficial. It might change my body, but I figured it wouldn’t do anything to help my body issues. I mostly blamed my body issues on severe asthma. In particular, I refused to believe that hormones could help me feel better.
Another of these ideas was that transsexualism, as an idea, and transition reinforce gender stereotypes and body standards. I saw transition as, primarily, cosmetic surgery. I believe that body modification is a human right, but cosmetic surgery is problematic.
As long as kyriarchy survives, those who hold power can lever those who don’t hold power into surrendering our freedoms for their ends. It’s what gets male athletes to surrender their health and dope themselves, to keep their careers. It’s what gets female office-workers to destroy their feet. It’s what got people from the pill, which should have liberated womyn, to “the only position for women in SNCC is prone.” Look at the existing expectations people place on womyn’s appearances. Do we want to normalize cosmetic surgery the same way, and create a world where every womon needs at least c-cups to be taken seriously?
If we can undermine kyriarchy, I think a lot of technologies that have been twisted toward oppression can be used either for liberation, or for self-realization, or both.
That said, it’s important to live. And for many of us *not* transitioning was enduring without living.
Marja Erwin
13 Oct 10 at 5:51 pm
I just wanted to say how superb and eye-opening this post is. I’m not trans but I know someone who is, and it’s unfortunately something most people never take the time to read into properly, resulting in really stupid, ignorant comments and “criticisms”.
Thank you.
Miriam
13 Oct 10 at 6:43 pm
If sex is inconclusive then gender rest on far shakier ground.
I really think gender is a pure social construct, like national identity or religion subject time and place variables.
But I honestly don’t see any gender aspect that is exclusively male or exclusively female.
Gender seems more like a team uniform.
I always pick the female street cop or front line soldier. Her gender presentation is masculine but in most instances she does not see herself as male.
Other than CDs the majority of “transgender” people take hormones and have other processes done that change their sex characteristics. Even when they do not have sex reassignment surgery.
Sex assignment itself is based on a preponderance of characteristics and one could as easily claim secondary sex characteristics as the deciding point as one could penis/vagina.
I tend to view the weighting of gender as being profoundly dangerous in a misogynistic world when it comes to women’s equality and the fighting of sexism.
Also when I am asked my gender, I say “Crunchy Lesbian soft-butch/butchy-femme.
Because that is my gender presentation. People look at me and their reaction is, “You’re an old dyke.”
I think asking if something will harm of benefit women is an important first question when discussing the substitution of gender for sex.
Suzan
13 Oct 10 at 11:39 pm
To me, it seems that there is passion in this post, and things to be passionate about; but also that some of that passion is misdirected.
Why for example does the NHS pay for hair removal for cis women and not trans women? Both are simply issues of hormonal imbalance? It is a clear and obvious injustice.
the whole ‘body as a lie’ has been covered by far better writers than I. My primary frustrations is that women (the ‘coming out’ as T), finally able to come out in a society that will definately attack them in social, economic and often physical ways are not celebrated or embraced, protected by laws in this vulnerable time of life but excluded from groups specifically designed to defend against exclusion…like feminism.
That said, the use of intersex women as a bridging type of example: “I have even seen people argue with a straight face that intersexed women’s vaginaplasties are real..” along with your axioms and percentages (99.5%? That might need to be adjusted dramatically). When you are intersex a penis is NOT female, a Chromosome check is not routine, an inherient ‘cis’ simply does not exist until you are medically deemed to have one, and that is done often from the age of several days to weeks (as quick as they can get the knives into you) to long past puberty.
When you talk about medications, I can’t help think of a prescription toxin, dexamethasone, and how it is being given and requested by pregnant women to ENSURE the elimination of the most common intersex condition. All before the completion of an official clinical trial proves this idea is true or not.
The doctor who gave your partner hormones without blood tests before and after and/or using an endrocrinologist is risking liver damage for her. Estrogen, Androgen, and other hormones are extremely potent and run a host of effects in the body. They are not supposed to be given out without proper health checks. And an arguement that it occurs, is an arguement against proper protocol in health. And that I what I would want: an EQUAL protocol. Where a woman, be they trans, be they intersex, be they undertermined condition, be they autoimmune disease, or post-m all have standard protocols. Because when an disease destroys the ovaries ability to produce estrogen, to prescribe A DOSE without knowing what disease, or even what dose is appropriate isn’t ‘cis privilage’, or gender priviliage – it is BAD MEDICINE. And I agree, a body with a certain level is a body with a certain level and should be treated with respect and equality while brought to protocol levels.
However, 1 year olds, 2 year olds, 12 year olds who have been naked, forced to be naked in front of doctors, told they are ‘defective’, told never to tell anyone, are not the best examples of gender theorists, or gender priviliaged. Yet, to the knife, or drugs or forced and public to male viewing dialation they go. This is why I do very much appreciate the complete and utter hypocracy that is shown to transitioning females (who legally change birth certificates because…they are female, right?) And the ugliness you describe here of gender accusation, of demanding if the ‘real’ is ‘beneath’ is in my view hate language born of socially desired ignorance.
However, being told you can’t be considered an ‘equal’ or even ‘human’ becuase you don’t actually HAVE 46 chromosomes much less an XX, XY configuration. Much less be publically outted as an ‘evolutionary mutant’, ‘deformed mutation’, ‘God’s Mistakes’ in hospital records, local gossip or medical papers? It is NOT, “most people consider some modifications/treatments to be legitimate steering of development (and hence not “fake” even though they are modifications of the body), and others decidedly not (ie trans treatments), and we ground these supposed firm distinctions in discourses of “biology” and the natural” – being used as an example in your school’s biology class as a ‘genetic mutation’ and having teens older than you, younger, asking to see, to what to know what else is ‘all fucked up’ IS what ‘most people’ do.
Yet, isn’t that exactly the ignorance and hatred that transphobia is about, the elimination of a person as human, or equal. So please, do not make an assumption about intersex or other females out there, who have common medical conditions which stand publically on the wrong side of the demarcation of ‘what is female’, or ‘who is female’.
By the by, the studies have only reached the 99% success rate under using a medical protocol and after six adjustment to that protocol. Which is why a
The reason a psychologist is needed is because several different conditions produce altered states of the mind, including cancer, which convince the person of their need for a change of sex. It is to screen for these that the tests are supposed to be done (this is not to say that some power tripping Psych is not misuing it, but in this case, elimination of factors which are NOT T, I would think are in the best interest of those who want to follow a successful and accepted protocol).
Elizabeth McClung
14 Oct 10 at 3:12 am
“The reason a psychologist is needed is because several different conditions produce altered states of the mind, including cancer, which convince the person of their need for a change of sex. It is to screen for these that the tests are supposed to be done”
I’d have more sympathy for that if EVERYONE was given psych screening to make sure they’re not a trans person who’s *not* transitioning because of the several different conditions that can cause us not to. There’s a vastly unequal amount of concern given to the respective ideas that a cis person might transition wrongly (GASP MUST BE STOPPED) and a trans person who needs to transition might not be able to (who cares, right?).
Jack
14 Oct 10 at 5:19 am
(uh, that was me not logged in. sorry.)
Jack
14 Oct 10 at 5:20 am
“the history of psychiatrists and doctors worrying more about the 1% of potential cissexual ‘regretters’ than the 99% who are not is long and torturous”
Would you mind providing some links to work on this? I’ve been wanting to read it, particularly case studies that policy is based on (UK by preference), as has my partner, but I’m not sure where to find it.
Gabrielle
14 Oct 10 at 5:40 am
Any “regreters” who have developed an association with religion after SRS should be treated first with religion deprogramming instead of assisted in de-transitioning.
There are a lot of hateful superstition peddlers out there preying on people having a hard time with life.
Suzan
14 Oct 10 at 8:34 am
I know of at least one “regretter” who did so via religion, who regrets regretting and wishes she could go back.
I also question how many people actually come in looking to transition who are doing so because of other conditions. I would like to know how prevalent this is.
Lisa Harney
14 Oct 10 at 2:53 pm
Press for change used to host an extensive reference journal section which details the research done post transition by year. I can’t seem to locate it (so perhaps it was taken down to to cose). The data was interesting as but had two problems a) It only includes those who decide to return the data, meaning it isn’t a full sample, and in some cases is a minority and b) the bias of what ‘successful’ means – did the data in the 70′s say that a hetero couple was success while someone who chose to be in a ‘non-traditional’ relationship be ‘unsuccessful’ – so the bias was examined. The papers were used to make protocols that were applicable to those in need of them. Sadly, none of the big three (UK, US, Canada) actually follow them, but often thrown in ‘bias’ hurdles.
Some doctors also have reported not just on operational success (infections, necrosis, etc) but on ‘follow up’ – I believe the longest practicing doctor from Jamacia had a long term follow up data. I have not seen a ‘meta-study’ but perhaps one is being done.
In the 2000 case on Intersex regarding the two part determination of sex for marriage (the ability to ‘naturally’ consumate, and whether the six point gonad orientated determination, at time of birth regardless of later surgery’ The following passage might be of interest, coming from a reading in the EU law,
“Upon examination of a very limited number of male-to-female transsexuals post mortem, their brains showed morphological differences in comparison with non-transsexual controls … The implication of the above scientific insight that the sexual differentiation of the brain occurs after birth is that assignment of a child to the male or female sex by the criterion of the external genitalia is an act of faith.’
Elizabeth McClung
15 Oct 10 at 3:04 am
@Jack: “I’d have more sympathy for that if EVERYONE was given psych screening to make sure they’re not a trans person who’s *not* transitioning because of the several different conditions that can cause us not to. There’s a vastly unequal amount of concern given to the respective ideas that a cis person might transition wrongly (GASP MUST BE STOPPED) and a trans person who needs to transition might not be able to (who cares, right?).”
I am only trying to explain the reasons behind the protocols, not the abuses or abusers in medical positions – believe me I have no illusions that specialists of ALL kinds believe themselves infalliable.
1) The idea of testing in order to force someone to transition, particularly for a non-lethal condition which is under the classification (in the EU at least) not as a psychological but biological ‘rare’ condition (one which occurs less than in 10,000 to 100,000) would be against the ethics of medicine. As many people chose to live with various medical conditions for a variety of reasons.
2) I am not aware of any biological conditions that once treated, remove the barriers for expression that (there are a host of names, I will use GID, as that is the petitioned use in North America, not because I wish any offense).
3) The reason is for appropriate treatment of all conditions. In this case, if a Psychologist used to seeing transitioning individuals sees other symptoms (a palsy, disorientation, a difference between left and right body movement), then in BOTH cases, treatment is sought, or that is the origin of the protocol as described in the notes of the symposium. So if someone was in an extreme manic state, and came in, or had indications of a physical ailment, both of those would be treated or investigated and then the person would RETURN to the Psychologist in order to determine if that was a secondary and unrelated medical condition.
4) Regarding ‘wrong’ transition concern versus transitioning: this is so different from Country to Country, or State to State, Province to Province – however a consensus of movement legally is that an incorrect application of gender was applied at birth, due to the limitations of current technology (This is the UK, Spain, much of the EU, some of the US states, some aspects of Australian law and New Zealand plus South Africa) and thus the onus is on the governing body to correct that. The people who are medically and administratively in charge come from often two generations before this, and may not apply in practice what is in law, or medical ethics. However, this is not that different than the high rate of diagnosis of mental illness for females for physical ailments like MS – or diverse ratio of treatment quicker for males with knee or similar injuries – the bias is not one that is based on ‘best medical practice’. There is no ‘cis male’ agenda against the ‘cis females’ who were put in asylums for fibro, Chronic Fatigue/ME, and MS: just ignorance enacted. It doesn’t make it right.
However, the ratio of those given hormones for transitioning and those not do not indicate a particular bias, at least not in any journals or evidence I can find beyond that of the location’s law, or the medical practitioners interpretation (as for example, the right to NOT give the pill to women as a religious cause IS allowed, while to not give hormones for endrocrine reasons is NOT allowed – though it does occur, much as AIDS medicine is not dispensed by some doctors – both breaking ethics).
Elizabeth McClung
15 Oct 10 at 3:29 am
People need to stop policing what others do to their own bodies. The circles don’t overlap: http://wickedday.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/venn_snark.jpg
The Nerd
15 Oct 10 at 5:12 pm
@Elizabeth: “I am only trying to explain the reasons behind the protocols”
Wow, I’m totally sure none of us have ever thought about that or engaged with the psychiatric community on this front. I’m sure the trans community hasn’t been doing this work and this kind of critique for decades. Thank you for opening my eyes!
/sarcasm
Jack
16 Oct 10 at 8:28 am
Elizabeth- “The NHS funds hair removal for cis but not trans women”. Really? My beard is imaginary then? I imagined having to petition to see a Dermatologist only to be told “Come back when you’re dying of something”. My amab ‘sister’ and her smooth face must be a delusion too.
Also – your disgusting attempt at defending transphobic gatekeeping is totally busted, as is your assertion that medical professionals in my country can deny someone HBC. i need to see proof of policies regarding the examples you mention. As you must be aware each PCT has it’s own budget to spend as it wishes, and blanket statements like “the NHS does X or Y” are therefore nonsensical in the extreme.
Oh Dear
18 Oct 10 at 3:05 pm
[...] on non-binary genders. If a trans woman is completely happy only taking estrogen and leaving her female penis as-is, then she’s done transitioning after taking estrogen. Her female-bodied status has been [...]
Fail. | Just Me
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