Question: Feminism and Transphobia
This is prompted by a discussion I had with Black Amazon and Zenobia.
I’m curious:
- How often is Germaine Greer’s Whole Woman taught in Women’s Studies classes? Does such teaching typically include criticism of the chapter Pantomime Dames?
- Same for Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire?
- Same for any similar works – Sheila Jeffreys, Mary Daly, and others whose names I’m no doubt forgetting.
- Have any cis feminists undertaken an academic or political refutation of the attitudes expressed about trans women (and intersex women in Whole Woman)? Beyond cis feminists who state their support for trans women and oppose the exclusion of trans women from feminist activism or women-only spaces. I’m talking about more formal stuff.
I’m a major in women’s studies, junior year, and I’ve only had Transsexual Empire mentioned in my Transgender Studies Class (go figure), which only had three people in it.
Pretty much whenever trans* stuff is mentioned, it’s on a 101 basis. We have studied writers in some of my classes thus far who have contributed to cissexism (Adrienne Rich, Gloria Steinem), but their prejudices were not mentioned.
We do seem to have faculty here that are at least tolerant of trans* people though, which is nice.
sarah
25 Oct 08 at 2:37 pm
Thank you. It’s frustrating that their prejudices aren’t mentioned or criticized.
Gloria Steinem is the name I keep forgetting.
When you get Trans 101, are trans people (women especially) positioned as outsiders to feminism or participants in feminism? Are we described in terms of inclusion, or in terms of, since we’re women, we’re already part of it?
Lisa Harney
25 Oct 08 at 2:40 pm
In my intro to Women’s Studies class, we talked about trans people as being a part of feminism, but we really only talked gender identity in general and specifically only trans men attending “all-women’s” colleges.
I would say intersex people and trans people are generally third-gendered, marginalized, and presented as outside of or on the fringes of feminism. Most of the reasoning behind helping trans women has to do mostly with intersectionality (so like not because trans women are women but because fighting against trans oppression is fighting against the way that oppression relates to the oppression of women). The concept of trans misogyny would probably blow most people’s minds here.
Also, a lot of the time Trans 101 conversations pop up is due not to the curriculum, but to class discussions. And these class discussions are usually very offensive (I really wish I could get a pass to leave the classroom every time Thomas Beattie is mentioned, for example).
Pretty much every “general” women’s studies class focuses on women who are white, able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgender, cissexual, and middle class. Any “other” sort of woman is mostly an afterthought unless you’re in a class focused on “other” women.
Sorry for writing such long things btw
sarah
25 Oct 08 at 3:14 pm
No, no, I don’t mind long comments at all. Thank you for laying all of that out for me.
If they’re invoking intersectionality to “helping” (omg, wtf?) trans women because we’re not women, but that we’re trans…that’s not intersectionality at all. :(
But then Black Amazon pointed out how intersectionality is often abused the other day.
Ah, heck, I forgot to link BA’s post.
Lisa Harney
25 Oct 08 at 3:20 pm
And yeah, I believe women’s studies classes focus on the mythical idea of the unmarked class of “woman,” which is to say a woman who is not considered exceptional (that is, she’s white, able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgender, cissexual, and middle-class), but rather part of the expected norm.
I mean “exceptional” in this sense to be “outside the expected norm.” Of course, “expected norm” is hugely problematic too, because there’s no actual norm.
And of course, intersectionality seems to be primarily used to identify how, say, being black and being a woman at the same time work, rather than being a black woman, or even to deny that womanhood’s even present in some cases (like being trans).
It doesn’t seem like anyone talks about intersectionality in terms of what it’s like to be a white woman, for example, and how being white can sometimes mitigate the oppression of being a woman – or how class can mitigate certain oppression, as well.
Sorry, rambly about intersectionality.
Lisa Harney
25 Oct 08 at 3:26 pm
The classes also usually are designed in such a way to give “normal” women the most amount of air time. If you look at most class schedules, they tend to put “issues of diversity” towards the back – and since most professors here get derailed when discussing “normal” women (who tend to be focused on in the front of the schedule), anything pertaining to “other” women gets condensed or cut to fit “everything” in.
Additionally, women’s studies classes here are designed to be largely discussion-based which affects what is talked about and who talks about it and in what way, usually at the expense of people who are marginalized.
I’m very interested in critiques of education and spend a large part of my classes analyzing the class itself, so I have a lot to rant about, haha.
sarah
25 Oct 08 at 3:53 pm
Then you’re exactly the right person for this conversation! Thank you.
It’s interesting (and frustrating) how women with the most privilege are centered in discussions about feminism. That seems downright backward to me.
Lisa Harney
25 Oct 08 at 3:58 pm
The college I went to didn’t exactly have a women’s studies department, unfortunately — though the English department (my major) just so happened to be really obsessed with gender studies and looked at just about everything through a gender and queer studies lenses at some point.
Anyway, so I only remember actually taking one “women’s studies” class and it was called Sex, Gender and Sexual Orientation. In that class, we read a chapter of The Transsexual Empire — and we seemed to read it explicitly for the purpose of tearing Raymond apart. I actually wrote an essay about it.
Interestingly enough, though, I don’t remember discussing transgender identity at all in my queer theory class! We talked about gender identity in the sense of conforming to masculinity and femininity standards, but no, I really don’t remember discussing transgender people at all.
Cara
25 Oct 08 at 3:59 pm
Thanks – I admit I hear very little talk of tearing the transphobic stuff apart (and of course it doesn’t seem like hardly anyone is published tearing it apart).
I’ve noticed that a lot of queer theorists conflate gender identity with gender conformity rather frequently, to the point that some have seemed (to me) unable or unwilling to discuss the concept of identifying as a man as separate from identifying as masculine, or identifying as a woman as separate from identifying as feminine – at least with regards to trans people. But I’m not sure how much of that is actually taught vs. how much is standard cissexist stereotypes of trans people as ultra gender conformists.
Lisa Harney
25 Oct 08 at 4:06 pm
The last bit of your OP, have cis feminists systematically refuted transphobic feminist writings? HELL NO.
It’s awkwardly worked around and ignored rather than critiqued.. Legacy of the past yadda yadda, Germaine repeated it in 2000 you say? Well I never..
queenemily
25 Oct 08 at 4:11 pm
Yeah, the ideas are clearly still in circulation.
Lisa Harney
25 Oct 08 at 4:14 pm
Lisa, yeah, a million bad readings of Judy Butler have made that conflation of man/masculine, woman/feminine, at least with regard to the less “subversive” performances of gender ie transsexual people are posited as the “dupes” of gender, too naive to actually perceive the difference (unlike the sophisticated queer theorist)…
queenemily
25 Oct 08 at 4:15 pm
Unlike the sophisticated queer theorist who repeatedly refuses to make that distinction.
Twice in the past week I’ve seen someone make the assertion that being trans means ignoring a part of what it means to be human, that all trans women reject everything stereotypically masculine and all trans men reject everything stereotypically feminine, which my video game-playing self found fascinating.
That also seems to be the idea that trans people are incapable of being objective about trans stuff, while cis people are always capable of being objective about trans stuff even though they refuse to listen to trans people.
Lisa Harney
25 Oct 08 at 4:19 pm
In my second-year Feminist Theory paper a few years back, on the one hand I can’t remember any of those works coming up, but on the other I can’t remember any substantial discussion of trans issues! What I can say is that it was a very all-inclusive paper otherwise, and nothing was taught as Truth – it was very, “this person’s theory is xyz, this school of thought rejects that because of abc”. I think they tried to get a balance of everything, but time constraints meant nothing got looked at in-depth.
QoT
25 Oct 08 at 4:54 pm
Don’t get me started on the whole video games = masculine thing :P Because it’s true, that’s what society and history has done to them, yet so much about them actually offers what was once a more feminine style of activity (sorry, personal rant :P)
The idea certainly is as you say, that trans people are somehow incapable of being objective about trans matters, but there are two aspects to this. Firstly, there is what would no doubt be claimed – that objectivity is inaccessible from within. There are many obvious flaws with this, and it makes me wonder how much a similar line of argument is used for the experiences of women of colour, working class, etc (and of course, never for middle class cis white experience…). However, I suspect it is really a cover argument for the trans=irrational assumption. That somehow we can’t be trusted to be sane, rational and reasoned, simply because we are trans. That we are inherently fraudulent and emotional.
Squigglefish
25 Oct 08 at 5:09 pm
Well, I did say videogames were stereotypically masculine.
The idea that people who have experiences are not qualified to speak about those experiences, but that people who do not have those experiences are qualified to thoroughly define them is what I consider beyond ridiculous – and yes, it is applied to race and disability. Autistic people get almost exactly the same arguments (with additional invalidating definitions) to tell them why they can’t really talk about autism.
I think there’s a deeper thing in that if you’re not white, middle-class, considered to be the “default” or “norm” then your life and experiences are automatically suspect because you claim they’re not like the “default.”
Lisa Harney
25 Oct 08 at 5:15 pm
i had Janice Raymond as my *professor* in a certain women’s studies class. that was a fun, fun semester. eventually she just started talking over me if i said anything, even if i was talking about the weather. there’s also Jean Grossholtz, whose classes require that you sign a statement saying that you are karyotype 46,XX to be allowed to remain in her class. i failed TWICE on that one. her logic was that if i were allowed in, “men and transsexuals” would follow.
Autistic people get almost exactly the same arguments (with additional invalidating definitions) to tell them why they can’t really talk about autism.
…or to tell us we can’t do anything because we’re autistic, or to belittle our achievements as being social promotion, or to demonize us as allegedly dangerous since autistic people supposedly are, blah blah blah. oh, and don’t forget that autistic people are always men. that’s SUPER important.
algormortis
25 Oct 08 at 6:20 pm
“I’ve noticed that a lot of queer theorists conflate gender identity with gender conformity rather frequently, to the point that some have seemed (to me) unable or unwilling to discuss the concept of identifying as a man as separate from identifying as masculine, or identifying as a woman as separate from identifying as feminine – at least with regards to trans people. But I’m not sure how much of that is actually taught vs. how much is standard cissexist stereotypes of trans people as ultra gender conformists.”
My strong suspicion is that this comes from people whose position wrt gender identity is roughly what mine is – ie, don’t have/do/get it myself, so have to basically take it on trust that other people do have/do/get it, and accept that i’ll never really understand it.
Trouble is, many genderqueer people don’t take that on trust, and assume that all of the things commonly described as “gender identity” are purely socially/culturally constructed (which still doesn’t mean “not real”, of course, but does mean “not intrinsic to a person”).
I mean, it took one of my closest friends coming out as a trans woman for me to get that “innate” gender identity actually exists. If she hadn’t come out, or i hadn’t known her, i would probably still be going around thinking that trans women transition purely as a way of attempting to renounce male privilege, and trans men transition purely as a way of attempting to escape misogyny…
shiva
25 Oct 08 at 6:26 pm
“there’s also Jean Grossholtz, whose classes require that you sign a statement saying that you are karyotype 46,XX to be allowed to remain in her class. i failed TWICE on that one. her logic was that if i were allowed in, “men and transsexuals” would follow.”
srsly? Fuck.
Lawsuit?
shiva
25 Oct 08 at 6:28 pm
Algormortis,
Ah, Jean Grossholtz. I’ve never heard of her, but what a poisonous statement. I guess “Get your laws off of my body” only applies to some women.
A few years ago on TD, someone dropped into the transgender forum to defend Janice Raymond as her teacher, and that if anyone was angry at TTE, it’s because we didn’t understand it.
And yeah, all that on the autism. There’s soooo many arguments like that. :(
Was it you who linked the post about Michelle Dawson being too “high-functioning” to really be autistic and too “low-functioning” to be able to do what she does at the same time? And yeah, after reading Amanda Baggs, I find it difficult to believe that “high- or low-functioning” makes the kind of sense that NTs who use it think it does.
Shiva,
I also think a lot of people with typical gender identities as masculine men or feminine women who never had to question their identities or examine them belief that they don’t really have one.
There’s also an assumption that defying gender stereotypes is intrinsically valuable and adhering to them is intrinsically bad.
Lisa Harney
25 Oct 08 at 6:30 pm
I got my B.A. in Gender and Women’s Studies, and am earning a certificate in Women’s Studies with my M.A.
I have only read the excerpts of The Transsexual Empire that appear in works by Kate Bornstein and the like– never on my own, and never in a Women’s Studies class. (Gender Outlaw, on the other hand, I have read in such classes.) I think we may have read excerpts from Mary Daly, but none that dealt with her transphobia. Never anything by Germaine Greer, Sheila Jeffreys, and so on.
I would say that, on the whole, none of my Women’s Studies professors or class curricula have shown any transphobic tendencies. Which is not to say that my classes have been entirely trans-friendly. I would say, as some commenters have said above, that trans issues remain at a 101 level, and that while transphobia is not noticeably apparent, cissexism is. I’m taking a class right now, called Undoing Gender, that purports to deal with the limits of the binary gender system, but which I have major problems with, because it seems to pose trans people as either a shiny new gender paradigm, or as victims of the binary gender system. There hasn’t been much of an effort to think of trans people as activists and/or people with agency. Certainly, there’s been almost no effort to think through the ways in which the cisgendered people in the class (seemingly all of us) are wielders of certain types of gender privilege, or how a rigid binary gender system might be limiting to us, as well. We are not, in other words, subjecting cisgendered identities to the same scrutiny and questioning to which we seem to subject trans people.
Adrienne
25 Oct 08 at 6:56 pm
I’d love to see a gender studies, women’s studies, queer studies class that positioned trans people as agents in the gender system, not as inherently revolutionary, or victims, or in general as objects for gender to act upon.
In fact, I think I’d be even happier to see one that subjected cis identities to rigorous examination and didn’t touch on trans until the class was incapable of firmly stating what a man or a woman is, but that’s just me. :) Thanks for posting that.
Lisa Harney
25 Oct 08 at 7:32 pm
I’ve never really come across Jeffreys/Daly/Raymond, et al, being taught in my classes – the faculty at my university seem to have a “weird old aunt we don’t talk about” attitude towards radical feminism in general.
What I have gotten is bucketloads of ignorant queer theory-inspired tripe – and just about every class, as Adrienne nicely put it above – has positioned transpeople as either inherently revolutionary or as objects for gender to act upon.
And wrt what Lisa said above with conflating identifying as male with identifying as masculine as applied to transpeople being taught – oh god yes. That’s been my main beef with gender studies, as I think I’ve had something to that effect in basically every single course that even hinted at trans issues.
Rebecca
25 Oct 08 at 10:35 pm
Not talking about them at all bothers me as much as talking about them without criticizing their transphobia, because the lack of criticism is still present, and the transphobia is just swept under the carpet.
I am so sick of people thinking that trans people transition because “We like to do feminine/masculine things and we’re too ignorant to realize it’s okay for men/women to do feminine/masculine things.”
Lisa Harney
25 Oct 08 at 10:39 pm
jeffreys teaches at melbourne uni which is the big old australian wanna be cambridge or ivy league. i met someone recently who’d been taught by her, she teaches first year, in social and political sciences, and yes is still pushing that tired old rad fem line. her most recent book was in part about misogyny and transfemininity.
i think elizabeth grosz who for a while in the early 90s was ‘our’ judith, and had the usual blah anti-trans remarks towards the end of volatile bodies is still teaching in sydney.
australia and new zealand both were suckers for that radical feminist lesbian separatist rubbish.
as for germaine…
frances
26 Oct 08 at 7:28 am
My intro course did in fact have Trans 101, but mainly because I talked to the professor about being made to feel uncomfortable in the class. She agreed with me and the next session she did “Here is how to be a Trans Ally and the basic terms trans people use.”
(This, of course, didn’t stop the stares I got when I came out in the newspaper, but I’d expected that already.)
However, my prof has made an effort to make all of the students read works written by a wide variety of people and understand their relationship to feminism. I can still see a lot of white, middle-classness showing up in the comments made and how the basic lecture material is presented, but having to also read bell hooks or Leslie Feinberg helps alleviate that.
averydame
26 Oct 08 at 7:35 am
I have a minor in Women’s Studies, and in my last Feminist Theory seminar, we really ran a gamut of literature, starting with a feminist interpretation of Freud, and with Luce Irigaray, which we were encouraged to critique as essentialist. I was lucky, our professor, who was male-identified and queer, felt that feminism in it’s current form naturally led into gender, trans and queer studies, that this realm of study was the obvious next step in gender studies. We went from Irigaray into hooks, and then straight into Butler (which is damn hard to read lol) and eventually into Bornstein as an editor for Taste This.
Our discussion was specifically geared to eventually discussing gender and the fluidity thereof. The whole second half of the semester was devoted to discussing trans issues and it was possibly one of the best feminist theory class I have ever had.
Dori
26 Oct 08 at 7:39 am
Here at the University of Michigan, there’s constantly a battle between the second- and third-wave feminists. It’s also something I’ve noticed in my personal life. For my mother, who grew up in the 50′s and 60′s, and was at U-M in the late 60′s/early 70′s, feminism is a white, upper/middle class women’s movement: it was about “women’s rights.” For us folks in college now, feminism is about gender equality.
Right now I’m working on a curriculum for our Program on Intergroup Relations that makes our gender dialogues inclusive of non-binary gender identities. Yay!
C
Cayden
29 Oct 08 at 6:55 am
Coming in a little late…
I am teaching cultural studies at an Australian university (and btw, Frances, Liz Grosz got exported to the US :-)). We tend to avoid those rad fem anti-trans people in our class readers. To be honest, in the contemporary feminist theory circles I move in, Greer is not even thought of as actually an academic, but more of a pop feminist (and not overly interesting at that). We use Jeffreys occasionally, to give students practice at spotting really seriously bad argument, and the conservatism of (lots of) rad feminism. When we talk about trans*folk in the queer theory course I teach, it’s well after we’ve looked at and queried the ‘science’ of sex, and the historical construction of masculinity/femininity. Although some of the students really struggle to grasp it, we do reflect the idea that sex and gender are *both* socially constructed, and inextricable from each other (even whilst we experience them as separate and separable). But at the same time, we’re suggesting (via Foucault) that the very idea of being an ‘I’, an ‘individual’ with a ‘true self’ is constructed. It’s critical, and it’s certainly *not* designed to put the lie to anyone’s experience. The queer theory course kinda centres around an introductory section, with some history of especially GLBT rights (with a decent nod to Compton’s Cafeteria and the diversity of civil rights that were being fought for around Stonewall besides just gay men, as it’s often characterised) and some examination of homophobia, particularly in connection to contemporary modes of masculinity. We then move into queer as a critique of identity, rather than a *kind* of identity. From there, we move through examining a variety of things, to complicate conceptions of identity: race (and yes, we critique intersectionality thing, suggesting that, say, blackness and womanness are not two overlying points of identity, but mutually shaped, so that what it means to be a black woman is entirely different from what white people tend to think of as blackness and womanness); straight sex (ooh, melikes recommending to my straight girls that they find a strap-on ;-)); disability (which intriguingly tends to really trouble people). So by the time we get to talking about trans* people, not only does no one really know what a man or a woman is, but our focus is really on the ways that heteronormativity and cisnormativity work together to completely invalidate experiences which might undermine them. I’ve given this lecture a few times, and I tend to focus on the diversity of experiences that get reduced to a single story by medicine; and we watch a video, most recently one I’ve forgotten the name of, but which looks at what some might call ‘trans*’ in a variety of cultural settings (I say “might call trans*” because we’re looking, for example, at fafafine etc, and the ‘trans*’ label could be understood as western colonialising of an alternate experience.)
As far as cis feminists resisting rad fem trans*phobic writing, well, I know lots of them. :-) It’s done in different ways: some in the classroom (I ripped rad fem trans*phobia a new one just the other day, in a class about technologies of bodily transformation, until my students were giggling at the rad fem tendency to get precious about womanhood); some at conferences; some in articles; some in books. To be honest, being a product of this educational context, I truly thought that trans*phobia in an academic context was just not a viable position anymore, and that cis privilege was as much a concern as white or class privilege (as in, dynamics to be aware of and critique openly, not as in ‘trans*phobia is like totally last season’). As I’ve moved into postgrad and beyond, it’s become clear that that’s far from the case, mostly as I’ve presented at conferences outside my immediate area. But I’m involved in a research centre which has literally hundreds of research associates from across the world. The vast majority of those RAs, if not working overtly on trans* stuff would be informed about trans* issues, and resistant to trans*phobia (esp. of the rad fem kind). The last conference was focussed solely on trans*, and it’s one of the key focusses around which we’re planning the next for next year. In other words, I suppose, there are lots and lots of academics out there arguing against trans*phobia. But they don’t get book deals like Greer does; their fame is limited to academic contexts (and possibly by being less well-established? more junior? less well-funded? I dunno, but I know that funding is *incredibly* tight where I am). This isn’t to say there is trans*phobia out there; there is, lots of it. But I don’t know any trans*phobic feminists IRL, anymore… and it is my area.
Then again, I have to disagree with Frances; I think Australian feminism (at least now) has a particular flavour, which, informed by Continental philosophy, is concerned with doing justice to difference, rather than making difference back into sameness. This, I think, tends to make it a bit more trans*friendly, and I think that this is probably partly in resistance to people like Jeffreys and Greer (an older generation; and I really wish Jeffreys had never got tenure!!). IME, contemporary Australian feminism tends to be a bit more critical than American feminism (as much as one can make generalisations like that) which still tends to be concerned with individualism (leftovers, sometimes avowed, from liberalism), and thus with some core humanity, the definition of which is often used to disavow different experiences. [shrug] But now we’re getting technical ;-)
Sorry to go on and on; and a repeat for you, Lisa ;-) And yes, that email is coming. So sorry. I have a paper to finish. This is great procrastination!!
WildlyParenthetical
29 Oct 08 at 8:07 pm
Transgenderism wasn’t really discussed one way or the other in my undergraduate degree, which I did in Canada. It was sort of taken for granted, however, that transwomen were women and should be welcomed, etc. We had transwomen in our classes, and the women’s centre renamed itself to make it explicitly clear that they were transpositive, etc. Transpositivity seemed part and parcel of not being a jerk, but transgender issues were absent from the course.
I did my MA in the UK, and it was mostly queer theory, so transgenderism was discussed a lot, mostly through reading Butler and discussing what “challenge” transwomen posed to traditional feminism.
Gwen
31 Oct 08 at 3:53 pm
To add my two cents (a bit late, but I have only recently discovered this blog – and I am so glad I did!)
I did my undergraduate studies in sociology b/c there was not a women’s studies degree option. There were a few women’s studies courses, which I took, and I do not recall any significant mention of trans issues – if at all. I do remember Greer’s “The Whole Woman” being assigned reading in an anth course I took. I remember, specifically, because of her anti-trans statements and I recall at the time feeling very much that this was against everything MY feminism stood for and discussing this at length with friends over copious amounts of wine. (It didn’t then and still doesn’t make sense to me, how some feminists could be anti-trans, but I digress).
I did my graduate studies in counselling psych at a much bigger university and trans issues were included to a larger degree than my previous university, perhaps because (I was told) a popular prof actually transitioned while a prof there. At this university there was more trans awareness and the on-campus women’s centre identified as women only space which included transwomen. (I mean, duh!)
Nonetheless, my exposure to trans issues has been primarily through “real life”. I worked (then and now) in the anti-sexual violence field.
Here in Canada there is an organization called Vancouver Rape Relief which provides support and shelter to (cis)women who have experienced sexual violence. Kimberley Nixon was a transwoman who applied to be a volunteer and was kicked out during training when the org found out she was trans (see http://www.egale.ca/index.asp?lang=E&menu=34&item=1147 )
I remember gearing up for a “fight” to include transwomen as volunteers in our policy (we only accepted women volunteers at that time) and was pleasantly surprised when it was passed unanimously within minutes. No fight necessary. (Who knew that a group of feminists from a myriad of feminist perspectives, none of whom were trans, could actually get their shit together on this one!)
Fortunately, I now also work for a feminist sexual assault centre which is trans-positive (and openly so). I also volunteer at our local Pride Centre where there is a huge trans population (compared to other Pride Centres I have been involved in). This may be due to us having a gender clinic (at a local Catholic hospital, if you can believe it!)
As a cisgendered individual, I have no idea what it is to experience transphobia, just as a white person, I have no idea what racism feels like.
Part of “my” feminism is about recognising the ways in which I am privileged. I am white. I am cisgendered. I was able to go to grad school. I am in a heterosexual relationship.
Sure, it sucks that I – like other women – experience sexism. But feminism, to me, is about so much more than just the ways in which women are oppressed. We are all products of a bi/trans/homophobic, heterosexist, classist, racist, ableist, ageist, patriarchal capitalism and therefore have been socialized from day one to carry these oppressions – and oppress others. That some feminists don’t get this continues to amaze and anger me.
And, it isn’t just feminists who don’t get it. I am involved in a national disability rights organization which refused to include “gender identity” as a form of oppression protected against in our discrimination policy, at the last AGM. At that point in time, I wasn’t sure I should stick with the organization, but I think I will give it one more run. If it is voted down again, I will probably have to leave.
But off my soapbox!
shermanvolvo
1 Dec 08 at 3:17 pm
May I just add, my apologies for going off track of the original questions. (I blame a head cold for my general rambling today).
In answer to your question, I did not formally respond to the transphobic text book beyond a few snarky in-class comments. I chose to deal with the prof (who I did not like for a number of reasons) by skipping class and drinking wine and bitching with friends.
shermanvolvo
1 Dec 08 at 4:30 pm
So, this is a post about 6 months old I realize but I was just linked to it now and wanted to add my own experiences at the end of my first year in the Women and Gender Studies program at San Francisco State.
I have yet to take the Feminist Theory class, so I’m not sure who gets addressed in that. However, in the 101 and 102 classes I took we have not discussed much about these authors, the department is a transnational one, so we tend to use newer books and authors than Greer, etc. The first day in 101 we discussed what sex and gender mean: sex = male, female, intersex; gender = masculine, feminine, transgender, genderqueer. And amongst all the other topics (and they ranged widely, it was 101 after all) we did talk about the experiences of intersex people with the medical industrial complex. In 102 sexuality wasn’t discussed as much as the intersections of race, for the most part and nation.
I did take a class though; Lesbian, Queer and Transgender Identities, where Raymond was read and discussed. It was a segment from the Transsexual Empire, I believe, from Susan Stryker’s Transgender Reader. Our class tore that apart. I also felt like we discussed trans*people in that class as actors and not simply those who gender acts upon or as necessarily revolutionary.
There was another class I took the same semester, Gender and the Culture of War, where we read Leslie Feinberg’s Drag King Dreams and discussed how militarism and safety overlap with race, gender and sexuality. Who gets to be “safe”, what “safe” means, how the issues of gender and immigration and religion etc. overlap.
I hope the classes are as good as I think they are, and that my cis-privilege isn’t just making me blind, but they do seem pretty good about this. Though I agree with another poster who said it’s also troubling if we just ignore this legacy and don’t discuss it.
whatsername
14 Jun 09 at 3:04 pm
So was that distinction between sex and gender used to reiterate that a trans woman is male and a trans man is female, or was there some acknowledgement that sex and assumptions about sex are also derived from social constructions that are used to identify gender? Just curious as to the context.
Anyway, thanks for that. I do like hearing that there’s some critique of transphobic feminist writing going on.
Lisa Harney
14 Jun 09 at 6:37 pm
My professor went from pointing out the two to trying to get us to think about our assumptions about sex and gender. She asked us if we were a gender different from what we are, what were things we would do differently, and what things we would never do again. Almost EVERYONE (I was so frustrated by this) started listing off biological things (“I would pee standing up!”) and it was a big class, so I don’t know if we ever got through the exercise like she wanted us to.
But she came back to it the next class, pointing out our gender essentialism and trying to get us to realize that we weren’t really working within the distinction we said we understood.
The distinction was definitely never used to justify the idea that a trans-woman is “really a man” or any of that sort of thinking.
whatsername
14 Jun 09 at 7:02 pm
That sounds pretty interesting, actually.
My question wasn’t clear about defining trans women as male and trans men as female – I was just wondering how trans people were defined in terms of assigned vs. preferred sex, if that makes sense.
Thanks for clarifying. :)
Lisa Harney
14 Jun 09 at 7:05 pm
On that point, I don’t think we ever explicitly discussed “what sex are trans*people, really“. It might just be me, coming out of a Human Sexuality class with an evolutionary biology book I really enjoyed, but it seems like basically sex just isn’t important. I mean, what does gamete production really tell us about ourselves? What matters is our genders, that’s all about how we think of ourselves, how others think about us, how we function in society, etc. etc. That perspective has never been explicitly stated in my department, though.
whatsername
14 Jun 09 at 7:16 pm
Oh, and every professor I’ve had has used whatever pronoun an individual self-identifies as to identify that person with, including gender neutral ones as Feinberg prefers.
whatsername
14 Jun 09 at 7:17 pm
I don’t think we ever explicitly discussed “what sex are trans*people, really“.
This is great, thank you.
And yeah, self-identification does (and should) matter a lot more than what you’re assigned. I’m glad to hear about your university. :)
Lisa Harney
14 Jun 09 at 8:03 pm
As with whatsername, I was just linked to this post by a friend who’s going to start teaching Feminist Theory in the fall and is picking my brain about how I do it.
When I teach Feminist Theory, and the unit on gender and culture in Contemporary Moral Issues, I always include a section at the end of our coverage of each theorist/school of thought/theory called “Blindspots.” I sort of modeled this after a similar segment my favorite history prof did called “misconceptions of historical figures based on their social/political status” or something like that. A bit cumbersome, so I just call mine “blindspots,” which may be a bit generous in some cases. This allows me to look at the ways various thinkers have marginalized groups like WOC, working class, trans, and intersex people, as well as explore the social and academic environments that give rise to this kind of myopic thinking. And this little segment at the end of each unit often generates the most rigorous discussion on the part of the students, which is nice.
As far as the literature goes, I haven’t seen much, although I’m in Philosophy, and tend to read the texts at the intersection of feminism and social justice and philosophical theory, which is a bit different from your typical gender studies or women’s studies texts. And as far as doing my own research/writing on these topics, although I’m really into this stuff, publishing on it would sadly marginalize me to the point of derailing my tenure track altogether. Working on this kind of stuff is a luxury reserved for those who are already tenured. So much for academic freedom.
Also, I’m frustrated by the lack of texts on trans issues that are informative, accessible to those at a sophomore/junior level, and short/concise enough to be used in my Contemporary Moral Issues course. None of the textbooks even touch on this stuff, so I’ve sort of patched together a few articles on the topic, and I use some video from Kate Bornstein, but none of the texts is quite what I need and they lack consensus on a number of trans 101 issues, even about stuff like language usage. For instance, most texts distinguish transgender from genderqueer, but I’ve been admonished online for making that distinction on a number of occasions. So the lack of informative and accessible texts is one reason I can often be found lurking on trans blogs, trying to find better ways to conceptualize and explain the issues to students. It also means there’s a high likelihood that I’ll print up and use one of your blog posts to direct class discussion at some point. I’ll be sure to ask you first, though! ;-)
Rachel_in_WY
14 Jun 09 at 8:32 pm