Feminist perspectives on transgendered people

[toboldlygo]

Excuse the random intrusion (haven't posted here before) but I've been watching My Transsexual Summer on C4 and it's raised some questions for me; basically, I was just wondering if there was any sort of feminist consensus on transgendered/transsexual individuals, whether there's any difference in opinions depending on whether they are FtM or MtF, pre or post surgery etc.

Not looking for a bunfight, just curious, if it helps any I am a cisgendered female these days but went through a phase in my late teens of being desperately uncomfortable in my own gender and wanting very much to be male.

Thunder, I mean FTM transgender person.

You see, I want to identify with the group of people formerly called 'women.'

I think that a FTM pregnant person should be allowed in women's groups, women's refuges, women's health centres and so on. I don't think a MTF person should be.

So I'd like a new term to define the people formerly known as women, because it seems to me that it is not just that we are allowed to call that group women, but that we are not allowed to give that group of people any kind of name at all.

If that isn't erasing our existence, then what is?

The "man" who got pregnant was so odd. There was so much coverage of it, as if something unusual had happened, when in fact what it was was a woman getting pregnant, who just happened to call herself a man.

Milly, I think we should be able to keep the term women. It's colonisation that men think they can take over that too.

the pg man thing was fascinating. he stopped taking the hormones for the duration of the pg, so his voice started to raise in pitch, and his beard stopped growing etc. he resumed taking the hormones after the birth.

Male and female aren't identities, they are biological realities.

There's a lot of truth in that, but that statement misses out some nuances much discussed in a number of fields.

For example in psychoanalysis (my professional field) it's common to refer to a 'core gender identity' - the gender one feels one is, which is rooted in physicality, and established within a year or two of birth as a rule - and a 'gender role identity', which is a much more fluid thing that has more to do with social roles and structures. Working with clients on their own sense of self can mean working with the slippage between core gender identity and gender role identity, or with someone whose core gender identity is stable but who struggles against the confines of gender role identity or feels they fluctuate between different gender role identities. There are countless more people like this - I'm one of them - than there are people who'd ever position themselves as definitively transgender.

From that perspective, while it's true that male and female is a biological reality, it's not an either/or thing: male and female is both an identity and a biological reality. The former normatively orders the latter to an extent; in my view our bodies aren't entirely blank canvases, as some theorists have argued; but there is a lot of room for manoeuvre in gender role identity than some might assume. I think there's a lot of room for feminist inquiry into the normative shape of gender role identity, without having either to ditch the idea of a core gender identity (the 'gender is a social construct' position) or else insist that there is or should be a 1:1 match between core gender identity and gender role identity for everyone (the gender essentialist position).

Sorry, that should read 'The latter normatively orders the former to an extent', ie core gender identity normatively orders gender role identity.

So basically we are in the Victorian era, and psychoanalysts are going to tell us that we must have a core gender identity, and however much we deny having any such thing, they are going to insist that we must have one?

How do psychoanalysts define people who deny having a core gender identity?

Are they mentally ill, deluded, ignorant or just lying?

Well psychoanalysis is a patriarchal discipline so it's hardly suprising that it would have theories that justify patriarchal arguments.

Male and female aren't identities, people only believe that because of the sexual hierarchy that has been created that has to ascribe certain qualities to each sex to justify male dominance.

Do you believe that male and female are identities for all the other sexually dimorphic species too, Manatee? Because male and female aren't limited to humans.

"I think there's a lot of room for feminist inquiry into the normative shape of gender role identity"

I'm sure feminists will be glad to hear that you approve, because it's what the whole of the second wave of feminism has been based on since the 1960s. Before feminism came along people didn't even realise that sex roles (gender) was socially structured, they thought they were natural and intrinsic - including the father of psychoanalyis - Freud, who had plenty to say about women's "true" natures.

I think manatee means we have a core sex identity, not gender identity. She's mixing up the concepts as keeps happening on this thread.

The thing is our sex doesn't have anything to do with identity. Being aware of our sex could maybe be thought of as such, but certainly sex isn't something you try on like a suit of clothes if you don't like the fit of hte one you've got.

So that would be like me having a core tall person identity then? That I might have to work on?

Or do we only have to work on our core sex identity because we are discriminated against? In which case, do men not have to bother with their core sex identity?

Good point Milly, I have a core supermodel identity, which unfortunately doesn't match my physical exterior.

I see no reason why I should be discriminated against for that though and miss out on multi-million pound modelling contracts and Vogue covers however.

Feelings trump physical reality after all.

I'm not going to 'tell' anyone anything, MillyR. - least of all that they're mentally ill, deluded or lying. For starters, I'm not 'psychoanalysts', I'm one person with some knowledge of a field that takes an interest in gender, offering a perspective from which the statement Male and female aren't identities, they are biological realities could be seen to miss out on some nuances.

Your response comes across as quite brusque: are you perhaps connecting the word 'psychoanalysis' with the cold, detached, phallocentric classical Freudian psychoanalysis, that so many - including many, many feminists - have critiqued since Freud's day? If so, perhaps I should have qualified my position a bit more clearly.

Popular perception of psychoanalysis has in many cases got stuck on a set of 'orthodox' Freudian ideas that are in large part considered out of date by contemporary practitioners. Psychoanalysts are (and always have been) anything but monolithic in their views - you only have to look at the controversy over Melanie Klein's work back in the 40s to see that. Like any other active field of thought and research, it's constantly evolving and there's plenty of debate within the field as there is elsewhere.

"a perspective from which the statement Male and female aren't identities, they are biological realities could be seen to miss out on some nuances"

The question isn't whether that statement is nuanced, the question is whether it's correct.

Male and female refer to biological realities. Just because patriarchal men have tried to ascribe particular qualities to the human sexes in order to justify male domination of women, doens't make that statement unnuanced, it just means that those looking for the nuance in it have bought into that particular patriarchal trick.

"a field that takes an interest in gender"

That would be feminism. Feminism deconstructed the whole are of gender roles - roles that the patriarchy including its subsidiaries like psychoanalysis are desperately trying to reconstruct.

Its' why little boys who like wearing pink dresses and playing with dolls are now being called girls in some instances.

Well it isn't a nuance then. It is merely a belief.

Phrases like 'established within a year or two of birth as a rule' make it sound as if this gender identity actually exists, rather than being a thing you happen to believe in.

Sorry for suggesting that it was psychoanalysts who were telling us this belief, rather than something you believe independently.

'Male and female aren't identities, they are biological realities could be seen to miss out on some nuances.'

Yes, they could be seen to miss out on some nuances of core gender identity, in much the same way that as an atheist I am no doubt missing out on some nuances about the nature of Ganesh.

But the nuances of a non-existent thing don't really matter to me personally, much as I respect the right of others to believe in them and live their personal lives accordingly.

Also, I apologise if I appeared to be dismissing the entire field of psychoanalysis. I have no issue with Susie Orbach.

I would like someone to say something about hormones and chemicals as shapers. We haven't done that yet.

Disappointed that the pregnant man was a WtoM, thought it was an amazing scientific breakthrough.

Yes, I really did, that's why I was so amazed. I know what you mean, but i think it would be great if they could do all the baby growing, birthing and bfing. All that bored me rigid. I like dc when they get to about 4 and can negotiate. Terribly dull before then.

Nah, it'll be great, they'll be too knackered and sorry for themselves to take any notice of us. We can take over the world while they are too tired to think.

I had lovely full-on drugs and a completely unnatural birth. Can't see the need for voluntary pain.

Does that make me unwomanly or unfeminist? Or neither?