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.

What is the more complex explanation of women's physical reality then?
I don't know. I'm certainly not an expert. I'm just willing to believe that if transsexual people tell me it's more complex than I think, that it probably is more complex, given that they've spent their whole life living and thinking about this experiences, whereas I've just spent a few hours reading about it.

And what other things have a physical reality that requires a complex explanation?
Most things! Things never fit neatly into categories, there are always some things on the edge that don't quite fit the definition. Like mammals have a physical reality but duck-billed platypuses have some of the characteristics of mammals but lay eggs.

A more important one is the boundaries of what counts as a person at all. That seems to be one of the key problems of the birth control and abortion debates, because no-one can agree at what point a feotus becomes a person.

I realise that with these examples the difference is more physical than a "feeling"... but i think it's quite possible that there are physical things in transgendered peoples brains that lead to this "feeling". So for me, those as-yet-unknown physical things may eventually form part of the explanation of what man and woman mean. In the meantime, I don't think it matters that the boundary is a bit vague.

Marmite, why are you willing to belive transsexual people, but not women who believe the opposite?

Marmite, what makes you think that transgender people have more knowledge of the physical reality of women's bodies than women who are not transgender have?

The 'person' thing is not an explanation to do with physical reality and so can't be defined from a scientific perspective anyway so is rightly much more complex. I don't think the explanation of the platypus is complex; it is simple but different from the norm for many other species.

I think the show was great. "A group of transsexuals", a bit like "a group of dwarfs", a bit like "a group of gays" or "a group of blacks". Those groups are all made up of individuals with their own pasts, beliefs, feelings and ambitions. When you ignore the individuals and address the group/label people can treat other people extremely badly because it's not the same to them as treating an individual badly.

Drew was turned down for a job because a bridal shop said their customers wouldn't want her there.
Sarah was denied a room in a house because the owner was worried about a brick through the window.
Sarah was worried in case her parents disowned her.
Karen's daughter has disowned her.

I'm not a feminist. I'm a personist.

"Yes, as I said earlier, I want to hear something about chemicals and hormones. They cannot be ignored in all this."

Hully, all I can offer you there is my own experience - as in the OP, in my teenage years I had a phase of wanting to be male (not to be a transman and undergo surgery in order to become 'male' but rather wishing that I had been born a man in the first place).

It was only ever a fantasy, I'd always been a tomboy type girl and dressed in very unfeminine clothing but that was about the extent of it, it sort of fizzled out as I got older and became happier and more confident about my (female) appearance.

However, more recently I was diagnosed with PCOS and switched to a different contraceptive pill with a much higher oestrogen content and also an anti-androgen which was supposed to help with the excess hair growth, acne etc. Can't say it's helped with that but since taking it I definitely feel somehow different; it's hard to articulate, really, but I feel a lot more 'womanly' than I ever did and am currently very confident in the body I have.

I do wonder if I didn't have abnormal levels of male hormone kicking around the whole time and that's what caused me to feel the way I did.

Because the majority group tend to dismiss the views of the 'other' and I feel like that is what is happening here. As women we're not usually the dominant group, but i think compared to transsexual people we are.

It's like I think a straight person is likely to have a much less nuanced understanding of sexuality than a queer person. Not necessarily, not always, but on the whole I believe that.

Marmite, you are probably right about straight people having a less nuanced understanding of sexuality in general, but straight people will no doubt have a better understanding of heterosexual sexuality than people who have always been gay will do.

The biological reality of women is something that is going to be most fully understood by people who have actually been female.

It isn't clear when you refer to transgender people if you mean MTF transgender people or FTM transgender people or both.

If you are saying that MTF transgender people have more understanding of women's biological reality that is truly extraordinary.

MTF trans are men. That's why they have been able to impose their idea of womanhood (anything a man feels he is) on us. Men have power in this world. Women generally don't.

Women have a far greater understanding of femaleness and women's bodies than men do.

If you term the debate "The biological reality of being women" then women have more experience, but if you term it "The biological reality of sex and gender" then transgender people I think have more understanding. That doesn't really help as i suppose we're discussing a bit of both!

I guess the crux of the issue is 'what is the definition of 'woman' for?' In the end it's a word that we can define how we want to. I feel happy for the boundaries to be drawn wider than the type of genitals we were born with or the type of chromosomes I have, as it would have a massively benificial effect for transgender people and little to no negative effect on me. I can see a few reasons for safe spaces where transgender people cannot go, but the vast majority of the time I think we should be inclusive rather than exclusive.

I don't get the sexuality analogy.

I am bisexual. I have no clue what it is like to be gay or straight. It actually really interests/puzzles me what it'd be like to define who you're attracted to by sex. I would imagine transsexuals know most about what it's like to be transsexual ... that's it.

Marmite - cross-posted.

Isnt' what you're saying 'if we frame the debate in terminology feminists reject, feminists will lost out'? I mean, saying you could term it 'the biological reality of sex and gender' is like me saying I can win an argument against atheists if insist on framing the debate as 'is God real or amazing' instead of 'is God real or not'.

But gender isn't biological, it's a social construction Marmite. This discussion seems to be going round in circles.

Gender is a sex hierarchy imposed on women in order to maintain male domination over us.

I don't think the crux of the issue is what is the definition of women for because you could say that about pretty much any category then - trees, clouds, roads, dollshouses, carrots, giraffes, lorries. What are the definitions of those things for?

The crux of the trans issue is why do they want to redefine "woman" away from women's biological reality, and the reason for it is that it's about undermining women's experience and women's political understanding of ourselves, a political understanding that has only just been created in the last 200 or so years. It is not a coincidence that trans activism targets radical feminists, lesbian groups and radical feminist lesbian events like MichFest. There must be no political understanding for women of our own selves and our realities, especially our physical realities - we must include the ones with penises too. It's incredible.

MTF trans are women. That's the law.

Thanks for demonstrating how men use the law to erase women's reality TiggyD.

Yes Tiggy ...it is the law ... do you have a comment on it? I don't think anyone doesn't know it at this stage in the thread, it has been mentioned quite a lot.

LeninGrad Wed 30-Nov-11 19:49:37
And this just about sums it up:

www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/radfemtrans.html

Me like very muchly.

toboldlygo - thanks for that, I think we are ignoring the role that these chemicals and hormones play in the way we, as humans, experience our bodies and our "feelings," possibly because it veers uncomfortably close to biological determinism and undermines the idea of purely societal constructs?

Marmite, there is no biological reality to gender. Both you and Manatee seem to be mixing up sex and gender, and I really don't know why. It forms part of neither feminist nor trans arguments.

I think one of you or both of you needs to explain why you are using terminology in a totally different way to the way it is normally used, because it is extremely confusing. With trans activists, I understand the argument they are making because they are precise in what they say. I think if you are going to change the meaning of sex and gender you need to explain why you are doing it and exactly what you mean.

As for what is the term woman for - it is to describe people with female reproductive potential, unless you think that the experiences that come from having female reproductive potential are so trivial that we don't need a name for the group who shares them. Alternatively, you may think that the shared experiences between women and MTF trans people are so important that we need a group name, in which case please say what these experiences are, because nobody ever does.

I agree Len.

It's all terribly people's front of judea, but sometimes things have to be for a bit.

Can I just say that i am really astonished that mtf would go into the showers and wave their willies and say I am a woman with a penis so ner. Just wow.

One day we will have third, fourth, fifth and sixth sexes (not in a ranked sense).

I don't mind it being the Judean People's Front. If people want to form different types of feminist groups for different reasons, I'm happy for them to do so. I don't feel a need to insist on being allowed into a Feminist pensioners' book group, or a separatist commune for women with female children, or an Asian women's refuge or an abortion support group.

We can all come together over campaigns with common ground.