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.

This has all been really interesting, I am going to read all the stuff.

Thanks all.

Sounds like i need to do some more reading to figure out how to express exactly what I'm trying to say, Milly. Thanks for debating, goodnight all.

Yes, the feminist reprise link is brilliant.

Manatee - your posts are really interesting but like others I don't quite get your use of 'gender'. Your discussion of how one acquires a sense of having a sexed body makes total sense, but I'd call this a core sex identity rather than core gender identity (as it comes from the body rather than social conditioning). The interesting question of course is, do transsexuals/transgender people experience this core sex identity differently, and if so, why?

Yes, that is a really interesting question.

Feminist Reprise had to shut down another site she had - Questioning Transgender, because of the attacks she was facing from trans activists.

I hadn't realised until starting to read about all this how vehement some trans activists can be (and the anecdote quoted by Hully above, about willy-waving in all women spaces, is just horrifying).

However - the majority of transsexuals do not behave like this, surely, and it seems unfair to impose a blanket ban on all MTFs in women-only spaces (as opposed to specific spaces e.g. rape support where different rules may apply) because of the behaviour of a vocal minority.

How do you know it's not a majority behaving like this Mooncup? Trans are pretty small in number so it seems like it must be a fairly high proportion at least.

Also, why shouldn't women in women only spaces be protected, or is a smaller amount of abuse and terrorisation of women acceptable as long as men's right to claim women's space is protected.

Here's some more details of trans activists targeting rad fems:

twanzphobic.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/twanzjacktivists-new-levels-of-threats-and-harassment/#more-3042

Here's a story of trans invading the one and only women's only music festival in the world (so that's the one trans attack):

gendertrender.wordpress.com/tag/michfest/

My personal experience is of non-trans people, and people who I don't think are actually terribly aware of trans issues either (judging by what people have said about the trans people they know, on this thread), being very outspoken about 'my cis priviledge' or 'the horrible horrible feminists being anti trans'.

It may be that this experience of mine is just a blip, but if not it's worrying - it would suggest lots of people are convinced about an issue when they've just taken on faith some very basic ideas available in mainstream media (eg: transpeople are very oppressed by feminists/ innate gender is real/ all transpeople want and deserve surgery, which will make them into the opposite sex with no trouble).

Extremists of all flavours everywhere are both monomaniacal and dull, and ultimately pointless. Extremism can lead to nowhere but fighting and suffering. Live and let live and actively engage with understanding and tolerance.

As in the earlier referenced blog.

No sorry, these are men threatening violence against women and invading women's spaces when they've been specifically told they aren't welcome. Saying everybody is as bad as each other is simply incorrect.

Does anybody really believe those blokes invading MichFest that Gallus Mag writes about in the Gender Trender blog are actually women, because if they do, I've got a super bridge they might be interested in buying down London way.

You obviously see things in much more black and white terms than I do.

To me, if a human being suffers terribly feeling that they are a "woman" born into a "man's" body, and longs to be accepted and welcomed by women as one of them, then they are bound to feel aggrieved and hurt that they are told they are "men" and not welcome.

Equally, I can understand why some women may have suffered terribly at the hands of male "men" and want a space devoid of anyone who has ever been even remotely a "man."

I don't see it as being about everyoen being "as bad as each other," but about a whole laod of unhappy human beings who have to inhabit the earth together and somehow work towards acceptance and tolerance.

I do accept, of course, that you don't see it that way!

I don't think I'm seeing things in black and white, more accurately. It's not possible to change a man into a woman. Physically it's as impossible as turning a man into a banana or a giraffe into a tree. So I don't understand why this particular delusion is the one that is pandered to.

I disagree that tolerance is a good quality to be encouraging when it is female boundaries that are being crossed by men. We need quite the opposite.

Tolerance of the idea of MTF trans for women logically leads to tolerating the list of issues that I listed up there. If we do believe that men can become women it's logical for children to be given hormone blockers, it's logical for a MTF killer to be assigned to a woman's prison, it would indeed be discrimination to stop a MTF offering counselling to female rape victims.

Women have a specific set of interests in this issue. We have the need to have our own physical reality and beings respected, we require our own experiences to be respected, and we have the issue of safety from men in women only spaces which is real. You appear to be saying that we must ignore those and tolerate what men want, which I can't support. So it's true, we do see things differently.

And I do think it's misleading to paint this as "extremists on both sides" when only one side is invading spaces and making threats of physical violence. It's pretty obvious why women shouldn't trust the supposed good motives of males who are behaving like that.

I have to say, I think hully that's rather more black and white, not less, isn't it?

You're saying (and I understand why people feel like this), that anyone who says they are suffering should receive sympathy and, ideally, the help they ask for.

As a principle I think I'd like to agree with it because it sounds like the most fundamental, humane thing to do. But in saying that, you're saying you won't get into - or maybe even you feel it's morally wrong to get into - addressing why someone says they are suffering and how the help they ask for would work.

IMO, that's the point at which the black-and-white certainties of 'this person is hurting, I must be sympathetic' start getting blurred. I don't know about anyone else but I don't like thinking about why people are saying they're suffering, but a blanket response of 'oh, it must be terrible' is only the positive side of the same coin that ignores it all. It's not I think really getting to the bottom of anything.

Sorry, I don't know if that makes sense or not, and I hope you don't mind me posting it.

Hmm.

I don't think that denying any human the reality of their own experience and feelings ever leads anywhere helpful.

Of course I don't mind, lrd! it is good, and interesting, to think about all this stuff.

Okay. With regard to the whys.

I don't think we yet know why. There are a lot of theories, some people think it's psychological, some chemical, some social etc, perhaps if we had a definitive answer (and I doubt there is one) we might be able to address it, although I worry that that might bring us dangerously close to the same idea of fixing gay people with psychology and/or chemicals.

I prefer therefore that, as knowldege currently stands, everybody's feelings and choices be respected and accommodated as far as possible (as long as they don't hurt anyone else of course), and I also see it as part of the introduction of a breaking down of fixed ideas about gender and biological determinism. Let people be who they want, whatever sex they want, have sex with whom they like. That, ultimately, will help lead to the liberation of all human beings of whatever flavour.

And I couldn't say to a woman who wanted to be a man, well, you can't, tough shit, you were born that way and you have to spend your brief threescore years and ten being miserable. Or man to woman.

I do find it really, really telling that several times in this thread, people have commented that it is unfair to deny anyone's 'feelings', or it's unfair to deny anyone the use of a word to define them, and so on. And these comments are being phrased always to refer to transgender people, as if we temporarily forget that women are any kind of consideration.

I think this does happen a lot, this attitude that women aren't really a disempowered group, or an oppressed group, or only when it's convenient for us, only when there isn't some other oppressed group's needs to be taken into account. And aside from the obvious problems of constructing some mental hierarchy of oppression, I find this worrying because that kind of attitude is at root of a lot of mistreatment of women through history. There is this very prevalent misogynistic idea that women really should become decorously invisible if anyone else needs to be seen, that women should put their own feelings and sufferings to one side if anyone else is hurt or wants to express an opinion.

To an extent I think this is particular to misogyny as an oppressive practice, and that is why I find it so hard to take when it is happening in this situation.

Hully, I understand your sentiments but I think you are reaching them by not actually stating your position on the issues.

Why should a MTF transgender person have the right to carry out a strip search on me? Why have I no right to have separate showering facilities from them but they are from me? Why am I not allowed to form any kind of group ever that is only for people with female reproductive potential? Why am I not even able to refer to women in that way because there is no longer any group name for us that is acceptable?

I think you have to address the issues.

"I don't think that denying any human the reality of their own experience and feelings ever leads anywhere helpful."

So if someone thinks they are Napoleon or Jesus you'd support them in that and you wouldn't think they were deluded?

Also being female isn't fundamentally an experience, it's a state of physical being.

lrd, reality and experience:

My reality is that I inhabit the biological shell of a sentient being labelled "woman," I don't mind the shell I inhabit, it doesn't interest me much, but we rub along ok.

My experience is that being inside that shell leads me to be treated by the world in certain ways, and to feel certain things eg pmt, because of chemicals and hormones.

I am fortunate in that my "reality" and "experiences" get along ok.

If you inhabit a shell that you strongly feel to be wrong, then someone telling you tough shit, you were born that way, live with it, it's your problem, is telling you to deny your reality.

If a white person claimed to be black, would you tell the black person they were being intolerant if they refused to accept them as such Hully?

milly, as I said yesterday, I think that currently there is an argument for a peoples front of judea situation while we work towards a working out of these thorny problems.

I don't have any positions, or certain answers, that's why I am here, otherwise I wouldn't bother! What would be the point?

I don't know, thunder, is the honest answer. Let me think about it. I certainly wouldn't put it in those terms, but I lean towards thinking how lovely it would be if we could all self-define without fear of reprisal, certainly.