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.

Ah. Interesting.

Oh, I see.

Do you know where it comes from, Moocup? I would like to know.

I do feel hurt by the use of qualifier. I think if someone referred to me as a 'born female' I'd still be confused.

What I don't follow is, if being female is not to do with how you were born, why distinguish between 'cis' and 'trans'? Personally I don't understand how it could be the same thing - ie. 'femaleness' that you'd either be born with or acquire later on. Can anyone shed light from the trans perspective as I just don't understand the argument, whereas the definition of being a woman thunder gave is much easier to accept on first principles.

Does it mean then, does anyone know, that identification is a kind of spectrum? So if you're a certain length along you identify as "female" without wanting surgery, a bit further and hormones will do, the whole hog and you want the surgery?

Manatee, I don't follow - how do transsexuals challenge the gender binary?

Doesn't it reinforce the gender binary to think of it as something that really exists, that you can transgress?

On wiki where I just looked, lrd, it said it was introduced so that transgender wasn't the abnorm with male/female being the normative. To give equal value to trans as well as cis. An interesting idea.

Ah, thanks Hully.

So why did the term 'woman' not get used?

I'm not saying I would not have a problem with that - I think I might, I'm afraid. But I don't get why, if you want to have a word for transgender being normal, you wouldn't campaign for MtoF transsexuals to eb called women, instead of introducing a term that qualifies the identity of other women?

I may well be missing a lot here so excuse me if this is not making sense.

as far as i understand, cis is used for a woman whose gender feelings tally with her born body (appalling English but you get the drift), as opposed to a trans woman

cis is also used for men whose feelings and bodies tally.

The point is LRD that transsexuals do need a term to differentiate trans and non-trans people. E.g. 'That doctor treated me appallingly - I bet he wouldn't have treated a cis woman like that.'

Ah, I see moon.

I'm sorry, but I do feel it is really rude to use a term that takes away from another disenfranchised group, though.

Here we go:

Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook defined "cisgender" as a label for "individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity", complementing "transgender".[2] A similar adjective is "gender-normative"; Eli R. Green wrote, "The term 'cisgendered' is used [instead of the more popular 'gender normative'] to refer to people who do not identify with a gender diverse experience, without enforcing existence of a 'normative' gender expression."[3] There are many derivatives of the term in use including cis male, cis female, and cissexual.

In that case I think there are two problems - that definition is using gender, which is a concept I'd reject as a feminist, and I cannot get over feeling that it is really hurtful to invent a term that makes women even more 'other' than they already are in patriarchial society.

I can see why it could have happened and why, if you are being treated very badly, you may feel any solution is acceptable. But even though I sympathize with that, I don't like the terminology or what it indicates.

"I sometimes wonder if the condemnation of transgendered people by some feminists is linked to a fear of losing that gender dichotomy (i.e. male = oppressing class, female = oppressed class,) that supports their analysis of gender-based injustice. Dunno."

I must take issue with this, Kri. I don't see feminists condemning trans people. I see feminists condemning a trans politics that has the capacity to undermine, divide and destroy women's struggle for liberation from male oppression (and is already doing so: consider the difficulty feminists have in even speaking of women-only organising without accusations of 'transphobia'). And unsurprisingly patriarchal institutions - medicine, the law - are more than happy to legitimise this trans politics. Feminism offers an analysis of SEX-based oppression. Gender is not the basis; gender is the hierarchy that feminists want to banish. That's why the concept of an innate gender identity is nonsensical from a feminist POV.

But what term would you prefer trans people to use, LRD? You can see the need for one, yes? And it does work both ways - one can say cis man and trans man too.

Proles - I don't know about this, there is an argument to have women only things where trans aren't allowed? Surgery/non-surgery/all?

I realised I have obviously missed a big issue here..

LRD I think 'problematise' is probably a better word than 'challenge'. I see what you're saying, but while you've got a point it only really holds if all trans people behave in the same way, which isn't my experience. Of course plenty of people transition and then just vanish into the general population; you could argue that these are indeed reinforcing the gender binary. But then there are others that don't.

I know male-bodied people who live as women, with female names, but don't want to have the operation. I know a woman who went through all the legal, hormonal and surgical steps to transition and become a man, and who still passes as such, but who stopped taking T and carried a baby when his/her female partner became infertile after cancer treatment.

One of the most important relationships of my life was with a woman who went halfway through gender reassignment surgery, lived as a man for 4 years and then had a dreadful reaction to hormone treatment and resumed life as a butch lesbian. I got used to thinking of her first as 'her', then as 'him' then as 'her' again.

I know people who identify as male but remain female-bodied because they don't agree with the idea of gender reassignment surgery, people who are 'he' within groups of sympathetic close friends but legally and professionally 'she', and plenty of people about whom it'd be anyone's guess if you saw them on the street whether they were male or female - and who would say, if you asked them, 'None of the above, thanks'.

These friends have definitely left me with a more nuanced and non-binary understanding of what gender is and the different axes on which it's constituted. That, in turn, has definitely influenced the way I think about gender politics in the broader sense.

Me too Manatee.

Tis tres complicated.

What about the spectrum thing?

mooncup - I am still not really sure I understand enough of the whole situation to comment helpfully (I know that's not a great response).

I think at the moment, what occurs to me is, in what situation would a doctor have a responsibility to treat a MtoF transsexual like a woman born a woman - opposed to treating that person as a human being, male or female? The situations I can imagine where it matters your GP pays attention to your sex are ones that surely wouldn't apply to a transexual?

I could be misunderstanding here.

But for example, if your GP said 'oh, I can't treat your depression, you're depressed because you're a transsexual', I'd not say that GP was failing to treat someone as a woman - I'd say he was being a knob.

It really isn't complicated. Gender is a binary and a binary is a hierarchy. The solution isn't to multiply gender but to get rid of it.

manatee - I'm sorry, I am being really inarticulate but I still do not understand how it does not reinforce the concept of gender to form some identity that refers to biological sex or the trappings thereof, as if it were constructed.

proles - what I'm finding complicated isn't the feminist side of the argument, it's the other side. Which I can't get my mind around. I would like to understand it, I just can't follow what people are trying to get across.

My example was just that, LRD - the point is not about doctors in particular, but about the need for a term which differentiates women-born-female from women-not-born-female, without using very loaded terms like 'real', 'normal', etc.

Manatee - fascinating to hear about your friends and their various approaches/experiences.

I want to know about trans people not being allowed to go to some women-only things please.

Hully I'd definitely say that among my lesbian friends the idea of gender as a spectrum has a lot of currency.

I used to spend a lot of time on a (mostly) London lesbian forum; there would occasionally be epic bunfights about whether or not it was OK for male-identified lesbians to participate in the messageboard, as it was intended for lesbians only. The more separatist-minded posters were on occasions deeply offended by male-identified posters talking about feeling as though they had a penis, and some even found the idea of using cock-like prosthetics abhorrent. On the other hand the genderqueer contingent would argue that they were lesbians, within a broad definition of lesbian, and as such had as much right to be there as the separatists. It got quite heated sometimes.

There were interminable arguments about how people 'identified', a proliferation of labels and debates about what the labels themselves meant ('What, you're saying you're not really butch if you like kittens and puppies? How dare you? I'm more butch than a steel toe-capped boot, me, and I wuv my kitten and have a My Little Pony duvet set etc etc etc') and definitely, absolutely, no consensus that you were either definitely female or definitely male.

I guess all that probably influences my approach to debates about gender too

Ah, ok Manatee. I think I'm not being very coherent, sorry.

But what I'm saying is, there are some differences between a MtoF transsexual, and someone who's born a woman. I think both women and MtoF transsexuals - obviously- deserve to be treated with respect. But why define the standard of treatment MtoF transsexuals should expect with reference to the standard accorded to women? Why not just treat everyone like human beings? Then you wouldn't need to use a term that implies a woman who's born a woman is 'other' compared to a transwoman.