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.

perhaps it was a woman-specific medical issue?

Hully, what woman-specific issue would you have, that'd be treated the same in a cis woman and a trans woman? That was the bit I didn't get.

I know it would be expensive, but ideally would you not allocate different bits of the prison or different prisons to different people? Prison is non-ideal in a shedload of ways though ...

god yes the prison thing is a nightmare. they'd have to be in a unit on their own I guess.

reclaim etc, hmmm, I'll have to think about that. I can see both sides.

Absolutely LRD, of course everyone should be treated like human beings. But even in that ideal world there would be sometimes be a linguistic need to distinguish between trans and cis women. E.g. 'Well, as a cis woman she's never had to undergo gender reassignment surgery.' or 'As a cis male, he's never walked around with a sock down his pants'. Just in the normal way of conversation about such issues, one needs a term.

It's not that different from referring to 'gay' and 'straight' women (though obviously that doesn't threaten the sex binary).

Hully, I think one poster case for this has been the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, which has a clear policy that only 'womyn-born womyn' are allowed in, thus excluding transwomen. It's caused some savage bunfights lively debates among different groups within the feminist, lesbian-feminist, queer-feminist, trans-activist and LGBTQ worlds.

Personally I see it as a classic example of the problems and limitations of identity politics.

In that ideal world, IMO, we would no longer be talking about 'gender reassignment surgery' because we would have accepted 'gender' as a concept is useless and restrictive.

yes, me too, Manatee.

new names for new times I say. As we don't seem to be able to live without names.

I can imagine if you had a penis, but identified strongly as a woman, it must be doubly hurtful to be told your penis debars you.

Equally if you want a physically-literally women only space to feel safe, you wouldn't want a penis-bearer.

difficult indeed.

I think we are too hung up on what genitals people have.

I can see your point, sgm

Boffin Couldn't agree more. But if we stop paying any attention to what genitals people have, doesn't feminism go by the wayside as well? And there, I think, is the rub.

If there was less polarisation in society generally, less emphasis on social divisions, then we would not need feminism.

I don't think so.

I think if no-one much cared what genitals people had, who was female and who was male, we would not have the patriarchy.

The need for feminism means we need to argue for women as a group, but that is only because the patriarchy disciminates on women as a group. If no discrimination, no need for feminism - which is the ideal.

eh?

Plus there are many more versions of sexuality than XX and XY. You have XXY, XYY and all sorts of other things. There may be as many as 15 permutations, with associated variations in genitals and personal inclination. We should celebrate this diversity, and stop shoving people into pigeonholes.

sorry the eh was to boffin, but i think your post explains it lrd!

If we manage to annhialate the hierarchy, that would be a miracle. But it is a desirable state of affairs.

I agree.

I'm still thinking about it all. It's most int'restin

Cis is meant to mean somebody whose assigned sex at birth is the same as their gender identity. It is then clearly offensive to tell many feminists, people who don't agree with the existence of gender, that you are going to refer to them by what you assume their gender identity to be.

Many women don't want to be told that their identity is woman, because they don't feel they have an inner gender identity - they feel like people with female bodies.

That seems to me to be entirely different to the terms gay and straight.

I also don't see how trans people give us a better understanding of gender by creating new kinds of gender. I don't need to know a greater variety of different genders any more than I need to know about a greater variety of yellow stars and pink triangles. I just want people to stop labelling people that way, or at least stop labelling me that way.

I haven't followed this but read the first few posts and am watching the program on C4 now so just posting/marking in case

I have nothing to add. I am not as eloquent and articulate.
I found this thread while sitting at Tunbridge Wells station tonight, with nothing to do for an hour, waiting for a late/cancelled train home.

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading it. I think you've all discussed it in such a rational and respectful (to each other) way. It makes interesting and thought provoking reading.

That's it really.