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.

lovely ol tufty

Milly, for you though you have a clear and certain start point from which to make those decisions.

I imagine that part of the huge difficulty of being trans is that lack, and therefore a strong desire to find a labelled section into which to put oneself?

I can imagine that's true hully.

I don't think anyone is wanting to have a go at trans people, but I assume the terminology and ideology isn't set in stone, and to me at least, while it's still set out in terms of gender, it's not possible to agree with it, even while I'm sympathizing with the reasons why people feel that way.

But aren't they talking about sex rather than gender? Or the terms are being used interchangeably...

If a MtoF trans wants to be strongly identified as being female, as opposed to just not-male, what words can they use? It's very hard.

When you say "don't agree with the existence of gender," that is because gender is a culturally and socially ascribed term?

So if they say they are "female" because they feel strongly that they are, aren't they denying gender because they have overcome it and are trying to identify with a feeling rather than a biology or a culturally-ascribed term?

These are sort of thoughts rather than questions expecting a definitive answer iyswim

hully - no, the term 'gender' has been used throughout the thread. As in 'gender reassignment surgery'. It may sometimes be used as interchangeable with 'sex' but to me that's a problem because I find it a bit offensive when people use gender as interchangeable with sex in general, and it's hard not to react in this situation too.

When I say 'don't agree with gender', yes, because it's a socially and culturally ascribed term, and because I think it's rubbish (or 'deeply unhelpful' if I want to be polite). I have no idea what gender means, if it doesn't mean the social/cultural/linguistic conventions usually associated with sex.

I don't see how you can 'overcome' gender by strongly feeling you belong to a gender.

I think where my issue is, is I don't understand what this 'femaleness' or femininity (or maleness or masculinity) is, that people identify with - is it a physical appearance, a social construct, or some combination of the two?

If it's physical appearance all I can think is: it must be awful to be so unhappy with your body you need surgery or hormone treatment, especially surgery that (at the moment), is not as I understand it perfect (ie., you don't get precisely what a woman-born-woman has down there). It may be for some the surgery is the best way to make them feel ok about themselves. For others it may be they're hoping surgery develops better solutions.

If it's some idea or concept of 'maleness' or 'femaleness' you identify with, well, what characterises that? How is this concept different from the social constructs of gender? If it is innate, are you saying it's innate to women to have this 'femaleness' - if so, how and where would you see it? My feeling here is that when you read people describing what they see as their strongly-identified female or male nature, it's not different from the social constructs of gender. So I think what is being argued is that gender in some way innate, at least to some people. And that puts limits on me as a feminist, IMO. Because the idea of gender as innate has been used to put women down form centuries.

Just wanted to add to the mix something that struck me recently about gender and its social construction. It's socially constructed, so by people, its a label that society places on you. It's a collective thing.

So to define for yourself a term like gender makes no sense to me. My gender is female because society has placed that gender on me. That's how gender works. There is no Platonic essence somewhere, it is the way that society formulates its norms. I can't turn round and say that I have decided that I am another socially constructed term, as I'm not society. Socially constructed terms are placed on you by others, they're not something you decide for yourself. It's not an individual thing.

Hence why gender is a bad thing and should be got rid of, not essentialised. And that's what I see when anyone tries to claim they are a term, that society has constructed. They are trying to turn something that it just a label constructed by society, into something essential (as in has an essence).

Does anyone get me? I feel like that turned into a ramble...

(I see traces of all the other destruction of collective political action through a focus on the individual here)

I'm sort of half-and-half with that AlwaysWild. I think people do and can reclaim terms successfully - and that is I suppose about creating a mini-society and constructing a term from inside it, which you then move to the wider society. And I can see the importance of having a lable you feel comfortable with, or that's not the offensive label society offers to you.

But I do agree, labels don't prove the existence of some Platonic essence!

Reclaiming terms, perhaps.

But this is changing the foundations of the way a whole concept works.

Yes, you're right - I take your point.

So what trans mtof are feeling strongly is the need to dump the socially ascribed gender male values? As well as, but not necessarily, the physical attributes of being male? Yet if they want surgery to correct how they feel about their external shells, is that just becuase those shells are also strongly gender-identified, or because they feel a need for a biological change and which case what is that?

I would very much like to be one for a few days to try and understand the feelings.

And for FtoM, there is clearly too an unhappiness with the biological shell. How much of it is chemical? The levels of testosterone across the spectrum urging a biological identification one way or another?

There are undoubted differences between humans dependant on testosterone (and other hormones).

I dump all sorts of the socially constructed female gender roles through being a feminist. Or fight against them rather than dump them. That's part of what feminism is for me. Doesn't mean I want to adopt masculinity, it means I want get rid of gender.

I don't know enough about how trans people feel to have anything except the same questions as you, hully.

I do get the sense that it's not easy to generalize and different people will have different ideas about what it all means to them. I wish I knew more about it. It does seem whenever you get a story in the media, it's been chosen because it conforms strongly to the guidelines about how in order to get surgery you need to identify strongly with the opposite-gender activities and so on, and that may not be very representative.

(Sorry, I realize you weren't asking questions to be answered anyway, I just meant I wanted to agree I don't know these things.)

I would like to get rid of gender, it is unhelpful

But have they lived as "men" Len, if they have never felt themselves to be "men? Just because biology put them in a male shell?

They have lived as men as society decides who is man and woman and treats them accordingly. That is how gender works.

Is that not cruel?

That seems to me to punish them doubly. Tough shit you were born male, so you are one evne though you feel utterly not-male?

Also, I doubt they are treated accordingly, most people who feel they are in the wrong body, are treated appallingly by others who see and pick on their difference as they refuse to conform to the gender expectations.