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.

Have to go and do Life now.

Will ponder more

But hully, isn't it 'unkind and a bit rude' to refer to 'cis women' or to 'gender' as if it were an unproblematic term?

That's my issue ... it may be there is a genuine impasse here, but it is only fair to recognize that there are problems on both sides and that women should not be expected to bow down and surrender their principles and their rights to dignity, simply because another oppressed groups exists whose interests appear to be in conflict.

yars - that's true too, that's why it's all so interesting. The disentangling of it all...

But by saying that they feel themselves to be women, they are telling women what being a woman actually is.

I have never yet heard anyone properly describe, how it feels to be a woman. AFAIC you could argue that what if feels like, is that you shouldn't have as high expectations as men and that you should constantly question and doubt yourself whenever you want to achieve anything and put everyone else's needs before your own. That's not an in-built feeling of what it's like to be a woman, that's a psychological state developed by many women as a result of being bombarded by the message that they are fundamentally different to and inferior to, boys and men, from the day they come out of the womb. It would feel different to be a woman, if those messages weren't there.

Other than that, I can't say what it feels like to be a woman. And so far, I haven't seen anyone else say what it feels like and how you can tell that you are one.

An example of case by case basis would be, if I am talking to a transgender MTF person I know, I am not going to refer to them as a man or use 'he' because that is not how that person sees themself.

If a transgender person says that feminists should stop discussing maternity care because it is not a woman's issue, as some men get pregnant too, I am going to say that I use the word woman differently to them, and I am still going to consider maternity care to be an important feminist issue.

Yes, there's a lot of disentangling to do ... it is interesting but it's nice to be debating it properly so I can at least get the positions clearer in my mind.

Maybe they need to say "I feel myself strongly to be not-man, I feel myself to be what my conception of a woman is."

Really have to go now

Ah yes, I agree with you re not believing in innate gender, Milly. That's why gender is a useful term, though - people who believe in innate gender don't use it, they think biological sex explains all.

Would be very interesting to read some research on possible biological reasons for why transgender people feel transgender, although as with 'what makes people gay' research it risks coming out as rather reductivist.

Ok, I've completely lost the thread then.

If people who believe innate gender think biological sex explains it all, I take it you're saying transgender people don't believe in innate gender? Or they do but they believe it must be tied to biological sex so they have to change sex?

Sorry to be slow (and I know I'm sayingh 'they' when there must be loads of differentviews but bear with me).

LRD, I don't think people who believe in innate gender just say biological sex. Many transgender people use gender to describe their mind, often what they believe to be their innate mind, and biological sex then refers to the body.

I'm really appreciating MillyR's clarity on this.

You and mooncup are saying different things then, aren't you?

Sorry, I'm just not very fast on the uptake, if I donm't get it after this I'll just keep quiet.

Well exactly Lenin.

The fact that the OP asked about feminist perspectives on transgender is rather missing the point. If we're talking about reality, legally and politically the definition of woman has already been reduced to "how a man feels about himself". Laws support it, medical treatment enacts it, society condones it. That's the real issue here.

Feminists have had zero say in any of this, so whilst we might have opinions about the institution of transgender/transsexualism, in reality we have no power to enact any of our views about womanhood. On the other hand the male supremacist political, medical and legal professions have decided that being a woman is merely about male "feelings" and thus any man who can claim he feels like one, socially politically and legally is a woman.

That's what power means in this world, the power to affect reality to suit yourself. Women don't have it, men do, so men have been able to use their power to change the definition of womanhood away from physical realities of women's bodies and into the real of essences and emotions (male ones).

Of course, because men have changed reality for women, there are real-life repurcussions for us. Off the top of my head, we have had:

• children being prescribed puberty blocking hormones
• a male killer and would be rapist being sent to a women's prison
• men being allowed into previous women-only spaces e.g. women's colleges (Germaine Greer resigned from Newnham College because they gave a job that previously would have gone to a woman to a MTF)
• gay and lesbian people in Iran being forced to have sex changes because of their sexuality
• a rape crisis centre in Canada being forced to spend huge amounts of money and time defending a case brought by a MTF who wanted to counsel rape victims
• women only spaces like lesbian groups and feminist groups being invaded by MTF often claiming they are "lesbians" (hello predators ..... before anybody jumps down my throat I've seen a MTF in action who preyed on very young vulnerable women who had no idea of his previous male status).

And because people are more invested in the right of men to call themselves women than the right of women and girls to be protected by male predation or incursion, none of the above matters.

Yes, I think I am disagreeing with Mooncup. Actually I think we probably agree on what we believe about gender, but are looking at how other people use the terms differently.

Radical Feminist use of gender = socially constructed gender role.
Trans use of gender = gender you feel yourself to be in your head (and sometimes claimed to be an innate state of mind)

Radical feminist use of sex= biological sex, having or not having female reproductive potential.
Transgender use of sex= assigned sex status at birth (what the doctors decided and ended up on your birth certificate.

I did not really think about feminism much before I became a mother - I sincerely believed that equality had been achieved in this part of the world. Now, my own experiences, and those of other women I know, have made it very clear that it is not the case.

The discrimination, and even the abuse, we experience is very much bound up in our reproductive potential, and the expectations and obligations that are associated with motherhood. This is another reason that it is difficult to integrate trans advocacy with feminism.

Sorry LRD,there are so many concepts and ideas here that it's hard to cover everything at once. My fault for being unclear.

I agree with Milly's post at 11.24. I just meant that gender is a very valuable concept, because it enables us to differentiate the genitalia one is born with (sex) and the way one presents oneself in society (gender). Traditionalist/patriarchal society does not really accept this distinction, which is one of the reasons we are feminists in the first place. Transgender people do accept it, but are more inclined to feel that they have an 'innate' sense of gender that arises from something other than social conditioning.

thunderbolts - the examples you raise are obviously distressing, but the fact that a few MTFs behave horribly is no reason to damn an entire group of people who have had a very hard time on account of feeling they're born in the wrong body.

Clearly we need to be able to deal with predatory/difficult MTFs in sensitive spaces (as we do with anyone who is predatory or difficult in a sensitive space).

On the other hand, transsexuals/transgendered people have first-hand experience of the different ways men and women are treated, and their insights can potentially be very valuable to the wider debate.

Don't apologize mooncup - it's probably me.

I think anyone who has experience of how the patriarchy tries to enforce restrictive gender roles has valuable insight.

The problem is, if that insight is backed up by terminology and ideology that undermines feminism, we can't say the insight outweighs the problems of terminology/ideology. I do feel it's more than people 'behaving horribly' - that behaviour seems to be the extreme product of an outlook that isn't compatible with feminism. Of course most people wouldn't behave like that, but the behaviour doesn't IMO come out of nowhere. It's not bad behaviour that just happens to be done by a transgender person.

I'm not damning anybody, Mooncup. I'm not sure why you're saying that I am.

I'm saying that men can't become women and when people argue they can and enact it into law these are the kind of consequences that arise from the idea.

It's appalling that some children are being given puberty blockers, it's barbaric and homophobic that gay and lesbian people are being given sex changes because homosexuality is a crime in Iran but the idea of mutilating bodies is fine. However these are the logical consequences of a belief that it's possible to turn a man into a woman.

"On the other hand, transsexuals/transgendered people have first-hand experience of the different ways men and women are treated, and their insights can potentially be very valuable to the wider debate."

I've heard this claim made an awful lot in the past ten years MooncupGoddess, ever since I came across a couple of MTF trans masquerading as radical lesbian feminists on a feminist internet board. One of them was the predator who used to secretly target young women there and arrange to meet up, and ended up in relationships with them (he was 50, they were in their early twenties). It all ended very horribly when they were outed.

Anyway, that's beside the point - I don't think I've ever heard a MTF trans or FTM trans say anything interesting or useful about the way men and women are treated, apart from the very obvious fact that men are treated better than women. The analysis never goes any further than that. On the other hand I have seen lots of attacks on feminists who object to the institution of trans (right up to and including threats of rape). I think trans have done far more harm to the feminist cause than good.

Here's a good example. Julia Serano, a MTF trans who appears to be spending quite some energy attacking a small women's festival - Michfest - which operates a woman only policy:

www.juliaserano.com/frustration.html