Feminism and the idea of a man or woman trapped in the wrong body are contradictory ideas

[EatsBrainsAndLeaves]

This post is in response to another thread where posters wanted to discuss this, but didn't want to derail the thread. So I said I would start the thread here.

A basic element of feminism is that women and men are born as that sex - biologically men/women, but society socialises us to behave as our alloted gender. Gender is the idea that women and men behave in certain ways. And we are all socialised in this even if we reject it or try to as adults.

For example, research shows that people treat the same babies differently depending on whether they are told they are boys or girls. The media pumps images to our DCs about what a girl or a boy should be interested in, play with and wear. Teachers are more likely to allow boys to speak out to the whole class than girls - well researched.

Feminism challenges these gender constructs and says that girls and boys can enjoy doing the same things, etc. Transexuals talk about being born in the wrong body e.g. born in a male body, but feeling like they are really a girl/woman.

But this is obviously at odds with feminism. Sex is a biological fact. You are born in a male or female body. Behaving or feeling like a man/woman is supposed to feel, is an artificial construct. Because what does a man or woman feel like? We only feel like ourselves as individuals. So any idea of feeling a man or a woman or a boy or a girl is based on an artifacial idea of how a boy/girl is supposed to feel.

So the basic idea of being born in the wrong body, is contradictory to the basic ideas of feminism.

Sea,

I would be fascinated to have a brain scan and told what % male and what % female I was. I don't think that you then need to make societal judgments based on that, it is just an interesting fact, and maybe useful to me in how I study things or treat certain illnesses.

Some people would also want to say they were an XY gender woman or an XX gender woman, because both elements were important to them.

larrygrylls

I think you just made the same point I was trying to make when I said "chromosome" was not an appropriate word for what I wanted.

I also want a 'word', not a 'statement'.

The reason I want a word is because people default to words over statements when talking (as it is quicker and easier), and right now we don't have words to cover the statements I listed.

People tend to default back to using words which have now basically become umbrella terms for some.... and so we now need words that mean the subsections.

Also, such a brain scan will only tell you what % male or female that part of you is biologically, just like a scan of your abdomen will tell you what internal male or female organs you have.

It will still not tell you what gender you are in your mind.

Agreed SeaHouses

I used "I am an XX woman" because the gender part does not apply to me... unless I was to say "I am an XX neutral woman".

But we do need words, and not these statements, for the ease of discussion where these terms are used over and over again.

I think you can support and sympathise with individuals without supporting the trans concept.

I have two good friends, both MtoF trans (and are a couple). I love them and supported them through their 'coming out' to friends and family and one through her operation.

Though I have never gave them an inkling of how I feel, I don't truly 'get it'. In order to receive hormone therapy and the operation, she had to live as a woman for a certain period. This involved wearing dresses, make up and jewellry. They carried on in the same jobs, same hobbies, just changed their outward appearance.

This does make them happy, which I am, of course very glad about, but it doesn't make them women. It makes them men wearing dresses. Being a woman involves having female sex organs.

They have no true concept of what it is actually like to be a woman, just an idea of how they imagine it to be (as they are both physically very large and unlikely to ever 'pass' they will never truly know what it feels like). The reality is feeling vulnerable, wary of assault and abuse from men, criticised/praised for looks or lack thereof, pressure to act a certain way, discrimination at work, lower pay, menstruation etc.

I can't imagine anyone actually feeling they want that ^. They don't know about that. That, coupled with a vagina and uterus is being a woman.

I dislike my breasts (they are difficult to support, are often painful and get me unwanted attention since the age of 10), hate my heavy and painful periods, avoid make up and skirts, have a manual job, dislike sewing, would love to have a shaved head for ease of management and quite fancy having a penis. Am a man? No I am an individual. Are my friends women? IMHO, no, they are men who like to appear as stereotypical women.

It's the fault of our disgustingly gender-sterotyped society that decides 'men do and look like this' and 'women do and look like this' that makes individuals who's interests do not match with their genitals feel so out of place and upset that they are convinced they are in the wrong body. A man who likes make up and dresses is made to feel so absurd and perverted that his only option is conclude he is, in fact, a woman.

Having said all that, society is how it is and while change is happening it's too slow for trans people who are suffering now. So, yes, men and women should be able to dress and act how they want without persecution, but at the moment they can't, they have to justify their choices and behaviour by attempting to become the opposite sex. Of course, often they never really achieve this (due to physical size/characteristics) and are still discriminated and persecuted. I've seen the abuse first hand and it's sickening.

What's the answer? Total overhaul of society, destruction of stereotypes, gender roles, prejudice and discimination so people can act and behave however they want...Simple!

Didn't you ask them how they felt?

Of course, their replies, (which I didn't pull apart when talking to them as it is an incredibly sensitive subject for them, lots of tears, hugs and nodding was all that is appropriate, not criticism or analysis) were...

They don't identify with men

They prefer to be women

They feel like women

Unhappy with the pressure to be masculine

And...women have much better wardobe options (that I did tease them about, but they did insist it ran deeper than that!)

They both are/were under professional care but only one was approved for surgery. I haven't asked why A has been turned down.

I acknowledge, and sympathise with the undoubted personal discrimination and difficulties experienced on an individual basis by transgendered people doing their best to get through life.

I also want to consider the bigger political picture of why transgender is so problematic for some feminists.

Here is my summary of some areas of contention between some MtF transgendered people and their supporters, and many feminists:

(I'm not trying to say that all transgender supporters or all feminists believe all that I've attributed to their side of the debate).

Transgender : Focus on the problems of the individual MtF person.
Feminism : Also consider the situation of females a group.

Transgender : Change the person to fit patriarchal society.
Feminism : Change patriarchal society to liberate females from male oppression and domination. Changing the person rather than society preserves the oppression of women by men.

Transgender - Increasingly tendency to keep their male anatomy i.e. not have surgery.
Feminism - Females who keep their female anatomy are oppressed by men.

Transgender : Change outward appearance of the body to facilitate a move from the masculine gender role (behaviour expected of boys and men by society) to the feminine gender role (behaviour expected of girls and women).
Feminism : Either remove male and female gender roles or change the value put on those gender roles so that they become of equal value, or don't link behaviour with physical appearance, making a move from one role to another unnecessary.

Transgender : Adopt the opposite gender role in an attempt to escape discrimination.
Feminism : Females have not been allowed to escape from many aspects of their gender role and its discrimination, often imposed by violence and law.

Transgender : Self-identify and self-define as a female and/or woman, often described as "feeling like a woman in a man's body" - their gender identity. Biology of sex is regarded as unknown or unfixed or a spectrum, and doesn't matter much anyway.

Feminism : The oppression of women by men has been based on biology. Biological sex is fixed. A person is either biologically female, male or intersex for her or his whole life. Transgender is not intersex. It's impossible to know what the other biological sex feels like. Both biology and gender have been used against females for thousands of years, so feminists protest against how the change in status of "female" in biology and "woman" in society will be used negatively against almost all girls and women, those who have been regarded by society as girls or women since birth. (That can cover people with hormonal and genetic conditions e.g. a chromosomal XY male with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome).

I am not surprised that there is disagreement between transgender supporters and many feminists.

Transgender is being used by patriarchy to persuade society that we are only individuals who determine our own destiny and there is no such thing as biological females as a group, oppressed for being biologically female. Patriarchy wants people to believe that there is, therefore, no need for feminism. Patriarchy uses the transgender v feminism argument to exploit both disadvantaged groups in a divide-and-rule strategy to maintain its privilege.

"Transgender is being used by patriarchy to persuade society that we are only individuals who determine our own destiny and there is no such thing as biological females as a group, oppressed for being biologically female. Patriarchy wants people to believe that there is, therefore, no need for feminism. Patriarchy uses the transgender v feminism argument to exploit both disadvantaged groups in a divide-and-rule strategy to maintain its privilege"

The only thing I can see in this paragraph is paranoia.

I agree with most of what you've said vesuvia.

Giving hormone therapies and surgery and official sex-reassignment to people only reinforces the destructive idea of gender roles and so impacts negatively on those suffering in the patriarchy.

But, until society changes, people who feel trans, still feel trans...what help should be given to them? Because their pain and disasossiation is real. Counselling?

Good post Vesuvia. One of the problems with all the reduction to individual identity is that the problem is placed at the door of the individual rather than society. So people who don't fit with society's norms are being told to change themselves, rather than acknowledging it isn't an individual problem and that society needs to change. You can see it across politics, that blame and responsibility is placed at the door of the individual to obscure the wider, and more challenging problems. That doesn't sound fair to me.

Asda - I agree with you about your views of your transgender friends. In terms of individuals and here I suspect I part company with a lot of radical feminsts - I actually am happy for people to have surgery and not have discrimination, with the exception of access to some women only spaces. But I think on a critical analysis level, we need to be honest, as you are, about what the reality is.

When I talk about my views around transexual/transgender they often ask if I have met anyone who is. I have met lots, for a number of reasons in my personal life that I can't explain without outing myself. The truth is before I met any transexuals I thought much more that it was fine for people to identify themselves as they want, what is the harm (and I wasn't a radical feminist). But as I actually met individuals I began to change my mind.

Like your experience, virtually everyone I met still looked very like men and behaved like men. They may have dressed as "women" and by that I mean how a woman is supposed to dress in the UK - but the reality is that is not how they behaved. This isn't man hating, some of them were very nice and some not - like everyone. But they didn't act like women - and I believe this is because of socialisation.

They feel that way but just because you 'feel' something doesn't make it reality. There are also people who are 'transabled', they feel that they were meant to have one leg/be blind/deaf/paraplegic/quadraplegic or whatever their chosen disability is. It is probably the same area of the brain that is producing the faulty wiring that leads people to believe themselves to be transsexual. I suppose the causes are different for every individual, some people may be brain injured, others could have been affected in such a way by their environment and sometimes nature messes up.

Just some very basic links for anyone who is interested, as I find all of these fascinating (and relevant as they too involve a disconnect between mind and body)

Trans-specism
Otherkin
Trans-ablism - also has personal statements by people who are both transgender and transabled, describing the similarity and intensity of their feelings in both cases.

Excellent post Vesuvia.

Here is an opinion from a woman who is both transsexual and transabled ('desires' to be 'moderately to severely deaf')

transabled.org/thoughts/a-comparison-between-transsexuality-and-transableism.htm

Really problematic post vesuvia. Throughout there is an assumption that inviduals are making decisions within their perception of the existence of a patriarchy - they they are 'bowing' to a superstructure. I know this isn't the case for the 3 transgendered people I know. Their knowledge of themselves was outside of a notion of a patriarchal superstructure.
Also, consistent with (what we are using as short-hand) rad fem theory, the ultimate determinant is a the birth biological imperative, whic hthis thread and one about a month ago has flatly de-constructed.

good lord

good lord was to bobbledunk's post

I think I'm probably more of a feminist than I realised judging by your informative post about feminism Vesuvia (I'm still exploring). :)

I especially agree with this point - that all of the oppression and discrimination as a woman I have faced in my life has been due to my biological sex (and the features that are expected to come with that, and usually do).

None of the oppression/discrimination has been based on my internal gender-identity because a) people don't know what it is unless I tell them, and b) I do not feel like a woman, I feel like an individual entity.

I feel very strongly that sex (fixed, biological) and gender (feeling in the mind, not necessarily fixed) very much need to be kept separate and acknowledged as different things. This is especially important when it comes to certain women's groups (which have traditionally always meant biological women), whereas now 'woman' is taken to mean biological and/or gender.

Many biological women still need a space that is defined by sex and not by gender (for reasons pertaining to sex and not gender).

And the vast majority of feminist issues - female-specific discrimination/oppression, female genital mutilation, being forced to wear certain clothing (rather than choosing to), being aborted or killed at birth for being female en masse - these are all based on sex, not gender which is actually irrelevant in these cases.

Pan
Forgive me if I am mistaken, but is your post saying that biological sex at birth does not exist? or has been deconstructed on this thread?

Because none of the posts here have done so without a rational counterargument. And I will happily respond to any arguments that claim so.

The trans-species link had a bit saying that trans-species are transgender are considered to be related by people that have both. I wonder if that is just because once you have acknowledged one in yourself, you are more likely to feel able to acknowledge the other.

I also find it strange that lycanthropy is considered a clinical condition but other kinds of trans-species feelins aren't.

Whiteshore no, no - I was merely saying the the biological 'determinism' at birth isn't the sole determinate as to how some people live their lives and view the world around them. Yes I am male, and don't really question this, and recognise the patriarchal fact of our society. Others don't share that view of themselves and are massively separate to the 'priviledge' (as MTFs esp). If fitting in to the superstructure was such a driver, then the MTF I know would have no motivation to undertake the massive and invasive sacrifices she made.

Pan

Ah, if you are saying that biological sex does not mean a person has to act out society's expected gender role (based on that sex), I completely agree. :)

I think the difficulty with talking about behaviour based on superstructure is that it is so ingrained in culture that many people are arguably actually not even consciously aware of its influence on them.

This is just my personal opinion made up on the spot (and I'm happy to reconsider), but I would say that many MtFs who desperately want to be live a specific gender role on some level realise that society at large will never actually allow them to do this in peace unless they also at least superficially appear to have that biological sex.

This is because society at large firmly believes that your biology has to be the same as your gender role.

Therefore, they attempt to get what they want (a female gender role) by appeasing or obeying society, and thus adopting the appearance of female biological sex... so that the two match, as society dictates.

It is an attempt to achieve two things: live the desired gender role, and appease society

Some will give up their personal desire and simply work on appeasing society (transgenders who have not 'come out' and live in a different gender role to the one they want).

Some (I would include myself here) are happy to be who they are (neither male nor female gender-identity in my case), without making any external changes to invoke a difference in societal behaviour towards me (I want society to change, not myself).

And some (where the vast majority of visible transgenders fall, because the other categories are not visible), attempt to reconcile society's expectations with their own wishes. They have an internal feeling about who they are, and how they want society to treat them, and they attempt to reconcile the two (to greater or lesser degrees of success).