I literally will not talk to you, and I definitely will not listen to you, until you have read the entirety of this, and yes, it is a two hundred and twenty eight page PDF. And then go read up on trans murder statistics. And then read some Susan Stryker.
And then if you still think cis privilege is a myth I still will not talk to you because you are a loss of a human being.
You have nothing to tell me that I have not heard before.
ETA: I received a call-out on the binarism of this which finally got through to me. I am leaving this post up for the sake of transparency (not hiding my fuck-up) but I no longer stand behind the idea that this graph is useful in considering non-binary genders. I apologize to anyone I hurt with my binarism.
What’s feminist about excluding an extremely vulnerable class of women who disproportionately suffer from violence, rape, body shaming, unemployment, homelessness, and poverty, who are routinely abused and manipulated by the medical establishment, and who are disproportionately involved in sex work and pornography?
That’s what I’d like to know about Raymond-esque “feminists” who see no place in the movement for trans women.
This was written by my friend Gus Allis, who is rad. She is one of the people I know who really sets the standard of what a “cis ally” should be. Check it out.
Transmisogyny is Misogyny Against All Women: An Open Letter to Cis Feminists
mi·sog·y·ny
/mɪˈsɒdʒəni, maɪ-/ [mi-soj-uh-nee, mahy-]
–noun
hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women.
I need to know something. I need to know what a real woman is. I’m a woman and I need to know if I’m real and the only person who can tell me is Bitch. Or maybe it’s Lisa Voegel. Or maybe it’s Rush Limbaugh. Ok, then I need to know two things. I need to know if I’m a real woman and I need to know who can tell me if I am. Because if I’ve learned anything during these past few years, existing on the periphery of the trans community as a cis lover, friend, sister, and solidarity stander of trans folk, it’s that I sure as shit don’t have the authority to determine my own gender identity. I’ve also learned, in no uncertain terms, that the war on trans women’s identities is a war on all women’s identity. Transmisogyny is misogyny against all women.
If you hate, dislike, or mistrust trans women, you’re misogynistic. Trans women are included in the big ol’ group known as women. Want proof? Well look at their name, silly. We call ‘em trans women, not trans chia pets, not trans beach towels, not trans schmeggeggies. Remember high school algebra? Oh hush, yes you do. Let me remind you of this lovely little mathematical rule:
If a=b and b=c, then a=c
If trans women= women and hating, disliking, or mistrusting women= misogyny then…then what? Solve for c.
Ok technically that would be trans women= misogyny but you know perfectly well what I mean and I hate that you even questioned my math.
But I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But Gus, I think trans women=/= women so therefore it’s totally not misogynistic to hate, dislike, or mistrust trans women.” And I understand that. Really, I do. But here’s the thing. Now listen carefully, my little chickadee, cuz I’m about to blow your mind.
You’re wrong.
Not only are you wrong, but even thinking that silly, silly, thing is unbelievably, incredibly, fantastically MISOGYNISTIC. And it offends me as a woman. Yes, yes it does. And here’s why. Here’s an annotated list of all the ways your transmisogyny hurts all women. Yes, even you, Bitch.
1. It Polices Women’s Identities
I listed this one first because it’s the easiest. If you are telling trans women they can’t be women, you’re telling every woman on the planet she can’t be whatever she wants. That doesn’t sound very feminist to me. It sounds more like something a pipe smoking white guy from the 50s would say to his daughter who wants to be an astronaut. Gross. Also, you’re basically declaring yourself the authority on other peoples’ identities. And really, my telling you to knock that off is for your own good. Do you have any idea how tiring that would be? Every time someone needed to know their own gender identity, they would have to contact you. Do you know how many people are in the world? Six billion-ish. I suggest, if you do keep this up, that perhaps you may want to get a gmail account, as that has an infinite amount of storage space. You’re going to need that for 6 billion emails with the subject heading, “what am I?”
But let’s get specific. The most common mistake I see here is when the queer community punishes trans women for specific aspects of their identities. Most notably, we’re talking about things that are deemed “unfeminine”. Seriously, folks, are you listening to yourselves here? You’re telling trans women that if they speak loudly/take up space/ defend themselves/have an opinion with which you disagree/wear pants/listen to metal/etc, they’re not real women. Uh, I’m sorry, what? I do all those things. You would shit twice and die if a man told me that. Why am I immune to that criticism? Why can I be butch and still be a woman? Oh, I know why. It’s because I was assigned female at birth, a great beacon of truth for my REAL gender. It’s because of that, and because of my cunt, which you recognize as legitimate. My “real” cunt is a “get out of gender invalidation free” pass. That’s convenient, as it serves for a great transition for…
2. It Polices Women’s Bodies
Here’s the real down and dirty analysis, right here. Wait for it. Wait. Ok. Now.
What the hell does a woman’s body possess that makes it a woman’s body? What does it NEED to have to be female. Did you immediately think of breasts, ovaries, vaginas? Gross. Think about that for more than two minutes and you’ll see why it’s gross. Still don’t get it? Well then go down to the nearest breast cancer walk and tell every single woman with a double mastectomy she’s not a woman. When you’re done with that, go down to your local hospital, ask the nurse where the OR is, and wait outside until you can find a woman fresh out of her hysterectomy surgery, and tell her the news. Yeah, that sounds evil, doesn’t it? Well it’s basically what you’re doing when you’re policing trans women’s bodies. You’re telling all women what they have to have on/in their bodies to be a woman. Which, obviously, is totally gross.
Also, what do you care what a human being looks like all inside out? That’s so WEIRD. How is it any of your business how many kidneys or ovaries or white blood cells I have? Like, that is legitimately weirding me out that you would even care. And can I just say, as a fat girl with a history of pretty serious body issues, it’s kind of triggering. First you wanna regulate trans women’s bodies and then what? Another person feeling like they have any authority over the validity of my body is really scary to me. And it definitely echoes of some very conservative, very anti-choice ideals. My body, my choice, fucker. Because that’s what “they” want to do “us”, isn’t it? Take away our bodily autonomy. Tell us exactly what we can and can not do with our organs. Awkward. You’re pretty much Bill O’Reilly. SO awkward.
(And seriously, this essay is totally not even getting into the super important points about people who are intersex who identify as women. This is mostly because I’m not intersex and I really can’t speak to those experiences, and also because I’m not as up on my shit with intersex issues as I like to believe I am with trans stuff. This is laziness on my part, and writing this essay has made me see this)
3. It Perpetuates the Myth of Shared Girlhood
Now, I don’t know what your girlhood was like, but I’m actually pretty sure it had nothing to do with mine. My childhood (a word I greatly prefer) was pretty much centered on reading, climbing trees, and hating my fat body. Oh yeah, I also lived in a three story mansion in Orange County, California. Kind of a different childhood than, say, my best friend who traveled the country with her hot air balloon pilot parents. Kind of a different childhood than my mother, who grew up a poor Catholic girl in the Italian part of Queens in the 1960s. To say that none of the different privileges, triumphs, oppressions, failures, and experiences of all our lives outweigh the fact that at one point all three of our ovaries released an egg for the very first time is insulting and demeaning. Our differences are important (it’s called intersectionality, maybe you’ve heard of it, “feminist”). The only thing we have in common, all of us, every single woman, cis AND trans, on this planet, is that we call ourselves “woman”. And that’s a big deal, really it is! But I think you’re being just a tad bit racist, classist, sizeist, ageist, ableist, and a hell of lot of other things by telling me that I, a white, upper class, American girl share a girlhood with every other person who was assigned female at birth on this planet.*
I mean, I guess you could say that all girls are affected by patriarchy. But really, all PEOPLE are affected by patriarchy. And, patriarchy looks different, takes different forms, and has different effects in different places, times, classes, religions, and races. So I’m sorry, I know that was totally your ace in the hole for this argument, but it’s been debunked. Sorry for not being sorry.
I hope you now see how wrong you are. I know, I know, you probably feel really really embarrassed now, and that’s totally natural. It’s embarrassing to think that trans women aren’t women. But you’ll get over it. Now all those trans women who’ve been barred from women only shelters, clinics and spaces because you were too into your weird second wave phase to be a decent person? They might not get over it as quickly. Because, honestly, as snarky and hilarious as this essay is (and it is really funny and you know it), the effects of your transmisogyny are significantly less hilarious. Misogyny kills women. Fuck prefixes, fuck specifying what kind of misogyny, what kind of woman. Misogyny kills women. How are those hands looking, Lady Macbeth?
* I want to put something here about how “shared girlhood” also negates trans guys’ identities too, because it basically essentializes that they can never be anything but women since they had a “girlhood”, which is obviously false and busted. I just can’t find the words at the moment.
Dear Readers,
I am sorry to have to do this to you. I really try to maintain a biweekly posting schedule, but this can be difficult when I’ve got work and school to contend with. School is the main culprit this time. I have two essays about, of all things, gender, due next week. So because I do not have a column ready, and in the spirit of academic stress, I would like to share a piece by a dear friend that I have been wanting to post here for awhile.
Zoe blogs about disability stuff over at Illusion Of Competence. But she’s also a kick-ass cis ally. She wrote this paper awhile back in response to the rampant transmisogyny in her feminist theory class. It provides a good quick-and-dirty criticism of much of what is wrong with ciscentric feminism. If the style is a bit academic for you, well, FEEL MY PAIN. This is the kind of thing I will be spending my weekend cranking out.
Without further ado, I present:
Locating Trans Women’s Experience in the Feminist Analysis of the Body
Academics, shrinks, and feminist theorists have traveled through our lives and problems like tourists on a junket. Picnicking on our identities like flies at a free lunch, they have selected the tastiest tidbits with which to illustrate a problem or push a book. The fact that we are a community under fire, a people at risk, is irrelevant to them. They pursue Science and Theory, and what they produce by mining our lives is neither addressed to us nor recycled within our community… Our performance of gender is invariably a site of contest, a problem which – if we could but bring enough hi-octane academic power to bear – might be “solved,” (Wilchins, 63).
Feminists have often used the experience of transgender individuals in their theory – to prove a point, to explore an issue, or even to point out an interesting case, a fascinating specimen of humanity. This essay will attempt to do the opposite – not to use trans people as an accessory to theory, but to show how their experiences are relevant to already-existing feminist concepts and critiques. This essay will demonstrate that trans women have a place in feminist discourse, focusing on feminist theory surrounding the body – particularly the “ideal” female body and the medicalization of identity.
The construction of society’s “ideal woman” has long been problematized by feminist thought, which points out how this concept is used to marginalize women with nonstandard or “non-ideal” bodies. Nancy Mairs writes:
I’ve spent most of my life (together with probably at least 95 percent of the female population of the United States) suffering from the shame of falling short of an unattainable standard. The ideal woman of my generation [had] blond hair pulled up into a bouncing ponytail. Wide blue eyes, a turned-up nose with maybe a scattering of golden freckles across it, a small mouth with full lips over straight white teeth. Her breasts were large but well harnessed high on her chest; her tiny waist flared to hips just large enough to give the crinolines of her circle skirt a starting push… (Mairs, 87)
Why not add, to this list of traits that our society requires of the ideal woman, two X chromosomes, a vagina, breasts, ovaries, a high voice? Trans women are marginalized for their lack of idealized feminine traits as are disabled women, women of color, older women, fat women, and others whose bodies are not accepted by society. Mairs writes that, as a wheelchair user, she is “not, by their standards, quite a person anymore,” (Mairs, 89). This dehumanization is something that trans women face every day, when they are regarded as freaks or as fascinating case studies rather than simply as women, as people. Many feminist writers have expressed their frustration at the fact that in our society, privileged groups are the arbiters of womanhood and personhood. A key tenet of feminism is that this should not be so. It should not be left to men to decide what a woman is – but neither should it be left to cisgender people. Refusal to accept trans women as women (or for that matter, insistence on regarding trans men as women) is just another iteration of society’s policing of women’s bodies.
The exclusion of trans women from womanhood is part of a cultural view that feminism has long opposed: that biology is destiny, that an individual’s personality and societal role are defined by hir genetic characteristics. A woman must possess two X chromosomes, and these chromosomes must dictate and limit every facet of her life. These arguments are inseparable, and both of them externalize control of women’s identity. Susan Bordo writes that the medical model of an identity or condition “requires the exorcising of all pre-modern notions that the body might obey a spiritual, emotional, or associational rather than a purely mechanical logic,” (Bordo, 66). This concept – that the body’s meaning is static, unchangeable, already written – is at work in the argument that biology is destiny.
The medical model is another topic that often comes up in feminist discourse surrounding the body. Many feminists have written about medical models of disability or eating disorders. They have discussed the way that medical models can pathologize women and subject them to a doctor-knows-best mentality even when it comes to their own bodies and experiences. Susan Bordo writes: “Since the seventeenth century, science has ‘owned’ the study of the body and its disorders. This proprietorship requires that the body’s meanings be utterly transparent and accessible to the qualified specialist (aided by the appropriate methodology and technology) and utterly opaque to the patient herself,” (Bordo, 66). This is absolutely the case in the treatment of gender-variant individuals. In order to be “officially” transgender or gender-nonconforming, an individual must be diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder, sometimes by doctors with only the narrowest idea of what makes a “true” transsexual. The simple requirement that Gender Identity Disorder be diagnosed prioritizes the doctor’s interpretation of the patient’s body over the patient’s, and assumes that the meaning of the patient’s experiences is “utterly opaque to the patient herself.” It also makes (often cisgender) medical professionals the guardians of transgender identity, conferring upon them the power to weed out “true” transsexuals from “false” ones. Doctors can then dole out or withhold hormone treatments and Sexual Reassignment Surgery accordingly (Spade).
The importance of diagnosis is common to any medical model. Unlike social models, medical models curtail discussion of the cultural or political aspects of an identity or condition. The medical model of neurodiversity, for example, has separate diagnoses, treatments, and expectations of “low-functioning autistics,” “high-functioning autistics,” and “Aspergers’ sufferers.” These distinctions keep neurotypicals in control of the discourse surrounding neurodiversity. A common catch-22 used to dismiss the concerns of autistic self-advocates is to invalidate their perspectives because they must not be “real autistics” – “real autistics” cannot speak for themselves. The medicalization of eating disorders has a similar consequence: Susan Bordo writes about medical professionals’ attempts “to distinguish between anorexia and ‘anorexic-like behavior,’ ‘true anorectics’ and ‘me, too, anorectics,’ ‘bulimic thinking’ and normal female ‘weight-preoccupation,’” (Bordo, 65). Bordo argues that these imposed distinctions are often used to prevent discussion of the cultural causes of eating disorders, and to justify our culture’s “female ‘weight-preoccupation’” by distinguishing it from disordered behavior.
The medical model of transgender and transsexualism functions in a similar way. Doctors often use blatant gender stereotypes as diagnostic tools. Dean Spade’s essay “Mutilating Gender” deals largely with his frustration with this aspect of the medical sector. Spade seeks both to have a mastectomy and to retain his own gender identity, which is more fluid and ambiguous than doctors consider proper for a transsexual man. “In order to obtain the medical intervention I am seeking,” Spade writes, “I need to prove my membership in the category ‘transsexual’ – prove that I have GID – to the proper authorities. Unfortunately, stating my true objectives is not convincing them,” (Spade, 326). Trans women are subjected to the same stereotyping and gender policing when they seek diagnosis and treatment. Spade notes that one doctor “diagnosed male-to-female transsexuals by bullying them: ‘The ‘girls’ cry, the gays get aggressive,’” (Spade, 326). These requirements – that trans people have binary gender identities, that trans women not be aggressive – are only a few on a long list of “diagnostic criteria” that trans people often encounter. Some treatment programs have considered that to be transsexual, an individual must be heterosexual as well – transitioning will then “save” these patients from perceived homosexuality. The diagnostic criteria for Gender Identity Disorder in children rely only on gender stereotypes and conventional ideas of gender-appropriate behavior (Spade, 320).
These diagnostic requirements spring from medical professionals’ determination to “create” only the most gender-appropriate men and women. Just as the medical model of disability limits our understanding of variation in the human mind, and the medical model of eating disorders curtails discussion of the cultural anxieties surrounding weight, the medical model of transgender reinforces gender stereotypes that harm us all. In feminist discussions of the way that medical models pathologize and restrict women, the experience of transgender women should not be ignored.
Why is it important to include trans women in feminist discourse? Because they are already there. Trans women are oppressed by the same societal forces and attitudes which oppress all women – the construction of the ideal woman, the medicalization of identity, workplace sexism and employment discrimination, victim-blaming in cases of rape, assault, and murder. This oppression is aggravated by the fact that trans women belong to another marginalized group, as is the case for women of color, disabled women, working-class women, et cetera. According to bell hooks, feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression – not just the sexist oppression of white women, or of rich women, or of cisgender women, but sexist oppression in all its forms. Until cisgender feminists include trans women in their discussions and critiques, they will not be advocating feminism – they will simply be advocating for themselves.
Works Cited
Bordo, Susan. “Whose Body is This?” Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. 45-69.
Mairs, Nancy. Carnal Acts. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.
Spade, Dean. “Mutilating Gender.” The Transgender Studies Reader. Florence, Kentucky: Routledge, 2006.
Wilchins, Riki Anne. Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender. Ann Arbor: Firebrand Books, 1997.
Happy Halloween, dear readers. To celebrate the spookiness of the season, I would like to talk about transphobia, with emphasis on the “phobia” part. Prepare to be disturbed.
Transphobia is commonly defined as “irrational fear and hatred of transgender people.” As a member of an oppressed and misunderstood class, I can easily accept that many people hate us, though I don’t very well understand why. It’s much harder for me to swallow that the bigots who I fear might actually be afraid of me. Seriously, I don’t see what’s so scary about trans people. We are just human beings at a disadvantage in society, more likely to be victims of violence than to commit it. Yet we have been constructed as vicious aberrations, by everything from horror flicks like Silence Of The Lambs to self-styled radical feminists.
Yep, that’s right. Feminists. As it turns out, a certain number of people who identify as such are only interested in rights for women who happen to be cis. Germaine Greer, Sheila Jeffreys, and Mary Daly are often cited examples of transphobic feminists. Daly is particularly noted for comparing trans people to Frankenstein’s monster. All three have accused trans women of being “parodies” of womanhood and of “mutilating” their bodies through surgery.
Considering that these arguments are based on the faulty assumptions that a) trans women all have “hyper-feminine” presentations (they don’t), b) they can’t ‘pass’ as cis (many can), and c) medically supervised surgery is equivalent to self mutilation, I feel safe stating these objections are not rational. I think what really scares and squicks these people is transgender surgery. After a couple of years of being out as trans, this doesn’t really surprise me. Cis people are alternately titillated and horrified by what they imagine we do with our bodies. They see us as medical miracles (man becomes pregnant!), grotesque freaks, or bizarre objects of desire (see “shemale porn”).
I think cis people are freaked out by trans surgeries because they fear our power to alter aspects of our bodies which they take for granted in their own. They see us as violators of “natural” physical and reproductive roles. A man bearing a child or a woman having a “penis” (whether she calls it that or not!) is seen by cis folks as a dramatic reversal of The Way Things Are; when for a trans person it might be just a fact of life.
This fear of trans people and our ability to shape our own bodies seems to be ancient. Demons like Baphomet are frequently depicted with transgender characteristics (to say nothing of their trans-species qualities). In the Greek myth of Hermaphroditus, a cis man is merged, against his will, with a female nymph, causing him to become physically androgynous. This story illustrates how cis people fear to undergo the transformations that many of us undertake voluntarily.
Sometimes this fear of transgender body modification includes the conviction that we will resort to mutilating cis bodies. Silence Of The Lambs is a perfect illustration of this trope. Instead of pursuing conventional transgender surgery, “Buffalo Bill” skins cis females to make hirself a “woman suit.” Buffalo Bill, of course, was based on a real trans person, Ed Gein, the same killer who served as inspiration for Norman Bates in Psycho. Although obviously it’s not good to stereotype trans people as murderers, I think the narrative of Buffalo Bill has something even uglier going on under the surface. Buffalo Bill’s mutilation of cis bodies represents the idea that all bodies are “cis bodies,” that trans people don’t have the right to alter the “natural” forms of cis “male” and cis “female.” When Germaine Greer asserts that “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact,” i.e. by simply existing, this is what she means. When people like Alix Dobkin accuse transgender men of mutilating “women’s bodies,” this is what they mean. Isn’t that unbelievable? Even though I am a man, and my body is self-evidently mine, somehow, transphobes would tell me, it belongs to a “woman,” it is a “woman’s body,” and not mine to alter– and in fact, that altering it is an act of violence and misogyny. Yet nobody seems to be able to tell me who this hypothetical woman is. She definitely never lived at this address.
In many cultures trickster gods such as Loki have assumed gender-bending forms, often in order to seduce somebody. This, too, exposes another cis fear– that we will “trick” them into having sex with us, thus “sullying” their heterosexuality (or homosexuality, for that matter). This is another way that cis people think we can harm them by our very existence– because what if they should find some of us attractive? (The horror!) I have to wonder why the prospect of feeling attraction for, having sex with, or falling in love with a transgender person is so terrifying. Apparently, our sexualities are just that dangerous and threatening, so much so that cis people who experience attraction to trans folks have felt justified in murdering us, and courts have accepted their “trans panic” defenses without blinking.
Now that’s scary.
It’s scary that trans people are victimized in public bathrooms. It’s scary that we face sometimes insurmountable obstacles in obtaining jobs or basic medical care. It’s scary that so many of us are homeless or marginally housed. It’s scary that so many of us are doing survival sex work, and that so many cops feel absolutely justified harassing random trans women on suspicion that they are working. It’s scary that there is so much hatred propagated against us in the media, and so much violence facing us in the world.
Transphobia is scary, not transgender people. So happy fucking Halloween.
I think I’ll go as Germaine Greer.
