The Great Trans Feminist Blogging Shakeup of 2009
I recently mentioned that I had submitted a question about trans women’s sexuality to Feministing and the question was chosen for their sex advice column and posted here. To my surprise, the discussion in the comments was mostly about how to hold a discussion on trans issues, and responding to transphobic posts. I was disappointed to see this, and this post is an attempt to gather my thoughts about how (whether?) a trans-specific discussion can be held on a site that does not have a trans-specific focus. (I do want to make sure to point out that the vast majority of the posts were not transphobic, and that there were definitely some good comments, advice, and links. I don’t want to make it sound like there was nothing of value in the discussion, or that I regret submitting the question, because neither of those is true.)
But first, lets go back in time a month or so and look at a similar discussion on trans issues which happened at Feministing and Feministe in mid April.
Here’s the timeline, as best as I can reconstruct it. It’s worth noting that I was not making a good habit of reading comments on these blogs, so didn’t really realize there was a controversy brewing until it was already in full swing. As always, I imagine there are other blogs with other posts that I missed – feel free to let me know about any of ‘em and I’ll try to update the timeline.
On April 1, Miriam at Feministing posted about a Focus on the Family FUD-inducing email about “Men in Women’s Bathrooms.” Likewise, on April 3, Cara at Feministe posted about an essay written by a cis man about things he learned from a trans student. In both cases, the posts themselves were fine, addressing trans issues with respect. However, in both cases, the comments drifted and became transphobic and/or wildly off topic. When Voz and GallingGala called people out on this at Feministe, they were told, “Not all discussions that crop up will be concerns to all women. Isn’t that bound to happen?”
On April 6, Lucy at Catspaw posted It’s Always About Cis Women, calling out Feminsting and Feministe on their inability foster trans-friendly spaces, ending her post with, “But maybe the Feministe commenter is right. Any discussion that crops up about trans issues is bound to not include the concerns of trans folk. It is always about the cis women. With a few (wonderful) exceptions, it seems as though cis women can’t be bothered to consider any experience outside their own. At least not the cis women found at major online feminist sites. Way to include all women.”
On April 7, Queen Emily at Questioning Transphobia posted Bathroom Panic, it’s totally feminist, calling out those in the Feministing thread on being transphobic.
Finally, on April 9, Voz Latina posted a call to boycott Feministing and Feminste saying that bloggers should “send a message that hurting trans women is NOT in fact feministing.”
Still with me? Good.
On April 14, Cara responded with her post, On Cis Supremacy, Feminism, and Feministe. She basically said that trans women had a right to be “absolutely furious,” that she should have stepped in earlier, and that she planed “to take full responsibility if [a similar situation] happens [again] and to not expect second chances.” The discussion in the comments was pretty positive, and began to turn towards how to keep future conversations on topic and not allow people to derail them with offtopic posts, trans 101 questions, or transphobic speech.
Then, on April 15, Miriam likewise posted In Response to the Dialogue, where she acknowledged what had been happening and promised a followup post with comments enabled. On April 20, she indeed posted Gender discussions at Feministing, which explicitly called for a conversation on how to discuss trans issues at Feministing. In the interim between the two posts, a number of Feministing community bloggers wrote posts worth reading, which are linked to from Miriam’s post on April 20. Miriam’s post garnered 350 comments, most of which tried to further the discussion, but comments almost instantly turned (once again) to trans 101 questions, offtopic discussion, and transphobic posts. Moderators did step in and stem this, so I do have to give kudos where they’re due, but it sucks that it continued to happen in the first place. (I want to specifically call attention to LenaD’s comment, which I agree with, calling for better trans 101 resources and for moderators to be specific as to why they are deleting or moderating a comment.)
So now what?
In the end, I’m upset about how the discussion at Feministing happened following my question and Proffesor Foxy’s response. First, as Caoimhe noted in the comments to my previous post on this subject, it would have been nice if Prof F had quoted some trans people she’d talked with. It’s entirely possible the “people” she spoke with are trans, and simply threw up their hands in confusion at my question, but I find that difficult to believe. Likewise, I naively thought that, after the huge discussion at Feministing about gender and trans issues, people would be able to hold their shit together and comment on a trans-specific question without veering wildly off topic.
I also don’t think any moderators stepped in to do anything about it. Indeed, Prof F said she was going to leave up a transphobic comment to provide “a great example of people on feministing responding to these kinds of comments.” Screw that.
I realize this is all in direct opposition to how I ended my previous post, where I said that “I want to reiterate that the experience of reading (and responding to) all these comments has been more positive than negative – it’s reassured me that, on the whole, Feministing’s community is able to be supportive when discussing trans issues. But not 100%, and not without veering offtopic along the way.”
I think I have to take that back. Feministing’s community was able to (almost across the board) not be transphobic. That’s definitely worth something, and is reassuring. But I’m not convinced that’s the same thing as being supportive.
I’m going to try and continue to participate in the Feministing community but today was an eye-opener. I’d like to think I could have appreciated how offtopic and transphobic discussion can be silencing and remove the possibility of a positive community experience without having it directly apply to something about myself. But I sure as hell can see all of that when it is around a question I asked, and a discussion I prompted.
-R
Themocracy
One thing that also happened when Miriam made her post was that every trans-related post on Feministing was comment-locked and all discussion directed to Miriam’s post.
And even that comment thread was derailed in a variety of ways too I noticed. I find I read any trans related blog articles on Feministing and then tend to skip the comments entirely, or read them and feel unwilling to participate as they rarely have anything to do with the actual subject and I don’t feel safe in participating.
Even after the whole blow up trans issues /still/ derail in the same ways every time.
I also notice that women of colour have exactly the same criticisms of the same blogs when issues pertaining to their lives are discussed.
I was on a blogfast all weekend and so didn’t come to the Feministing post until this morning, and at this point it seems a bit overwhelming. FWIW, I think at times those of us who are cis allies follow these kinds of conversations but don’t contribute much, not because we’re apathetic, but because we’re not sure what we can contribute and are still in the STFU & listen phase. And unfortunately that leaves the discussion to those who are exclusively doing trans101 and derailing and having the metaconversations. I’ve engaged in many of the metaconversations in the past, simply because I think that having a variety of voices insisting on thoughtfulness, inclusivity, and sensitivity is important. But at some point these conversations simply operate as another derailing mechanism.
But it’s not that I think cis women can’t contribute to a discussion like this. In this case I don’t think I can, because from what I gather I just have a really odd experience of gender (I’ve never felt particularly identified or bonded with my body or like I had an inner gender identity or anything like that – to me it all seems like script, all the way down), so I feel like it would be a bit presumptive for me to give any kind of advice or try to relate my experience to yours. But that doesn’t mean I’m not reading and listening and processing and becoming more and more convinced that everything about the way we handle gender and sexuality is profoundly problematic in our culture. And these ideas will probably simmer around in my head for awhile, and at some point result in constructive comments. In the meantime, I am listening and feeling empathetic and engaged. And I suspect I’m not the only one. If that’s worth anything…
Thanks for your comment, Rachel! I very much apologize if I made it sound like I believe cis voices don’t have a place in trans-focused conversations. I don’t think that’s true and I hope that, in my frustration, that’s not the message I conveyed.
Likewise, as I said over at Feministing, I don’t think it’s presumptive for people who don’t identify as trans to use their own experiences to relate to those who do. One of the comments I really aprpeciated over at Feministing was from someone who used her own experiences with changing weight to talk about how she felt her sexuality (or sexual experiences) change. On the same page, one of my roommates and I have talked about how important names and pronouns are. He was able to relate his experience having an oddly spelled name, that’s often mistaken for a nickname, to give him some perspective on how frustrating it is to have people not acknowledge your stated identity. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, as some trans individuals may feel differently, but I’ve never been offended by people who make an honest effort to understand where I’m coming from by relating it to their own experiences.
On sort of a different note, I agree that meta-discussion is important, and can be enjoyable. How else can groups or communities find a common language and set of rules or expectations with which to hold discussions? I was disappointed with the Feministing thread this past weekend, though, because I thought the ‘how to hold a trans-specific discussion’ had been hashed out last month. Obviously something like that continues to be an ongoing conversation – I don’t think it’s just a one time, “OK, we’re done!” type thing, but the Prof F column didn’t seem like the place for it.
Thanks again for your thoughts. It really does mean a lot that people like you are empathetic and engaged, and I really appreciate the message. It is worth something, and I don’t want to discount its importance. I’m just hoping the entire Feministing (not to say feminist) community can get to a similar place where trans-focused discussions are able to exist, with trans and cis voices, without becoming bogged down in offtopic or meta discussion.
I agree with that entirely. Actually I think one of the hardest things for cis people to empathise is the way that trans people experience gender. Most cis people I’ve talked to about their experience of their gender say the same as you, Rachel. If you are trans you can’t help /but/ be aware of it in a different way.
The important thing is reaching out to understand each other in sensitive and supportive ways, in the right place and time as you say yourself
No, I totally didn’t interpret you as claiming that cis voices don’t belong in trans conversations – I just think that at times I feel that speaking from a privileged perspective can serve to further the marginalization of the othered individual…
Also, regarding Mattie’s comment… when I’ve mentioned before that I have a hard time conceptualizing the experience of having an inner gender most people have assumed that this is simply the case for anyone who’s functional as a cis person. But I don’t think that’s an accurate description of this. I remember many times as a child feeling a strong sort of dissonance at being classified as a girl. I really did not see myself as a girl, and have no idea what it would be like to “feel like a woman or girl,” apart from the whole being fairly competent at enacting the script thing. On the other hand, I didn’t feel like a boy either. And I didn’t feel particularly compelled by either script. So I coped pretty well by rejecting a lot of the feminine script but still “passing” easily enough as a tomboy. And having a very feminine appearance helps too, as it mitigates a lot of the censure that my androgynous behavior would have received in a person who doesn’t fit the physical ideal.
So I feel extremely doubtful about the dominant idea that many cis people don’t seem to have a strong inner gender identity simply because their inner identity matched with their gender assigned at birth, whereas trans people are very aware of their inner identity because of the strong divergance. I suspect that this is another case where we are tempted to put people in two neatly-defined and separated boxes, but the reality is more complex than that. I suspect that a lot of people don’t have a strong sense of their inner gender identity other than that which is internalized through socialization, while others do. But there are many ways to learn how to cope and fly under the radar if you don’t identify with your assigned gender but also don’t feel compelled by the other end of the binary. And, as with our binary views of gender and sex, I think breaking down this type of binary thinking would benefit everyone. But this is a topic for another post (and now is probably not the time to introduce this discussion, as more important things are being discussed on the topic of trans-cis relations and experiences), and I don’t want to derail.
My apologies for my assumption, Rachel, and thank you for taking the time to correct me. I understand and agree with the point you make that gender is alot more complex than a simple binary.
Mattie,
No apologies necessary. I think this is a common assumption, and it makes a kind of sense that parallels the way that white people have the privilege of being oblivious to race, men can be oblivious to misogyny, etc. But I do think the assumption merits some extra thought/discussion in this case.
[...] at The Thang Blog trillian has posted a good summary of how recent problems faced by trans women in feminist [...]
[...] assumptions about her, she quite rightly pointed that this was an assumption and was kind enough to explain [...]
Rachel,
I’m not sure I agree. Not everyone has the same experience with gender, but I find it difficult to impossible to accept that the majority of cis people have genders that differ markedly in scope from trans people, or that trans people are the people who primarily have strong gender identities, while cis people are more laid back.
That’s not to say that everyone who appears to be cis has a strong, concordant gender identity, but I think it’s pretty safe to assume that a large number of cis people do. Most kids have a fairly strong sense of their own gender and expectations of them because of that gender at a fairly young age – enough so that I don’t think it follows that most people don’t really have that.
Plus, this kind of reasoning can (and often does) flow into the idea that trans people are somehow less advanced/more primitive than cis people because we supposedly take gender more seriously than cis people.
It also assumes that all trans people have similar experiences with gender beyond transitioning, and since I know more than a few trans people who have transitioned, who describe experiences similar to yours regarding gender identification (before or after transition, or both), I don’t think that the need to transition is specifically tied into one’s sense of one’s own gender, at least not in all cases.
I feel that in some ways that being able to talk about cisgendered and cissexed as true counterparts to transgendered and transsexual can help. Recognising that one’s relationship to gender and to physical sex can be more complex than simply being trans or cis. Gender is not always simply binary for either cissexed or transsexed people, that gender is not sex and that they do not always line up in matched pairs. They are intersecting components of more complex identities.
Yes, Mattie, that.
Also, Norah Vincent had the experience of going from a typically cis life to living as a man for a period of time for her book Self-Made Man.
Oops, correction: “talk about cisgendered and cissexual…”
(This comment has been edited in the brief interim since I originally posted it.)
Wow, great discussion all! (I’ve been at work all day and unable to weigh in.)
I don’t know that I have that much to add at this point, as I think I need to let some of the discussion sink in and mull things over. I am particularly interested in thinking of cisgender and cissexual as parallels for transgender and transsexual, as I haven’t heard the concept of ‘cis’ taken that far before.
Specifically, Mattie, I really appreciate your post on the subtle differences between cisgendered and cissexual. I need to reread your post a few times, along with geopunk’s definitions, but I’ll definitely be posting more on the subject.
Lisa,
For sure – I’m not trying to make any universal statements about cis or trans people, and I’m sensitive to the ways radfems take these kinds of themes and run with them.
What I suspect is that within both cis and trans there is a lot of variation in how one experiences gender identity. I know my cousin, who’s trans, felt very strongly, for as long as she can remember, that she was a girl, that her body was all wrong, was attracted to the feminine script, loved girly toys and clothes, etc. On the other hand, I have a trans friend from my undergrad days who says he didn’t really strongly feel he was a boy so much as that he wasn’t a girl. I, on the other hand, didn’t feel that I was either, and experienced fairly strong dissonance when I was identified as a girl as a young child. But I didn’t want to be a boy either. I suspect genderqueer would have been the right category for me if it had been an option. Instead, getting away with the most androgynous behavior I could was my coping mechanism. But just because that’s my experience doesn’t mean I think it’s the experience of all cis people, or that it’s not the experience of some trans people. I suspect there’s a range of ways gender identity (outside of socialization and the imposed scripts) is experienced in both groups.
What I object to is people dismissing my experience by saying “the only reason you don’t experience a strong gender identity is because of your cis privilege.” (Much of this is carryover from discussions on other blogs, so please don’t feel that I’m attributing this to you.) For one thing, as feminists and people who are committed to social justice, we should be validating everyone’s lived experience and individual voice. For another thing, where does this leave genderqueer individuals who really don’t identify with either gender? I think it’s important that genderqueer folk don’t get lost in the cis/trans shuffle. Finally, I think that moving away from binary thinking benefits everyone in this discussion, and this is another way we can be more open to acknowledging that the human experience takes many forms and often occurs on a continuum instead of in little boxes.
And I think I’ve now officially totally derailed this thread. =( I’ve considered posting on this issue on Feministing but haven’t because I think it’s a really delicate issue that would have to be worded just right and would possibly spark off a really inflammatory and not at all constructive discussion that might well be used in some very anti-trans ways.
Rachel,
First, please don’t worry about derailing the thread. It’s my darn blog, and I’m going to say this: If I can complain about a trans-focused discussion getting derailed with meta-discussions, I can also applaud when a meta-discussion gets derailed with talk of gender and identity. ::grin::
It sounds like you and Lisa both agree, to some extent, that every individual (cis and trans) has their own personal experience of their gender. However, Lisa seems to be saying that most people have a similarly strong concept of their own gender, even if cis people are less aware of it than trans people. Meanwhile, you seem to be saying that everyone feels their own sense of gender to varying degrees, and that doesn’t necessarily have to do with whether one is cis or trans. (Please correct me if I’m putting words in either of your mouths, as that’s certainly not my intent.)
From my perspective, I think I’m somewhere in between the two of you, while leaning slightly more towards Lisa’s position. That is, I think most people probably have a solid concept of their own gender, cis and trans, and whether or not their aware of it. At the same time, I certainly agree with you, Rachel, that it’s utterly unfair to dismiss someone’s life experience and to say “the only reason you don’t experience a strong gender identity is because of your cis privilege.” I think some people probably do fall into that category, but that doesn’t automatically mean every single person who doesn’t experience a strong gender identity is simply blind to it through the power of privilege.
Likewise, as you say, I think cis and trans are extremely useful concepts but can lock things into yet another binary. I’m realizing I wrote this comment with phrases like “whether one is cis or trans,” implying there’s no other way of being. Using parallels between discussions of gender and discussions of sexuality, I would be dismissing a large group of people if I were to simply say “straight or gay,” even though many might assume (correctly, in this case) I mean “straight or everybody else.”
That said (as I begin to argue with myself) does transgender as an umbrella term include those who identify as genderqueer? Should it? Perhaps using cis and trans, like using straight and gay, is a necessary evil to try and give people a general idea of a concept without having to resort to saying “I identify as being approximately 2/3 across the cis/trans continuum,” even though I agree that would be a much less restraining way of holding conversations.
I need to mull this over some more, but does anyone else have any thoughts?
Yeah, I was talking about the ways I’ve seen the argument used. I also think that there’s a difference in the way that cis people who deny any strong gender identification in order to delegitimize trans or genderqueer identities say that and the way genderqueer people say that. Obviously, no one can know what’s in anyone’s head, but at the same time there’s a lot of conversations about trans people’s genders that never get extended to cis people’s genders.
Like – I’ve seen people say “Well, I asked a bunch of my cis friends if they identify strongly as men or women, and they said no. I took them completely at their word, and now I’m going to demand all of you trans people here give me extensive, exhaustive justifications to explain your gender identification.” As if both approaches are equal.
Like, it’s the difference between saying “my experience is this” and “my experience is this, which proves your experiences are wrong,” if that makes sense.
Rebecca,
I don’t think cisgender, cissexual, transgender, or transsexual are really hard and fast categories, so it’s easy to drag any of them too far, use them to erase valid categories (like genderqueer), or as a form of identity imperialism to impose “No true trans/genderqueer person would ever really do that” or to categorize genderqueer people as cis because they’re not transitioning (and some genderqueer people do transition).
Also, Rebecca, I am glad that Foxy came back and deleted the comment that spurred so much derailing – and sorry I stepped into that as well. I admit that policing bodies is one of my own hot buttons.
Oh, don’t be sorry. It’s one of those things that, once the derailment has happened, sometimes all you can do is dive in and try to make sure stupid/X-phobic/hateful stuff doesn’t slip by without dissent.
Fair enough.
Oh, sympathies on m Andrea finding her way to that post. She’s a real winner, that one.
I (fortunately, it sounds like) didn’t see that until the comment was deleted, but it sounds like she’s simply an amazing and eloquent debater…
Oh, definitely amazing and eloquent. Of course, by that I mean viciously stupid.
She has exactly one conversation when trans comes up: “No trans person has ever justified her decision to transition to my satisfaction, because I reject everything I say because I think I know their motives better than they do. Therefore, I will derail this thread that has nothing to do with transitioning, and demand that trans people again explain to me why they need to transition, if all they want is to be seen as women – isn’t it possible to be seen as a woman whatever your body looks like?”
Occasionally, she’ll demand that someone prove that “transgenderism” isn’t a fetish or she’ll simply continue to assume that we all do it for the jollies.
And if you can get her to talk about race, she’ll go on about how she’s not racist but women of color are just too *angry and mean* to ever get anything done, and why don’t they listen to her advice?
She’s either one of the worst people to ever live, or she’s a long-term troll. Wait, I don’t mean to imply those are exclusive categories.
I think there is a really important point around the interaction between binary trans identities and genderqueer identities. There are points of stress between both as at different times both groups can find themselves being erased by being placed in the other.
Some people have a tendency to want to put /everyone/ trans into genderqueer, whether they feel they have a binary identity or not. Not just cis critics who find binary trans people hard to accomodate and would like to push us all away into a third gender do this, but also some genderqueer people do this as a misguided way of trying to build solidarity.
Equally some binary people (trans or cis) have a very hard time understanding genderqueer experiences and dismiss them as confused and really binary, thinking that their own experience means that it cannot be more than a political pose, rather than a true identity.
Especially amongst those of us who are not cis all round we need to not be pushing /each other/ into categories, not erasing each other’s identities. We ought to be presenting a unified recognition of the richness of gender identities and the right of all humans to self identify. As long as we police each other we only provide ammunition to the transphobes in society of all types who want to erase all our identities.
>>>Like – I’ve seen people say “Well, I asked a bunch of my cis friends if they identify strongly as men or women, and they said no. I took them completely at their word, and now I’m going to demand all of you trans people here give me extensive, exhaustive justifications to explain your gender identification.” As if both approaches are equal.
I believe I’ve deja-vud that conversation a time or a hundred.
It’s a double bind – trans people are forced on both macro (institutional) and micro levels to *prove* how strong our sense of gender is in order to get some sense of it being accepted at all..
..and then we’re condemned for being naive enough to actually believe in this thing that cis people are properly skeptical of (but nevertheless *do* of course). It’s the tundra, different rules apply.
So you know, any time someone says they don’t believe in gender, but nevertheless have an assigned-at-birth pronoun, a relatively gender-normative presentation, and a solidly binary identification, I’m skeptical myself. Cos like Lisa says, there’s a long history there of cis people
The difference is, cissexual and cisgendered people’s identifications and practices are *not* contestable in the same way that trans people’s are. I have to defend my identification and body practices every day, frequently having to present documents that out and misgender me.
And it is THAT experience of constant negation more than anything that makes me aware of sex/gender in ways that cissexuals frankly can usually barely comprehend.
Yeah, I’ve been involved in a few of the radfem flamewars and so I definitely feel like discussing this stuff is a sort of walking-the-tightrope situation. But that also applies to discussing the ways in which gender is socially constructed. When I cover this stuff in the classes I teach we spend a lot of time discussing ways in which these theories shouldn’t be applied, and implications that don’t follow from them, because I’ve seen this stuff used in such hateful ways before.
I guess to me, the goal is to open up identity formation to allow for a whole range of processes that would be accepted. So my objection to the two little boxes (M/F) has to do with being forced into one or the other, not with people who feel comfortable in and/or willingly choose one or the other. If you feel that you fall on one end of the spectrum or the other, then that’s a perfectly legitimate choice and should be validated. What I object to is being pressured to choose the other box if you don’t feel comfortable in the one to which you were assigned (because then cis/trans becomes the new set of boxes, as Rebecca noted). And being told that I ought to just be thankful that I could pass well enough in the box to which I was assigned doesn’t seem that helpful here.
I want my daughters to feel that they can mix and match “masculine” and “feminine” characteristics if they’re so inclined, and choose the pronouns they feel comfortable with regardless of what they intend to do with their bodies. If this freedom results in a traditional cis or trans identity, then that’s fine, but if they end up choosing “none of the above” then that’s also OK.
I think I’m really sensitive about this because I spent a good deal of time as a child feeling like there was something wrong with me. I recognized fairly early that you were supposed to identify with your gender in an immediate, intuitive way, and I didn’t. I remember doing bar charts in 2nd grade where we were charting the class according to gender, hair color, eye color, height, etc. Blond, green eyed, and tall came immediately and intuitively, but “girl” did not. But neither did “boy.” I honestly felt like I didn’t belong in either, but realized that I was supposed to feel like I did. And I was a thoughtful kid and spent a lot of time mulling over this, and kept it as my little secret that I wasn’t a girl even though everyone thought I was.
So I feel like characterizing this as two choices – either you’re cis and your inner identity matches your body and your socially assigned gender and everything’s peachy keen and wonderful or you’re trans and your identity is the opposite of your assigned gender and/or body – is another restrictive binary. However, I know the ways in which a move toward more freedom to move about the gender continuum can and has been used against trans folk, and I want to be sensitive to that while still being able to discuss this stuff.
As to the question of whether trans includes genderqueer… In popular usage I think trans only applies to those who move from one end of the spectrum to the other, although there’s no reason it has to be that way. But I do think that in our culture you get the impression that if you’re not one you have to be the other, so genderqueer just sort of gets lost. I think trans could be an umbrella term including genderqueer, but I like the idea of keeping it as a third option. For one thing, many genderqueer people don’t experience it as a transition so much as a long process of finding their niche. And I like the idea that we could leave it open for negotiation and exploration. And in reality, that’s sort of how it works for most trans and cis people. Nobody ends up with all the male or female characteristics, and I think we do evolve over a lifetime and embrace at least some of the traits of both genders.
That’s exactly why unpacking cis and looking at cisgendered and cissexual helps so much. One can understand some genderqueer identities as being for example transgendered and cissexed, others as being cisgendered but transexed, so yes, some genderqueer people are also trans. Personally I always understood transgendered as /including/ genderqueer but… there you go, there is not complete agreement around these terms as some of them are contentious amongst different groups of trans people. As with any group that suffers discrimination, identity policing and othering of people who don’t fit the right script is not uncommon.
Transition I think is a different thing for everyone, regardless of their identity. But if you start off as trying to fit into cis completely and then move out of that to be true to yourself I think you are transitioning in some senses. Transitions can be social, they can be physical or they can contain elements of both. It’s a whole other complex experience that is over simplified and misunderstood by most cis people. I certainly know genderqueer people who are also transgendered and transsexual, they see themselves as having a transition to make. I don’t think that seeing genderqueer as discrete from trans helps them.
This was what I was getting at in my post that trillian referenced above. Genderqueer describes a gender type, just as a binary identity does. Transgender and cisgender describe your relationship to the gender assigned to you at birth, transsexual and cissexual describe the relationship between your gender identity and your body. They don’t say what that gender identity is nor do they define what it was when assigned at birth. Trans does not equal binary. Cis does not equal binary, to work those out you have to look deeper and talk about these more complex intersections.
Rachel, I wasn’t talking about rad-fem flamewars. I was talking about the day-to-day lived experience of transness, and specifically how that’s denied *through* a cis discourses of fluidity. Gender’s not important, I don’t fit, yes that’s all fine, completely support it – but do you get discriminated against, literally live and die for this? I think not.
Hence “let’s deconstruct cis” if you are *not trans* is almost inevitably going to be a privileged move.
I’m going to have to bow out on this one, cos I’ve generally appreciated your comments at Feministing and you seem nice enough and all, but another round of feminist theories > trans experience doesn’t appeal right now.
I realize now that I’m really not communicating well. This
Gender’s not important, I don’t fit…
is not really at all what my concern is with. I think that gender is unavoidable in our culture, and my (sort of) failure to fit in my gender is not at all what I’m trying to get at here. And FWIW, I really don’t believe that my experience equates to the discrimination and stigma and personal danger that trans people experience regularly, and I’m sorry I gave that impression. I do agree that that would be a profoundly offensive attitude.
Mattie,
I agree that these distinctions are incredibly helpful and do much to un-binary the situation. The fact that the waters are often so muddy is a common cause of some of the misunderstandings and disagreements, I think. It still seems to me that trans and cis identities do ride on the M/F binary (or at least tend toward the ends of the spectrum), while genderqueer does not. And I don’t think that’s a problem, as long as there are other options.
I also realize that transitioning is not a cut and dried process for trans people either, so it may just be a linguistic issue. I think I just like the idea of negotiating your identity over time and allowing it to evolve, which most of us actually do in reality. My cousin laughingly admits that it took her three years to “allow” herself to exhibit any “masculine” behavior after transitioning. I’m like “think about all the money you wasted getting your oil changed when you could have just done it yourself!” But of course, part of that comes from living in a small conservative town – I think she felt she had to work harder to “convince” everyone. She now reflects that if she had been living in a big anonymous city she probably would have changed the damn oil herself.
But all of this aside, I guess I’m just bothered by the dismissive way people assume that anyone who presents as cis must have a secure and solid gender identity that they’re just not aware of. I really do think this is different from saying “but I don’t feel white!” And having my experience dismissed and erased in the name of privilege seems counterproductive. I suspect I’m not the only one who’s not trans but nevertheless grew up feeling like there was something wrong with me, and I don’t see the harm in leaving it open so that we could acknowledge that there’s probably a range of experiences regarding gender identity within all the different groups.
As to the genderqueer thing – I’ve only had two friends who were genderqueer so the pool is admittedly small here. One easily and unreflectively categorized genderqueer as a trans identity while the other argued that it should be a distinct category. And this seems pretty representative based on what I’ve read and the conversations I’ve had online. So it’s a work in progress…
Mmm… what Queen Emily said plus… I think you are edging into “genderqueer is not at all the same as you deluded trans people and your adherence to a false binary and it’s just better” territory, without perhaps meaning to. Also, I don’t think anyone here is saying that cis people don’t suffer from restrictive and stereotypical gender roles. We’re not talking about gender performance, scripts as you’ve called them, it isn’t the same thing, that’s a whole additional subject beyond identities.
I think I have a real problem with the way that cis people construct cis as an identity that they then have the privilege of rejecting. “But I don’t see myself as cis! I’m a special snowflake and can’t be labelled.” Wrong. Cis is as much a decription of how you deal with social expectations as it is about how you relate to your body. If you can negotiate social expectations without transitioning you are effectively cis. The reason I’m emphatic about this is because removing this meaning means denying the experiences of trans people. I appreciate that life is messy and that cis people might have complex relationships to being cis but denying trans people’s realities is not the way to deal with it.
I think that, as dangerous as it is to draw parallels in power/oppression situations, it’s worthwhile to compare people’s reaction to being labeled cis to being labeled white.
I’m white. I move through the world as white, am read as white (because I am white…), am afforded the privileges of being white, an so on.
And yet, I don’t “feel” white. I don’t have a strong “white” identity. When describing myself, white would be pretty far down the list of adjectives I’d use. But all of that is irrelevant to my place in the social and cultural power dynamics of race, and the fact that my racial presentation and perception by others matches how I view myself.
To say otherwise would be dismissive and presumptuous of me and – although I do believe cis people are entitled to have complicated relationships with gender and to not self-identity as cis – the same thing applies with those who are cis.
(And I hope to the gods I didn’t open an even larger Pandora’s box by mentioning race…)
(bad bunny meant to stay away)
Well, Rachel mentioned it first. I don’t think we need to make the comparison, this is about privilege in a broad sense yes?
The point about privilege is its relationship to power, and the obliviousness this produces.. People’s feelings – and Rachel keeps making this about *her feelings* about gender, which is well annoying btw – are in some ways irrelevant. The privilege question which “cis” names is about material effects:
Are you institutionally privileged for your gender presentation?
Are you required to be sterilised to have your gender accepted by a government? unmarried? to have surgery? Are you likely to be housed in the wrong jail, the wrong homeless shelter? etc etc
If not, then yer cis innit. “Cis” doesn’t need to fit every feeling every person has in their lives, it names an oppression they don’t face.
Now sure, you can instead call yourself passing-as-cissexual, and there’s a valid argument to be made there. So long as you’re aware – and most genderqueers I know who pass-as-cis sometimes are well aware of this.
But the rest, as interesting as it is, is philosophising verging on insulting navel gazing given the high stakes for those who *do* face that oppression.
First, I want to say that genderqueer is not exclusive from trans people who transition – in that, I know more than a few transsexual people, who undergo HRT, who have had surgery, who are also genderqueer. It’s not that over HERE you have trans people doing their transitioning and over THERE you have cis people and somewhere in the middle you have genderqueer people who are strictly not binary identified and thus completely separate from cis and trans people.
Cis isn’t really something people identify as, it’s a way to identify the institutional, legal, social ways in which cis people are privileged over trans people. People who talk about not identifying strongly as a man or woman still frequently benefit from cis privilege – they don’t have to spend any part of their life in a legally incoherent state (living as male or female, with identification that says the opposite).
Debates about whether people truly identify as cis sort of miss the point, and frequently help to divert attention from the fact that in general, society privileges and positions cis people as natural, normal, biological, honest, real, genuine, authentic, and trans people as unnatural, abnormal, artificial, deceptive, false, imitative, and fake.
And that genderqueer people tend to get coded into one of those categories (or even code themselves into one of those categories), because people who don’t transition are still seen as “better” and “more authentic” than people who do. For example, Janice Raymond herself suggests that instead of transitioning, trans women should be feminine males. Queen Emily, who commented here, tried to live as an assigned male genderqueer before transitioning, and the former generally garnered her a lot more acceptance than the latter.
It’s not, as Mattie says, about gender roles, performance, or scripts – because generally speaking, someone who transitions is positioned as incapable of understanding those scripts properly. If I perform high femme, many cis people (if they know I’m trans) characterize this as “trans women don’t know how to be properly feminine, overdo it, and aren’t really all that good at being women” while a cis woman engaging in the same performance will be naturalized as, if not normal, at least clueful, because she identifies as a woman and was assigned female.
You can be uncomfortable with the gender roles, assumptions, and expectations of womanhood, but still accept the gender identity of “woman.” Of course, so can I. And I am uncomfortable with some of the gender roles, assumptions, and expectations of womanhood, even though I am completely comfortable identifying as a woman. And I think trans women are frequently positioned as uncritically assuming the most stereotypical roles, assumptions, and expectations of womanhood, and then cis women compare themselves to that caricature, and say that they don’t relate as strongly to their gender identity as “woman” as trans women do. I’m not saying you did this specifically, but I am saying that this conversation happens pretty frequently – where trans people’s gender identities are defined as stereotypical and shallow and cis people’s gender identities are defined as complex and interesting.
A few years ago, I read someone saying that a trans person’s identity is seen as “discreditable.” That is, anything a trans person does can be discredited because the person doing it is trans. This is another part of cis privilege. If a cis man crashes a tram while he’s texting his girlfriend, then the public discussion about this will be how he fucked up because he wasn’t paying attention, because texting is the end of the world, etc. etc. But if a trans man crashes a tram while he’s texting his girlfriend, then the public discussion about this will be how you don’t let those crazy trans people operate heavy equipment, because if they can’t tell the difference between men and women, how can they be trusted to operate machinery safely?
So cis people don’t deal with that stuff. Trans people do. That’s pretty much it. It’s not about putting trans or cis gender identities under a microscope, or trying to determine how many trans people can dance on the head of a pin.
Well said. I’ve been sitting here trying to think of something to add, but I think you said it.
I don’t want to cause trouble, and I’m not sure that I’m communicating very clearly at all here, so I’ll just say this. I don’t really find this
You can be uncomfortable with the gender roles, assumptions, and expectations of womanhood, but still accept the gender identity of “woman.”
to be an accurate description of my experience at all. My experience extends way beyond that, but I think I’m just not putting it into words well. And I think because of this we’ve sort of missed each other.
It seems obvious to me that many people have a very strong, immediate, and intuitive sense of their gender identity. And I’m in no way trying to cast any doubt on that or invalidate that experience in any way. And I recognize the danger and the stigma and the heartbreak that often comes with having a gender identity opposite from the gender and/or sex assigned at birth. In this way I acknowledge my privilege. In fact, my privilege goes beyond that in many ways. But what I’m questioning is this conception of all cis people as having an inner gender identity that effortlessly meshes with the identity they were assigned at birth. And my experience makes me wonder if it really is the case that each and every individual has a strong inner gender identity prior to socialization. I don’t doubt that this is the case for many people, but I still maintain that it doesn’t seem to have been the case for me. So this makes me think that instead of dismissing the experiences of people who never wanted to transition to the opposite gender but nevertheless experienced a complete lack of correspondence with the one they were assigned, we should work to open up the range of options so that everyone can find a niche that works for them.
Maybe a part of the issue is that I don’t see a movement to acknowledge identities and experiences all along the gender spectrum as an inherently anti-trans position. The way I’ve always interpreted feminist theory in this area, trans-exclusion does not follow from a move to loosen the binary. In contrast, the move is toward affirming whatever identity works for each individual, and even though that does open up all the space in the middle of the spectrum, the extremes are still included. And obviously a feminism that’s grounded in social justice has to concern itself with those who are marginalized and mistreated. (I realize that many people don’t share this view of feminism, to put it mildly) On the other hand, I can see why feminist rejections of the binary would seem trans-exclusionary and I recognize that this kind of theory has often been used in hateful ways. But I’m not sure if that’s your take on this or not, and I apologize if I’ve misunderstood your thoughts here.
I imagine you’re right, that not every person has a strong sense of their gender above and beyond what they’ve been socialized as. (Although I would wager that this is the exception, rather than the rule.) Likewise, it is counterproductive to discount lived experiences as “being blinded by privilege.” (I don’t think anyone here has been saying that, but many of us have touched on situations where that does happen, or people who do say that.)
That said, Lisa seems to be saying that cis, as a concept, is useful in identifying the societal and cultural power structure around gender identities and identifying with (or against) one’s assigned sex. Likewise, saying “gender is based on socialization, and is a learned concept” (even if you’re not saying that’s true for everybody!) often leads to saying “…and those who chose to transition do so because they’re buying into the binary gender system in spite of its false and constructed nature.”
Now, nothing that I’ve read of yours leads me to believe this is what you’re saying. But it seems like Lisa worries that you’re unaware of the baggage attached to what you are saying. (And I apologize profusely if I’m putting words into either of your mouths.)
Because you’re right, in that an understanding of gender where one can not identify with their assigned gender while still not transitioning can (and should!) lead to more openness and acceptance to all identities. But it can also lead to saying that those who do chose to transition are buying into a false and outdated concept of gender and should be pitied (at best) or mocked and scorned (at worst).
PS – don’t think you’ve caused any trouble! I am glad you’ve been part of this discussion, and hope you haven’t felt picked on.
No, I’m not feeling picked on at all – my skin’s pretty thick after spending years in the philosophy dept. =)
And I am aware of the baggage involved and the slippery slope that this line of questioning treads dangerously near to, so I really do understand the caution here. And I often hesitate to bring this up because of this, and because I realize that I’m not the one who has to deal with the crap that follows from a misapplication of these ideas on a daily basis, except in a theoretical sort of way.
I’ve just noticed a trend lately of defining cis not just as a position in the hierarchy, which it definitely is, but also as a sort of condition in which one’s inner gender identity matches one’s gender and/or sex at birth. And I’m sure that may be true for many people, but it muddies the waters a bit when it comes to those for whom the best thing would be a more flexible gender system. In my mind a more flexible system benefits trans and genderqueer and cis identities of all stripes. But I am aware of the ways this ideology has been used against trans folk, and I would hate to feed into that.
That being said, I don’t think that a position which questions the binary and encourages flexibility has to be anti-trans. On the other hand, I’m not sure how to characterize it in a way that will prevent it from being used in this role by those who are grasping for ways to defend their position of privilege. So perhaps that’s where the work lies right now.
At any rate, I really do appreciate discussions like these and think they offer an opportunity for constructive dialogue that often gets missed.
And your new layout is kicking some serious ass. =)
Re: cis matching. Yes, that’s true. That’s the Serano position (“subconscious sex” and all that), and I don’t find it super useful. I understand what she’s trying to do with it, but it does posit a full alignment between sex, gender and the signifier of “woman” or “man.” A positive definition is actually much harder than a negative one (“not trans”), though I think it’s worth considering *why* given the general power imbalances that is.
Cos see, I think a lot of the reason why I find the flexibility thing so frustrating is that cissexism as a regime is elastic enough to incorporate *both* flexibility and elasticity.
Trans people seem to get always-already excluded from legitimacy – too fake, *and* too invested in “real” genders (which no-one else really really believes in).
I’ve lost track of the number of so-called “liberal” people who’ve told me that “no-one feels they fit their gender.. and therefore no-one should transition.”
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