A searing conflict
More on the Michelle Goldberg article.
Cohn estimates that there are about 20 gender-critical trans bloggers, though their Internet presences tend to wax and wane; some who were active just a few months ago have pulled back, while others have just begun. Among the most prominent are Snowflake Especial and Gender Minefield, as well as Gender Apostates, a group blog run by both trans and cisgender women. Like many other trans people, the trans writers behind these blogs have experienced a searing conflict between their physiognomy and their self-conceptions. Like the broader trans rights movement, they believe in fighting violence and discrimination against trans people. But they reject the idea that biological sex is mutable, though sex organs obviously are. They see a difference between living as a woman and being one. Perhaps most of all, they object to the strain of online trans activism that seeks to erase sex distinctions through language alone—for example, by designating the penis a female organ, or by removing the word “woman” from reproductive rights activism.
There are good reasons for objecting to that. Women are still an oppressed class, as women, so removing the word that names them from discussions of rights they are denied is a very bad idea.
Highwater, for one, struggles to reconcile her convictions about gender with her desire not to hurt other trans women. “What I think a lot of trans people hear, if you suggest that trans women aren’t women, is, ‘Stop kidding yourself, you’re just a man, go back to living as a man,’ ” Highwater says. “That’s not what this means. The fact that I hold these views doesn’t mean that I think that trans women aren’t valid. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think they don’t have a right to live their lives the way they live their lives.”
So what does it mean? “I lived 40 years trying to live as a bloke,” Highwater says. “I’ve not experienced the things women have experienced. I’ve not been brought up that way. So why on earth would I want to claim that I’m a woman as much as any other woman? To me, it no longer makes any sense. What seems to be a much more honest approach is: ‘I am an adult human male who has suffered with a level of sex dysphoria for whatever reason for decades, and have now got to the point where I’ve had to make a social transition.’ ”
And they’re different things. The experience of trying to live as a bloke when you don’t feel like one is different from the experience of being brought up as a woman. Both have their issues; why mash them together?
Given the salvation she found in transitioning and the discrimination she faced afterward, Hart’s impatience with the mainstream trans rights movement might seem strange. To understand it, it’s necessary to understand how the meaning of the word transgender has expanded in recent years. There was a time when transitioning necessarily implied hormones and surgery, with doctors deciding who would be allowed access to them. The Harry Benjamin Standards of Care, the first official protocols for the treatment of what were then called transsexuals, were published in 1979; they required people who wanted surgery to first live in their new gender for at least a year and to produce two letters from medical professionals. Those wishing to transition also couldn’t be heterosexual according to their birth sex; anatomical males who were attracted to women—and who therefore would become lesbians—were ineligible.
The new generation of trans activists utterly rejects this model. To them, being trans is fully a matter of self-definition. Surgery is far from required; according to theHuman Rights Campaign, only 33 percent of trans people have it.
…
To a degree, Hart thinks the broadened definition is a good thing. “I don’t support Harry Benjamin saying you must be a heterosexual feminine-presenting woman in order to be truly trans,” she says. But as she and other gender-critical trans women see it, the reaction has gone too far, turning the words man and woman into floating signifiers that designate nothing but states of mind, and erecting a new set of taboos to enforce their ideology. As Hart puts it: “You can’t identify your way out of your body. Genderism is a myth that suggests that’s possible.”
If man and woman are just floating signifiers that designate nothing but states of mind then why wouldn’t all women simply identify as men, thus ending the hierarchy that subordinates women once and for all?
[G]ender-critical trans women clearly feel like they’re struggling against an ideological tide. A 28-year-old trans woman in Ohio with a gender-critical Tumblr—she asked me not to name it, lest it draw unwelcome attention to her—says she sees parallels between contemporary trans activism and her Christian fundamentalist upbringing. “It’s just this sense that there are certain things that are unquestionable, and you can’t even talk about them,” she says. “I guess a lot of belief systems have things that operate in that way, but there are just so many for trans activism and for fundamentalist Christians.”
There definitely are things that are unquestionable and that you’re not permitted to talk about them. If you do talk about them, sirens go off and everyone for miles around rushes to publish a statement disavowing what you said and hoping you burn in hell.
Like Highwater, Cohn thinks that premise sets trans people up for failure. “I think it’s very damaging,” she says. “The women we see in our lives—that’s the standard we’re trying to match. And that’s not possible. There’s always going to be dissonance, because we’re not women.”
The mainstream trans rights movement’s answer to this feeling of dissonance is to expand the boundaries of what woman means. “You can be whatever kind of woman you want to be,” Boylan says. “But what I don’t want is to take anything away from someone else, and I don’t want anyone else to take anything away from me. If your thing is saying that a transgender woman who has been through transition is not a real woman but some other kind of woman with an asterisk, then you are taking my womanhood away from me.”
I still wonder, though, why that reasoning doesn’t apply to other kinds of identity. People don’t get to identify their way to being Japanese or Colombian, black or white, tall or short, deaf or hearing, a runner or a swimmer. Some you can’t become, some you have to put in a lot of work to become; in no case is just identifying enough. Why is gender alone being treated as so easily reversed?
Not only gender alone. Female gender alone. Nobody’s muscling in on men the same way.
Well, if you TERFs would get out of the way, the religious right in the USA would recognize their error and pass ENDA.
[WARNING: The above may contain sarcasm.]
More seriously, Highwater probably knows more about what identifying as a cis male than I do. People who don’t conform to stereotypes tend to have to confront that just a wee bit more than those who (mostly) do.
It’s a bit different with gender though, don’t you think? I had one female and one male parent (didn’t we all?). If I had one Japanese and one Colombian parent, would anyone object to me identifying as Japanese or Colombian? Likewise with one black and one white parent (like Obama, whose mother was white, but who identifies and black). I get the point, I just don’t think gender is comparable to, “tall or short, deaf or hearing”. Sex might be, but not, I think, gender.
I had an accountant for a father and a teacher for a mother, so I could just identify as either one of those things, right?
The comparison to nationality is illustrative in more than one way. One can immerse oneself in the culture of country X to the point that they identify with that culture without becoming a citizen of country X. One can acquire the citizenship of country X while still not quite understanding its culture and not identifying with it. Or one can do both. And due to the citizenship laws of some countries, one can be a citizen of country X from birth without ever setting foot in country X, without knowing the first thing about its culture and so forth. Or one can be a citizen of country X from birth but spending all but a short time of one’s life elsewhere. So one can be many different scenarios where one is a citizen of country X without having any meaningful connection to country X, and one can have a very strong connection to country X without being its legal citizen. So what does it mean to be ‘really from country X’?
Similarly, it is not that hard to change one’s legal gender in the US (though it can be harder in some states, leading to some people being able to change their gender under Federal law but not under their state’s law). So what is one’s ‘real’ gender – the legal one, the one they identify with, or the one others identify them as being?
Another thing – many people who determine for themselves that they identify as a different gender than others perceive them as being don’t leave it at that. They take all kinds of steps to change other people’s perception of their gender – ie they make an effort to ‘pass’ as the intended gender. Even at the price of being exposed to discrimination as members of that gender (as happens to trans women that are not exceptionally rich and famous).
I also think it is significant when one transitions socially (more important than medically). People who are out as trans from early childhood really do experience living (almost) their entire life as the gender they transitioned to. In what way are they different from cis members of that gender?
OK, I’ll give you one that works that way – ‘true’ membership of a religion, at least as accepted among atheists – we say that members of religions shouldn’t use the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy to exclude people claiming membership in their religion just because they don’t agree with said people’s behavior or interpretation of the religion. Now the various denominations of the religion may have all sorts of criteria, but we do not grant any of them the authority. We accept that other people may work under different definitions of religious identity.
To be honest, what gets me is the, “You can’t take away anything from anyone else” when female-bodied people who do not “feel like women” are told that the definition of woman now excludes them.
We still are discriminated against as women, unless we successfully present as men. We still face the social pressures women face, unless we successfully present as men. We still fight for women’s rights, which not everyone who identifies as women wants to do. We still have vaginas– and as far as I know, we will never get penises, even if we want them, because surgery doesn’t work that well.
So. We’re what? Trans, sort of, whether or not we decide to live as if we were not women. Cis, because trans activists spit that at non-conforming women because we’re so fucking privileged to spend our entire lives telling us we are doing womanhood wrong when we don’t really want to do it right, we just want to be people, but the fact I haven’t change my name and told people my pronouns are he/him/his makes me *comfortable* with being female.
Actually, I’d kind of prefer to be male. But that ain’t gonna happen. Wishing wouldn’t make it so. Surgery wouldn’t make it so. “Thinking like a man” doesn’t make it so. Having a homunculus of a male body doesn’t make it so. And the fact that male friends treat me like one of the guys sometimes doesn’t make it so.
Telling me my body is irrelevant doesn’t make it so.
That.
Samantha, last time this came up on Pharyngula, the working definition claimed by the commentariat was ‘a woman is anyone who says they are one’. That would include you.
Or more accurately, that could include you, Samantha.
@Anat:
I’m quite sure the commentariat of Pharyngula would not agree with your assertion. Because, you know, it’s quite reductive and prima facie ridiculous.
I know this because I am a woman. Except that I am not a woman. I don’t identify as a woman. My social experience was not that of a woman. I don’t consider myself a woman in any way, shape, or form. Obviously, the Pharyngula community* would consider my claim facile, at best.
But hey, I said I was a woman, didn’t I?
Apologies in advance if I’m being overly combative here. But that is obviously not the position of the community at Pharyngula (said community being a hard thing to define in itself), and one cannot slap enough sarcasm tags onto a post to excuse outright falsehood.
In short: what the fuck? Are you trolling, or are you just really, really bad at sarcasm?
Me? No, I was reporting a lengthy exchange between a person who identified as an agender woman and some of the Pharyngula regulars. It went on and on for several rounds with the agender woman stating repeatedly how she felt excluded by the current feminism-trans-activism, and the regulars insisting that obviously she was included in the definition of woman because she said she was one, and they didn’t care why she said she was a woman. If she determined that she was a woman based on her body and her perception by others that was a fine reason for *her* to say she was a woman, but they didn’t care what her reasons were. Nobody tried your gambit (can a cis-man become a woman by insisting he was one?).
How does anyone know that no one tried Patrick’s gambit? How does anyone know that no cis man said he was a woman?
OK, I don’t know. On the internet nobody knows you’re a dog, and all that. But nobody said ‘here I am, a cis-man, and I had you all accepting me as a woman because I said I was one’ or anything of that sort. Nobody attempted to point out their definition could be exploited that way or asked them what they would do if anyone did so.
Quite. And there was that competition for a writing fellowship for women that I posted yesterday – it’s open to anyone who identifies as a woman, “including trans women, genderqueer women, and non-binary people.”
Through my kid I became aware of several young people who are a gender other than male or female, but if being forced to choose between binary genders have their preference. I think my kid decided to go all the way and transition (socially and legally) to male because the law currently only accepts binary options, and he definitely wasn’t going to be female. (Still doesn’t care much for the company of ‘cis-dudes’ as he calls them.) But some non-binary people are in the opposite position – they are definitely not male, so under some circumstances might fall under the female umbrella.
Sorry if I was intemperate there, I was pretty irritable last night.
There’s enough disagreement as it is, but your definition of women as ‘anyone who says they are one’ is the definition used by Mike Huckabee when he wants to perv out on high school girls in a shower. That’s definitely not the Pharyngula consensus. If you were using it as a shorthand, I would recommend … not doing that, because it’s unclear.
I’m pretty sure the Pharyngula commentariat would agree with Ophelia that gay men who in all other circumstances identify as such don’t get to “identify” as sassy black women. Similarly, I highly doubt Pharyngula regulars would uncritically accept a by-all-indications cis AMAB person just because they said they were a woman*. I seem to recall some bad-faith commenters who got ripped to shreds for doing that, actually. But then, that’s a pretty dipshit thing to do.
So yeah, anyway, there’s enough disagreement without setting up strawmen that light up the heavens when lit on fire.
* Note that initial acceptance (e.g.. taking someone on the internet at their word as to their identified gender) is not the scenario I’m addressing.
But it’s not a strawman. There are people who to all appearances present as men but say they are women; they tweet abuse at people who question their claim to be women.
Also, what do you mean “I highly doubt Pharyngula regulars would uncritically accept a by-all-indications cis AMAB person” – what “indications” can there be on Pharyngula other than what people say about themselves?
There’s Alex Drummond for example, as Michelle Goldberg mentioned.
Quick response, I’m supposed to be working.
I don’t think the Drummond case is applicable to what I’m talking about. Drummond identifies, and has identified as a woman for quite some time, quite publicly. Now, I personally think that’s highly problematic in terms of just what the hell “woman” means, but it’s a mile away from simply “saying” she’s a woman.
Again, I was objecting to THIS:
I read comments at Pharyngula, and I think this is a gross mischaracterization of discussions there regarding gender and gender identity. If the characterization was “sincerely believes”, or “strongly feels”, or some such, I’d accept that (though others might not). But the definition in the quote is indistinguishable from the Huckabee definition. Hence, I snipped at it.
As to Pharyngulites accepting such claims uncritically, IIRC there have been a few instances of people trolling who got smoked out — the community clearly has standards for when it’s appropriate to claim the status of “woman”, and no, just saying it isn’t sufficient.
I’ll stop there, because this is feeling like pedantry, and you get enough of that from John Morales.
PatrickG, the Pharyngula thread is several weeks old, I won’t be able to dig it up easily, but a regular poster definitely said that a woman is anyone who says they are one, and others posted to refer to that definition in order to explain to the poster identifying as an agender woman that said definition includes her. The definition was not challenged by examples like the ones you mention.
Perhaps if challenged they might modify the claim with ‘consistently’.
“Consistently” is all I need. :) Though I disagree with that standard, as I tend to come down on the side of saying that neatly erases all real meaning from the word “woman”, or at the very least introduces a level of imprecision that makes discourse on issues related to women very difficult. But then, I’m a TERF that way.
And again, apologies if I was intemperate. I don’t really pay much attention to how my words may come across (failing of mine), and sometimes I appear much more
But that is the definition we’re currently supposed to sign up to. Someone who identifies as a woman is a woman. There are no stipulations about consistently etc. That was part of that NUS Women document I was arguing with a few days ago, for instance.
And yes, it does erase all real meaning from the word “woman,” and yes, that is what putative TERFs object to.
I was thinking in particular of this passage:
@ 18 PatrickG
I recall that Danielle Muscato was accepted quite readily when she came out. I don’t think any outsider had a clue, prior to that, that Muscato was not a cis male. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with accepting Muscato’s gender identity, I just don’t understand what you’re getting at. How does “accept a by-all-indications cis AMAB person just because they said they were a woman” differ?
Really, looking at the NUS document… I probably could have gotten a resolution praising dolphins for their aquatic grace into there. Does that “Speech Against: Free” mean nobody opposed the motions, or what? They all had a “Speech For”, but no “Speech Against”. Debate!
I will be very curious to see if they actually get a Palestinian speaker sometime in the next year, though it really did feel like they forgot until the last moment they should probably mention something about women in that item. Being the Women Conference and all. Ah, university…
Hahaha I know, it’s so random. They thought of a bunch of things and wrote them down. Ok then…
@ SilentBob:
My point was pedantic and irritated: Identification goes beyond “saying” you are something. I get irked by this because he right uses the “well, I can just say I’m a girl and then I get to rape people” language, whereas the argument evidenced in the other points here is not that.
Basically, you’ve got nutjobs who do use the “say” formulation — I thought bringing up Huckabee as an example would be sufficient to illustrate. That is not what the people at Pharyngula subscribe to, and it’s sloppy to imply that they do.
That was my original point, though I did get slightly diverted.
Regarding the “consistently” thing from earlier, all I was trying to say is that the folks at Pharyngula do require some, what, sincerity? on the part of the person doing the identifying. Trolls who pretended were not treated kindly — again, “say” isn’t the whole of the standard. Like I said — pedantic.
I’ve repeated myself five times without getting any clearer, so I’ll just give up. I shouldn’t post while working, it’s not conducive to clear writing. Or productive working.
@ Ophelia Benson:
Yeah, I’m just going to give up, since that was meant to be a joke, not a dismissal of the issues. For the record, I mostly agree with you, I just went incoherent-Morales for a while.
See y’all in another thread.
There is a difference between punctiliousness and pedantry.
Patrick, regarding the Pharyngula regulars – they can’t require that a person ‘sincerely believe’ their claim because they can’t objectively test for it, they are not mind readers. And they can’t demand making an effort to ‘pass’ as that would be gate-keeping and potentially body-shaming. So they are stuck with ‘anyone who says they are’ while possibly actually meaning ‘anyone who says they are, as long as we believe them’.
Also – let’s keep in mind that Pharyngula is a blog. Pharyngula regulars are just names on a screen, many of which aren’t real names. Some of them meet IRL over time, but not all, and there are always new people. So this whole idea that there’s some standard of evidence for people who say they’re trans doesn’t make a lot of sense.
(All of that makes it seem, to me at least, all the more odd that everyone is expected to know who is trans and to keep it in mind at all times, so that there can be rage and shouting if someone “misgenders” one of the trans people by accident. “Happiest Sadist” is still running around shouting that I lied about not knowing HS’s pronouns. Not true. I didn’t lie, I just failed to keep track. How could I? I can’t possibly memorize the pronouns of every Pharyngula commenter, and why would I want to anyway?)
Yep, that’s really what I was trying to say. To use the examples upthread, I take NUS’s use of “complex gender identities” and “oppression as women” as illustrative of what I would characterize as “sincere claims”. There is gatekeeping/vetting — even if it’s just a personal assessment of sincerity or claimed lived experience. One does not simply up and claim a new gender identity, after all — that’s a deeply personal, complex decision with many ramifications for one’s life. People being people, they are going to assess claims, whether to detect fraud or determine whether someone’s thought through issues (e.g. “sounds like you might not be aware of XYZ, go take a look”).
I should note that I added further confusion by conflating internet and meatspace interactions. On the internet, the social cues that would allow community identification are largely absent, so the solution is to err on the side of caution — this is a deliberate suspension of truth assessment, to achieve the particular goal of not making it harder on people, not uncritical acceptance. An insincere claim on the internet will meet a different reception than an insincere claim in person, where social cues (i.e. sincerity) make it much easier to assess claims. That assessment still happens, though.
Anyways, sorry for all the poor writing and sloppy thinking. I’ve definitely learned that I really can’t switch mental gears from medical taxonomies to gender identity issues without deeply muddling my thinky processes. Personal growth, I suppose.
P.S. As to the HS thing, oy. I would think the pertinent point would be “have you misgendered HS lately?”.
@ 33 John Morales
But it would be pedantic to point it out.
;-)