Record Keeping

I keep copies of many of my comments elsewhere, so that I can keep track of how my own thinking evolves, and also just so that I can remember what I’ve said in various circumstances.

A recent entry on Transadvocate has given me a good opportunity to expand on a few things in a different mode than purely reactive, and I’m going to take the occasion to reproduce my comments here:

Those who identify as “WBT” no longer see themselves as being a transsexual, stating that “surgery made me female.” They can identify however they like, but if all the facts are taken into account, SRS/GRS/SAS cannot make any male-born individual into a female.

Yeah, but so what, really? We (the non-fundamentalists) sometimes make too much of a point in waving that in their faces, I think. If we are to be consistent and insist that biology and anatomy are not that important, then I think this is a point where we could give ground without any offense to our own principles. The fact is that most trans people really do transition in a fairly normative context, and there is no inherent wrong in that. I might have a stricter view of biological reality, but that view – fortunately – does not pertain in the area, for instance, of legal recognition of sex… nor, by our own principles, should it.

I recognize the frustration. The fundamentalists make much of cherry-picked and lovingly displayed physical facts, and it’s tempting to just pound away at the obvious contradictions.

But to what end? It advances little, I think.

I am of the political opinion that separatism of any kind is a failure. But who am I to say “thou shalt not secede?” I just wish that in doing so, they didn’t seem quite so adamant about pulling down straw giants behind them.

…

I think I failed to emphasize something… namely, that it does no harm for someone to believe that their surgery makes them “really female.” It is, after all, what sits at the deepest heart of most transwomen, even if a more worldly attitude tends to seep in over time. The only harm done is when their inward belief becomes an outward mandate.Which, I confess, tends to be what happens… as it does for anyone who invests themselves so heavily in any kind of identity.

…

I know that crossdressers and I have little in common. I’ve had the oft-narrated experience of going to a single meeting of a local “gender group”, seeing that it was largely devoted to the interests of straight men who wear frocks, and deciding it had little to do with me. I’ve met enough actual crossdressers in real life to have that sense of dissonance. But I don’t bristle at the “transgender umbrella” because I don’t understand it as an identity collective. The possibility that crossdressers and I may share some experiences or face some similar issues doesn’t threaten me, because I am comfortable with the differences, and their action in the real world.There are overlaps. People do evolve (now there’s a critical difference between me and a fundamentalist). But affinity and alliance are not identity, and those of us who are comfortable with the alliance know that.

…

I should like to add that very few natal women of my acquaintance – I work in an industry where professional women are more than usually well represented – are as adamant about their “essential, immutable gender” as most fundamentalists appear to be. I’ve had conversation with them about it, and they tend to express a far less rigid view of themselves, me, and the world in general.

—

If it is that all those that SAY they are transsexual ..ARE transsexual…

I didn’t say that. It’s the overreaching generalizations that make this conversation so difficult.

What I do say, however, is that it is no more valid to say that “no transsexuals are also transgender” than it is to say that “all transsexuals are also transgender.”

And that has to do with my perspective on what “transgender” usefully refers to. My own observation is that even many “classic” transsexuals shift their gender performance over time, in order to function in the world. I agree that gender is in some respects innate – I’ve had too many conversations with too many mothers to think otherwise, and if I didn’t believe it in myself – if I didn’t have what seems to be a kind of lodestone in my nose – I would probably have felt no need to transition. But it is also a social process – again, as most natal women will tell you.

Or at least, as they have told me. I am not delusional. I know very well that I am in some ways “tolerated” but I am tolerated fairly well because I don’t walk in, say “Hi girls!” and start yakking like I own the place (and I am not suggesting that you do). I let people know me, and I listen to them a lot, and that gives me an opportunity to learn who they are, and that’s partly how I discover who I am. Because that’s how socialization works.

And as part of that process I’ve had a lot of time to talk to women, not about how they see me but how they see themselves, and that’s where I learned that many natal women don’t have the death-grip on their “sense of gender” that most fundamentalists seem to claim for themselves. When I feel comfortable discussing transition with these people they “get it”, not because they’re happy I’m “joining the club” or some such nonsense, but because as modern adult women they’re more aware of the action of gender as a social system… they are, after all, the living legacy of the feminist revolution.

Too much of this conversation is dominated by absolutes, by imperatives and irreconcilable declarations, in the face of complex realities. No one has the authority to say “it is thus” in any context but their own experience.

~ by gorgonqueen on January 31, 2008.