The Stonewall/Bindel affair, and the politics of transsexuality
Submitted by Django on Nov 28 2008 13:31
tags:
What would a revolutionary gender politics be? I don't have a clear answer, but certainly the area is one where there aren't many clear arguments of much use. The recent debacle involving Stonewall and Julie Bindel does allow us though to think about where to start.
Julie Bindel’s nomination for the Journalist of the Year prize (which she didn’t win) at the Stonewall awards this month ignited a storm of controversy, with many within the broad 'LGBTQ community’ outraged at the organisation’s recognition of a commentator with a long record of writing which they see as ridden with ‘transphobia’. This led to a colourful demonstration outside the event, and a not so colourful counter demonstration by the 'Julie Bindel fan club'.
Bindel, the Guardian’s stable ‘radical feminist’ has come up here before. Her stance on prostitutes organising was used as an example of moralistic thinking precluding effective action in this blog entry. Clearly, as a self-described ‘good liberal’ she is pretty far from any kind of anarchist/libertarian communist position, and so we shouldn’t expect much from what she writes – interesting as it is in showing how much ‘radical’ feminism in actual practice translates into simple radical liberalism, unable to go beyond various forms of civil rights activism. Her writing on transgender issues is pretty sloppy too, and the opposition to her 'transphobia' centers around two main and contradictory arguments she has made over the past few years:
1. Gender reassignment treats gender as an internal biological condition when it is not, and therefore surgically altering the genitals of transsexuals is the mutilation of gays or lesbians who identify with aspects of the ‘wrong’ gender and who are attracted to those of the same birth gender.
2. Transsexual women are not ‘real’ women, should not be treated as such, and should not receive support as such.
The first argument comes up in a number of articles, such as this, in which Bindel writes: ‘Feminists want to rid the world of gender rules and regulations, so how is it possible to support a theory which has at its centre the notion that there is something essential and biological about the way boys and girls behave?’ Claiming that ‘sex change surgery is unnecessary mutilation’, she argues that ‘my concerns about the increasing acceptance of "transsexuality” as a diagnosis are based upon my feminist belief that it arises from the strong stereotyping of girls and boys into strict gender roles.’
Though of course containing its own moral assumptions in seeing choosing to alter the genitals as “mutilation”, this argument is reasonably straightforward.
The second argument was used in some of Bindel’s earlier and most controversial articles on transsexuality, in particular an article from 2004 on the case of Kimberly Nixon, a male-to-female transsexual who had a human rights ruling in her favour in Canada overturned – the woman in question had been turned down employment from a rape counselling centre on the grounds that she wasn’t a ‘real’ woman: ‘The arrogance is staggering: having not experienced life as a "woman" until middle age, Nixon assumed "she" would be suitable to counsel women who have chosen to access a service that offers support from women who have suffered similar experiences, not from a man in a dress! The Rape Relief sisters, who do not believe a surgically constructed vagina and hormonally grown breasts make you a woman, successfully challenged the ruling and, for now at least, the law says that to suffer discrimination as a woman you have to be, er, a woman.’ She then, contradictorily, argues that genders ‘...are not real. We play at them. We develop traditional masculine or feminine traits by being indoctrinated, not because we are biologically programmed to behave in those ways.’
In which case it would be impossible to make claims about who is a ‘real’ woman or not. If it is the experience of ‘being’ a woman, then for Bindel’s argument to work you would have had to have been a ‘woman’ from birth, living some shared experience that possession of a ‘natural’ vagina entitles you to irrespective of real divisions (as if a cleaner and Deborah Mearden share any meaningful commonality despite both having vulvas, much the same as if a Muslim postal worker and a Muslim entrepreneur have any meaningful commonality as part of the ‘Muslim community’); having lived as a ‘male’ (with a real cock), however this played itself out, at whatever point in your life would disqualify you. Moreover this experience of being a ‘real’ woman is only accessible to those born as such, meaning it isn’t acted because in order to work it comes down to 'natural' genital endowment. This contradicts her arguments about not accepting arbitrary, institutionalised binary sexual identities, and clearly just dresses up her own gender essentialism.
She is right about one thing though: feminism’s most vital insight and argument was to decentralise the production of gender from a given biological ‘fact’ to a contingent social relationship. Gender is acted out through norms of behaviour, speech and comportment. Interpretations of this run from the fairly general acceptance that gender and sex are two different things - biological sex being the material facts of the body, gender being the roles and behaviours assigned to binary categories of people - to more radical analyses which criticise the ways in which biological sex is already a gendered category, seeking to understand the way in which sexual organs, hormonal differences, height and the rest to have meaning within a binary gender discourse in the first place.
But either way, gender must be understood as something which is learned and acted, and that a society that we’d want to live in would involve the dismantling of binary gender identities.
It is this argument which seems to be causing so much anger in the transgender community. Ultimately it comes to clash with the underpinnings of much trangender activism. Gender reassignment surgery does reify gender, it seeks to objectify and materialise a social relation. The argument that sex change surgery makes you a man or a woman is clearly reactionary – the belief that surgery makes you more of a woman is reactionary whether it is a transsexual or Katie Price doing it. And here is the controversy. Lefties of many varieties who will criticise cosmetic body modification as the attempt to make bodies fit into binary, ideal gender types when ‘natural’ women have it done will see the same argument applied to the modification of the body by transgender people as ‘transphobia’. It is not a coincidence that gender-reassignment surgery is supported by fatwa and easily available in Iran, whilst having sex with someone with the same genital arrangement is punishable by death, as the setup there reifies heterosexist, binary gender norms.
What matters, then, is the practical implications of the best insights of feminist theory. Clearly, the violence and intimidation transgender people routinely face is unconscionable. But the question again boils down to the contradictions between the politics of affirmation and the politics of negation. This may at first seem strange. As Slavoj Žižek amongst others has argued, the difference between the politics of oppressed and marginalised groups seeking to defend themselves and the politics of class struggle is that class struggle seeks as its end point the abolition of class. “Class pride” is a reactionary concept, and though class relations can and do express themselves through communities and class identities, if class struggle is to be part of a revolutionary project rather than the affirmation of the working class within capitalism then it must abolish capitalism and with it abolish class. Class is furthermore a material position within capitalism – those who have nothing to sell but their labour and who must work for the money necessary to live, those dispossessed of ownership of capital and who must sell their labour time and labour power to those who have or administer it. It is not a sociological category, but a condition and a social relation. The struggles of women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians insofar as they are organised around the marginalised group must struggle for recognition of various kinds. But this, as so often, is an oversimplification. The various marginalised roles are themselves constituted within the process of their marginalisation – and though the material proletarian condition which is the prerequisite for capital accumulation is demonstrable in a different way to the constitution of various marginalised identities, we can still see the issue in terms of affirmation or negation: in the case of gender, either liberal feminism’s affirmation of women as bourgeois subjects with equal legal standing, or the radical project of the negation of gender binaries and with it gender identity.
So what would this look like in practice? I don’t pretend to have the answers. In the case of negating the proletarian condition, the answer is relatively straightforward: the direct communisation of the means of production, the abolition of wage labour and the replacement of the state by the construction of real human community through linked councils. Gender cannot be negated in the same way, though the same processes of seizure and transformation growing out of class antagonism. Its fairly easy to imagine that a society where the production of the entire social environment is no longer alienated would allow for a new kind of society and more radical possibilities, but its not enough to talk abstractly of revolution as being the cure-all we must invest our faith in.
But we do know where it can’t start – certainly not from the reification of binary gender identities. The task must be to destabalise and desacralise gender, and this cannot be done whilst upholding a belief in the ability to “match” bodily organs to gendered behaviour. The critique of gender cannot be held back because it offends the sensibilities of marginalised groups, and whilst we recognise the difficulties transgender people face, we can’t let those difficulties be an excuse to suspend critical thought.
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Nov 28 2008 14:23
#2
Django wrote:
And here is the controversy. Lefties of many varieties who will criticise cosmetic body modification as the attempt to make bodies fit into binary, ideal gender types when ‘natural’ women have it done will see the same argument applied to the modification of the body by transgender people as ‘transphobia’.
good blog. for all the insults i've had thrown at me for asking, i've never heard an argument that reconciles this contradiction.
As to where we start, to use a largely trivial example there was a recent outcry over sussex university renaming some female and male toilets 'toilets' and 'toilets with urinals' - i don't think there were actually any transexual students demanding this, so it was a bit right-on random - but it does seem to treat gender as irrelevant (an alternative would have been demanding 'transexual toilets' say). i mean i was at a festival this summer and they'd divided the toilets into male and female, as the queues grew people just started queuing for cubicles or urinals. a minor negation of gender? i mean i can't see any argument for male/female toilets rather than urnials/cubicles... as to more substantive matters, i'm equally unsure where to start, but i agree about where it can't. that in itself is a start, of sorts.
edit: i would add that i don't think there's such thing as a "revolutionary gender politics" per se, only a gender politics with a class analysis. this is because i don't think (binary or otherwise) gender roles are essential to capitalism, whilst clearly it makes extensive use of them (and has done historically; particularly with regard to 'a womans place' and reproductive labour). a capitalism freely embracing plural, self-defined roles completely decoupled from biology is perfectly conceivable, so long as those roles are arrayed within the labour-capital spectrum. this isn't to say it would be a bad thing, only it's not revolutionary without being part of a class politics.
Nov 28 2008 19:03
#3
Yeah i agree, clearly the 'queering' of heterosexism can be accomodated by capitalism reasonably well - going for a night out in the Village in manchester or even looking at some mainstream advertising which uses homoeroticism tells us that. Clearly that doesn't mean that capitalism doesn't also make use of heterosexism, but as a form of class society what is important is that it will make use of whatever contingent oppurtunities are made available for it.
So we can't necessarily see an abolition of heterosexism as 'revolutionary', as the class basis of the society is the same. But nonetheless pro-revolutionaries should have an analysis of these issues, and one that is coherent, as the lack of this has caused obvious problems not least in discussions on here. And we shouldn't see them as being secondary or diversions either, even if in my view these issues are always figured through the relations intrinsic to the total social from - capitalism. You've mentioned some good examples. Also on a more organisational level, the potential for a feminism which makes material demands of patriarchy while remaining organised on class-conscious lines has been demonstrated pretty well by the Mujeres Libres and their precursors. The historical anarchist movement has been pretty strong on that front actually.
Nov 28 2008 19:05
#4
Good post.
Just a couple of points, Joseph the articles I saw about Sussex University stated that the toilets were demanded by women to prevent male to female transsexuals using them alongside "real women."
Also, the initial blog post seems to state that all transgender people are either gays or lesbians whereas there are straight transsexuals.
Nov 28 2008 19:09
#5
Also, the catch all tag for issues around gender and sexuality "sex and sexuality", not gender:
http://www.libcom.org/tags/sex-sexuality
Nov 28 2008 20:32
#6
Django wrote:
But nonetheless pro-revolutionaries should have an analysis of these issues, and one that is coherent, as the lack of this has caused obvious problems not least in discussions on here. And we shouldn't see them as being secondary or diversions either
no sure, it's not about setting up a 'hierarchy of oppressions' or whatever, or saying that sexism's not important because struggles against it aren't inherently revolutionary. part of my argument in the politics of affirmation/negation blog was that the reformist/revolutionary dichotomy is useless - the important thing is concrete material demands for the class. women in northern ireland getting abortion rights would be such a gain (especially since wealthier women can just travel to the UK), without in any way being a threat to capital. the mujueres libres are a good example of how class struggle needs to explicitly address the particular demands of sections of the class as well as the general, or it will fail to be truly liberatory.
fwiw i'm reluctant to use the word patriarchy in a general sense in relation to liberal democratic societies with notional equality. sexism is a reality, and is used by capital (and to an extent opposed by sections of capital too), but i think the UK is a sexist society rather than a patriarchal one (like Iran say), as i don't think there's a systematic rule of men over women. open to persuasion on this though.
Steven. wrote:
Joseph the articles I saw about Sussex University stated that the toilets were demanded by women to prevent male to female transsexuals using them alongside "real women."
i know jack was really irritated by it. but he's a contrarian on stuff like this. if that's the case, it may be a case of the right thing for the wrong reasons. i mean as a trivial example of the normalisation of binary gender roles, is there any argument for male/female toilets not urinal/cubicle ones?
Nov 29 2008 00:57
#7
Ally McBeal?
Nov 29 2008 01:07
#8
lol, more radical than most lefty feminists unfortunately. i mean without wanting to drag out what was meant as a trivial aside, is there an argument against it?
Nov 29 2008 11:07
#9
Joseph K wrote:
fwiw i'm reluctant to use the word patriarchy in a general sense in relation to liberal democratic societies with notional equality. sexism is a reality, and is used by capital (and to an extent opposed by sections of capital too), but i think the UK is a sexist society rather than a patriarchal one (like Iran say), as i don't think there's a systematic rule of men over women. open to persuasion on this though.
Well the Spain of the 1930s was in the classic sense. Lots of feminists would use patriarchy in a much broader sense though, meaning a society which is simply dominated in terms of political and economic power by men through to one in which universal subjecthood is gendered male in various ways. I'm not quite sure how i feel about it though, if a word can have lots of different meanings and political implications its not that useful.
The argument about seeing stuff like this as of secondary importance comes more from seeing things like the demand for access to abortion being dismissed as 'not a class issue' by some communists (where the demand for access to free healthcare would never be dismissed in the same way). I'm not suggesting that people having class analysis as the foundation of their politics constitutes a hierarchy of oppressions, like I said i do think these kinds of issues are always expressed in and through the relations intrinsic to capitalism so having a coherent class politics has to be central if we're going to pose a response to capitalism as a whole. The problem is that people with good class politics often a) dismiss these kinds of issues or ignore them b) bolt on some form of liberalism to deal with them.
Nov 29 2008 12:20
#10
Quote:
Joseph the articles I saw about Sussex University stated that the toilets were demanded by women to prevent male to female transsexuals using them alongside "real women."
Are you sure on this? Given the people who were into campaigning on it I find this hard to believe (I think it was people around the very pro-trans womens group/officer) - especially as afaik there were 0 trans people at Sussex at the time.
Nov 29 2008 12:59
#11
Quote:
Are you sure on this? Given the people who were into campaigning on it I find this hard to believe (I think it was people around the very pro-trans womens group/officer) - especially as afaik there were 0 trans people at Sussex at the time.
That's what it said in the Metro. Googling I can't find anything, but I remember thinking it seemed very weird for student union people to be say because they're usually ultra-PC. But the article was saying that women didn't want people who were basically men using their toilets.
Joseph, as for there being any arguments against it, well it's not an argument as such but I'm pretty sure the health and safety at work act requires separate gender toilets.
Nov 29 2008 20:43
#12
I'm 90% certain it's bullshit - journalist wrongly filling in the blanks after hearing it was the womens society behind it or something?
Nov 30 2008 11:49
#13
Steven wrote:
Joseph, as for there being any arguments against it, well it's not an argument as such but I'm pretty sure the health and safety at work act requires separate gender toilets.
as you say, not really an argument that 
Nov 30 2008 14:57
#14
I think I've been to one cafe in London which has unisex toilets, and they don't have any urinals at all the gits.
Dec 2 2008 23:20
#15
I am a transsexual woman - admittedly a mutualist rather than a communist - and thought I'd offer my thoughts.
When I hear gender, I think of culturally-specific gender roles.
When I hear sex, I think of biological sex. And, of course, what can be done with it.
"... surgically altering the genitals of transsexuals is the mutilation of gays or lesbians who identify with aspects of the ‘wrong’ gender and who are attracted to those of the same birth gender."
This is so wrong it defies description, but she expresses a widespread delusion. I am a moderately butch, thoroughly lesbian woman, transitioning male-to-female. I am not attracted to men, if you insist they are my birth gender (sic) - though I can be attracted to other women who are transitioning from that sex.
I grew up without being able to describe or express my transness - my feeling that those were/are the wrong parts defied both my mixed/androgynous gender roles and my male body sex, and exists nonetheless. Honestly, there are certain brain structures, such as the BSTc, where trans women are more like cis women than cis men. And one can assume the reverse for trans men, but there haven't been enough studies. It seems that we have female brains in male bodies, or the reverse. This may sound close to biological essentialism, but it has nothing to do with gender roles or sexual orientation.
Thanks.
Dec 4 2008 20:17
#16
I think the primary problem with this argument made by libertarian communists is that it assumes a totally constructionist view of gender as the basis of its argument. This is an argument that has been developed by sociologists from the 1970s feminist movement, usually in opposition to sociobiologists who argue that social roles are based on biological facts. Of course, I don't agree with what socio-biologists argue, but it's important to contextualise this argument.
The problem it seems to me is that lib/coms have not sought to engage with scientific evidence in any way on this point, I have never seen a scientific study on gender referenced in the course of these discussions. Instead, evidence is derived from weighty readings in psychoanalysis, critical theory and sociology, not the most materialistic basis for an argument really.
So, I'm not convinced either way, but I am significantly more interested in the scientific research that has been done than all the arguments of Butler, Zizek and Lacan put together. I'll have a quick look and see what I can come up with.
Dec 4 2008 20:55
#17
Here is an article found through a quick search on Google Scholar. I don't have time right now, but I can definitely find more another time. This article had 234 citations. The article was originally published in 'Nature' which is one of the most reputable scientific journals published.
A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality
By J.-N. Zhou, M.A. Hofman, L.J. Gooren and D.F. Swaab
http://www.symposion.com/ijt/ijtc0106.htm
Transsexuals have the strong feeling, often from childhood onwards, of having been born the wrong sex. The possible psychogenic or biological etiology of transsexuality has been the subject of debate for many years [1,2]. Here we show that the volume of the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc), a brain area that is essential for sexual behaviour [3,4], is larger in men than in women. A female- sized BSTc was found in male-to-female transsexuals. The size of the BSTc was not influenced by sex hormones in adulthood and was independent of sexual orientation. Our study is the first to show a female brain structure in genetically male transsexuals and supports the hypothesis that gender identity develops as a result of an interaction between the developing brain and sex hormones
Dec 4 2008 22:12
#18
when i mentioned the hypothetical possibility of sexed brains on a recent thread on this i was shouted down loudly from all sides pretty much. i do think lefties are scared of biology. of course sexed brains wouldn't require social inequality any more than sexed genitalia do.
however, i'm not sure how much sexed brains would map to gender roles, which even if not 100% socially constructed (clearly they're not, women haven't been cast as caring mothers by accident, they can breastfeed for starters) are clearly a social shaping of acceptable behaviour into a neat binary that doesn't seem to fit the desires of concrete individuals.
(of course in that study, differences in brain structure in adults could themselves be the product of social construction due to neural plasticity, since the brain develops according to stimuli etc. i'm no expert on neurology though of course.)
Dec 5 2008 00:11
#19
Quote:
I'm not sure how much sexed brains would map to gender roles.
They don't seem to... Trans people face a lot of pressure to conform to gender roles during and after transition. Cis people can usually risk people questioning their gender. Trans people can't always risk that. Nonetheless, many trans people defy gender roles. There are plenty of butch trans women and femme trans men.
Dec 5 2008 00:38
#20
that's interesting, since even if brains are indeed sexed it doesn't provide an essentialist basis for binary gender roles; i mean just a look at the variation in behaviours, characterstics, aptitudes, interests etc within non-trans biological males and females would seem to suggest that.
Dec 5 2008 12:24
#21
I'm skeptical of some of the most high profile studies about sexed brains, because if you cut through the hyperbole you can get left with very underwhelming data. Take this example which got a lot of media coverage recently, showing a 'link' between the shapes of the brains of heterosexual women and homosexual men:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/16/neuroscience.psychology
Which was critiqued here:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=256
With the conclusions written up in more sane language as:
Quote:
Rightward hemispheric asymmetry was found in the brains of 14 of 25 heterosexual males and 11 of 20 homosexual females, but in only 13 of 25 heterosexual females and 10 of 20 homosexual males.How much media play do you think the study would have gotten, if the results had been spun like that?
Dec 5 2008 12:43
#22
In fact in that case the data points towards the conclusion that having male and female brain categories isn't a useful way of understanding variation, and is more ideological than anything else - hence the value of the 'lofty' theory which analyses where this categorisation comes from.
Quote:
Nonetheless, many trans people defy gender roles. There are plenty of butch trans women and femme trans men.
These, incidentally, are still gender roles.
Dec 5 2008 12:57
#23
transvestites- more power to them.
transexuals - need conseulling not preyed upon by charltans and the medical industry. They certainly shouldn't be took seriously when they make assertions about being born in the wrong body or other essentialist shite.
Dec 5 2008 13:00
#24
yes i wouldn't take any science on what you read in the media. it's invariably misrepresented through ignorance or sensationalism, and obviously represents another layer of ideological mediation (on top of the conclusions, which may not fit the data, and potentially the data itself, dependent on methodological choices.)
but that said, there is a knee-jerk hostility to the very possibility of sexed brains amongst lefites, that isn't there for say sexed genitalia, or the biological facticity of different skin tones (which doesn't mean there's such thing a biological 'races', which clearly are discursive categories). i mean it's not the most implausible hypothesis, bodies are sexed, and the brain is a bodily organ.
i think the fear is if brains are indeed sexed, this might map to aggregate differences in aptitude or behaviour which might provide a rationale for gender roles and/or social inequality. but this would be a reductionist lapse into the naturalistic fallacy; we don't treat women as lesser because they (generally) ovulate every month, so why do it if one or other brain region is on average a few millimetres different in size?
there are so many levels of mediation between genotype and phenotype, and from this to behaviour to politico-social status. so i'm not quite sure why the fear of biology, since only reductionist reactionaries would claim that is implies ought here (even the 'rape is natural' sociobiologists were keen to point out they weren't endorsing rape, although this was somewhat lost through the media coverage where the naturalistic fallacy is a journalistic staple.)
Dec 5 2008 13:19
#25
I don't see how *any* gender-role-driven theory can explain the brain differences, or the much weaker genetic correlations.
Here is a follow-up study to Zhou et al.: http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/85/5/2034 Kruijver et al., 2000, "Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus." It does include some of the same researchers as the earlier study. It does not concern the brain as a whole, but one, highly sexually dimorphic, structure in the midbrain.
Besides, there are plenty of people who are androgynous before and/or after transition. And there are plenty of people who adopt the opposite gender role without being transsexual e.g. Virginia Prince. The desire to switch gender roles is neither necessary nor sufficient for transsexualism.
Dec 5 2008 13:31
#26
I think that you used the analogy of skin tones is important. I mean the fact that there is variation in skin tones but that this doesn't add up to the concept of 'race' which is clearly a discursive one leads us to not taking race seriously as a biological category. In the case of there being sexual categories in brain shape, (which there may be hypothetically though the evidence I've seen doesnt look very strong) this doesn't necessarily allow us recourse to talking about 'male' and 'female' brains as they've been described in studies in order to essentialise differences in sexual orientation, driving aptitude, the clothes we want to wear etc - this is clearly a discursive category which has its own problems.
Theres clearly a difference between penises and vaginas and variation in brain shapes though, you don't have to be a lefty to see that.
Dec 5 2008 13:33
#27
Is there any possible evidence that would convince you that it's not about gender roles?
Dec 5 2008 13:42
#28
Quote:
transexuals - need conseulling not preyed upon by charltans and the medical industry. They certainly shouldn't be took seriously when they make assertions about being born in the wrong body or other essentialist shite.
Queenemily addresses this bullshit here:
As long as I thought transition was, as you put it, "essentialist shite," I denied my deepest needs and lived in misery. Your theory fucked up my life.
Dec 5 2008 13:44
#29
That whats not about gender roles? I've just said that differentiation of brain size by sex doesn't allow us to ascribe gender roles, though there is a point there about how far we are able to talk about 'male' and 'female' as unproblematic categories I suppose. I was replying to Joseph K's post, yours crossed with mine.
Dec 5 2008 13:49
#30
even if one were to assume 'sexed' brains as a sort of vague pattern, it still wouldn't anyway justify transexualism than anything more than the reification of gender. Afterall if a person is born a woman but wants to have a sex change because they somehow "feel or know" they have a male brain isn't that a kind of circular argument, "Men have this type of brain, if I have this type of brain I should be a man", essentially erasing the possibility of women with male brains or at best implying they are some sort of mistake or error?
Ofcourse the whole notion of sexed brains is an ideological crock of shit, fuelled on a dogmatic need to assert the biological origin of differences and inequalities between men and women. The fact that it is such a popular and readily embraced assumption despite a massive lack of evidence simply belies just how deep rooted and implicitly accepted sexism is within society in a way that explicit racism simply isn't allowed to be anymore. Infact some of the studies used as evidence actually show the opposite if approached in even the most basic critical manner, for example the study about gay men and women having the same brain shape (with it's heterosexist assumption that gay men are essentially women and lesbians essentially men).
Dec 5 2008 13:51
#31
Django wrote:
I think that you used the analogy of skin tones is important.
it wasn't an accident
Django wrote:
Theres clearly a difference between penises and vaginas and variation in brain shapes though, you don't have to be a lefty to see that.
why? because brain shape may have behavioural implications? imho sexual dimorphism only maps to essentialist gender categories if you're one of those reductionists who ignores all the levels of mediation between genotype and politics.
Marja Erwin wrote:
Besides, there are plenty of people who are androgynous before and/or after transition. And there are plenty of people who adopt the opposite gender role without being transsexual e.g. Virginia Prince. The desire to switch gender roles is neither necessary nor sufficient for transsexualism.
I think Django is arguing against the concept of gender roles per se, i.e. that they're needlessly restrictive categories for proscribing acceptable human behaviour, whether through biological rationalisation or purely social.
Dec 5 2008 13:53
#32
Marja Erwin wrote:
Quote:
transexuals - need conseulling not preyed upon by charltans and the medical industry. They certainly shouldn't be took seriously when they make assertions about being born in the wrong body or other essentialist shite.Queenemily addresses this bullshit here:
As long as I thought transition was, as you put it, "essentialist shite," I denied my deepest needs and lived in misery. Your theory fucked up my life.
there's a difference between your individual means of coping with your situation and a consistent political stance on matters.
For example for many woman with chronic body issues a breast enlargement does serve as a means of giving them greater confidence and giving them some sort of resolution, that does not for a second mean that I support a politics of breast enlargement and don't hold a critique of a society and oppurtunist industry that creates such physcological crisis by upholding certain narrow ideas of beauty and womanhood.
Dec 5 2008 14:01
#33
Joseph K there is more grounds for believing in raced/ethnic brains than there is in sexed ones yet if one was suggest that our dismissal of such theories were simply knee jerk leftism most people would call bullshit.
Why is it different for sexed brains? The only reason I can see has nothing to do with evidence and everything to do with how deeprooted genderism and sexism are in society and central they are to how we categorise the world. I mean isn't it bonkers when we get to the stage of sexing brains despite all evidence showing that men and women can have "female" and "male" brains respectively and that the difference is on a gradual spectrum as opposed than the more obvious binary of cock or twat? Add to this the fact that actual socialisation offers a better account for such differences isn't it about time we just disregarded sex brain theory for the crock of reactionary shite that it is instead of tolerating under some 'hypothetical' plausibility thought experiment, y'know much like we treat racial theories?
Dec 5 2008 14:07
#34
Joseph K. wrote:
I think Django is arguing against the concept of gender roles per se, i.e. that they're needlessly restrictive categories for proscribing acceptable human behaviour, whether through biological rationalisation or purely social.
Well, yes, at least as far as they are rigid and they are associated with each sex.
I'd agree as far as that goes. But dragging transsexualism into this? Transsexualism does not reify gender roles. We transition for other reasons. Unfortunately, we risk more if we break gender norms, so we may have to take on certain gender signifiers before, during, and after transition. If we don't match the corresponding gender, people may question whether we are in our assigned sex (before transition) or our (brain sex) adopted sex (after transition). If people question that, we may face physical attack, blacklisting, or any variety of other threats.
Dec 5 2008 14:16
#35
You said earlier you felt you were in the wrong body or words to that effect? Do you think this experience arises naturally and spontaneously in people or is it not the symptom of overbearing gender roles mapped to types of biological bodies? How can someone simply feel they are somehow in the wrong body, not merely that they don't like their body but that they are in the wrong one? To me it rests on a notion that the persons true self (gender or if you even want I will indulge 'brain sex' for the moment) is at odds with their biological sex and this very concept of them being at odds or inherently linked is the product of thousands of years of sexism and essentialism.
Dec 5 2008 14:22
#36
revol68 wrote:
Joseph K there is more grounds for believing in raced/ethnic brains than there is in sexed ones yet if one was suggest that our dismissal of such theories were simply knee jerk leftism most people would call bullshit... isn't it about time we just disregarded sex brain theory for the crock of reactionary shite that it is instead of tolerating under some 'hypothetical' plausibility thought experiment, y'know much like we treat racial theories?
sorry mate that's just empty rhetoric. there is such thing as biological sex, and not biological race for starters, so while anything involving the latter is a priori impossible, the former is at least a plausible hypothesis. note i'm not disputing the likely ideological motivations for a lot of this kind of research.
revol68 wrote:
Why is it different for sexed brains? The only reason I can see has nothing to do with evidence and everything to do with how deeprooted genderism and sexism are in society and central they are to how we categorise the world. I mean isn't it bonkers when we get to the stage of sexing brains despite all evidence showing that men and women can have "female" and "male" brains respectively and that the difference is on a gradual spectrum as opposed than the more obvious binary of cock or twat?
have you actually looked at the evidence? i haven't, let alone a systematic review. i'm simply not precluding the possibility of sexually dimorphic brains a priori. now these would only map to binary gender roles if you're a riducluous reductionist, which you're not. the fact behavoural variation within biological sexes is so large despite prevailing gender norms would seem to demonstrate this, whatever sexually dimorphic brain structures are subsequently discovered.
revol68 wrote:
there's a difference between your individual means of coping with your situation and a consistent political stance on matters.
this is a crucial point. criticism of a politics of transsexuality is no more a criticism of trans people than criticism of a society which makes women feel inadequate if they have small tits is a criticism of women who choose to get boob jobs.
Dec 5 2008 14:49
#37
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sorry mate that's just empty rhetoric. there is such thing as biological sex, and not biological race for starters, so while anything involving the latter is a priori impossible, the former is at least a plausible hypothesis. note i'm not disputing the likely ideological motivations for a lot of this kind of research.
I was using race in it's modern liberal usage as synomous with ethnicity eg geographical ancestory and all that. I mean considering the wide variety of environments that humans across the globe evolved in it isn't hard to construct some vaguely plausible sounding just so stories as to why certain ethnicities perform better at certain tasks. Also yes biological sex in cocks and twats and XX and XY exists just as skin tone, different facial features and differing ranges in height exist amongst europeans, asians, blacks and native americans, these are facts. My argument is that the extension of sex from these facts to 'sexed brains' is to step beyond them and enter the realm of old school racism which happily extended 'racial' difference from obvious biological facts to the much murkier world of the brain and ultimately psyhcology and temperament etc.
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have you actually looked at the evidence? i haven't, let alone a systematic review. i'm simply not precluding the possibility of sexually dimorphic brains a priori.
I can't say I research the area but like most people I do tend to come across the research in it's amplfied form through the media which is unsuprisingly always happy to offer insight into the differences between men and women. The fact that the what seems to be it's most conclusive and championed research is on even the most simple of observations shown to be both empirically not that impressive and furthermore resting on some pretty awful assumptions would suggest to me it's safe to say it's shit. Afterall none of us would have much of a grasp of racial theory literature and it's studies but it wouldn't stop us being dismissive of it. Of course very few would be stupid/brave enough to carry out research that seeks to ground different groups behaviours in 'racialised brains' and there work certainly isn't/wouldn't be met with such uncritical reception as that into 'sexed brains'. The reasons don't lie in empirical data and science they lie in the fact that political struggles have went some way in making it unacceptable/unthinkable for scientists to approach race/ethnicity in such a way, something that isn't as true with sex and gender. Political struggles have made it so that racial brain theories are to all intents and purposes dismissed a priori, the backlash against feminism and the general deeper grounding of gender and sexism has meant that theories of sexed brains aren't dismissed and infact seem to be enjoying alot of popularity.
Dec 5 2008 14:49
#38
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Well, yes, at least as far as they are rigid and they are associated with each sex.I'd agree as far as that goes. But dragging transsexualism into this? Transsexualism does not reify gender roles. We transition for other reasons. Unfortunately, we risk more if we break gender norms, so we may have to take on certain gender signifiers before, during, and after transition. If we don't match the corresponding gender, people may question whether we are in our assigned sex (before transition) or our (brain sex) adopted sex (after transition). If people question that, we may face physical attack, blacklisting, or any variety of other threats.
The idea that 'transition' from birth sex to another does not reify gender roles is a bit weird, but maybe its a problem of differing definitions. I mean, the argument on the blog you posted above doesn't really get at the problem at all - saying that people who don't surgically 'transition' are reifying gender as much as those who do through having genitals is evasion, and it makes no distinction between gender as basically performance and gender as the nature of your genitals, as if the latter isn't the reifying act which is being discussed. Its pretty disingenuous.
So this:
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Cis people reify gender categories even more strongly. Because, beginning in a category, and not only staying in it but actively defending its boundaries against trans people is fucking reifying it.
is an absolutely ludicrous strawman argument.
In order to think that it is possible to match "brain sex" and genitals through surgery you'd have to have a essentialist idea of what gender is. Thats the point. Now there are plenty of trannies who don't see the need to undergo surgery, and who don't see the structure of their genitals as being what gender is about. They certainly aren't reifying gender in the same way as transexuals who require genital surgery in order to 'match' their brains and bodies are.
Thats the point of the blog, that there is a fundamental tension between having a view of gender which sees it as being the matrix of activity, speech, comportment etc which we act out,which has a normative role in sexist societies and which logically has no bearing on the genital structure of the doer and one which sees the need to root that matrix to whichever binary genital category, which transexuals seeking surgery clearly do.
The fact that trans people do get threats etc is beside the point, which is said repeatedly in the blog.
Gender is a more complicated thing than the category you are born into and are expected to act out.
Dec 5 2008 14:53
#39
Well, it can arise non-naturally, when the mother takes sex hormones or endocrine disruptors during pregnancy. For example, it is more likely among male-assigned children of mothers who took DES. It can also, apparently, arise naturally. For example, there are various groups in south and southeast Asia, formerly described as Eunuchs, including the Hijra in India, and others. Some of these are quite low-status groups. Nonetheless, on the order of 1 in 500 assigned males chooses to join these groups. That's comparable to Lynn Conway's figures for the number of MtF and FtM trans people in the west: http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TSprevalence.html
I don't think it is "the symptom of overbearing gender roles mapped to types of biological bodies." Growing up, I was reasonably comfortable with masculinity, and rather dismissive of femininity. I wanted to be a tomboy.
"How can someone simply feel they are somehow in the wrong body, not merely that they don't like their body but that they are in the wrong one?" There can be a generalized disconnect from one's body, particularly from the organs of the wrong sex. In particular, my body-map didn't correspond with my body. I had this persistent sense that there should be the normal female features, and yet keep encountering certain normal male features instead. There are other, similar concerns that are harder to explain. I feel more comfortable, and more alive, while taking estrogen and anti-androgens than I did before taking them. Of course, that can be attributed to the placebo effect.
Dec 5 2008 14:58
#40
How on earth did end up feeling you had the wrong downstairs mix up? Do you think there can be some a priori conflict between your subjectivty and biology? That you have some sort of female soul but it got put in the wrong body?
How does this differ from a young girl who under the pressure of idealised beauty types looks down at here small breasts yet feels that there should be big bossomy ones there? Likewise what about a black kid in a predominantly white culture who looks at his face in the mirror expecting to see a milky complexion and then starts skin bleaching?
Dec 5 2008 15:23
#41
Django wrote:
The idea that 'transition' from birth sex to another does not reify gender roles is a bit weird, but maybe its a problem of differing definitions.
Because it isn't about gender roles - it is about subconscious sex. I believe that if we eliminated gender roles, or made them equally accessible to either biological sex, about 1 in 500 people would still feel a need to transition from one body sex to the other body sex. (Obviously, that doesn't change genetic sex or, I would assert, brain sex).
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In order to think that it is possible to match "brain sex" and genitals through surgery you'd have to have a essentialist idea of what gender is.
You might say so. But the essentialist idea might not involve gender roles - that's the point - it might not even correlate with gender roles. That's why so many trans people equate gender identity with brain sex and distinguish gender identity/brain sex from gender roles.
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Thats the point. Now there are plenty of trannies who don't see the need to undergo surgery, and who don't see the structure of their genitals as being what gender is about.
Transgenderism is an incredibly broad category. It includes cross-dressers and drag queens who focus on gender roles. Few of them have any interest in transition.
Many transsexual people question whether transsexualism belongs within the transgender category. A few insist that these are exclusive sets: nobody who is transsexual can be transgender, and nobody who is transgender can be transsexual. I think that goes too far, but transsexualism at most overlaps with transgenderism. They are not different degrees of the same thing.
Many genderqueer people identify as transsexual. I assume that genderqueer identities reflect intermediate/mosaic brain sex (or intermediate/mosaic BSTc structure). There's no reason, if you have brain sex, that you can't have an intermediate brain sex.
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Thats the point of the blog, that there is a fundamental tension between having a view of gender which sees it as being the matrix of activity, speech, comportment etc which we act out,which has a normative role in sexist societies and which logically has no bearing on the genital structure of the doer and one which sees the need to root that matrix to whichever binary genital category, which transexuals seeking surgery clearly do.
Again, I think there are two different things at work here. There is gender identity, or subconscious sex, which may be rooted in brain sex (as in the Dutch studies). And there are gender roles, most of which seem to be independent of any biological basis (especially since they vary from culture to culture).
I believe that body sex should correspond with gender identity.
I do not believe that gender roles should correspond with either body sex or gender identity.
Dec 5 2008 15:29
#42
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I believe that body sex should correspond with gender identity.I do not believe that gender roles should correspond with either body sex or gender identity.
You really are twisting my melon, man!
What is the difference between gender roles and gender identity.
Why should body sex correspond to gender identity and what is there in gender identity that means it does have a matching correspondence with body sex?
Seems to me you're notions of gender and essentialism are even more confused than your sexual identity.
Dec 5 2008 15:56
#43
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You might say so. But the essentialist idea might not involve gender roles - that's the point - it might not even correlate with gender roles. That's why so many trans people equate gender identity with brain sex and distinguish gender identity/brain sex from gender roles.
I don’t think this split between ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender roles’ makes much sense, especially as the function in your argument is to see one as essential and ahistorical and the other as socially and historically contingent. There isn’t a difference. Gender identity is as contingent as gender roles are (and that applies to ‘naturally’ born men and women too), which makes the idea that ahistorical biological ‘brain sex’ naturally couples with with gender identitiy dubious to say the least. Leaving aside the dodgy idea that there is ‘subconscious sex’ its still just naturalistic fallacy.
I mean the argument that ‘oppressive’ gender roles are bad but that we should have a society where people could feel the full flowering of their natural femininity or masculinity means acting like all the developments in feminism since the 1960s didn’t happen (or just totally misrepresenting them, as in the ‘transphobic tropes’ article you linked to.)
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Again, I think there are two different things at work here. There is gender identity, or subconscious sex, which may be rooted in brain sex (as in the Dutch studies). And there are gender roles, most of which seem to be independent of any biological basis (especially since they vary from culture to culture).I believe that body sex should correspond with gender identity.
I do not believe that gender roles should correspond with either body sex or gender identity.
This is very illogical though. If gender is independent of any biological basis, being socially and historically contingent then there is absolutely no reason to believe that there should be a need for the two to correspond. Theres nothing in your argument which leads to the conclusion that there is any necessary link between the two, in fact in other posts you have contradicted that, and so the only reason I can see for it is sticking with received essentialist ideas of what gender is – that it is rooted to whether you have a penis or a vagina.
If you separate sex and gender in such a way, that there is a subconscious ‘sex’ which is independent of the socially contingent construction of gender then you are left with sex without mediation and the impossibility of having a ‘gendered mind’.
Still, I can’t see any difference between this argument and those of women who get boob jobs because it brings their bodies in line with their internalised view of what feminity is and makes them feel more like a ‘real’ woman.
Dec 5 2008 16:20
#44
revol68 wrote:
How on earth did end up feeling you had the wrong downstairs mix up? Do you think there can be some a priori conflict between your subjectivty and biology? That you have some sort of female soul but it got put in the wrong body?
The most common explanation is that we have the instructions for typically-female and typically-male BSTc structure, and other sexually dimorphic midbrain structures. Just as different hormone levels can trigger either male or female instructions in the formation of the genitals, they might trigger either male or female instructions in the formation of these midbrain structures. Prenatal hormone supplements do affect the chance of transsexualism (as well as genital intersex conditions). Hormone replacement therapy, however, does not seem to affect these structures in adults.
I'm sure there are evolutionary advantages to having the body map hard-wired in the brain. Same for our sense of "healthy" vs. "sick" hormone levels.
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How does this differ from a young girl who under the pressure of idealised beauty types looks down at here small breasts yet feels that there should be big bossomy ones there? Likewise what about a black kid in a predominantly white culture who looks at his face in the mirror expecting to see a milky complexion and then starts skin bleaching?
Um, yeah, it is an awkward issue. Where does my identity leave off and these influences begin? Someone growing her breasts in adulthood might not get the same size as someone getting hers in puberty. And there is a lot of controversy about the top job among MtF folks.
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What is the difference between gender roles and gender identity.
Gender roles = what society tells us women and men should do, because they are women and men, not men and women, respectively.
Gender identity = a sense of what sex our bodies are supposed to be and how they are supposed to work. "Supposed to" is clear enough, I think, if there are mismatches due to injury or sickness; I think the same term can apply to mismatches due to the genitals developing one way and the brain developing the other.
P.S. Should a man who loses his penis not seek reconstructive surgery? If not, should someone who identifies as male but is female-bodied not consider the same option, after hormones? If not, should someone who considers herself female but is male-bodied not consider the reverse, which is technically simpler? The whole point of medicine is to make our lives better. Transition works. Avoiding it doesn't.
Dec 5 2008 16:28
#45
The medical community, of course, initially dismissed transsexualism, like homosexuality, as a mental illness and tried to prevent transition:
http://www.bilerico.com/2008/12/the_gender_gulag_voices_of_the_asylum.php
Dec 5 2008 19:06
#46
But the problem is what these terms you are accepting uncritically amount to.
Take the idea that someone has a ‘female’ brain, lets assume this is true, even though there isn’t much evidence and the authors of the studies you have provided concede that there is limited scope for generalisation, as many of the sexually dimorphic sectors of the brain remain the same in transsexuals and non-transsexuals, and the (limited) studies on BSTs don’t allow you to talk logically about men or women or transsexuals having ‘female brains.’So even if we accept that dubious concept as being useful its not what transsexuals have (and this study finds that changes in brain structure result from the transition process rather than preceeding it)
But still if that hypothetical person felt anxious about having a cock rather than a fanny then theres no reason why if the genitals were surgically altered this would need to follow on to encompass wearing ‘female’ clothes or having ‘female’ haircuts (which all the ‘tomboy’ women I know still do) unless we decide these things are hard-wired into the brain as an essential part of having a physiological sex (which would be ludicrous). So even if we were to say that there should be a unitary relation between sexed brains and genitals theres no reason for transsexuals to enact a female ‘identity’ socially unless we understand that gender comes down to the matrix of behaviour, comportment, speech etc which is by nature historically and culturally contingent, that this is what makes you a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ in any meaningful way. In that case its not whether you have an inny or outy that makes you male or female at all, that becomes a separate thing entirely with little to no bearing on the issue of what gender is.
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How does this differ from a young girl who under the pressure of idealised beauty types looks down at here small breasts yet feels that there should be big bossomy ones there? Likewise what about a black kid in a predominantly white culture who looks at his face in the mirror expecting to see a milky complexion and then starts skin bleaching?Um, yeah, it is an awkward issue. Where does my identity leave off and these influences begin? Someone growing her breasts in adulthood might not get the same size as someone getting hers in puberty. And there is a lot of controversy about the top job among MtF folks.
But surely this is the crux of the issue, as its impossible to presuppose some kind of unmediated, natural and essential gender identity. There is no break between your supposedly timeless sense that you have the ‘wrong’ body and the way in which gender is socially constructed because there is no break between ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender roles’, otherwise we would have a timeless ‘gender indentity’ which would amount to very little at all (bearing children? Penetrating women?) By the same token we’d see men getting their penises extended as the natural expression of their innate and timeless masculinity.
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What is the difference between gender roles and gender identity.Gender roles = what society tells us women and men should do, because they are women and men, not men and women, respectively.
Gender identity = a sense of what sex our bodies are supposed to be and how they are supposed to work. "Supposed to" is clear enough, I think, if there are mismatches due to injury or sickness; I think the same term can apply to mismatches due to the genitals developing one way and the brain developing the other.
It looks like its requiring a lot of effort on your part to separate the two, as if the acceptance that societies produce norms of behaviour for men and women does not impact on how we feel our bodies should be. That theres clearly divergence with how sexed body parts ‘should’ be at different times and in different cultures (attractive penis and breast sizes and shapes) should set alarm bells ringing.
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P.S. Should a man who loses his penis not seek reconstructive surgery? If not, should someone who identifies as male but is female-bodied not consider the same option, after hormones? If not, should someone who considers herself female but is male-bodied not consider the reverse, which is technically simpler? The whole point of medicine is to make our lives better. Transition works. Avoiding it doesn't.
It depends on the context of the surgery – if he felt it was necessary in order to make him a man it would naturally be reactionary and very silly. However if there was some form of reconstructive surgery to allow the capacity for sexual pleasure (and that could mean the construction of a clitoris or something imbetween) then I don’t think anyone would oppose it.
But again, unless we accept that women getting boob jobs or labia reductions to make themselves more feminine is the same thing are we to disregard that she might feel much better after surgery, more comfortable in her body? In which case we’d just accept that this was the body she was ‘meant’ to be born in and now inhabits. The same with men who get penis extentions. So its not really an argument which allows for the naturalisation of the condition.
Even if we argue that transsexuality is about getting people in the ‘right’ body as it would be 'mapped' in the 'subconscious sex', it couldn’t succeed as a woman born a man cannot carry children as ‘natural’ women can, nor can men born women experience erections or produce semen as ‘natural’ men can not having prostates etc – so the bodies inhabited never become as they ‘should’, and the entire rationale is on shaky ground. So even if we were to accept those terms of understanding what gender is then it doesn’t work anyway and has an accompanying raft of serious problems.
So ultimately, even if we do accept that its possible to have mismatching brains and bodies (which I don’t) the conclusion that surgery makes you male or female still wouldn’t hold.
Dec 5 2008 20:23
#47
The concepts of sex and gender are [primarily] intended to describe cisgender experience. They break down when describing transgender and particularly transsexual experience. A traditionalist concept of gender might say:
If you are born male, you are always male, and should embrace masculine gender roles; if you are born female, you are always female, and should embrace feminine gender roles.
Any of several movements (radical feminist, queer, cd rights, etc and their associated theories) would separate gender roles from sex:
If you are born male, you are always male; if you are born female, you are always female. If you prefer feminine gender roles, you should perform them; if you prefer masculine gender roles, you should perform them.
I eventually realized I am not into either set of gender roles, but I feel I need to be a woman. The above theories can't describe or explain what I'm feeling. I had to transition - and make up my theory as I go. Experience ought to come first, and theory ought to describe and organize experience, not dismiss it.
I think people are reacting against an inverted traditionalist concept:
If you embrace masculine gender roles, you are male-brained, and should be male-bodied; if you embrace feminine gender roles, you are female-brained, and should be female-bodied.
When most trans people hold a more radical concept:
If you are male-brained, you should be male-bodied for your own happiness; if you are female-brained, you should be female-bodied for your own happiness. If you prefer feminine gender roles, you should perform them; if you prefer masculine gender roles, you should perform them.
Unfortunately, cis people often question trans people when our presentations stray from one set of gender norms. And cis people sometimes discriminate against, or kill, trans people when they discover us. Yielding:
If you are male-brained, you should be male-bodied for your own happiness, and should adopt masculine gender presentation for your own safety; if you are female-brained, you should be female-bodied for your own happiness, and should adopt feminine gender presentation for your own safety.
That's survival, not sexism.
Most anti-transsexual arguments regard MtF people, so from here on I'll ignore FtM people. Now when people accuse us of reifying gender, I immediately assume they are referring to the assumed and incorrect if you embrace feminine gender roles you are female-brained, In this case, my first reaction is to note that trans women do not necessarily embrace feminine gender roles, and that there is other evidence for brain sex [specifically BSTc sex] which has nothing to do with gender roles. Since people point to other studies connecting supposed brain sex to western gender roles, things tend to bog down.
However, after further reading, I take it you’re challenging if you are female-brained, you should be female-bodied. If you point to various transgender people who do not seek transition, crossdressers simply are not transsexual. They have nothing to do with this. If you point to various transsexual people who do not seek surgery, genderqueer people and non-op transsexual people do seek transition and have different end-points. This can reflect the costs of surgery or it can reflect intermediate brain sex (BSTc sex). As long as the should is a matter of advice - not obligation - almost all transsexual people benefit from hormone replacement therapy, and few report regrets after surgery.
I hope I don’t have to explain why a male body / female body-map combination, or a female body / male body-map combination could result in gender dysphoria. [and yes, the inability to menstruate or bear children can leave milder gender dysphoria, it can also cause distress in AIS women and others]
Dec 5 2008 20:29
#48
Yes cross dressers don't buy into essentialist bullshit as much as those that spout shit about being born in the wrong body and having a male brain in a female body ete etc.
I don't get why feminists and leftists accept this reactionary crock of shit more readily simply because it comes from marginalised minorities like transexuals rather than more obvious purveyors of gender essentialism. Being a marginalised minority on the recieving end of discrimination and violence doesn't mean the politics coming from such a community aren't utter shite.
And again I should draw a clear line between the criticism of transexualism as politics and attacks on transexuals as individuals, and just as I have no time for breast enlargement (or god forbid any political stance that might form around it) I don't feel the need to scapegoat young woman who get breast enlargements as a result of chronic self esteem issues and no that doesn't apply to vapid fucktards like Daniella Lloyd or Kerry Katona, who should be executed as a warning to young girls everywhere.
Dec 5 2008 21:43
#49
Revol68, are you trying to make an argument, or are you just stringing together offensive bullshit?
Is it essentialist bullshit that I wear glasses so I can see? Is it essentialist bullshit that I am careful to treat my asthma? So why is it essentialist bullshit when I try to treat my hormone imbalance? Would it be essentialist bullshit if it came from some other endocrine problem? Sometimes the same physical condition can be healthy for one person and unhealthy for another. They are healthy or unhealthy relative to the other aspects of the body and the mind. That fact that my untreated hormone levels wouldn't be too unhealthy for men, in general, doesn't make them healthy for me...
Dec 6 2008 01:44
#50
Marja Erwin wrote:
Revol68, are you trying to make an argument, or are you just stringing together offensive bullshit?Is it essentialist bullshit that I wear glasses so I can see? Is it essentialist bullshit that I am careful to treat my asthma? So why is it essentialist bullshit when I try to treat my hormone imbalance? Would it be essentialist bullshit if it came from some other endocrine problem? Sometimes the same physical condition can be healthy for one person and unhealthy for another. They are healthy or unhealthy relative to the other aspects of the body and the mind. That fact that my untreated hormone levels wouldn't be too unhealthy for men, in general, doesn't make them healthy for me...
Fuck now you're using terms like hormone balance and healthy to medicalise this essentialist crap. Please tell me what was wrong with your body before the hormones, was your health threatened?
Would you take such an attitude to a young black kid bleaching his skin or a young girl that feels compelled to have breast enlargements? Is bleaching their skin or undergoing envasive surgery to have a breast enlargement merely then reaching a healthy balance for themselves?
I'd suggest that this issue that is being medicalised is actually the product of racism and sexism and not should be addressed as such rather than some real medical disorder that simply arises in the a person.
Dec 6 2008 10:34
#51
Come on, this argument transsexuals are 'male brained' or 'female brained' doesn't hold up even on the basis of the studies you have cited, because they also state that the majority of areas of the brain which are known to show sexually dimorphous variation (and other examples provided show how silly this idea can be even though there is more 'evidence' than in the case of transsexuals brains) don't show variation in the brains of pre-transition transsexuals. And other neurological change which has occured has also been shown to come from the process of transitioning and hormone therapy. So talking about 'male brains', 'female brains' etc in this instance (and I'd argue more broadly) is clearly an ideological exercise dressed up as naturalised fact, the same with other clearly reactionary ideas like "subconscious sex" which has now been reduced to natural "body mapping" - which would again be a explanation we'd never dare apply to "natural" men or women getting cosmetic surgery.
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Any of several movements (radical feminist, queer, cd rights, etc and their associated theories) would separate gender roles from sex:If you are born male, you are always male; if you are born female, you are always female. If you prefer feminine gender roles, you should perform them; if you prefer masculine gender roles, you should perform them.
This isn't really accurate. The feminist/queer argument which ha been refined since the 40s is that "one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one." The point that feminist/queer arguments make is that gender per se is contingent, external, social and performed and penetrates subject formation, and that there is no timeless and essential "gender identity" that can be presumed to exist prior to this process. So you are not "always" male or female by virtue of what you are born because that would require a ludicrous and essentialist view of what it means to be "male" or "female". Separating "gender roles" and "gender identity" is disingeneous, and you are trying to make the arguments others have made fit into these divisions you are harbouring which allow for essentialist thinking. "Maleness" and "femaleness" encompass a much wider range of activity than some caricature of "traditional" masculinity or femininity - its not like tomboys aren't performing a female gender because they don't look like Audrey Hepburn, again that would require a ludicrously simplified view of what gender is.
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Experience ought to come first, and theory ought to describe and organize experience, not dismiss it.
But leaving aside the fact that this flatly contradicts the argument that we should invest our trust in the medical profession to make things better, there would again be no reason not to apply the same process to women and girls who feel like they should have bigger boobs or lips or smaller labias. Theory would be reduced to the position of justifying the experience of atomised individuals and naturalising whatever interpolated desires they may have, and so wouldn't be any theory worth pursuing at all.
I think your treatment of transexuality as isolated from the desire to inhabit a certain (contingent) sexual identity (as if it were about the desire to have a surgically altered body and absolutely nothing else) is disengeneous. The medical profession you're relying on certainly wouldn't agree, as would many transsexuals. I mean pretending that transsexuals end up inhabiting some form of identity which is only intelligible by reference to their presumed biological sex (like being a tomboy is) because they decide that although its irrelevant it makes life easier isn't very convincing, as clearly there is a well documented identification with the other gender and everything this means rather than just the belief that there should be a fanny when you look down and that this has no bearing on what clothes you wear, how you behave, carry yourself etc.
Personalising anti-essentialist and anti-gender arguments as being "anti-transsexual" ignores what has been said by many posters - that critical thought on gender no more attacks transsexual people than it does women who get boob jobs.
Dec 6 2008 10:57
#52
Django wrote:
reduced to natural "body mapping" - which would again be a explanation we'd never dare apply to "natural" men or women getting cosmetic surgery.
to play devils advocate here, the difference between female and male reproductive organs is qualitative, the difference between small tits and big ones is quantitative, so if there was such thing as a 'body map' wired into the brain, it could refer to the presence or absence of expected organs (like the missing limb still 'felt'), not their particular characteristics. this would differentiate transsexuals from breast or penis enlargers.
Dec 6 2008 12:32
#53
revol68 wrote:
Please tell me what was wrong with your body before the hormones, was your health threatened?
Stress problems, dulled senses, dulled emotions, fatigue due to the stress, breathing difficulties worsened by the stress, persistent discomfort, etc. The breathing problems had, more than once, put me in the hospital, back when I had insurance coverage.
... However, this frustrates me.
Because my experience contradicts your theories, my statements are taken for false consciousness. The fool! S/he believes in gender! I believe in gender dysphoria. I believe in body maps... I believe that I feel what I feel.
If someone feels gender dysphoria, this makes them unreliable. Who, then, can observe gender dysphoria and remain reliable? The nonexistence of gender dysphoria becomes an unfalsifiable claim.
Dec 6 2008 13:03
#54
fwiw while it is the official term i don't think 'gender dysphoria' is a good way to describe the posited biological brain/body conflict you're describing. since gender relates to social roles and has nothing to do with biology i think the term only adds to the confusion, reflecting widely held essentialist views of gender.
Dec 6 2008 13:22
#55
But by the same token, leaving aside issues of the relationship between the individual's consciouness and the environment in which it is produced, if we decide that what someone 'feels' is by definition sacrosanct and unarguable then we are left with a tautology - I believe in it, therefore it is real.
Dec 6 2008 13:22
#56
Django wrote:
Come on, this argument transsexuals are 'male brained' or 'female brained' doesn't hold up even on the basis of the studies you have cited, because they also state that the majority of areas of the brain which are known to show sexually dimorphous variation (and other examples provided show how silly this idea can be even though there is more 'evidence' than in the case of transsexuals brains) don't show variation in the brains of pre-transition transsexuals.
As I had noted several times, the male brain / female brain theory does not assert that the whole brain has to be male or female respectively, but only certain tissues - notably the BSTc and possibly other tissues relating to the body map and such features.
Obviously, we can rule out most male brain / female brain studies, where there's more overlap than difference, even if they are more statistically significant. Otherwise, there would be far more transsexual people, particularly genderqueer and other intermediate/mosaic ones. The cis male BSTc is about 5-6 standard deviations larger than the cis female BSTc.
Actually, there is a certain resemblance between theories of gender identity and theories of sexual orientation. They aren't linked in the ways that researchers expected, of course. There are stereotypes about hyper-feminine trans women and there were stereotypes about hyper-feminine gay men, which miss everybody else. Early researchers assumed that both were either extremely feminine biological men or extremely masculine biological women, described both in terms of a "third sex," "inversion," etc., looked, with statistically significant results but not diagnostic ones, for physical differences in genital size and the like, and so on.
I believe that sexual orientation is now attributed to structural differences in the midbrain - setting the baseline - and cultural pressures - in the west, shifting potentially-bisexual people some distance towards heterosexuality.
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And other neurological change which has occured has also been shown to come from the process of transitioning and hormone therapy. So talking about 'male brains', 'female brains' etc in this instance (and I'd argue more broadly) is clearly an ideological exercise dressed up as naturalised fact, the same with other clearly reactionary ideas like "subconscious sex" which has now been reduced to natural "body mapping" - which would again be a explanation we'd never dare apply to "natural" men or women getting cosmetic surgery.
Actually, no. From Kruijver et al. 2000:
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Our results might theoretically also be explained by a lack of androgens in the transsexual group because all subjects, except for T4, had been orchiectomized. We, therefore, studied two nontranssexual men (S3 and S5) who had been orchiectomized because of prostate cancer 3 months and 2 yr before death, respectively, and found that the BSTc neuron number of S3 was close to the mean of the male group and that the BSTc number of neurons of S5 was even the highest observed (Fig. 1), indicating that orchiectomy did not cause any decrease in SOM neuron numbers. Not only were five of the transsexuals orchiectomized, they all used the antiandrogen cyproterone acetate (CPA). However, an effect of CPA reducing the number of SOM neurons of the BSTc is highly unlikely because S5 had taken CPA during the last 2 yr of his life and his BSTc neuron number was at the upper end of the male range, whereas T6 had not taken CPA for the past 10 yr, and T3 took no CPA during the last 2 yr before her death, and they still had relatively low numbers of SOM neurons.The BSTc SOM neuron numbers of two postmenopausal women [73- (M2) and 53-yr-old (P)] and of a 25-yr-old woman with Turner syndrome (S6: complete 45,X0, with ovarian hypoplasia) were completely within the normal female range (Fig. 1). If high estrogen levels would have a reducing effect on BSTc neuron numbers, the opposite effect (high neuron numbers) would be expected in the postmenopausal women and the Turner syndrome patient due to their low endogenous sex hormone level status. However, this was not the case. Noteworthy is that according to the available clinical data the two postmenopausal women did not receive any estrogen replacement therapy either. Although the Turner syndrome patient had been receiving hormone replacement therapy since she was 16 yr of age, her neuron numbers were even higher than P, whereas she had almost the same BSTc neuron number as M2 who did not receive such a therapy. Again, this argues against the probability of an estrogen-induced reduction effect on the number of SOM neurons. Finally, the BSTc neuron number of a 46-yr-old woman who had suffered for at least 1 yr from a virilizing tumor of the adrenal cortex (that produced very high blood levels of androstendione and testosterone) was also clearly within the lower spectrum of that of other women (Fig. 1; S1: latest androstendione serum level before death was 48.0 ng/mL; the normal range for women is 0.4–3.5 ng/mL; the latest serum testosterone level before death was 26.82 nm/L; the normal range for women is 1.04–3.30 nm/L). Thus, an increasing effect of testosterone on the BSTc neurons does not seem likely to be the case either. Furthermore, it should be noted that the FMT stopped taking testosterone 3 yr before death while having a BSTc neuron number clearly within the male range.
In conclusion, estrogen treatment, orchiectomy, CPA treatment, or hormonal changes in adulthood did not show any clear relationship with the BSTc SOM neuron number. In addition, we had the unique opportunity to study the brain of an 84-yr-old man (S7) who also had very strong cross-gender identity feelings but was never orchiectomized, sex re-assigned, or treated with CPA or estrogens. Interestingly, this man had also a low BSTc SOM neuron number that was fully in the female range (see Fig. 1, S7). This case provides an additional argument against the view that orchiectomy, CPA, or adult estrogen treatment of the transsexuals would be responsible for the reduced somatostatinergic neuron numbers.
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This isn't really accurate. The feminist/queer argument which ha been refined since the 40s is that "one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one." The point that feminist/queer arguments make is that gender per se is contingent, external, social and performed and penetrates subject formation, and that there is no timeless and essential "gender identity" that can be presumed to exist prior to this process. So you are not "always" male or female by virtue of what you are born because that would require a ludicrous and essentialist view of what it means to be "male" or "female".
Yes, but the feminist/queer argument does not challenge the biological categories with the same intensity that it challenges the move from biological sex to gender roles.
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Separating "gender roles" and "gender identity" is disingeneous, and you are trying to make the arguments others have made fit into these divisions you are harbouring which allow for essentialist thinking. "Maleness" and "femaleness" encompass a much wider range of activity than some caricature of "traditional" masculinity or femininity - its not like tomboys aren't performing a female gender because they don't look like Audrey Hepburn, again that would require a ludicrously simplified view of what gender is.
It's an important distinction for transgender people. Consider a TS woman in "boy mode," or a CD man "en femme." In each case, the gender presentation, and gender roles, differ sharply from the gender identity and subconscious sex.
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But leaving aside the fact that this flatly contradicts the argument that we should invest our trust in the medical profession to make things better,
What argument?
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there would again be no reason not to apply the same process to women and girls who feel like they should have bigger boobs or lips or smaller labias. Theory would be reduced to the position of justifying the experience of atomised individuals and naturalising whatever interpolated desires they may have, and so wouldn't be any theory worth pursuing at all.
A theory of regrets? A theory of social pressures? The theory has to explain the experiences. It doesn't have to justify them all. The problem is, arguments that "there is no such thing as gender dysphoria," or "there is no difference between gender roles and gender identity," not only fail to explain transsexual experience, they contradict it.
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I think your treatment of transexuality as isolated from the desire to inhabit a certain (contingent) sexual identity (as if it were about the desire to have a surgically altered body and absolutely nothing else) is disengeneous. The medical profession you're relying on certainly wouldn't agree, as would many transsexuals. I mean pretending that transsexuals end up inhabiting some form of identity which is only intelligible by reference to their presumed biological sex (like being a tomboy is) because they decide that although its irrelevant it makes life easier isn't very convincing, as clearly there is a well documented identification with the other gender and everything this means rather than just the belief that there should be a fanny when you look down and that this has no bearing on what clothes you wear, how you behave, carry yourself etc.
I don't understand what you're saying here.
Dec 6 2008 13:26
#57
Joseph K. wrote:
Django wrote:
reduced to natural "body mapping" - which would again be a explanation we'd never dare apply to "natural" men or women getting cosmetic surgery.to play devils advocate here, the difference between female and male reproductive organs is qualitative, the difference between small tits and big ones is quantitative, so if there was such thing as a 'body map' wired into the brain, it could refer to the presence or absence of expected organs (like the missing limb still 'felt'), not their particular characteristics. this would differentiate transsexuals from breast or penis enlargers.
Yes, there is an immense difference between phantom B-cups when you have As and a phantom vagina when you have nothing... Thnx
Dec 6 2008 22:51
#58
I thought I might chime in to offer another perspective. Marja is lesbian but I'm a much better candidate for your revolutionary scorn, because I'm into guys and I don't "rock the boat" so much with assimilation to bourgeois life and whatever. And I'm transsexual.
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As Slavoj Žižek amongst others has argued, the difference between the politics of oppressed and marginalised groups seeking to defend themselves and the politics of class struggle is that class struggle seeks as its end point the abolition of class.
So yeah, um, I guess that this terminology makes me one of those "bad" reactionary transsexuals? I certainly am not working for the abolition of gender. I mean, I like gender for the most part, now that I've gotten my issues worked out and grown up and stuff. Although part of it might be that I'm generally a reactionary liberal...
I'm interested in allocating resources to marginalized groups (that I'm a member of) where I feel there is a strong claim that they are deserved. And I'll do what I can to pitch in to help other groups when it's not hard to do so - like I won't cross a picket lines or vote against gay marriage and so on, even if I'm not in a union or gay.
But also I'm not going to go tilting at windmills to help people in ways they personally don't want to be helped. I'm not going to assume false consciousness explains why the whole world won't do what I think is best for them... or worry that they are "reifying a problematic concept" as they get along in life.
I honestly prefer conservative transphobia to liberal transphobia because conservatives have specific complaints (like: you will teach my kids by example to be perverts) connected to relatively concrete claims that can be addressed relatively simply by explaining what trans people are really like, and maybe citing scientific brain studies or hadiths or pointing out Acts 8 or whatever. Then show that you have a good job and aren't looking for handouts and they're cool with you 
Theoretical liberals have their heads so far up in the clouds that when they refer their initial "eww gross" reaction to transsexuality to try and justify it with their pre-existing beliefs (as everyone does) they tend to refer them back to something so amorphous, undemanding, and incoherent that it doesn't even make predictions you can show to be false. Like, it's so fuzzy that it's "not even wrong"... despite being used to justify claims that people like me should have our bodies and identities serve everyone else as some kind of token in a "more enlightened than thou" game played by culture warriors.
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The task must be to destabalise and desacralise gender, and this cannot be done whilst upholding a belief in the ability to “match” bodily organs to gendered behaviour. The critique of gender cannot be held back because it offends the sensibilities of marginalised groups, and whilst we recognise the difficulties transgender people face, we can’t let those difficulties be an excuse to suspend critical thought.
Liberal cis people talking about sex and gender remind me of that kid from Kindergarten cop who said "My Dad's a gynecologist, he looks at vaginas all day." I mean, yes, in some sense the kid was right, but he was mostly missing the point in a naive way.
So how about you, Django (I'm assuming you're a dude?), grow your beard out and start taking female hormones and wearing miniskirts. When people have a problem with it, you tell them that you have no gender (but please don't bring up terms like transgendered or transsexual) and that you're just doing your part to "destabilize and desacralize gender" like a good revolutionary should. After 8 years of that go ahead and start writing on the subject of sex and gender and I'll take you seriously.
I'll be invisible to that effort (I'm post-op, married, and don't talk about my medical history except online) and will not oppose you so long as you don't pollute the political capital of my marginalized group (transsexuals). And, assuming you're not going to go for the beard, boobs, and miniskirt plan, please umm... shut the f**k up about what trans people should or shouldn't do with our bodies.
How can you not see the similarities between you and the pro-life people telling women what to do with their pink parts? Like, what on earth makes either of you (liberals squicked by trans women or conservatives squicked by women who get abortions) think that your squickage is worth airing? As a general request: please stop telling people what they can or should do with their own bodies. It's called "body autonomy" and it's a really simple and easy principle to apply to diverse array of political questions.
Personally, I will continue to working behind the scenes, giving trans kids advice on navigating corporate and governmental institutions, commenting here and there on the net, and working to eliminate structural transphobia from medical insurance company's policies that (unless the girls are blessed with good parents who are also rich) usually seem to cause girls to lose years and years of their lives saving up money for medical care to simply feel whole.
---
Last note: if anyone is still reading this far and wants to read something coherent on the intersection of social justice and transsexuality, may I recommend that you check out Julia Serano's book "Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity".
Dec 7 2008 00:01
#59
Jane wrote:
I thought I might chime in to offer another perspective. Marja is lesbian but I'm a much better candidate for your revolutionary scorn, because I'm into guys and I don't "rock the boat" so much with assimilation to bourgeois life and whatever. And I'm transsexual.Quote:
As Slavoj Žižek amongst others has argued, the difference between the politics of oppressed and marginalised groups seeking to defend themselves and the politics of class struggle is that class struggle seeks as its end point the abolition of class.So yeah, um, I guess that this terminology makes me one of those "bad" reactionary transsexuals? I certainly am not working for the abolition of gender. I mean, I like gender for the most part, now that I've gotten my issues worked out and grown up and stuff. Although part of it might be that I'm generally a reactionary liberal...
What are you talking about? nobody has said anything about "bad reactionary transsexuals"
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I honestly prefer conservative transphobia to liberal transphobia because conservatives have specific complaints (like: you will teach my kids by example to be perverts) connected to relatively concrete claims that can be addressed relatively simply by explaining what trans people are really like, and maybe citing scientific brain studies or hadiths or pointing out Acts 8 or whatever. Then show that you have a good job and aren't looking for handouts and they're cool with you
We're not liberals or transphobes, we are not afraid of trans people and we don't hate them.
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Theoretical liberals have their heads so far up in the clouds that when they refer their initial "eww gross" reaction to transsexuality to try and justify it with their pre-existing beliefs (as everyone does) they tend to refer them back to something so amorphous, undemanding, and incoherent that it doesn't even make predictions you can show to be false.
we don't find something disgusting about transpeople and I don't even know what you mean when you say
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Like, it's so fuzzy that it's "not even wrong"... despite being used to justify claims that people like me should have our bodies and identities serve everyone else as some kind of token in a "more enlightened than thou" game played by culture warriors.
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Liberal cis people talking about sex and gender remind me of that kid from Kindergarten cop who said "My Dad's a gynecologist, he looks at vaginas all day." I mean, yes, in some sense the kid was right, but he was mostly missing the point in a naive way.So how about you, Django (I'm assuming you're a dude?), grow your beard out and start taking female hormones and wearing miniskirts. When people have a problem with it, you tell them that you have no gender (but please don't bring up terms like transgendered or transsexual) and that you're just doing your part to "destabilize and desacralize gender" like a good revolutionary should. After 8 years of that go ahead and start writing on the subject of sex and gender and I'll take you seriously.
what are you talking about?
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I'll be invisible to that effort (I'm post-op, married, and don't talk about my medical history except online) and will not oppose you so long as you don't pollute the political capital of my marginalized group (transsexuals). And, assuming you're not going to go for the beard, boobs, and miniskirt plan, please umm... shut the f**k up about what trans people should or shouldn't do with our bodies.
people aren't talking about what trans people should or shouldn't do with there bodies
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How can you not see the similarities between you and the pro-life people telling women what to do with their pink parts? Like, what on earth makes either of you (liberals squicked by trans women or conservatives squicked by women who get abortions) think that your squickage is worth airing? As a general request: please stop telling people what they can or should do with their own bodies. It's called "body autonomy" and it's a really simple and easy principle to apply to diverse array of political questions.
but we're not telling you what to do with your bodies
The issue we have is that the reasons being put forward for why people want to have sex change operations don't make any sense, and that what people have been talking about. It's obvious that people should be able to do what they like to the bodies, but that doesn't make it possible for someone to have the wrong sexed body.
Dec 7 2008 02:01
#60
of course there is nothing pathetically liberal with the argument that "it's my body and i can do what i want with it, with no requirement that I actually engage in any sort of discussion, dialogue or rationalisation" nope nothing in that line of argument resembles the argument of bourgeois property rights.
I don't give a fuck about transexuals or what they do to their bodies anymore than I give a fuck about some girl getting DD tits, the difference is that I'm not asked to express solidarity and support for a woman getting a tit enlargement and am certainly not labelled augmentationphobic for refusing to offer political support for breast enlargements. I almost certainly have never been criticised by anyone on the left for not supporting the right to cosmetic surgery or breast enlargements on the NHS yet a refusal to support the mutilation of bodies to better map onto reactionary notions of gender and sex has me labelled a bigot.
On a simple political level I don't understand why I should give a fuck about transexuals beyond a basic defence of trans people not to be scapegoated or harassed, they are a tiny minority of the population and essentially irrelevant to everyone but themselves.
Dec 7 2008 05:53
#61
I'll second the recommendation of Julia Serano's _Whipping Girl_.
And in my mature transsexual individualist feminist opinion, respect for and validation of the individual's own subjective internal reality is the key to this whole debate. If someone says she is a woman, then she *is* a woman. The consciousness of being a woman takes primacy over the tyranny of the majority *and* the body, and the consciousness of my womanhood is communicated and established by my pride, strength and confidence in moving, speaking and dressing as a woman. Primacy of consciousness over the body. Medical science has concluded that it is *much* easier to feminise a male body via estrogen, electrolysis and even vaginoplasty surgery, than to fuck with our heads by enforcing a conformist male gender expression that we demonstrably hate.
I suffered, while trying to pass as a regular guy, from extremely low self-worth, major depression, and anxiety, and feel much better about myself in recent years as a woman. I no longer have any doubt that's who I really am.
Dec 7 2008 11:14
#62
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If someone says she is a woman, then she *is* a woman
If I then define woman as "likes pink, lives in the kitchen, buys too many shoes" (which is something a lot of misogynist arseholes would laugh at and nod along to), how does that map to her *being* one?
As has been pointed out elsewhere, many trans people do not behave in a way generally defined as 'female' after an op, and if they do, it's sometimes down to societal pressure to then conform as a woman to avoid harrassment. If a post-op trans person subsequently decides to maintain a traditionally 'male' role of say, aggression, physicality, high sex drive, their definition of woman directly clashes with majority opinion.
'Woman' is just a word, and it is one which is heavily manipulated on a mass level and can mean polar opposites on an individual level (eg. I would simply define woman as a human with a certain body type, the Daily Mail might define it as someone who's mentally inferior and emotionally superior, soft and caring, impressed by shiny objects etc). So tbh it's not actually a very useful way of defining anything, it's simply too mired in a wide range of clashing prejudices.
On the main subject though, it has been interesting to hear that many trans people don't adhere to gender stereotyping after the op, largely seems to confirm that we're talking about a form of body dysmorphia here (revol - this is not necessarily the same thing as wanting a boob job) rather than about a need to fulfil a specific gender-role?
Dec 7 2008 20:35
#63
revol68 wrote:
of course there is nothing pathetically liberal with the argument that "it's my body and i can do what i want with it, with no requirement that I actually engage in any sort of discussion, dialogue or rationalisation" nope nothing in that line of argument resembles the argument of bourgeois property rights.
Um, but I admitted to being into "bourgeois" notions from the get go. There's a lot to be said for picket fences and a tidy kitchen and being friendly to your neighbors and co-workers. It's not insulting to me to have my beliefs labeled with a commonly understood term that's basically accurate.
It has negative emotional valence for you, I get that. But it doesn't have the same valence for me. If you want to respond to my arguments in a way that connects you'll need to read more deeply.
I used to be really into anarcho-syndicalism. I still have fond feelings for it. I just realize from having participated in that kind of thing that it's not a defect-free arrangement of the world anymore than any other arrangement would be. It's just different warts is all. I'm trying out a different system now.
::shrugs::
On the other hand...
revol68 wrote:
I don't give a fuck about transexuals or what they do to their bodies anymore than I give a fuck about some girl getting DD tits
So... does this mean you're admitting your gross (in the sense of broad spectrum and unnuanced) misogyny up front but claiming that it's a coherent take on the female gender and/or justified by something?
Or are you going to sputter and insist that you don't actually have serious problems with women and/or femininity and are not a misogynist?
radicalgraffiti wrote:
but we're not telling you what to do with your bodies. The issue we have is that the reasons being put forward for why people want to have sex change operations don't make any sense, and that what people have been talking about. It's obvious that people should be able to do what they like to the bodies, but that doesn't make it possible for someone to have the wrong sexed body.
And the issue I have is that I don't think any "reason" I put forward in a community like this would be listened to with any kind of sympathy. And in the meantime, statements that damage the credbility and/or authenticity of trans people deeply affect our social lives and our access to medical care. If we lose sympathy, we lose our medical care.
And more to the point, the kind of sentiments that people in this forum are directing at trans people are precisely the sort of thing I expect I'd get every so often if I was open about my gender history out in the world. I would understand if a number of you read me as "being in the closet" about my transsexuality - but it's not wanting to deal with reactions like yours that cause me to make the choices I do.
You (with your insistent questioning of my very existence while you sit around secure in your feelings that your gender is totally authentic and will never be questioned by anyone) are part of my system of oppression : - (
revol68 wrote:
On a simple political level I don't understand why I should give a fuck about transexuals beyond a basic defence of trans people not to be scapegoated or harassed, they are a tiny minority of the population and essentially irrelevant to everyone but themselves.
Because we're a corner case that exposes a huge number of raw nerves. We're sort of like canaries. How a society treats trans women reveals very much about how it treats anyone with any gender. I think there are *way* more options available than the choices being offered in the blog post that started this discussion but this is on the right track:
Django wrote:
It is not a coincidence that gender-reassignment surgery is supported by fatwa and easily available in Iran, whilst having sex with someone with the same genital arrangement is punishable by death
It's not binary choice. It is possible for trans women and trans men and gay guys and lesbians and gender queers and cross dressers and so on and so forth with the diversity you find out in the long tail of gender-related neurology and the cultural variations on top of that to all be supported in expressing their deepest and best selves. And if we were able to do that, imagine what kind of openness and vivacity and acceptance of subtle truths that would require of a culture... and what that level of openness, vivacity, and truth-appreciation would mean for everyone.
It would be nigh utopian : - )
Dec 7 2008 23:41
#64
Marja Erwin wrote:
As I had noted several times, the male brain / female brain theory does not assert that the whole brain has to be male or female respectively, but only certain tissues - notably the BSTc and possibly other tissues relating to the body map and such features.
In which case its clearly an abuse of language to talk of a "male brain" or a "female brain" based on this, which should make us think about why these concepts form such common currency within these debates. These kinds of ideas are clearly ideological, naturalising as they do socially produced categories. Especially given that you are talking about having a subconscious and natural "gender identity" which finds expression through existing gender ideology. I mean, I could accept this purely hypothetical idea of a "body map" despite the consequent problems it would carry, but to leap from this to the idea that we are born with a gendered subconscious which aligns perfectly with our historically produced gender ideology is apologism and nothing more.
Marja Erwin wrote:
Actually, no. From Kruijver et al. 2000...
Yeah I read the study, but given that you are consistently talking about “female brains” piloting male bodies, even though you conceded in part that its not possible to talk about a “female brain” on the basis of BSTc variation, I presumed that you were referring to other neurological change which has been attributed to transitioning, such as here, which is why i didn’t say “BSTc variation has been shown to be a result of transitioning”. You seem to be assuming I did.
So why is it necessary to talk of male or female brains? Thats clearly not whats being discussed. A form of body dismorphia of this kind has, as has been stated before, no impact on what gender is. It might lead to you being placed in either biological sex category, but that isn’t what makes gender, as being biologically male or female isn’t what makes you a “man” or a “woman”.
Marja Erwin wrote:
A theory of regrets? A theory of social pressures? The theory has to explain the experiences. It doesn't have to justify them all. The problem is, arguments that "there is no such thing as gender dysphoria," or "there is no difference between gender roles and gender identity," not only fail to explain transsexual experience, they contradict it.
I mean, leaving aside the idea of neurologically caused body dismorphia, the reason that gender identity and gender roles cannot be separated is because, as has been said elsewhere, these things are independent of biological sex unless we take a ludicrously reactionary position and decide gender ideology is the natural expression of biological truths. Theres plenty of women I know whose hair, dress etc which are clearly socially contingent and not expressions of some "natural femininity" are perceived by them to be simply expressions of their gender identity. The same with men drinking and fighting. Now unless we decide that these things are hardwired into the brain then they are clearly the performance of socially contingent gender (meaning gender per se), which is totally different from biological sex and has no necessary relation with it. Given what you are hypothesising comes down to a “body map” and nothing more, this would be being expressed in and through an ideology of gender which is no more natural and timeless than an ideology of race or nation or whatever. A “body map” of some kind could exist hypothetically, but subconscious and pre-existing identification with whatever historically produced gender category can’t.
So the fact that people experience their consciousness through existing ideology which is neither "natural" nor desirable doesn’t really have any impact on the important arguments, as pretty much anyone with an interest in thinking critically would accept that consciousness is always a product in some form of the ideological environment in which it is produced.
Marja Erwin wrote:
Yes, but the feminist/queer argument does not challenge the biological categories with the same intensity that it challenges the move from biological sex to gender roles.
It frequently does, actually. Whether I agree with it is a different matter.
Dec 7 2008 23:21
#65
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I used to be really into anarcho-syndicalism. I still have fond feelings for it. I just realize from having participated in that kind of thing that it's not a defect-free arrangement of the world anymore than any other arrangement would be. It's just different warts is all. I'm trying out a different system now.
Frankly this just makes you sound like a middle-class tourist who 'tried' anarcho-syndicalism for a while and the got bored of being radical when you realised it would be hard work. How close am I?
Dec 8 2008 00:22
#66
Quote:
So... does this mean you're admitting your gross (in the sense of broad spectrum and unnuanced) misogyny up front but claiming that it's a coherent take on the female gender and/or justified by something?Or are you going to sputter and insist that you don't actually have serious problems with women and/or femininity and are not a misogynist?
I really fail to see how my comment about some girl getting DD tits in anyway shows misogyny. I don't have a problem with woman (as biological category) I do however have plenty of problems with aspects of constructed femininity which is a millstone on billions of womens necks. I mean femininity as a binary to masculinity celebrates passisivity and servitiude, things I have only contempt for, much as the contempt I have for woman who feel the need to turn themselves into blow up sex dolls in a desperate bid to be validated.
Dec 8 2008 01:14
#67
Django wrote:
These kinds of ideas are clearly ideological, naturalising as they do socially produced categories. Especially given that you are talking about having a subconscious and natural "gender identity" which finds expression through existing gender ideology. I mean, I could accept this purely hypothetical idea of a "body map" despite the consequent problems it would carry, but to leap from this to the idea that we are born with a gendered subconscious which aligns perfectly with our historically produced gender ideology is apologism and nothing more.
I'm not sure where the last idea comes from.
Let's assume that we can plot people's appearance from "very male," to "androgynous," to "very female." Hormones and certain types of surgery can shift someone's appearance from one side towards the other side. Many people start hormones while stealth, before coming out. However, this affects everything from breasts (mtf) to beards (ftm) to the shape of the face (either). Cis society questions people who look physically ambiguous.
Similarly, let's assume that we can plot people's most comfortable gendered behavior on a spectrum from "very masculine," with the median being "androgynous," to "very feminine." Cis society pressures people who appear as women towards the "feminine" side, and people who appear as men toward the "masculine" side.
Anyway, before transition, trans women have been pressured towards "masculine" behaviors, and trans men towards "feminine" behaviors. More so for trans women. After transition, trans men are pressured towards "masculine" behaviors, and trans women towards "feminine" behaviors." If we could separate personality from socialization, we might say that half of any group are more "masculine" than the median for the whole population, and the other half of any group are more "feminine" than the median for the whole population. I think that's actually true of trans women, and of trans men.
However:
1. Trans people may put off certain gendered behaviors before transition, and then compensate after transition.
2. Trans people may deliberately experiment with gendered behaviors.
2. Trans people may choose gender presentation to avoid being outed.
Looking gender-ambiguous does present certain problems. Trans people can sometimes use baggy clothing or shaving to temporarily conceal the changes. Trans people may adopt an androgynous style, to minimize the costs of being outed, or a gender-specific one, to minimize the chances of being outed. That is a personal choice. Almost all trans men and most trans women can pass as cis men or cis women, respectively, after some time on hormones, and either top jobs or hair removal, respectively. However, there are still risks, which do affect what people wear and do. [And yes, I'm outing myself by using my full name. But I'm mostly talking about face-to-face situations.]
We'd expect about one-half of the people who identify as women to identify as feminine, wouldn't we? And, under the circumstances, we can't expect the other one-half to identify as masculine, but to work with butch and androgynous identities.
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Yeah I read the study, but given that you are consistently talking about “female brains” piloting male bodies, even though you conceded in part that its not possible to talk about a “female brain” on the basis of BSTc variation, I presumed that you were referring to other neurological change which has been attributed to transitioning, such as here, which is why i didn’t say “BSTc variation has been shown to be a result of transitioning”. You seem to be assuming I did.
I thought it was a clear shorthand for "certain brain structures, probably including the BSTc and possibly including others as yet unidentified." Sorry. I am aware that other changes can occur during transition.
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So why is it necessary to talk of male or female brains? Thats clearly not whats being discussed. A form of body dismorphia of this kind has, as has been stated before, no impact on what gender is. It might lead to you being placed in either biological sex category, but that isn’t what makes gender, as being biologically male or female isn’t what makes you a “man” or a “woman".
Are there better terms? We can't use terms which out us and/or third-gender us all the time. Besides which, people challenge the terms "male" and "female" due to our reproductive problems. When coming out, I considered the phrase "gender-free woman," to distance my identity from the roles.
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I mean, leaving aside the idea of neurologically caused body dismorphia, the reason that gender identity and gender roles cannot be separated is because, as has been said elsewhere, these things are independent of biological sex unless we take a ludicrously reactionary position and decide gender ideology is the natural expression of biological truths.
The term "gender identity" comes from the medical establishment. Most researchers assumed either:
1. That transsexualism was rooted in purely psychological causes, or
2. That transsexualism was connected to natural femininity (or later natural masculinity), or
3. Both.
Due to the gatekeeping system, and the pressure to go deep stealth, it took some time for people to counter the second claim. Newer patients asked the older patients what the doctors wanted to hear, and post-SRS patients disappeared.
By the time the original reasons for the association of "gender identity" with gender roles, gendered performances, etc. fell apart, it was the established term.
Dec 8 2008 01:13
#68
Quote:
Um, but I admitted to being into "bourgeois" notions from the get go. There's a lot to be said for picket fences and a tidy kitchen and being friendly to your neighbors and co-workers. It's not insulting to me to have my beliefs labeled with a commonly understood term that's basically accurate.
Except I responding to the fact you were ranting against liberals and their transphobia. Furthermore I also pointed out that I am willing to defend trans folk on basic liberal grounds as opposition to scapegoating and reactionary intolerance to difference. However if trans people expect support for their politics and right to 'medical' care, that is a completely other matter and requires an actual justification way beyond 'my body, my personal rights'.
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And the issue I have is that I don't think any "reason" I put forward in a community like this would be listened to with any kind of sympathy. And in the meantime, statements that damage the credbility and/or authenticity of trans people deeply affect our social lives and our access to medical care. If we lose sympathy, we lose our medical care.
So trans politics are simply those of pity and sympathy aimed towards upholding acess to 'medical' care (medical care of course meaning the butchering/medicating of healthy organs). If you want support for such political demands you need to be able to asset an actual political argument beyond 'my body, my rights', which is actually what is being attempted in the form of the medicalisation of 'gender dysphoria', resting as it does on reactionary notions of sex and gender.
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Because we're a corner case that exposes a huge number of raw nerves. We're sort of like canaries. How a society treats trans women reveals very much about how it treats anyone with any gender. I think there are *way* more options available than the choices being offered in the blog post that started this discussion but this is on the right track:
As has already been stated Iran is extremely supportive of sex changes, yet woman in Iran are massively oppressed. I would however agree that how a society treats transexuals reveaks alot as to how it treats gender in general and in Iran I would suggest that it is supported because it helps to side step confrontation with accepted gender roles for the sexes, afterall if a man behaves like a woman it isn't because men don't have to behave in this given way but infact because he should really be a woman.
In the West I see the treatment of transexuality as being the coming together of the commodification of everything, a medicalisation model that seeks to explain and solve complex social problems and deep rooted essentialism in regards to sex and gender.
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In these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything
For $200 anyone can conceive a God on video
Hes a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock
Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him rita if you want, if you want
Dec 8 2008 01:23
#69
Lets put it this way why do youse need medical treatment on perfectly healthy organs?
If someone went to a doctor and said they felt they shouldn't have a left arm, that they have always felt this left arm was alien to them etc the doctor wouldn't just chop it off, the doctor would send them for counciling.
In all this discussion there has been talk about transexuals feeling a desire/lacking, that they should have a vagina/penis or whatever, what is being left out is the fact that this lack also involves a violent rejection revulsion towards their own body prior to surgery and hormones.
In anyother situation where people feel a loathing towards their bodies we seek to address this in terms of social pressures and ideas and don't simply indulge such self loathing, for example a black kid bleaching their skin or a small breasted girl hating her body. Why when it comes to people hating their sex organs are we expected to ditch our critical faculties and just offer support, whilst any other response is hysterically denounced as 'transphobia' or silencing transexuals.
p.s. I also don't know why transexuals hitch their wagon onto gay, lesbian and bi sexual politics, as they are entirely different matters.
Dec 8 2008 13:54
#70
revol68 wrote:
Lets put it this way why do youse need medical treatment on perfectly healthy organs?
Health is relative to the rest of the body and the mind.
Quote:
p.s. I also don't know why transexuals hitch their wagon onto gay, lesbian and bi sexual politics, as they are entirely different matters.
Partly because about 30% of trans people are lesbian or gay before transition, and another 30% are lesbian or gay after transition, with some minor overlap. Another 30% or so are bi or pansexual. Partly because transsexual rights issues overlap with transgender rights issues, and the gay rights movement has shamelessly appropriated transgender history, e.g. Stonewall, while distancing itself from transgender people.
Dec 8 2008 16:01
#71
Quote:
a black kid bleaching their skin or a small breasted girl hating her body
I'm not sure about the parallels here, I mean there's no major bonus for say, a male-female transition in this society, wheras a black kid wanting to be white or a girl wanting bigger breasts potentially has a significant positive impact in terms of access to jobs, societal rank etc. There's a difference between body dysmorphia as something intrinsic to your brain's programming and body dysmorphia as an extreme response to societal pressures.
Dec 8 2008 16:45
#72
Quote:
I don't know where this idea comes fromLet's assume that we can plot people's appearance from "very male," to "androgynous," to "very female"...
Marja, I don't think you're looking at the arguments at all here.
Dec 8 2008 16:57
#73
Rob Ray wrote:
Quote:
a black kid bleaching their skin or a small breasted girl hating her bodyI'm not sure about the parallels here, I mean there's no major bonus for say, a male-female transition in this society, wheras a black kid wanting to be white or a girl wanting bigger breasts potentially has a significant positive impact in terms of access to jobs, societal rank etc. There's a difference between body dysmorphia as something intrinsic to your brain's programming and body dysmorphia as an extreme response to societal pressures.
If the skin bleaching is motived because of a loathing of their own skin colour, an internalisation of white supremacy, then it has a common parralel, that is a self loathing of the body you are born into. Of course there is a difference in that most people who skin bleach don't try and pimp some baseless essentialist shite about brain mapping and skin tone.
As for there being a difference between body dysmorphia as something intrinsic to your brain's programming and body dysmporhia as an extreme response to societal pressure, well this is exactly the point I don't accept that there is this body dysmorphia that is biologically wired and independent of societal pressures, it's nothing but an ideological sham, convenient to a society riddled with sex and gender essentialism, to the medical industry and transexuals looking to gain support for free medical access to such procedeures.
Honestly the very notion that you can be born into the wrong body is fucking bonkers, we don't have souls for fucksake. The fact that leftists and many feminists seem to be willing to accept the most pathetic essentialism when it comes from transexuals is simply the result of a lack of political guts and the PC imperative to always side with a minority.
Dec 8 2008 17:23
#74
Hmm well I don't think I'm going to dismiss dysmorphia potentially being er, hardware as well as/rather than software, so to speak, largely because I don't think I have the expertise to definitively say otherwise.
I also generally work on the 'follow the money' principle, and I don't see enough of a gain to trans people, certainly male to female, for social pressure to be the sole factor in their decision to change. What's in it for them apart from months of difficulty, a high probability of losing friends and family, a lifelong problem of prejudice etc?
With a black kid wanting to turn white, there's usually a very specific trigger of 'white is good, whites get good jobs, society loves white people'. So I can see that being a societally induced dysmorphia. But there's no such trigger when talking about a man becoming a woman. There might be a 'dropping out of macho culture' thing but I doubt it is the overriding one.
However, working on the principle that it is possible (though again, I'm not talking definites because I'm not well-enough read to) for a form of body-dysmorphia to exist does not mean that people are talking about 'the wrong soul in the wrong body' here.
We'd be talking about a genetic abnormality (please note I don't mean this in a bad way, being double-jointed would fit in the same category) where the brain is wired to think it should have a female body attached when it doesn't or vice versa. Given all the other things that can go wrong with the body during pregnancy, I don't think that's tremendously far-fetched.
Dec 8 2008 17:46
#75
Well considering most testimony from transexuals usually revolves around them saying they 'have always felt like a woman trapped in a mans body' etc I would suggest that what is going on is that they hold their gender identity is not correct for their body map, causing a loathing of this body and desire for one that does 'map' to their gender identity. What we have is a social conflict being medicalised as a simple biological one, a situation that serves the dominant essentialist discourse regarding sex and gender (see for example the Iranian support for transexuals), fits perfectly with the medicalisation of the social world and provides a rational for transexuals to argue for free access to medical procedueres. A real relationship of convenience.
Your willingness to accept such a 'genetic' or developmental fuck where by the brain is wired to think it should have a female body assumes of course the existance of distinct sexed brains, something with fuck all evidence and is pushed for reactionary ends to reify social differences between the sexes.
Now of course, even if one were to accept the baseless notion of such sharply sexed brains, why would a sex change operation provide the solution? Do you really think that turning a cock inside out and stuffing it back inside someone will fool their brain into thinking it really is a vagina? Maybe some ping pong balls to act as ovaries?
It's a lot of baseless shit that see's many leftists and feminists proposing the most reactionary essentialist shit in order to politically defend transexuality.
I mean do you think those people who say they shouldn't have a left arm aren't mentally disturbed and infact there's some hypothetical body map in their brain that only has a right arm? Do you think they should have their left arm amputated?
Dec 8 2008 17:51
#76
Why would we more readily accept the claims of transexuals wanting their bits cut off than those people wanting a healthy limb cut off? Why would we go to such means to rationalise it as medical problem as opposed to a social/psychological one.
Dec 8 2008 20:46
#77
Django wrote:
Quote:
I don't know where this idea comes fromLet's assume that we can plot people's appearance from "very male," to "androgynous," to "very female"...
Marja, I don't think you're looking at the arguments at all here.
Right, I'm looking at the things people do to avoid getting killed, beaten, or just discriminated against.
Dec 8 2008 21:28
#78
Marja Erwin wrote:
Django wrote:
Quote:
I don't know where this idea comes fromLet's assume that we can plot people's appearance from "very male," to "androgynous," to "very female"...
Marja, I don't think you're looking at the arguments at all here.
Right, I'm looking at the things people do to avoid getting killed, beaten, or just discriminated against.
Make up your mind, are transexuals seeking to correct a biological mismatch or is it the product of societal pressures, of people being forced to surgically rearrange their biology in order to avoid repurcussions for transgressing the gender roles that are socially mapped to their biological sex?
Dec 9 2008 08:52
#79
Rob Ray wrote:
Frankly this just makes you sound like a middle-class tourist who 'tried' anarcho-syndicalism for a while and the got bored of being radical when you realised it would be hard work. How close am I?
Not very. Raised working class but thrifty. I was poor and saving for surgery and interested in utopia. I found cool people and cheap food and rent... but a lot of inefficiency on top of that and no real interest in the practicalities of maximizing the goodness-to-the-world of the institutions we were participating in. Lots of shirking. Very few people interested in figuring out the budget. Good parties but not so much enthusiasm for cleaning the toilettes the next morning. We had Food Not Bombs using our kitchens, preparing food for hungry people (yay)... but ruining kitchen equipment through thoughtlessness in the process (net impact: negative).
The more I learn about the pragmatics of the world, the more it seems to me like the globe is already a very mature anarchy, with certain syndicates having found that they survive and thrive better when they organize themselves like political parties or banks or armies or advertising firms or whatever. The only syndicates that think of themselves as "syndicates" seem mostly ineffective to me. And that framing indicates to me that improving the world is more a matter of vision, persistence, and planting the right seeds.
I was up for hard work - I wasn't up for being taken advantage of or wasting my time. I learned a lot and miss some of the social elements, but if I want to materially improve the general state of the world I figure I can do it with entrepeneurial work and donating to well chosen causes. Not that that's the"ultimate best thing ever that everyone should be convinced of and working on"... it just seems like a more efficient allocation of resources to me.
::shrugs::
I didn't come here to get so involved in politics politics. I just wanted to chime in on the trans stuff because transphobia affects me kinda personally. In which vein: Is revol68 a troll? Is he just doing the stereotypical transphobic schtick for the lulz or, um... is he really that inflexible, linear, and humorless in general?
Dec 9 2008 08:52
#80
Rob Ray wrote:
Frankly this just makes you sound like a middle-class tourist who 'tried' anarcho-syndicalism for a while and the got bored of being radical when you realised it would be hard work. How close am I?
Not very. Raised working class but thrifty. I was poor and saving for surgery and interested in utopia. I found cool people and cheap food and rent... but a lot of inefficiency on top of that and no real interest in the practicalities of maximizing the goodness-to-the-world of the institutions we were participating in. Lots of shirking. Very few people interested in figuring out the budget. Good parties but not so much enthusiasm for cleaning the toilettes the next morning. We had Food Not Bombs using our kitchens, preparing food for hungry people (yay)... but ruining kitchen equipment through thoughtlessness in the process (net impact: negative).
The more I learn about the pragmatics of the world, the more it seems to me like the globe is already a very mature anarchy, with certain syndicates having found that they survive and thrive better when they organize themselves like political parties or banks or armies or advertising firms or whatever. The only syndicates that think of themselves as "syndicates" seem mostly ineffective to me. And that framing indicates to me that improving the world is more a matter of vision, persistence, and planting the right seeds.
I was up for hard work - I wasn't up for being taken advantage of or wasting my time. I learned a lot and miss some of the social elements, but if I want to materially improve the general state of the world I figure I can do it with entrepeneurial work and donating to well chosen causes. Not that that's the"ultimate best thing ever that everyone should be convinced of and working on"... it just seems like a more efficient allocation of resources to me.
::shrugs::
I didn't come here to get so involved in politics politics. I just wanted to chime in on the trans stuff because transphobia affects me kinda personally. In which vein: Is revol68 a troll? Is he just doing the stereotypical transphobic schtick for the lulz or, um... is he really that inflexible, linear, and humorless in general?
Dec 9 2008 09:24
#81
your bigotry disgusts me, I'm a human stuck in a trolls body!
Dec 9 2008 11:06
#82
It's quite amazing that trans folk feel they can assert all sorts of reactionary essentialist shit and yet expect nothing but support from feminists and the left. Maybe they haven't noticed that feminists have been battling for centuries to breakdown biological essentialism that maps female and male bodies to narrow forms of behaviour and identity. Why should we accept reactionary arguments that seek to narrowly map identity, gender and subjectivity to biological sex, whether it's in traditional conservative garb or from marginalised community such as transexuals?
Dec 9 2008 10:30
#83
Quote:
it seems to me like the globe is already a very mature anarchy, with certain syndicates having found that they survive and thrive better when they organize themselves like political parties or banks or armies or advertising firms or whatever.
Ah okay, so you don't actually have any idea how syndcalism as an organising structure is supposed to work and got your political views on anarchism from the crusty scene. Fair enough, I can see why you decided it was a waste of time if that was your main influence. The army isn't syndicalist, let alone anarcho-syndicalist.
Dec 10 2008 01:07
#84
revol68 wrote:
Make up your mind, are transexuals seeking to correct a biological mismatch or is it the product of societal pressures, of people being forced to surgically rearrange their biology in order to avoid repurcussions for transgressing the gender roles that are socially mapped to their biological sex?
You assume this is an either/or situation. It's not.
Transsexuals are seeking to correct or ameliorate a biological mismatch. Some wish to transition from one side of the gender binary to the other, some wish to transition to some other position, e.g. in-between, and some wish to transition from some other position - and may identify as transsexual, intersex, or both.
However, present-day society punishes those who do not look like one pole of the gender binary. The state-capitalist system also punishes those who do not match gendered identification and records. To the extent that it allows non-outing records, it requires surgery, even from those who might not want it - or cannot afford it.
Dec 10 2008 17:58
#85
Marja Erwin wrote:
Django wrote:
Quote:
I don't know where this idea comes fromLet's assume that we can plot people's appearance from "very male," to "androgynous," to "very female"...
Marja, I don't think you're looking at the arguments at all here.
Right, I'm looking at the things people do to avoid getting killed, beaten, or just discriminated against.
That's not what I meant, as you know. I, and others, have detailed at great length what gender is and is not, and have engaged extensively with your hypothetical argument about "body maps" to show that even if it were true it a) doesn't represent having a "male" or "female" brain and b) it has no effect on what gender is and what makes you "male" or "female". On the other hand, your view shuttles between seeing gender as something contingent, seeing gender as something essential, seeing it as seperate from sex, seeing it as identical to sex, etc. To the exent where arguments still begin with the assumption that people are just plain "masculine" or "feminine". Or that people have a "gendered subconscious". Which makes this exercise increasingly tedious.
Edit - though to be fair your arguments were far more interesting than those of others which consisted of giving me fashion advice and expressing a desire to be a 1950s housewife. I do suspect they'd have received a very different reaction if they came from anyone else though.
Dec 10 2008 17:42
#86
If transexuals had real balls they'd be transvestites!
lolz
Dec 10 2008 18:45
#87
Quote:
I, and others, have detailed at great length what gender is and is not,
Based on your own experiences, as opposed to my, or any trans person's, experiences. Which is fine until you start using your theories to take down my experiences.
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and have engaged extensively with your hypothetical argument about "body maps"
It's not very hypothetical to me... Of course, it is one way of describing and understanding the disconnect I felt, and still to an extent feel, from my anatomy. I'm not the only one to use the explanation either.
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to show that even if it were true it a) doesn't represent having a "male" or "female" brain
I never pretended male brain/female brain was anything more than a shorthand for some, male some-but-not-necessarily-all sexually dymorphic structures in the brain / female some-but-not-necessarily-all sexually dymorphic structures in the brain. In particular the BSTc.
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and b) it has no effect on what gender is
Gender is at least two different things: gender identity and gender roles. There's no reason they have to correspond. There are social pressures to make one's appearance and gender roles correspond.
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and what makes you "male" or "female".
It makes as much sense as anything else. Chromosomes don't do it - Turner's Syndrome, Klinefelter's Syndrome, De la Chappelle's Syndrome, etc. Hormone levels don't do it - Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. A physician with a ruler doesn't do it. Why shouldn't each person decide? (Which, in practice, means body map and other aspects of subconscious sex would do it.)
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On the other hand, your view shuttles between seeing gender as something contingent,
Gender role.
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seeing gender as something essential,
Gender identity.
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seeing it as seperate from sex,
Gender role.
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seeing it as identical to sex, etc.
Gender identity would correspond with subconscious sex - "brain sex."
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To the exent where arguments still begin with the assumption that people are just plain "masculine" or "feminine".
Some people have personalities closer to one gender role, others don't.
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Or that people have a "gendered subconscious".
Subconscious sex. Nothing to do with "masculinity," "femininity," or gender roles.
Quote:
Which makes this exercise increasingly tedious.
I have been very careful to distinguish between:
1. The concepts of gender, gender roles, gender expression, and gender performance.
2. The concepts of gender identity, subconscious sex, and "brain sex." Also, body map and BSTc sex as examples.
Unfortunately, gender has different meanings in different circles. I think I discussed this earlier in the thread.
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Edit - though to be fair your arguments were far more interesting than those of others which consisted of giving me fashion advice and expressing a desire to be a 1950s housewife. I do suspect they'd have received a very different reaction if they came from anyone else though.
Quite possibly.
Dec 10 2008 19:26
#88
Marja Erwin wrote:
Based on your own experiences, as opposed to my, or any trans person's, experiences. Which is fine until you start using your theories to take down my experiences.
They're not based on my own experiences at all, but based on decades upon decades of theoretical development and arguments by the feminist movement and others based on the experiences of struggles around gender.
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It's not very hypothetical to me... Of course, it is one way of describing and understanding the disconnect I felt, and still to an extent feel, from my anatomy. I'm not the only one to use the explanation either.
Its the definition of hypothetical. But again, were it to be true, it would have very serious and likely insurmountable problems of its own in terms of "fixing" the "problem".
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Gender is at least two different things: gender identity and gender roles. There's no reason they have to correspond. There are social pressures to make one's appearance and gender roles correspond.
Though this might be convenient for you, the idea that gender roles and gender identity are two seperate things with seperate politics is an idea that no-one with an interest in critical thought would have been able to seriously make for decades. As I've said elsewhere, it would require a totally ahistorical and essentialist view of identity to see it as developing in isolation from the historical and ideological context in which it is produced.
Unless we see gender and sex as the same thing (as in official/medical use), rendering the discussion meaningless , we have to define what they mean. I think the definitions which underlie the entire field of gender studies are useful : sex is biological sex (though this is by no means an ideologically neutral way of understanding the body), gender is, as has been described several times, the socially and historically contingent matrix of behaviour, speech, language, comportment, dress etc which is used to identify "masculinity" or "femininity". This is what makes you "male" or "female" in as far as these are concepts which are socially legible. It is also by definition performative, existing as a relationship between people which is enacted by those it encompasses. The second category (gender) is independent of the first (sex - although many would argue that the first already operates within an ideological discourse, and the way in which ideology distorts physical facts - as in the categorisation of "male" and "female" brains - verifies this to some extent IMO).
So again, unless we see "gender" as ahistorical, timeless, not a product of its ideological context and springing from neurology* and nothing else, we can't see "subconscious sex" - which is here a hypothetical "body map" which expects there to be ovaries, a vagina, breasts etc, and "gender identity", which means an identification with whatever socially contingent and historical form of gender ideology is in existence as the same thing. The desire to be the other gender is something that may be experienced, but it is experienced (for whatever reason) in and through concepts of gender, and it is the idea that a surgically constructed penis/vagina makes you that gender which is deeply reactionary (and where a critical gender politics cannot begin).
Which is why this:
Quote:
2. The concepts of gender identity, subconscious sex, and "brain sex." Also, body map and BSTc sex as examples.
Is untenable essentialism.
The fact that these definitions are pretty particular to your arguments is telling, though I suppose more reactionary sociobiologists might make use of them too.
*Joseph K made an interesting point earlier about the observed relatonship between behavioural and neurological development seen in many other fields (its central to the development of the capacity for language in children) which is something which should be borne in mind.
Dec 10 2008 23:02
#89
Django wrote:
Marja Erwin wrote:
Based on your own experiences, as opposed to my, or any trans person's, experiences. Which is fine until you start using your theories to take down my experiences.They're not based on my own experiences at all, but based on decades upon decades of theoretical development and arguments by the feminist movement and others based on the experiences of struggles around gender.
Your plural, as in cis peoples' experiences. Cis people feel little or no disconnect between their bodily sex and their subconscious sex. That's what it means to be cissexual. So it follows that cis people have little reason to explain how or why someone would feel the distinction.
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It's not very hypothetical to me... Of course, it is one way of describing and understanding the disconnect I felt, and still to an extent feel, from my anatomy. I'm not the only one to use the explanation either.Its the definition of hypothetical. But again, were it to be true, it would have very serious and likely insurmountable problems of its own in terms of "fixing" the "problem".
My lived experience is not hypothetical. My descriptions are, of necessity, approximations and metaphors - for such is language - but they are not hypothetical either.
Quote:
Quote:
Gender is at least two different things: gender identity and gender roles. There's no reason they have to correspond. There are social pressures to make one's appearance and gender roles correspond.Though this might be convenient for you, the idea that gender roles and gender identity are two seperate things with seperate politics is an idea that no-one with an interest in critical thought would have been able to seriously make for decades. As I've said elsewhere, it would require a totally ahistorical and essentialist view of identity to see it as developing in isolation from the historical and ideological context in which it is produced.
Well, gender identity is the accepted term... it is misleading, and does not correspond with the intersection of gender and identity.
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Unless we see gender and sex as the same thing (as in official/medical use), rendering the discussion meaningless , we have to define what they mean. I think the definitions which underlie the entire field of gender studies are useful : sex is biological sex (though this is by no means an ideologically neutral way of understanding the body), gender is, as has been described several times, the socially and historically contingent matrix of behaviour, speech, language, comportment, dress etc which is used to identify "masculinity" or "femininity". This is what makes you "male" or "female" in as far as these are concepts which are socially legible. It is also by definition performative, existing as a relationship between people which is enacted by those it encompasses. The second category (gender) is independent of the first (sex - although many would argue that the first already operates within an ideological discourse, and the way in which ideology distorts physical facts - as in the categorisation of "male" and "female" brains - verifies this to some extent IMO).
I would agree with you as far as that goes. However, I feel that gender roles are arbitrary, and feel that my bodily sex was mismatched and still, to some extent is. That required some third term. I don't like the term gender identity; I prefer Julia Serano's term subconscious sex. She reserves gender identity for the interrelationships between subconscious sex and gender expression.
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So again, unless we see "gender" as ahistorical, timeless, not a product of its ideological context and springing from neurology* and nothing else, we can't see "subconscious sex" - which is here a hypothetical "body map" which expects there to be ovaries, a vagina, breasts etc, and "gender identity", which means an identification with whatever socially contingent and historical form of gender ideology is in existence as the same thing. The desire to be the other gender is something that may be experienced, but it is experienced (for whatever reason) in and through concepts of gender, and it is the idea that a surgically constructed penis/vagina makes you that gender which is deeply reactionary (and where a critical gender politics cannot begin).
See above.
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Which is why this:Quote:
2. The concepts of gender identity, subconscious sex, and "brain sex." Also, body map and BSTc sex as examples.Is untenable essentialism.
The fact that these definitions are pretty particular to your arguments is telling, though I suppose more reactionary sociobiologists might make use of them too.
The terms come from the psychological establishment, which still associates gender identity with gender roles (as in the Standards of Care) but have acquired different meanings in trans circles. Some trans people find the associations works for them, and some of us find it doesn't work for us. I don't know what sociobiologists say.
I listed various resources and whether they confuse the two, or not, but the site went down and my post got lost.
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*Joseph K made an interesting point earlier about the observed relatonship between behavioural and neurological development seen in many other fields (its central to the development of the capacity for language in children) which is something which should be borne in mind.
Dec 15 2008 14:34
#90
Marja Erwin wrote:
My lived experience is not hypothetical. My descriptions are, of necessity, approximations and metaphors - for such is language - but they are not hypothetical either.
Thats not the point I was making though. The idea that certain tissues in the hypothalamus are sexed but that these tissues account for a body map which we all have but that only transsexuals are really aware of is a scientific and medical hypothesis.This is quite different from defining purely theoretical objects.
But then again if the 'body map' was a universal aspect of human experience I'm sure it would be used in order to explain and naturalise all sorts of 'needs' in other forms of body dismorphia- that the map of the body which the body modifier 'feels' doesn't correspond with what they actually have. There have been enough attempts to explain body dismorphia per se as a consequence of genes or neurological makeup (including cosmetic surgery). And I wonder about the repercussions for conditions like Body Integrity Identity Disorder - the individuals affected by that certainly feel that their 'body map', which doesnt include a particular limb, doesn't match the materiality of the body.* And I know that there have been attempts to account for that disorder on neurological grounds but it certainly doesn't explain why the people who have it are pretty much always white - showing the huge part that socialisation is playing.
So I think that the idea of a 'body map' has a number of problems and suspect that is flattens out a complex phenomenon (in which gender ideology looms in a massive and inseperable way) into a simple case neuro-biological cause and effect. I mean, its not like the Dutch studies are a commonly accempted cause for transsexuality anyway.
Marja Erwin wrote:
I would agree with you as far as that goes. However, I feel that gender roles are arbitrary, and feel that my bodily sex was mismatched and still, to some extent is. That required some third term. I don't like the term gender identity; I prefer Julia Serano's term subconscious sex. She reserves gender identity for the interrelationships between subconscious sex and gender expression.
Ok, thats fair enough. The point thats been made throughout though is that gender is something social, but that it is used to give meaning and identification to our bodies. Serious problems occur when the gendering of sex translates into the idea that we can change gender through changing sex. Now, Serano's term if it relates to the idea of straightforward body dismorphia wouldn't really have any impact on arguments about what makes gender, as gender doesn't have a neurological basis, it would only describe the way in which the body is given meaning within gender categories by gender ideology.And in that case it doesn't represent any change from the way in which gender is mapped onto anyone - it would represent the way in which gender ideology structures consciousness, rather than the way in which an already genetically gendered consciousness expresses this in the creation of gender ideology. So it really wouldn't have much of a relationship to what makes maleness or femaleness, and how we are 'male' or 'female'. It certainly doesn't mean that body modification means a 'transition' from one gender to another, though it does mean moving from one physiological category to another (I'll leave the problems of that aside).
Like I said, I could accept the idea of a 'body map' hypothetically. There are many problems with the way in which gender ideology regulates how we deal with biological sex (the need to identify 'male', 'female', 'homosexual', 'heterosexual' 'brains' etc has come up repeatedly). But if a neurologically based body map did exist it wouldn't have any impact on the arguments made here,any more than the fact that 'men' are nearly always born with penises does.
My problem is that as I'm sure you are aware gender identity disorder is diagnosed in part on the the basis of identification with the other gender, with everything this means, rather than just having a phantom body image which is then rationalised after the event through gender ideology by the medical profession. And this has serious consequences based on the definitions of sex and gender that we've been talking about, as any procedure which starts from the idea that identification with the other gender is treated through transitioning reifies gender as sex. This is quite a different proposition to dealing with body dismorphia which is really independent of gender.
*And I've never been expected to solidarise with them against the idea that limblessness isn't a natural and unproblematic status of being, or with any other form of body dismorphia. Its the idea that I'm supposed to solidarise against hacks like Julie Bindell as part of the struggle against 'transphobia' (which she may be but the argument that we aren't born with the 'wrong' gender isn't) which prompted the orginal post, the idea that this is supposed to be part of having radical politics.
Dec 19 2008 20:06
#91
Well, trans politics stands at the intersection of several other issues. Of course, these include different views of bio sex, gender roles, and sexuality, as well as medicine, psychology, and body modification - cf. the breast enlargement and limb removal analogies.
I think we share the same goals: to enable people to develop themselves, to create networks which enable this, and to undermine systems which prevent this (the state, capitalism, patriarchy, etc.).
A society which pressures people into breast enlargement (e.g. parts of the West) or sexual reassignment surgery (e.g. Iran) includes systems which prevent self-development. A misunderstanding of the self could also prevent self-development. A society which erects barriers to sexual reassignment surgery (e.g. most of the West) can also prevent self-development. Obviously, my desire for moderately-sized fully-formed breasts makes it hard for me to criticize other women for wanting larger breasts, or smaller ones. If the procedures were safer, I'm not sure it would be a bad thing for them to be moderately widespread, although I don't want anyone questioning the womanhood of someone who prefers to keep AAs or to reduce them.
I suppose our debate comes down to whether the desire to have more typical hormone levels and more typical sex organs for the sex one identifies with represents false consciousness, represents self-actualization, or can represent either one, depending on the circumstances. I'm actually inclined to believe it can be either one, and that gender roles confuse people. I wish trans activists - particularly those of us who don't, at least consciously, feel any strong attachment to masculine or feminine gender roles - would draw the line and oppose any mention of gender roles in the DSM and SoC. I wish cis activists would understand our perspectives.
Dec 19 2008 20:26
#92
I wish the left had the balls not to bow down before every tiny marginalised group and suck it's surgically augmented cock.
Quite frankly transexual politics are irrevelant to all but a tiny minority of people who if not massively confused pathos of a sexist gendered society are just as politically confused.
Have your ops, suck up to the medical establisment, just quit expecting 'cis' (wtf does that even mean) people to give a fuck on a political level.
Dec 19 2008 20:54
#93
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I suppose our debate comes down to whether the desire to have more typical hormone levels and more typical sex organs for the sex one identifies with represents false consciousness, represents self-actualization, or can represent either one, depending on the circumstances.
Well, I wouldn't call it false consciousness - I'd never use that term. What I think is interesting is how we decide what 'makes' gender, and if we have a critique of it and where it comes from, how we should approach the politics of it being consciously 'made' in various ways. so from my perspective that would mean questioning whether there is a physiologically gendered 'self' which can be 'actualised' through a surgical transition or hormone therapy as part of that process.
good stuff.
were you on the boards when the last transphobia accusations got thrown around, twas hilarious.