Do gay women accept male to female transgendered people as "real" women?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was talking about group attitudes the other day with a gay female friend who told me that most gay women, regardless of how progressive they consider themselves, are not all onboard with the notion of accepting transgendered men as “real” women regardless of how extensive the gender modification is.

This surprised me as I would have imagined that gay women, being subject to discrimination themselves, would have a more open attitude toward this.

Is this somewhat hard line “ovaries or out” attitude among gay women for real, or was my friend blowing smoke?

2

Your friend is unfortunatly right. Unfortunatly, even minority groups are not impervious to discrimination, and I have heard of lots of cases where the distinction has been made between “bio-women” and “mtf-women”. Obviously this leaves especially mtf-lesbians in rather a difficult and lonely situation.

I would however add the caveat that not all gay women discriminate (or feel uncomfortable with or whatever) against mtf-women, but shamefully, I can’t say that it is an uncommon problem. People suck.

3

This is a shameful aspect of my community. There are actually people out there who believe that MTF folk have some sort of “male privilege”. There are others who openly discriminate against MTF people - the michigan’s women’s (oh excuse me, wymyn’s) music festival makes a distinction between “real” women and male-born women.

… argh I can’t tell you how angry this makes me. This is one of the very few things that makes me unspeakably mad. I find it incredibly offensive that lesbians, a marginalised community themselves, have no problems discriminating against another group of people.

MTF lesbians, as Iteki pointed out, are particularly shunned. I have MTF friends who identify as lesbian. I have lesbian friends who are transitioning FTM. Ironically, there is an undercurrent in the lesbian community that is almost iconising the FTM and drag kings (no these are not the same thing, but the trend appears to be the same for both). Now THAT I find irksome. If we want to talk about lesbians doing bizarre stuff, let’s talk about lesbians iconising women who are becoming men!

Let me clarify: I have no problem with FTM or MTF people (insert obligatory “some of my best friends”… comment). I just see an irony in MTFs being shunned from the lesbian community whilst FTMs are being welcomed with open arms.

Never mind the other issue I have with it which is that lesbians are positively reinforcing action that encourages members of their population to become one of the group that receives this so-called “male privilege”. That attitude, in my mind, undoes a lot of what feminism has achieved. It tells me that underneath it all we believe that, as women, we are still not where we should be in the grand scheme of things.

I understand that those who transition from one gender to the other (or sit somewhere in between) do so for reasons that have nothing to do with male privilege or otherwise - my issue is with the way our society responds to it. Hang the MTF women! Idolise the FTM men!

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Max

4

This issue came up a few weeks back on a British lesbian message board I frequent. One of the posters was a transvestite, and some people were uncomfortable with him posting there. There were a couple of other problems with this person too, so the decision was made to ask him to leave. However, one of the other members is a post-op transexual, and nobody objected to her prescence. Also, at one of the bars we go to (one of the best known lesbian bars in London) a regular is a transexual who’s only just started therapy and looks quite manly.

I do know, however, that a few women there were against post-op transexuals being considered real women. I started a thread on this subject several months ago. The argument one woman made was that they had lived as men for many years, and enjoyed the advantages of being male. Personally I think that the disadvantage of being ‘in the wrong body’ would far outweigh any advantages you get from the erroneous gender.

Some lesbians seem to be uncomfortable with the idea of transexuals, even to the extent of preferring not to date them. I think this is unfair but stems mainly from ignorance of what causes transexualism, and can be remedied with education and better acquaintance with transexuals. It’s certainly hot hardened intolerance.

As I said this is a British board, and of the three people who said they didn’t think post-op TS women really counted as women, two were American. It seems to be more of a problem in the US than here. I know that the big women’s fair in Minnesota (?) once actually did gender test on the door, and I could never imagine that happening here.

Nah, just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you’re not human. We grew up in the same society as everyone else and learnt the same prejudices. Most homosexuals even have to contend with internalised homophobia. In some ways the discriminated-against minorites can become over-protective of their position, and resent anyone who blurs the boundaries.

However, I would not say that most gay women don’t accept transexuals. It is more that the majority of gay women don’t feel vested enough in the subject to argue against those few women who are intolerant of transexuals.

A post-op transexual woman would certainly be accepted by me and my group of lesbian friends though, so if anyone reading this fits that description and is in London, let me know. :slight_smile:

(I can’t link to the aformentioned discussions, as the server on which they were hosted died and the threads are no more).

5

Ah, should have previewed when writing such a long post. :rolleyes: I meant the Michigan Women’s Music Festival, thanks Maxxxie.

6

Back again, because this is a very, very interesting discussion for me. I actually have some mixed feelings on this issue, which is quite hard for me. I think that obviously instances such as people being banned from festivals etc is awful and wrong, all descrimination is.

However, where it gets a little confusing for me is in, for example, the issue of “women only spaces” for discussion or debate. The issue has come up once or twice during LGBT conferences, where there has been an mtf-lesbian on the conference.

Women-space discussions are set up for two main reasons, 1) Women discussing situations etc that are intensely personal and connected to being a woman, and 2) Since guys are to a greater extent socialised to “take space” women often get (deliberatly or inadvertantly) silenced in mixed group discussions.

In the second case, “new women” are feared to be still subject to the conditioning of their upbringing and will “take too much space”. If there is just one in a group of ten or whatever then that evens out, so it’s not an issue really imho, but it could possibly be in the future.

In the first case, there are certain experiences that an mtf-woman, no matter what other experiences they have had, simply have not gone through. For example discussions on how being raised as a female in our society has impacted ones life, or whatever, or how puberty influenced blahdiblah. In the same way as there are some things that I have not experienced and would not be able to discuss on a peer-basis with a transexual person, there are things that a transexual person cannot discuss on a peer-level with somone who is not. Does that make sense?

7

I’ve recently begun thinking more deeply on this subject myself, as a lesbian.

On just the shallow dating front, I’ve found I’m more likely to be attracted to a MtF person who looks distinctly more female than male. I have been either attracted or not attracted to MtF persons in the past at various stages of changing over. I don’t have any psychological problems with the concept of men or the male body, so if someone I was interested in had been born with some things wrong for her, I don’t think it would be a problem for me that she got them fixed.

Then again, if I met her before she had any changes done, I would probably have trouble enjoying intimate physical contact with her just because I’m not at all attracted to the male body. If this were the Love of my Life I wouldn’t mind waiting for her to finish the process and get things straightened out, though. The concept of having a change done doesn’t disgust me, any more than dating a woman who had corrective surgery because of a past injury or illness would disgust me.

But I think I’m a minority on that point… which is sad. I think a lot of lesbians do have issues with men, for a variety of reasons, and even a male body or formerly male lifestyle could be enough to trigger those issues.

8

This is so sad and disappointing to read…how an already marginalized group must create further divisions, how the oppressed will oppress others just to be a rung up on the ladder. Not to hijack, but the same thing happens to a lesser degree with women who identify as bisexuals; a lot of hatred based on the “going back to men” phenomenon or the ability to “pass” as straight.

:frowning:

9

It’s not sad and disappointing. I do think that most lesbians accept transexuals, at least in the UK. A minority speak out against them. Transexuals probably are more accepted, overall, by lesbians than straight people. Don’t be disheartened.

(I realise I’m generalising here, but it’s hard to discuss this subject without doing so; based on the discussions I’ve had with other lesbians on this very subject, I think I have a reasonably good idea of their views).

10

astro, a “transgendered man” is a female-to-male transsexual. The term you were looking for is “transgendered woman”.

You’ve made this mistake before (when you asked the same question, I might note), and were corrected for it then. Just remember, three times is enemy action.

The question you ask in the OP is also discussed in the abovelinked thread, as well as in this thread and this thread.

11

Sorry for the confusion KellyM I’ll endeavor to keep my description nomenclature more accurate in the future. As to the issue of similarity the questions outlined below are (IMO) two related, but substantially different questions with this OP sort of a followup (based on a conversation I had recently) to a tangential part of the first one. While I respect your correction what specific trigger point you set to consider something “enemy action” or not is not of any moment to me.

and

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12

To clarify: when I said ‘a minority speak out against them,’ I meant a ‘a minority of the tolerant lesbians speak out against the intolerant ones.’

13

The three threads I linked discussed the topic pretty well already. You might also look at Janice Raymond’s hideously vile book, The Transsexual Empire, which forms the grounding for a lot of the loathing of transsexual women that is found in radical feminist circles. The is a small but vocal group of lesbians who consider transsexuals to be some sort of spy or intruder, another (not quite as small) group that is warmly open and welcoming, and a much larger group, probably the majority, that accepts us as “sort of women but not really”.

14

That annoys me quite a bit. I’m a natal woman, bio woman, call it what you will, and I take up a lot of space. I have a dominant personality. I talk. It’s partly because of the way I am and partly because of the way I was raised. Yet I don’t have the pesky Y chromosome and pesky “ah, but she was raised to be dominant because she was raised male” excuse for keeping me out so all the shy girls can have their turn.

**

Oh, that makes sense, aye. There are some things about being treated as a girl by peers, teachers and relatives that a woman who was raised as a boy won’t have in common with other women. But then there are also a lot of differences between the ways that individual girls are raised. Some of us were raised to be traditionally feminine and some of us weren’t. And of course the hormonal and physical experiences of puberty are things that only hormonally “normal” natal women have in common. I can’t trade stories about starting one’s period with my MTF friend, but then I don’t trade period starting stories very often.

15

Tansu, while I obviously do not share my own period stories whenever that sort of thing comes up (unlike some transsexuals, I do not make up lies about my history), I don’t shy out of those conversations, either. However, sometimes menstrual bitch sessions depress me because my lack of menstruation also means that I can never get pregnant, which is a source of considerable disappointment on my part.

16

I do, personally. I know quite a few that don’t, though, and I think it’s disgraceful.

17

There’s a great scene in the movie Better than Chocolate where a transgendered lesbian does a song called “I’m Not a Fucking Drag Queen” at amateur night at a lesbian bar. Then she goes to use the bathroom. Another woman catches her in there. Angry words are exchanged ("Aren’t you in the wrong bathroom, sir??).

The other woman starts to beat her up. The main lesbian characters come in, find her, forcibly break up the fight, and force the woman to apologize. (“Sorry.” “Sorry, ma’am.” “Sorry, ma’am.”)

It’s a very well-done scene which I hope, but unfortunately don’t expect, is not representative of common experience.

18

In response to the above comment… everyone has had different experiences in their upbringing… it’s the ability to compare these different experiences which makes us thinking and feeling broad-minded humans.

I don’t think it’s fair to make a comparison between the upbringing and socialisation of MTF women and biomen, because MTF women are often discriminated against by their families if they’re out, and if they’re not out, most I know report feeling an extreme sense of shame or fear about their identity. This is hardly conducive to being encouraged to take up space.

That said, trans people are a marginalised minority in both society and women’s spaces… is it such a bad thing for us to take a little space? :wink:

19

I can see how not accepting them into the community is intolerant, but I don’t see how preferring not to date transsexuals is intolerant. I’m not intolerant if I prefer not to date blondes, or women of a certain body shape, etc. That would just indicate that I have certain personal tastes. The issue of personal taste is an entirely different one from that of group acceptance, methinks.