Something that’s been bugging me while trying to get a handle on the thread about transsexuals and sex-segregated locker rooms, that I think I have finally managed to articulate:
It is held as axiomatic by many people that gender is not a biologically real or essentialist characteristic. Genders are socially performed and fluid. A person can be somewhere on a sliding scale between entirely male and entirely female, a man can wear lipstick, a woman can play football, so on and so forth.
It is also held to be true by many people, who may or may not overlap with the above people, that transsexuals are people who are “really” one gender despite being born with the outward physical appearance of another gender. E.g., despite the petite frame, vagina, and lack of facial hair, Person X is, at some level of reality deeper than biological appearance, a man, and may or may not get surgery to match the outward appearance to that reality.
Are these two notions fully compatible? It seems that if one believes that there is no such thing as gender-appropriate appearance or behavior, then the born-woman could engage in any sort of masculine activity or styling and be satisfied with that. Insistence on matching some essential nature of maleness or on surgical changing to the “correct” sex doesn’t fully mesh with the first axiom about gender being socially constructed. At the core, does not the idea of transsexuality accept that gender roles are so physically real and so immutable that one must engage in all manner of outward signalling up to and including medical treatments on a massive scale in order to conform to one’s “real” gender?
Well, first you need to have a concept of gender. Spanish has done fine without such a concept so far (it’s being introduced now, and at least in Spain with very little success - attempts to talk about people in terms of “género” have so far only managed to give that word a new meaning: “sex”), perhaps because the “social expectations based on a person’s sexual characteristics” have varied so much from one area to another within Spain, since time immemorial and up to present times. And this brings me to the question, how would something that changes to much from location to location, time to time, culture to culture and language to language be either “biologically real” or “essential”?
For those of us who transition, it’s not just to fit in as our true genders. It’s for ourselves. I mean, can you imagine what it’d be like to be a guy with no dick? How frustrating and awful it feels? How invalidating? They don’t just want one because society thinks you need a dick to be a man, they want one because their brain tells them they should have one and that manifests as severe dysphoria with what they’ve actually got.
Straight up and treating this as non-rhetorical: I can’t. My masculinity, for me, is defined entirely and completely by my genitals. If I had different genitalia, I’d be a woman–and that idea doesn’t bother me at all.
It feels to me similar to saying, “Can you imagine what it’d be like to be an albino with dark skin?”
BUT: I believe that this is a failure of imagination on my part. I have no reason to think that my own experience of gender (i.e., I don’t much experience it) is correct or universal or anything, and I have plenty of reason to believe that other people experience their gender as core to who they are. So I’m able to believe simultaneously that gender is a socially-created thing, and that people experiencing gender dysphoria are experiencing a real phenomenon.
I can’t help you there. It’d be like trying to describe blue to someone born blind. That’s not a failure, some things are just ineffable. I’ve never found anything I feel fully explains all the feelings involved to my satisfaction. It’s not a failure on anyone’s part.
The guy with no dick thing though, I meant, say you lost it in an accident. You’d still have the urge to fuck someone the way you used to, right? You’d miss it even if you aren’t into fucking. You’d feel the difference, even with your eyes closed and even if no one else knew. That’s how it feels for trans men. Surgery and hormones aren’t only about what other people think, though that’s usually a part of it, it’s about feeling as close to right in your body as is possible with current medical and surgical techniques.
AIUI, transsexuals feel that their physical body is wrong. Their “self”, if you will, does not match the plumbing.
Current research backs up that concept. As we learn more about brains and about people with gender issues, the evidence points to a mismatch between the physical structure of the genitals and the physical structure of the brain.
One possibility would be to fix the brain to match the body - but we aren’t capable of doing that. And, since people’s sense of “self” matches the physical brain structure, changing the brain would quite conceivably cause more problems than it would resolve.
So the preferred methodology is to edit the body to match the brain, whether via hormones or surgery or whatever.
None of that has anything whatsoever to do with social and cultural constructs of gender, e.g., masculine vs. feminine behaviour, activities, styles, etc.
The fact that both situations use the word “gender” causes confusion, such as that in the OP. It’s a problem.
I think this is an excellent and provocative question.
My take on it is as follows:
Gender is socially defined; that process of defining is very much a PLURAL process — that is to say, Joe Jones and Sue Smith do not each define gender inside their own heads as if in a vacuum, but rather instead they do so in interaction with the culture of which they are a part.
Out of all the Joe Joneses and Sue Smiths of the world, there are some for whom it is true and correct that WHO THEY ARE is at odds with the gender expectations of the world around them but the plumbing, the bodies themselves, is not at issue, because FOR THEM gender as they apprehend it in their minds leaves room for them to be who they are (despite being at odds with expectations) and be physically the sex that they were born as. Then there are some for whom gender and plumbing are irreconcilable; WHO THEY ARE is not only at odds with other folks’ expectations but also cannot be apprehended in their minds as making sense in the bodies in which they were born.
In between, perhaps, are those who might accept that in some hypothetical alternative reality, where their biological sex would NOT have the social meaning it has to everyone around them that it does in this reality, who they are might NOT be at odds with the world’s gender expectations, but that’s not the world they get to live in.
That experience of being at odds with expectations can be incredibly frustrating and painful. It makes you want to change something, to resolve that constant tension. You can either change everyone else in the world (altering their deeply internalized sense of what sex and gender is all about) or you can change yourself. If you’re going to change yourself you may find that changing your own body is less traumatic and less of an assault upon the self than changing your own fundamental idea of who you ARE and/or what sex and gender means to you.
I identify as genderqueer, not transsexual. I don’t mean to speak for other people whose experiences differ.
I’m another one that doesn’t quite get it…but I think it’s because while I have accepted my biological gender, I don’t feel like it is an intrinsic property of me. I have always felt quite genderless. That is to say, I feel like I could wake up tomorrow with different anatomy and blend in “OK”. I would probably still do certain things “wrong”, but I would be able to learn how to do them “right” soon enough. Lord knows how much I have had to be coached in how to “act like a lady.” Most of it has stuck with me.
So the way I have worked it out in my head is this: there are three types of people. 1) Folks who feel okay with their label but don’t really care about it that much. 2) Folks who wear their label proudly and do care about genderness (both theirs and others), and 3) Folks who hate their label but still care about gender very much. Most people are going to be in the first and second groups. The last is going to be the transexual group. And I guess “genderqueer” people may fall into an additional group: they don’t care about their label because they don’t care about any labels. If I was a little more into identity stuff, I’d probably put myself in this category instead of the first one.
How that plays into genetics, I have no idea. But I do find it interesting that there have been some studies correlating trangenderism with certain “other” abnormalities. For instance, the 2D:4D finger-ratio (linked to prenatal androgen exposure) appears to be correlated not only with homosexuality and gender non-conformity, but also handedness, schizophrenia/autism spectrum risk, fertility, and personality traits.
Yes but…if you really didn’t care about labels, you’d just accept things the way they are. You’d be happy to wear a skirt and lipstick if that’s what everyone expected, or pants, or a kilt, or blue skin paint. People who intentionally violate gender norms have to care a lot about gender norms, because if they didn’t care they’d just do whatever was easiest, which is to go along with everyone else.
Personally, I’m happy being a man. It’s fucking awesome to be able to pee anywhere and not menstruate and to have some upper body strength so I can move a goddam rock when I need to, which is a couple times a year. On the other hand, I have zero interest in all sorts of manly things. I don’t want to be a woman, but if I was a woman I wouldn’t be horrified. I mean, I imagine I’d dress the same as I do now, have the same work I do now, be interested sexually in the same people I do now, follow the same pursuits I do now. I don’t do manly drag now, and I’d have no desire to do girly drag if I was a woman.
So that’s me. On the other hand, I know plenty of men and women who are heavily invested in manliness and womanliness. That’s them.
Shaving one’s legs and wearing pantyhose are not “easy” in any sense. Nowadays a woman will not be harrassed for foregoing either. At least by strangers.
A truly androgynous person goes with options that they find pleasing to themselves, regardless of the opinions of others. This is what I mean by “not caring”.
Just because a person doesn’t care to fit in doesn’t mean they have no personal tastes.
Maybe it’s my location and my particular social group, but here in the rainy Pacific Northwest among middle-class white people it would be hard to tell the men from the women by the clothes. I mean, some women wear highly gendered clothing that men wouldn’t be allowed to wear, but there’s a very very large overlap in what’s acceptable attire for men and women. A woman wearing jeans, t-shirt, flannel shirt and sneakers isn’t exactly going to set tongues wagging and the neighbors wondering what the parents did wrong.
I guess gendered dress does come up in “formal” occasions like weddings and funerals and bar mitzvahs. I’d hate to have to wear the getups that women are supposed to wear for that.
I think women have more leeway when it comes to dress. Still, even when everyone is dressed down, I still see women doing it that way and guys doing it this way. Guys and girls wearing skinny jeans aren’t wearing the same kind of skinny jeans. Girls wear t-shirts that fit a certain way, that look a certain way. You will see a girl wearing a guy’s shirt and “boyfriend” jeans, but I don’t think you’d see a lot of guys walking around in their girlfriend’s attire (at least not openly). Shoes actually seem to be more sexually dimorphic than they used to be, IMHO.
I guess we should also remember that gender is much more than clothes. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into it that we no doubt take for granted.
Not at all. A given person might enjoy baking, wearing makeup, playing football, building houses, teaching preschool, and hunting. If the person cares heavily about gender norms and is a woman, she might forgo football, construction, and hunting, whereas if he’s a man, he might forgo baking, makeup, and teaching. If the person doesn’t care about labels, he or she might do them all. Swap in your own gender norms for mine if you prefer.
I don’t think many people, outside of 1970s radicals, believe that gender is an entirely socially constructed thing. What is socially constructed is the meaning of gender. I think many, if not most people, have a strong internal sense of gender. But the significance of that sense is largely created through social interaction. You can “feel” male and female without that necessarily meaning you act in any particular way.
Elucidate please. Meaningless (gender neutral) as phrased. Of course there are certain characteristics that differentiate men from women – way beyond genitalia. That’s nature. Society has little to do with it.
Equality? All for it. Sameness? Not even within gender.
I’m with the OP. Either a transsexual is suffering from body dysmorphia or they place an absurd amount of emphasis on traditional stereotypes about men and women, to the point where a man thinking or enjoying stereotypically un-male things means they are not a man, and they have to hand in their penis. Neither of which makes their belief any more true than a Christian’s belief in God.
This is actually a fairly significant subject of debate within the broad feminist movement. Radical feminists (the ones who think everything comes down to patriarchy and tend to take fairly strict lines on matters sexual anyway) pretty much share the OP’s view. Unfortunately they tend to express this view in a manner that amounts to nothing less than hate speech against transgender individuals (especially trans women), which has poisoned the debate and made it near impossible to consider the OP’s issues rationally. For an interesting critique of this radfem position from one of their own, and an atypically calm discussion in the comments that follow, see this article.