To your point, Jragon, I think some people are born into tough situations, and it’s like a pressure cooker, and it can be hard not to take advantage of any opportunity to get irate and take it out on someone.
That said, yes, sometimes the politics involved are just an excuse for fundamentally angry people to share their favorite emotion.
Una Persson, thanks, more good information!
It’s a odd thing re the divisions some make. I always wondered why the author of this bookwhich was a good read about how a gay woman passed as a man and her experiences swapping genders could then turn around and diss transsexual people as “conforming” vs taking the (assumedly more righteous) path of living androgenously as she does. You would think she would be sympathetic.
Just over forty years since Walter Carlos became Wendy Carlos. To me, that was the “cope with it” event. I read the Playboy interview, and coped with it.
It is, to me, a little daunting – and a little gratifying! – that transsexuals are specifically asking for social acceptance, whereas the gay rights movement was more about basic legal protection. Gays had to fight simply for the legal right to exist in this country, and, lately, for equal protection under the law. Transsexuals are asking for something more profound, and, also, something that can only be given voluntarily. It’s closer to the “Guess who’s coming to dinner” phase of race relations. “Would you want your sister to marry one?”
The law can protect against concrete discrimination, but can’t make a society accepting.
However, the campaign has a huge advantage, in that it doesn’t have to overcome laws against the very existence of transsexuals. No one (thank God!) is either prohibiting – or mandating! – sex reassignment surgery.
It’s a different struggle.
For me, one of the very few sticking points is athletics. I would be uncomfortable with a m>f getting a position in a women’s college basketball team. The skeletal and muscular differences would introduce an unfair advantage.
For a lot of other people, the issue of which bathroom to use is a big problem. (That one doesn’t bother me in the slightest! I grew up with sisters! What girls do in bathrooms was long ago de-mystified for me!)
I’m a gender-identity misfit myself.
We live in a world where different behaviors are expected of the different sexes, and where the same behavior may be viewed very differently depending on the sex of the person. In a hypothetical world where this was not true, there would be no gender. I’m not saying that such a world is possible, desirable, representative of how things really & truly are apart from sexist ideas that are stuck in our heads, I’m just saying that if there were no pattern of different expectations and beliefs about differences between the sexes, then by definition there would not exist a bunch of notions of what is “masculine” and what is “feminine”. The notion of someone being “a man trapped in a female body” would make no more sense than “a blue line with the color of a red line”. But that would be true as a consequence of there being no notion of a “man” aside from the biological plumbing itself.
Our world does have gender. We have a correlation in our heads between body morphology and sets of behaviors and related characteristics. It’s like having the notion that triangles are red, circles are blue. In a system where people thought that, you could meaningfully refer to “a triangle with the color of a circle” meaning a blue triangle, in defiance of expectations and convention and widespread beliefs about what colors triangles and circles are supposed to be.
SINCE our world has gender, even if you do not believe there are any real or valid diffs, it isn’t “crazy” for a person to hold as their internalized sense of self that they are of the gender that normatively exists in the other sex — a man in a woman’s body or a woman in a man’s body. Because they are constantly interacting with people who DO have gendered expectations. You may believe that all gendered expectations are wrong, but if they feel that the other set would much more accurately correspond with who and how they are as a person, it’s an entirely reasonable way to look at it.
I’ve used the term “genderqueer” to refer to myself in situations where it’s appropriate to do so. I don’t really think of myself as being female (despite the fact that I am physically). However, I suffer no serious dysphoria from it, and I have no realistic plans of transitioning or cross dressing; given my physique, I am not gonna pass as a male without surgery. And, really, it’s like…fine, physical body is female. Whatever. I’ll go with it, even if I think it’s wrong.
I don’t feel right appropriating the transgender label because I don’t have dysphoria; I have no first-hand experience with that struggle, and adopting the label trivializes what those individuals are going through. But putting me down as cisgender isn’t right either, because being female really does feel like playing a role. So…genderqueer.
I promise, I’m not trying to piss anyone off or make a political statement.
I doubt that this will ever be a huge issue. Transgender people are just not a huge percentage of the population. Even if they become widely accepted (which is what I hope for, but realistically think it won’t happen super quickly) then there still won’t be a flood of transgender women joining women’s athletic teams.
Even if there were huge numbers of transgender women wanting to join sports teams, it doesn’t mean that it’s unfair. Some people have natural athletic advantages. Venus and Serena Williams are cisgender women who have natural athletic advantages over most cisgender women and over many cisgender men. And just because someone was born a man doesn’t mean that they are athletically superior. If someone like Danny Devito transitioned from male to female, they wouldn’t be a top athlete for any sport.
If a naturally talented male transitioned to be a female and wanted to play sports, I would have no problem with it. She is a woman, she wants to play sports, she should be allowed. She might have some advantages over other players, but so do Venus and Serena Williams, and they are allowed to play.
There might be some issue that I’m not thinking of. But I think we should cross that bridge when we get to it. But until then, I think that any transgender woman who wants to play sports should be allowed.
I’m genderqueer. I’ve written about it in various places. I am not merely flexing my gender muscle to fuck with people. It has been THE central facet of my identity, the single most important element in helping me understand how I fit in amongst other people.
Perhaps I should start an “Ask the GenderQueer person” thread?
Una, do you think that genderqueer people are undermining the fight for transgender acceptance?
Do it! Put the link in here, I’m interested.
If you do start the thread I have these questions.
I’m a bit confused by your self description in the link provided. You identify mentally as a woman and being “one of the girls”, but on a physical sexual response operational level you are attracted to women physically more so than men. Why would you not simply consider yourself an effeminate heterosexual and let it go at that? The flip side is the old joke that you are a lesbian trapped in man’s body.
Are you or do you consider yourself fairly effeminate in your mannerisms? Would I think you are gay until you started eyeing some girls rear end?
I didn’t know that the Williamses were m>f. This seems to support my argument; two of the biggest stars in women’s tennis were born men. Their dominance is unfair, and… Well, I don’t want to say “should be banned,” but if I were a woman and had to face one of them, knowing that they have skeletal and musculature advantages of men, I’d be miffed.
(This is absolutely the first time I’d ever heard this of the Willamses. I always thought they were merely Amazonian women.)
No, I’m afraid this solidifies my concerns, rather than alleviating them.
Am I being whooshed? Or are you?
Are you confusing cis- with trans? Or do I not get the joke?
They are ciswomen. Built like trucks, but cis. (I think they’re hot tho!)
The sweet Williams sisters. They were like (link not entirely SFW) God reached into R. Crumb’s psycheand made his dreams come true.
It doesn’t matter to me; I’m not judging genderqueer people. What I was trying to say is that many do not understand them, and the ones I do know seem very militant and in-your-face. However, my sample size is very small.
I would read it; I’d like to learn more. Please note I don’t judge genderqueer folks; I admitted that many in the community (which actually includes me) don’t understand some of them. I guess I don’t understand my specific friends because they are so “in your face.”
With respect, Vincent doesn’t inhabit the standard, heteronormative world most of us do.
Because their experience is even more difficult for Society at large to cope with, it can lead to problems understanding transgender people. Serious problems, actually.
Should they stop, stay hidden, feel guilty, or feel less proud of who they are? NO. They are who they are and I support my genderqueer brothers and sisters.
Edited: they are so in your face about wanting to rile up Society in general and cisgender people in specific, wanting to cause controvery, wanting to cause problems. They will wear full male dress and go into a women’s room on purpose to see the reaction (almost never going into the men’s dressed female…). To me, this is really hard to understand.
