What on earth is a transnerd? Did I miss something?
Thank you. It’s like people keep failing to appreciate the fact that there are a lot of bonafide, flesh-in-blood, lifelong-person-with-F-on-their-birth-certificate-having women do not “present as female”—which is just one more subjective determination we’re adding to our plates. Perhaps these women are fond of the masculine aesthetic. Perhaps they have PCOS and have decided to embrace their facial hair. Perhaps they just look naturally androgynous. Regardless of the reason, they are still women and they experience the world as people with a female reproductive system. People with this reproductive system are subject to a pattern of social and biological experiences that are unique to their sex class. Coming up with an all encompassing word for “people perceived as female” means some women will be left out, and that seems wrong to me.
Centering the female experience around our appearance is what I’m referencing when I say being a woman is not a costume. A trans woman could look indistinguishable to Taylor Swift, but the minute someone learns she is trans woman, she will not be subject to the same suite of assumptions and biases as a female would. The transwoman experience follows a different tradition than the female experience.
You have a point. And some really do seem to reduce it down to appearance: saying ‘the hardest thing about being a woman is choosing what to wear’ really illustrates how little Jenner knows about womanhood. Plus Pips Bunce ‘identifying as female’ on the days he wears a dress and wig (reinforcing gender roles and endorsing sexist dress codes - how progressive!) I’m still angry another poster told me I should be celebrating, when he literally took a woman’s place.
I’m also in tech and I know a couple of trans women. One of which I met before the transition and one I met after. But just based on their personality, I would not classify them as the same as the cis women I work with. The trans women still very much have a typically male personality and are essentially the same as their male counterparts other than for how they physically appear. For example, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, but both of these women have the typical male way of speaking where they dominate the conversation and drone and and on. They also have hobbies that are more typical with my male coworkers than female. And there are other things like that where I would describe them more like a male coworker who externally presents as a woman rather than as a female coworker. Even if they visually looked 100% like a typical woman supermodel, their personality was much more to the male side.
For these coworkers, I would not think that they should try to be a representative for something like “Women in STEM” since the issues they face in STEM are likely not similar to what cis women are facing. Certainly these trans women have issues they face, but it doesn’t seem like they are really facing the same issues that cis women do, especially when they are exhibiting the same behaviors that cis women are trying to overcome.
I just want to say good points are being made on both sides of the discussion.
But I think I need more help with understanding what’s considered “trans erasure” and what isn’t, and what’s effective communication and what isn’t. I’ve got some hypothetical exchanges that I’d like folks to weigh-in on.
Dialogue #1:
Detective: Can you describe the suspect?
Victim: Male, bout 6’5" tall, built like a linebacker with a beard. Wearing a t-shirt and jeans.
Detective: How do you know this person is a male? Do you know this for a fact?
Victim: Um…
Detective: I’m just going to say leave gender out of the report, if that’s all the same to you.
Dialogue #2:
Detective: Can you describe the suspect?
Victim: He was a big linebacker-looking guy, about 6’5" feet tall, with a beard.
Detective: You are using masculine pronoun. Why?
Victim: Because he looked like a man. He showed no visual signs of femaleness, biologically speaking, and he was dressed like a man. He acted very male-like. So I think it’s safe to say he is a man.
Detective: OK.
Dialogue #3:
Detective: Can you describe the suspect?
Victim: They were about 6’5" tall, with the build of a linebacker. They were wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Had a beard. No glitter, though.
Detective: Was this person a man or a woman?
Victim: I don’t know what to say to that. You see, they could be a cisman or they could be a transwoman or they could be gender fluid/nonbinary or intersex. They could be a ciswoman.
Detective: Is there any reason you think they could be anything other than a male?
Victim: I don’t know what you mean. What do males look like? Why does it matter? I don’t see gender.
I am guessing there are some who think that pegging criminal suspects by gender is regressive because it requires people to make guesses that could lead to misgendering (however slim the possibility). To that I would argue we don’t seem to have a problem pegging criminal suspects by race, despite race being a social construct and despite race having a big self-identification component. Personally, I’ve always had a problem hearing “Black male suspect” in the absence of more precise descriptors (“Light-skinned black male suspect”). But even with more precise descriptors, there’s a good chance of misclassifying a person racially. A person might identify as biracial. Is calling them a black person “biracial erasure”? Many Dominicans are offended if you call them “black” even though that’s how they are frequently pegged in the US. Should we would refrain from describing criminal suspects racially just to avoid throwing out a term that someone somewhere has a problem with, even though that term communicates “well enough” to 90% of the target audience?
Very often we are asked to describe someone based on their physical appearance. Gender/sex is usually the first thing our minds go to. “Be on the look-out for my delivery person. Bob’s a tall guy with an afro.” Is “guy” here not communicating something different than “lady” does, in a visual sense? If “man” and “woman” are landmines to be avoided, is “guy” and “lady” as well? If I describe Bob as a “guy” even though Bob identifies as a woman and prefers female pronouns, should I feel ashamed? Or is it acceptable for me to argue that “guy” is a great term to use since Bob’s presentation pings as “guy” to 90% of humanity and I want whomever I’m speaking to to have some visual representation of who they should be looking out for?
For folks who think using terms like “guy”, “lady”, “woman”, and “man” are words that should be avoided in casual conversation: If you hear other folks using these terms, are you prepared to correct them or question them, like the detective does in the first example? For instance, if my mother were to mention the race of a person who has wronged her ("I got into a fender-bender with this white woman this morning!), I might be like, “Mom, why are bringing race into the conversation? Come on now!” But I wouldn’t feel like “woman” was inappropriate here. Do you think it should be?
Aah, “Bobbi” was never like that. She was always a listener. And here, DnD and LARP is not a gendered hobby - if anything, it’s more female-skewing than male-skewing in Cape Town, and has been for decades. So “Bobbi” does not stand out on that front in our shared subculture.
Yes, that line is a classic example of someone treating womanhood as a costume.
This view is about as superficial as a drawing done by a 5 year-old of his family. Daddy is going be in pants with a hat on top of his head (even if in real life Daddy never wears hats) and Mommy is going to be in a dress with a pearly necklace (even if she wears pants as often as she wears dresses and she has never worn a string of pearls in her life). Where do kids pick up this imagery? They pick it up from TV, toys, and storybooks. The world tells you women are the people that look like bejeweled dress-wearers, so of course when you’re a child this informs your concept of what a woman actually is.
But adults should know better. Men are not defined by what they wear and how they act. Women aren’t defined that way either. Believing otherwise is sexism, plain and simple.
I don’t know, because I don’t think terms like “woman” should be avoided in casual conversation. I just disagree with you as to whom they should be applied, it seems. And if I accidentally misgender a trans-man or an effeminate cis- one by making assumptions that way, in my experience, I’ll be politely corrected and we’ll move on. I know this because it has happened several times. And yet my social experience is not some minefield fraught with verbal booby-traps.
It’s not accidental misgendering that my trans friends hate. It’s misgendering as psychological warfare.
I get how calling someone a pronoun they’ve asked you not to use is offensive, which is why I’ve never done that. But I’m not talking about that.
I’m talking about describing someone based on how they present with gendered terms. It seems to me like saying something “I saw a woman get hit by a car this morning!” is just as “trans erasuring” as saying “Women should get checked for cervical cancer”. After all, the person I saw get hit by a car might not be a woman, just like it’s possible to be in possession of a cervix and not be a woman. I’m not just concerned that “individuals with private part X” will become standard. I’m also concerned that if we normalize “individuals with private part X”, then we are implicitly saying there is something wrong with saying something like “I saw a woman get hit by a car this morning!” Twenty years from now, I don’t want to have endure lecturing from my nieces on how unenlightened I am for describing people in ways that presume their gender. “Auntie monstro, you should not call that person a ‘woman’ without know that’s how they identify! That’s offensive!” This is what I mean by words becoming “landmines”.
Here are a couple other things a trans woman is unlikely to face in the workplace if her trans status is known:
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Office rumors about slutting her way to the top of the organization. This is a misogynist trope that appeals to the belief that a) females routinely use their sexual desirability to wrestle power away from men and b) females lack the skills to get ahead on their own merit, because they are intellectually inferior.
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The perception that she’s a man-hater if she identifies as a lesbian. This is a misogynist trope that appeals to the belief that a) every woman is supposed to worship at the alter of the almighty penis and b) if she doesn’t worship it, then she’s uppity, defective and heretical, akin to a God-hating atheist. (Because she’s an intellectually inferior woman, she also doesn’t know what’s she really wants because she hasn’t met the right dick yet.)
The public treats trans women to a different set of expectations than they treat women, regardless of how closely they physically resemble each other. These expectations can be stigmatizing in their own unique way and deserve a spotlight of their own. By collapsing this under the “woman” storyline, trans erasure is more likely to occur.
Wow, that’s really surprising. The UK is just like America, those hobbies are very male dominated, especially DnD. Also very white. Are there also more women coding in startups down in SA?
In my experience, transwomen are more happy with the former because it can include them, and less with the latter because it excludes them. That doesn’t make the word “Woman” a landmine, it makes it contextual.
I too was up late, and I’m still on my first cup of coffee. But I didn’t say you called transwomen men. I said you’ve made it clear you believe that’s what they are. In this post, you were asked point blank “are transmen women?”
Transmen are females, females are women. You’ve stated in other posts that “woman” and “man” are biological descriptors, but you don’t refer to them as such out of respect. Which is great.
You said you’d be more comfortable with my transman friend receiving an award for outstanding woman in industry, than someone recently living as a woman but biologically male. We both agree he wouldn’t want it, but I imagine there’s someone out there who would happily go up in a full beard and 3 piece suit to accept the award.
I don’t think you’ve literally used the phrase “transwomen are men” but as I said, you’ve made it clear that as biological description, it’s accurate to consider them as men, or transmen as women.
I think part of the problem is as I said last night. I, and others, see female as a biological word, but woman may refer to someone biologically female or someone with a female gender identity. That’s why your conversation with Newgent seems irrelevant to me. There’s no question he’s biologically female. Since the words are interchangeable to you, why not ask him if he is comfortable being referred to as a woman. It just means adult female, right?
I don’t think you are tracking what @monstro is saying. Trans women might appreciate being referred to as a woman, but not a trans man or NB.
“I just saw woman get hit by car” might be a trans man.
It helped that it was driven here by the uni roleplaying society, not teenage boys clustered around comic book shops. That just wasn’t the Cape Town scene. So the people running cons and running LARPs were as likely to be women. And that kind of leadership trickles down.
Similar moves are afoot now with LGBT+ representation in the next generation of roleplayers. Lovely stuff.
Oh, it’s still very White, but not as much as the UK or USA, I gather, and better now than 25 years ago…
Not in general, but certainly in the kind of company I choose to work for. My company now is at around 60/40 split which makes for a very different company culture.
That’s including the transwoman on the woman side, you understand?
I found some more ‘transracialists’:
https://www.unilad.co.uk/featured/transracial-could-be-the-next-big-thing-in-2018/
Obviously it did not become the next big thing in 2018, but it’s interesting how much of the arguments against transracialism also apply to transgender:
Because it’s rude to hound someone over a question that I’m not particular interested in getting an answer to in the first place?
What prompted me to contact him was @AnnHedonia scolding me for calling him a female. Not a woman but rather the very thing that you’re saying codes as a biological term. I didn’t just ask him about this out of the blue; there was context behind it.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like folks are having a hard time tracking things in this conversation. Perhaps it’s the new platform, I dunno.
If it’s a transman or NB , IME they would correct and move on. Of course, my experience isn’t car wrecks, but I’ve had occasion to misgender someone at a party or a club. And they’ll just tell me their pronouns and we’ll have a drink and it’s sorted. Again, no minefield. Just moleholes, easily filled in.
Is the fundamental problem here that you and your sister just aren’t interacting with enough IRL transgender people, and only know what the media presents to you?
That’s why I italicized to me. The new platform is a bit weird in how it treats quotes, at least on my phone.
Sounds nice. I’d be a lot keener to play if it wasn’t so very male-dominated.
There’s few enough employees that that makes a difference?
My experience is more like @filmore’s, except I don’t think it’s a coincidence.