Slaves were useful too, but that doesn’t mean they had it easy.
Trans people are just people and many–I would say most–people actually recognize this and behave accordingly. The ones that mistreat them stand out and thus it may seem that they are in the majority, but we can’t really know I suppose.
Until very recently, trans people could simply blend. The idea was so out there that people simply thought you were a mannish woman - or an effeminate man. If people thought anything at all. Billy Tipton had several wives (none legally, but several women called themselves Mrs. Tipton - only one suspected Billy had been born female). Albert Cashiers lived out his entire life as a man, getting a Civil War veterans pension (even once the government discovered he was not what he seemed - they deemed he did fight, bravely, during the war and was entitled to his pension.)
What was under your clothes was so firmly no one’s business that it was really no one’s business. And the fact that clothing was so very not revealing until fairly recently and that you could move into a new town making up a new name made claiming a new identity fairly easy. Of course, it meant cutting your ties and creating a new identity (although Billy Tipton kept some of his pre-transition contacts, if I recall - he stayed in touch with family and friends).
As the twentieth century progressed, it became much harder to reinvent yourself - whether that was being an unmarried mother and presenting yourself in a new town as a widow, or changing gender, or changing ethnicity like my great grandparents did that the turn of the 20th century. And it seen, I think, as less necessary to - you shouldn’t HAVE to lie about your gender identity, your sexual preference, your race, your class, your marital status, your religion.
What? Transmen can pass fairly easily, sure. I’ve only ever met one transman who I could see was born XX. But transwomen? I cannot think you are talking about us when you say this. Believe me, most of us want nothing more than to pass and never be outed by a large frame, tall height, deep voice, etc.
IME less than 1 in 5 transwomen who transitioned after the age of 40 will ever be able to pass 90% of the time. If you count the 20-40 group, you might get double. The only reason I pass so well is my body never made testosterone at anything near a normal level; I’m intersex.
FTR, the first law banning crossdressing in the US was passed in 1848.
So you DO have a superpower!
Hmm, maybe I know transmen who haven’t fully transitioned. I struggle not to use the wrong pronoun for at least three transmen. That would be most of the transmen i know.
Crossdressing is NOT being transsexual. As you well know. And while those laws were probably used to punish transsexuals, they were more likely to target women who wore pants - you know, those women who had it so good back in 1848.
A distinction, I am sure, which was foremost in the minds of the people who wrote this law in the middle of the 19th century.
I’m sure they were often used to target cisgendered women who just wanted to dress comfortably. But they were also used - and specifically written to include - men wearing dresses. Which undercuts your ludicrous assertion that “until recently” trans people could just pass, because no one could imagine a person dressing like the opposite gender. Not only could they imagine it, it was happening often enough that they decided they needed to write laws against it.
Precisely, and I find Anamen’s implication to be offensive.
What a shock.
What I don’t understand, AnaMen, is that earlier you seemed to acknowledge that men generally have a slight advantage, at least in some aspects of life. Women often find themselves at a disadvantage. Why is it difficult to believe that a transwoman would have the same disadvantage as many ciswomen, PLUS unique challenges related to transitioning and passing in society?
Can you provide cites? I’d be interested in the pre-WWII trans woman experience. I’ve only come across trans men (which has something to do with my own academic interest in women’s history - the idea that women chose to become men because it gave them more freedom - not because they felt gender missassigned - was a path - although though modern eyes, Billy Tipton and Albert Cashiers certainly both seem to be trans rather than escaping the restrictions of women. Unlike, say Sarah Edmonds who returned to her female identity after the war (and took a male identity to immigrate to the U.S. and get a job, she had been living as a man for some time before the war began - she seems to be much more a case of a short term switch in order to get independence than someone who today would identify as transgendered).
Slight? No, huge.
I don’t know why you think I’ve denied what you said. I’m not interested in non-trans women winning this Oppression event. If I were, I might point out the different message trans women received since birth or the fact that they can pass for male, and thus have an option. We all have unique challenges and should respect each other’s, not compete to determine whose is worse.
Good grief; what is wrong with you?
I’m impressed that you can see chromosomes sans microscope. This is not a normal human ability.
The fact that I’m different from you doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with either of us.
It was also a handy way to exclude women from many professions, or at least make working in those professions much more difficult. That may not have been the foremost thought in the minds of those passing those laws (I suspect Biblical prohibitions on cross-dressing was a prime motivator) but that’s one of the effects.
I’m not sure anyone other than you in this thread is seeing it as some sort of contest.
What “different message”? That they’re wrong, they’re not who they think they are, they’re crazy, they’re sick, they’re perverted…? I have an internet friend from another message board whose own mother tried to beat her to death with a shovel, landing her in the hospital and leaving her permanently scarred, because she felt it better to beat her own child to death than have “her boy” live as a girl. Nor is that the only such story of over-the-top violence I’ve heard.
It’s like saying homosexual men have nothing to complain about, if they just shut up and play the part of a heterosexual guy they can have all the male privilege they can handle and more. Sorry, no, it’s not that easy.
And, newflash - a lot of the younger, fully transitioned transwomen are NOT going to be able to pass as a normal male. Or, at least no more so than ciswomen I can. That’s sort of the point of the hormones and surgery, and with this being done at younger ages, often with a puberty-blocker prior to that, no, they’re going to be able to pass as a guy simply by changing their clothes.
Something which, perhaps, you should take more to heart yourself.
A subtext in this conversation seems to be the notion by AnaMen that trans women are dressing in a very identifiably feminine way, not so much because they are under constant threat of physical assault going about their workaday lives, but because *that * presentation and everything involved in maintaining it is *really *the primary goal in transitioning. Specifically to be able to take on the essential aspect of being very feminine via dress, hair, makeup and mannerisms and that the body modification part of the transitioning process to achieve that presentation is almost secondary in importance. Her question is why can’t trans people also step away from the oppression inherent in feminine clothing and presentation expectations.
The main response to Anamen’s questioning of why the obsessive focus on clothing etc. if we’re getting past rigid, oppressing gender role expectations is “Well they have to do that not to get killed!”. AnaMen assumes that if you’re not doing sex work or hanging out in dangerous bars, but simply going about your workaday life the chances of this happening are relatively slim, so it’s kind of a strawman and not really all that explanatory.
As a thought experiment if you had a magic wand and could transition anyone from one sex to another re what they would have been if the chromosomes had aligned the other way in utero, but they had to dress like AnaMen sans makeup and gender neutral in appearance. They would physically be cis-women, with female frames and faces, but they could not dress in feminine clothes, use makeup, or “present” as stereotypically feminine in dress, hair styling or appearance. They would effectively look like a somewhat butchy, but identifiably female woman in dress and presentation. The magic that physically transitioned you does not allow you to deviate from this gender neutral presentation.
If the choice was be a cis-woman with no ability to take on feminine presentation attributes or be a cis-man who could transition and do as he pleased re dress and manner which choice would most people faced with a M-F transition choice make?
Is the clothing aspect that AmaMen objects to that important or not? Would they trade a little back dress for real ovaries?