If anyone recalls the Hemlock fiasco with a transgender then you’ll also remember that such statements as above (and their negation) were being tossed around a bit.
But I think it is a damn good question. What makes a person a woman? Is there a general womanness a person can have? Of course, we may limit our discussion to biology alone, and say “If their DNA says they are a woman then they are a woman” but is that reasonable? After all, we don’t crack open people’s heads just to confirm they have a brain in there, we assume they are consicous and not robots or puppets from their behavior.
So what about a person who claims they are a woman? Are they required to have the requisite genes?
Tie in to Zoggie’s thread which made me want to go over this issue again. Z’s thread asks: gender roles still useful? I want to ask: so what’s a woman (or man, I just like talking about women so that’s my bias), anyway?
I, personally am a woman who thinks she should have been a man. That doesn’t mean I’m going to change who I am (physically or what have you). I’ll just be the best woman I can and try to enjoy the things only women can have - all the while yearning to pee standing up (yes, I know that’s weird).
Anyhoo, I’ve also been to gay bars with drag shows. Anyone of those drag queens is a woman to me when they’re dressed that way. RuPaul is a woman if she wants to be! I believe that society tries to tell people who or what they are too much. If someone says “I am a woman” or “I am a man” (except for weird cyberfreaks who wanna get down) then they are who they say they are. Period!
I’m somewhat reciprocal to mandielise, give or take a solid jolt of radical feminist dismissal of gender roles. That is to say, insofar as I’m stuck in a world that has gender roles, and where they are what they happen to be*, then “who I am” would play out a lot better and more comfortably if I were female. But like mandielise I’m not inclined towards surgical solutions and so I just make the best of it. (And intermittently wave a flag on behalf of “heterosexual sissyhood”).
Regarding Zoggie’s thread that erislover linked to, (which the hamsters won’t let me reload right now), a poster stated that there are places where it is illegal for that poster to use the public facilities. This, I presume, would be due to laws that conflate gender with sex in such a way that it would be illegal to enter the one marked “Women” if one has male parts and/or is wearing / exuding the gender trappings of "Men", and equally illegal to enter the one marked “Men” if one has female parts ***and/or is wearing / exuding the gender trappings of “Women”. Not to mention being in possession of “mixed parts”.
mandeliese, there are little things you can buy that supposedly make it possible for a woman to pee standing up.
On the broader question: we don’t yet know what makes a woman a woman or a man a man. The DNA test (XX = woman, XY = man) has the merit of being easy and obvious, but it hits some unfortunate complications: people whose chromosomes stubbornly refuse to be either XX or XY; people with XY chromosomes who nonetheless look exactly like women in every respect discoverable without an internal examination; and people who (for whatever reason; current best theory is prenatal exposure to feminizing or masculinzing substances at certain specific points in feta development) are convinced enough that they are in “incorrect” bodies to seek to alter their bodies to more closely match what they believe is more correct. The simple DNA approach has to throw up its hands in defeat in the first case, in the second case yields a result that is contrary to all intuition, and in the third case yields a result that at the very least is unfairly inconvenient, if not downright harmful.
Remember, the simple solution is almost always wrong.
Actually, I find that the simplest solution is almost always the right one.
Also, I am inclined to believe that gender dysphoria results purely from that person’s experiences before I chalk it up to some supposedly “masculinizing substances” in utero. I’m no scientist, but I’m generally skeptical about the tendency to turn all matters of psychology into just a three-steps-removed biology problem.
Anyways, I think the problem stems from the fact that the word “gender” clearly means two different things. One of those things is biological, the other social (note that I don’t say “cultural”, I think gender is defined for each person by interpersonal relations.) The biological identity has the simple solution of testing DNA. I suppose the results can turn up “male”, “female”, or “ambiguous/other” if the XX or XY isn’t there. So that latter person isn’t really a known gender. The social gender is defined by how people relate to that person and what they consider that person. You might also say there is a
Insisting on combining the terms and allowing people to self-define their gender seems unnecessary. If you divide the terms, with no natural hierarchy to which form of the word “matters more”, then there’s no problem at all.
BTW, mandeliese, remember that most drag queens are simply performance artists. It’s about pageantry and expression. Only a few drag queens actually identify themselves as women internally, or strive to do so. While I’ve never been to a drag show, a former acquaintance of mine is now a drag queen and some of my friends have been to his show several times. From what they tell me, the idea is not that the drag queen is really pretending to be a biological woman or even identifying himself with that gender. It’s merely a genre of performance art that happens to involve a biological male, extravagant costuming that may or may not be considered “crossdressing”, and songs made famous by female performers. Long story short, not all drag queens are TGs, so they wouldn’t appreciate your considering them “women” on stage.
I appreciate your response, rexdart and will keep that in mind in the future. However, at the show I attended, I met one of the drag queens and explained how ignorant I was. She told me that when dressed in drag she’s a woman - she has a woman’s name, a woman’s clothes, a woman’s build, etc… However, after the show - or whenever she changes, she is once again a “he.” Then again, that’s only one drag queen at one show at one club. I’d be interested to see if there are any drag queens here who feel the same or differently?
That really just shows your ignorance more than anything. The “subbosedly masculinizing substance” is testosterone and it is a documented fact. The theory is that there can be not enough at the point when the brain’s gender is determined, but still enough to make the person look biologically the opposite of the brain.
KellyM, I’d like to respectfully disagree with you here, although I haven’t really made a decision about this, so everything you read here is me working out my opinions out loud.
IMO, XX or XY chromosomes is an excellent way to determine whether or not someone is a man or a woman (and not to nitpick, but I was under the impression that femine and masculine were gender terms, not sex terms, so talking about feminizing and masculinizing in terms of sex seems incongruous).
I think you can be a man, woman, or other, with people with appropriate chromosome pairs classified as such, and those whose “chromosomes stubbornly refuse to be either XX or XY” fall into the “other” category. As far as surgery and other techniques to change one’s sex, I think that just makes one a man with female parts, or vice versa. (an appology for the following bizarre and possibly inappropriate analogy) I might really want to be a pony, and I imagine that in the next 200 years it might be possible to change my body medically so that I resemble almost exactly a pony. I still would not be a pony, IMO, but a human that looks like a pony.
I in no means am trying to imply that there is anything wrong with having one’s sex changed, but just feel that just wanting to be a woman does not make me one (if that were the case), and neither does having my sex organs removed and replaced. Again, this is IMO, and I stand ready to have my barely-formed ideas challenged.
RexDart and Eonwe, it’s very hard for me to respectfully disagree with someone who is insisting that my entire life is a self-deceptive fantasy. My penis does not make me a man, no matter how many times you insist that it does, and I will disagree with you most disagreeably if you persist in trying to force that label on me.
RexDart, there is evidence that in-utero exposure to feminizing agents (DES, DDT, and others) can cause feminizing effects in brain structure that lead to transsexualism. I don’t have links at hand, but I believe if you hunt around the boards for related threads on these topics you’ll find some of the references. There is no support, and in fact negative support, for your contention, including one celebrated (or bemoaned, depending on your point of view) case of a person born with male chromosomes and ambiguous genitalia who was “forced female” shortly after birth and who transitioned back to male in adulthood. If your position was correct, this individual should have been female because he was raised female. This belief, common in the 70s and 80s and championed by Dr. John Money and the source of great pain for the 1% or so of newborns whose sexual characteristics are surgically altered prior to their first birthday, is now generally discredited by people who actually study these things. In short, your understanding is outdated and, quite plainly, wrong. Not to mention harmful.
EonweThere are actually at least seven recognized different indicia of gender, ranging from chromosonal sex through to individual self-image. While in most people most of them are congruent with one other, there are plenty of people where there are variances. Some of them can be changed surgically. As of yet, there is no way to change chromosomal sex. More interestingly, there is no way to change individual self-image. Letting chromosomes be the only thing you look out denies many people of their individuality. Zen Buddhism has a belief that to name something is to do violence to it; in this case, I believe this belief to have quite a bit of merit.
Wow, I’m flattered. My thread has a little sibling.
I’ve never known what made someone male or female. Being female myself, I know I’d feel wrong if I had been born male, but I don’t know why.
It is a good question. You can list the traits that men typically have and the traits women typically have, but there are usually individuals who don’t always fit the mold. In some respects, I don’t feel typical- I definitely don’t want to settle down, have children, etc. But I’m still female. And someone born with XY chromsomes and a penis who gets a sex change and has mentally always felt like they were a woman should be considered female, too. I think it’s a very different from wanting to be an animal, like a pony or a tiger, and then changing yourself to look like that animal. In a sex change, you’re not changing to another species, but to another sex. It’s more than someone who wants to look like a pony. It’s someone who thinks in a different way, and it’s not just wanting to be a woman and trying to look like one. I think the mental aspect to sex/gender is crucial.
I’ve been curious about the legal implications of redefining gender. I mean, let’s assume the Violence Against Women Act of 1996 were still in effect (SCotUS declared it an unconstitutional expansion of Congressional powers under the commcere clause), or you have a similar state law. Could a man claim protection under the law if he declared himself a “woman”? And how far would he have to be in transition: would it have to be a transsexual, or could a pre-operative gain the protection, or a pre-operative who decided to hang onto his…unit? Or what about one who just didn’t happen to be wearing his female garb while attacked?
Trust me; the courtroom is where this debate is going to arise the most. There was a big case about this in Kansas a few months back; that state’s Supreme Court ruled that a MtoF transsexual was not a “woman” for purposes of the state’s intestacy laws, meaning he/she couldn’t inherit his/her husband’s property. I dunno if it has (or can be) appealed to SCotUS.
ResIpsaLoquitor, more accurately, Kansas held that the individual in question had failed to successfully change her legal sex when she amended her birth certificate under (IIRC) Wisconsin law. Wisconsin considers her a woman. Kansas, a man. Gotta love our legal system.
To all that doubt my speculation, which is all I represented it to be, that TG was purely psychological in origin, let me expound upon my thinking.
TGs tend to have not just the desire to become physically women, or the identity as physical women, but something more. They have the desire to take on the social role of women, to be seen as women with all that means in today’s society. They enjoy the trappings (accoutrements, I suppose, to lose the connotation) of the gender. This can’t be biological, I don’t think there’s a chemical that can make someone have the more intricate desires about sexuality that many TGs have. These desires have alot to do with how they are perceived by peers, not just the biological attributes of gender. How do these come to pass with just a chemical? It seems it must be experiential, at least for some of these desires.
And I fail to see how it is harmful, KellyM. I don’t need to go into the personal history of friends I’ve had, experiences of mine, but suffice to say that I don’t think that viewpoint is even offensive to TGs. All I assert is that “gender” should be split into multiple meanings, the biological and social, maybe the internal psychological as well. That’s pretty liberating for TGs, IMHO, and it doesn’t require a postmodern linguistic reworking of one of the foundations of our language to accomplish that goal.
Why can’t that be biological? Perhaps it’s that biologically they feel female and the fact that they are denied that that makes them want that role even more. Normally, if you’re female, you take it for granted, but if you were denied the chance to have a female body, you might feel you had to compensate to be recognized.
Out of curiosity, what experiences might make someone TG?
RexDart, your generalization of transgenders is offbase. I am not all that interested in the “trappings” of womanhood. I work in a male-dominated profession, I don’t like to wear makeup (I’d wear jeans and a t-shirt if our dress code permitted it), etc. etc. However, I am, none the less, a woman.
So your conclusions may be a vaguely accurate generalization of limited set of transgendered people you know, but they are not an accurate generalization of transsexuals. And in fact your inaccurate generalization is – again – harmful to transsexuals, especially when it is held by physicians, lawmakers, and others in a position to force decisions on others.
KellyM, I’m not going to let you get away with accusing me of something, that my viewpoint is harmful, without providing examples. (And please do not simply use that first sentence to launch onto your examples, I have more to come in this post.) I quite clearly stated that, after dividing the meanings of “gender”, none should be given any hierarchical preference. Biological gender should be given no preference legally over any of the other meanings of gender. I don’t see how the law should even be a part of gender. Certain issues have arisen that are gender-specific, like abortion, but that is a case of reproductive gender only. Since I am soon to be a lawyer, apparently you count me among that population of people in whom it is harmful for the belief to be held that TG is psychological.
Let me expound, once again, and note that when I say it is psychological I am not asserting that it is a dysfunction that “must be cured.” I have no interest in doing that, and if your hangup about people with my belief stems from encounters with people who want TG “treated and cured” by psychiatrists, let me assure you that I am not such an individual. I do not appreciate words being forced into my mouth just because some of the people who hold a similiar final viewpoint (using different reasoning) assert some corollary positions.
TG and TS are totally different people. You can’t take the statement that I made about TGs and call it unfair to TS, because I didn’t address TS did I? TS obviously have a bigger thing going on in their heads, they had “The Operation”. TGs have an identity issue that expresses itself with a desired identity that exceeds what mere biology could produce.
Also, remember that the “trappings” of womanhood go beyond dress code and appearance. There is a social relationship position held by women. There are alot of issues that could be brought forth at this point, but suffice to say this: there are desires in TG people that relate to issues other than biological gender identity. When a man says “I feel like I should have been born a woman”, he means more than just “I should have had a uterus and Fallopian tubes.” Agree with that, and you’ve agreed that mere biology cannot explain the TG phenomenon.