Sex is Not Gender

[Amelia Pond]

Sex is Not Gender
ELIZABETH HUNGERFORD, AUGUST 2, 2013

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/02/sex-is-not-gender/

Samantha Allen's article, "Counterpunch and the War on Transgender People," published in the Jacobin on July 10, 2013 and then republished on Salon the next day under the title "The hate group masquerading as feminists," contains many emotionally-charged adjectives and strongly-worded assertions, but it is remarkably short on analysis and understanding. There is no war. As a gender critical feminist and an attorney, I have been analyzing the legal and medical conflation of gender with sex for years. The articles authored by Julian Vigo and published in CounterPunch last month are not "reactionary" or demonizing of trans people, as Jacobin's editorial staff erroneously believes...

Allen actually calls for more people to recognize radical feminists as a hate group and then pointedly adopts the term Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) to refer to them throughout the article. Make no mistake, this is a slur. TERF is not meant to be explanatory, but insulting. These characterizations are hyperbolic, misleading, and ultimately defamatory. They do nothing but escalate the vitriol and fail to advance the conversation in any way.

[MadeleineG]

The claim that homosexuality is not a condition is a suspension of disbelief in contemporary neuroscience. Condition does not imply error.

The author discusses the removal of homosexuality from the DSM while making no mention of the definitional refinements in gender diagnoses in DSM-V. How are these processes not parallel?

What is truly conservative is an unduly restrictive attitude towards expression. I disagree with the author's reference to the outmoded "wrong body" paradigm. Echoing the thoughts of others here, I don't have the wrong body, I have an body I fail to identify with. I also have a specific set of target indicators that I do identify with but that are not currently present. In this light, I don't see transition as a corrective process, but as a progressive one. Education, not treatment. For me, becoming female is more akin to learning a remedial skill that I missed in school than having a wart removed.

Maddy