I feel we have a predominantly modern Anglo-American understanding of transsexualism around here. The familiar narrative going back to Harry Benjamin-- i.e., I'm a woman, I'm not a man, because I have the gender identity of a woman, my body needs to be adjusted to become as much of a female body as possible, and I fully assimilate into the identity of a woman in society. My sexuality might be heterosexual, or bisexual, or lesbian, just like any other woman.

This is a relatively new construction of gender identity in a world where transgender has existed for many thousands of years, in all kinds of cultures. Once we step outside of our familiar culture, and consider how we'd be understood by non-Anglo-American cultures, especially non-Western ones, the above not a given, it may even be quite alien to other people's sensibilities.

For example, the concept that a transsexual woman can be lesbian is hard for many people to grasp intuitively. In many other cultures, a trans woman is considered a subset of gay male, and as such is assumed to be a sex object for men exclusively. From that perspective, it can be hard to see her as a woman just like other women, especially one who might want to have sex with women, or to have no sex life at all, anything that doesn't make her a sex object for men. This is what I see especially in more intensely patriarchal cultures like Latino or Arab. The assumption seems to be, why would you take on a female role in life, if not to attract macho men and give yourselves to them sexually? As if that's what it's all about.

I keep noticing that the most boy-crazy trans women tend to originate from non-Anglo-American cultures, like the Pakistani transsexual lady I heard in a panel discussion recently, when asked what she likes about being trans, she grinned and said "I get lots of BOYS." Along with this, I can't think of any examples of lesbian transsexual women except from within contemporary Anglo-American culture.

Another example: I've noticed that from an African-American cultural perspective, men can be very vocally resistant to my identification as a woman at all. I've been in many arguments where they try to tell me I'm a man and if I say I'm a woman they treat me like I'm crazy.

Then there's the well-known example of hijras in South Asia, who are classified as non-men, non-women, "third gender," even though they live as women, get SRS, and speak of themselves in the feminine grammatical gender-- they're still not accepted as really women the way we Yanks expect to be. There are many more such examples from non-Western cultures in which we are not considered women; we're taken to be "third gender" or "two-spirit" or just ultra-->-bleeped-<-gy gay men, but not women in the way that we understand it.

Reading studies like Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations by Serena Nanda shows me how unusual it is, among world cultures, for us to claim full womanhood. Which raises uncomfortable questions for me-- like how would a transsexual dyke like me get by in a world where no one accepts that I could be a dyke, that I must automatically be assumed to be doing this to attract men? Would I exist at all? I don't know what I would do in that situation. So is the current flourishing of transsexual women in our culture who assert ourselves as women for the sake of being women and not male playthings the result of recent Anglo-American social constructions of what women can be? Without which we could not have existed? Or am I wrong, are there any possibilities of transsexual women existing purely as women (and possibly lesbian) in non-Western cultures? Is it only the development of HRT and full SRS in 20th-century Western Europe and America that allowed us to conceive of being who we are? Are we just an invention of Harry Benjamin?

maybe i misunderstood a little bit but even in the west most people would be surprised or confused by homosexual transsexuals. i came out & started transitioning when i was 15 & my family was very supportive but were surprised when they met some gay transsexuals at a support group and they said if i was lesbian they wouldnt want to help finance my transition because theyd consider it a waste. even on oprah i remember she interviewed a transsexual who was with another woman and oprah was surprised and asked why get the sex change if she will just be with a woman. of course to people who are in the community it's no big deal but most people who don't know much research about transgender people will be surprised at gay transsexuals and wonder why bother.

the black men you mentioned may not have considered you a woman but i think there's an equal amount of white men who feel the same. my dad, grandparents, ex boyfriend and best friend are all black and had no trouble considering me female. i think who will consider you female or not doesnt have much to do with race, same with boy craziness. there are a lot of young white transsexual girls who are very boy crazy, i think it just happens that the ones you met weren't. i think the things you mentioned have more to do with an individual's personal beliefs than their race

your average person even in the west doesnt know about Henry Benjamin & may or may not consider us 100% female. the only group of people in the west who i know for sure consider us female is the transgender community and thats probably same all over the world.

Maybe it's just the demographics of where I live--the Washington, DC area, that I'm more likely to have these conversations with African-American individuals. I wasn't talking about race. Skin color doesn't determine beliefs about gender. I was thinking of culturally-based attitudes.

I doubt that beliefs about transsexualism are the same the whole world over. It has been part of many cultures for centuries, cultures that are much older than ours, with their own perspectives on gender. It wasn't acknowledged at all in America until quite recently in history, only about half a century now.

One problem I have with Serena Nanda's book Gender Diversity is her anti-transsexual attitude; based on her study of transgender in non-Western cultures, she believes that the modern Western form of transsexualism is not legitimate. For one thing, she denies the validity of FTM TS, because historically in the cultures she studied female-born persons were not allowed any freedom to cross gender boundaries. She believes that ->-bleeped-<- ought to transgress existing gender categories, so she is against transsexualism for allegedly reinforcing them.

I feel we have a predominantly modern Anglo-American understanding of transsexualism around here.

No doubt because most of us are Anglo-Americans.

Quote from: Hypatia on April 30, 2008, 10:36:45 PM
Maybe it's just the demographics of where I live--the Washington, DC area, that I'm more likely to have these conversations with African-American individuals. I wasn't talking about race. Skin color doesn't determine beliefs about gender. I was thinking of culturally-based attitudes.

I doubt that beliefs about transsexualism are the same the whole world over. It has been part of many cultures for centuries, cultures that are much older than ours, with their own perspectives on gender. It wasn't acknowledged at all in America until quite recently in history, only about half a century now.

One problem I have with Serena Nanda's book Gender Diversity is her anti-transsexual attitude; based on her study of transgender in non-Western cultures, she believes that the modern Western form of transsexualism is not legitimate. For one thing, she denies the validity of FTM TS, because historically in the cultures she studied female-born persons were not allowed any freedom to cross gender boundaries. She believes that ->-bleeped-<- ought to transgress existing gender categories, so she is against transsexualism for allegedly reinforcing them.

even culturally though i don't think the west sees ts as fully female compared to other cultures. i think the only culture where we're 100% considered female by almost everyone is our own.

QuoteThere are many more such examples from non-Western cultures in which we are not considered women; we're taken to be "third gender" or "two-spirit" or just ultra-->-bleeped-<-gy gay men, but not women in the way that we understand it.

'ultra-->-bleeped-<-gy gay men' pretty much sums up the way i think most people in the US view trans people, unless they are in the trans community themself or know someone who is. maybe its different where you live though

Quote from: lemon on April 30, 2008, 10:53:26 PM
even culturally though i don't think the west sees ts as fully female compared to other cultures. i think the only culture where we're 100% considered female by almost everyone is our own.

Our own happens to be rooted in 20th-century Anglo-American historical context. Our own beliefs about this are not found indigenously outside of this culture, but are a product of it.

Quote'ultra-->-bleeped-<-gy gay men' pretty much sums up the way i think most people in the US view trans people, unless they are in the trans community themself or know someone who is. maybe its different where you live though

Our beliefs are not entirely limited to just us-- we have lots of LGB and straight allies who support us in these beliefs too-- but I was talking about the definition of transsexualism as we understand it, which forms part of the larger context of modern Anglo culture, albeit not everyone in the larger culture as a whole understands us as we'd like to be understood.

Those who want to degrade us or attack us have been known to use this cultural contextual divide against us-- for example, J. Michael Bailey (in The Man Who Would Be Queen) racially characterized his idea of "true transsexuals"--those who had sexual orientation exclusively for men-- as mainly Latina and black, what he meant to imply by that, I don't know. But Bailey's racial attitude bothers me a lot so I need to question whether the underlying cultural basis influences how we understand transsexualism in relation to sexuality.

Our own happens to be rooted in 20th-century Anglo-American historical context. Our own beliefs about this are not found indigenously outside of this culture, but are a product of it.

What exactly is the other option here?  That we pull them out of the either, or just invent them full cloth?

Quote from: tekla on April 30, 2008, 11:29:22 PM
Our own happens to be rooted in 20th-century Anglo-American historical context. Our own beliefs about this are not found indigenously outside of this culture, but are a product of it.

What exactly is the other option here?  That we pull them out of the either, or just invent them full cloth?

I wasn't suggesting there ought to be any other option. I personally cannot think of transsexualism in any other way. But I've traveled around the world and I interact with other cultures a lot. When I place myself in a different cultural context--say if I travel to India, where the traditional definition of "woman" would exclude us--and introduce myself as a woman, what basis would there be for anyone there accepting me as such-- would my insistence upon my womanhood be taken as an arrogant Western cultural imperialism trying to override their indigenous traditions?

I too (as have several others here) lived abroad.  In my case, in both The Kingdom (Saudi Arabia) and Southeast Asia.  That they see things different is true.  That they are right, of course, is relevant, and that relevance is cultural.

Quote from: Hypatia on April 30, 2008, 11:26:23 PM
Our own happens to be rooted in 20th-century Anglo-American historical context. Our own beliefs about this are not found indigenously outside of this culture, but are a product of it.

by "our own community" i meant trans communities in general, not just the ones we have in the US. not all trans communities are rooted in 20th century anglo american historical context, there are trans communities all over the world, which is more what i was referring to.

Quote
Our beliefs are not entirely limited to just us-- we have lots of LGB and straight allies who support us in these beliefs too-- but I was talking about the definition of transsexualism as we understand it, which forms part of the larger context of modern Anglo culture, albeit not everyone in the larger culture as a whole understands us as we'd like to be understood.

but the larger culture as a whole is the more visible one & is the one that is seen by the rest of the world, which is why you might generalize some cultures. this conversation could just as easily happen somewhere in a trans community in latin america or asia: "in the US there are so many hate crimes towards trans people and there are many conservative & religious people, we are just viewed as ultra ->-bleeped-<-gy gay men there".  in south america, asia, africa, the USA, etc there are trans people & their allies who feel like they are truly women inside, but because the majority of people view them as "ultra ->-bleeped-<-gy gay men" etc, that is how some people think everyone in that culture perceives them, but i dont think thats true. theres no anglo american definition of transsexualism, every individual will have their own view & definition

Quote from: lemon on April 30, 2008, 10:24:17 PMeven in the west most people would be surprised or confused by homosexual transsexuals. i came out & started transitioning when i was 15 & my family was very supportive but were surprised when they met some gay transsexuals at a support group and they said if i was lesbian they wouldnt want to help finance my transition because theyd consider it a waste. even on oprah i remember she interviewed a transsexual who was with another woman and oprah was surprised and asked why get the sex change if she will just be with a woman. of course to people who are in the community it's no big deal but most people who don't know much research about transgender people will be surprised at gay transsexuals and wonder why bother.

Yeah, I've gotten the same reaction. And the more I think about this, the more it bothers me, on several levels. For one thing, the implicit heterosexualism-- the privileging of heterosexuality. By the same logic, they could question why are gay people gay at all-- it's like saying a vagina can exist only to accept a penis-- if a woman is born with a vagina, how dare she withhold it from men and reserve it only for other women? That's what this attitude implies. Also, it assumes that transsexualism is nothing but an expression of sexuality, instead of being an identity in its own right. As if the only possible motivation for transsexualism is to manifest a particular (privileged) form of sexuality.

Quote from: lemon on April 30, 2008, 11:59:01 PMthere are trans communities all over the world, which is more what i was referring to.

Of course, but they don't all  define it in the same way that modern American transsexuals do. To assume that the definition we use is the only one used by trans people around the world would be cultural imperialism.

Quotebut the larger culture as a whole is the more visible one & is the one that is seen by the rest of the world, which is why you might generalize some cultures. this conversation could just as easily happen somewhere in a trans community in latin america or asia: "in the US there are so many hate crimes towards trans people and there are many conservative & religious people, we are just viewed as ultra ->-bleeped-<-gy gay men there".  in south america, asia, africa, the USA, etc there are trans people & their allies who feel like they are truly women inside, but because the majority of people view them as "ultra ->-bleeped-<-gy gay men" etc, that is how some people think everyone in that culture perceives them, but i dont think thats true. theres no anglo american definition of transsexualism, every individual will have their own view & definition

That's something I would like to understand better-- because many reports I've read from other cultures, quoting the views of trans people interviewed there, don't always corroborate our own views. I am wondering if you could be right, that we all feel we're just women no matter where in the world we are, but then how to explain those who express different views of their gender identity-- maybe they feel constrained by an oppressive environment and unable to answer freely? I guess I'm saying that over here I don't really have a direct window into the self-understanding of trans people who grew up on the streets of São Paulo or Karachi, I can only read reports by researchers whose biases may or may not color the views of the trans people themselves. It's hard to know for sure given the information that's available from where I'm at.

Quote from: redfish on May 01, 2008, 12:07:31 AM
I'm unfortunately less versed in cultural differences than I would like to be, but is it accurate to even call people who lived before the modern designation of "transsexual" that very label?

I have to agree with that, in my opinion, it's the same as with the labels "gay" and "straight".
There sure have been many transsexuals or androgynous people in the past, but since we know that GID is pretty much self diagnosed, who are we the put people in boxes they didn't know would exist one day?

You have talked a lot about the anglo-american view on transsexuality, well, I can't say much to this since I'm not from America or England, but I will tell you about my cultural experiance (I'm from Austria, by the way, middle Europe, south of Germany):
I can't remember when I first learned about transsexuality, but as far as I can remember to me this term was never anything different than "a person that was born in the wrong body". It was never really connected to any kind of sexuality, but maybe that's because I was to young to really think about that.
I don't really know to what degree people here really accept transsexuals as "real" men or women, but I have never really heard that they would connect it with hyper-homosexuality, more like some kind of personality disorder meaning they think they are born with the wrong body (but of course everybody who is in their right mind sees that they are just confused/crazy).
The first time I heard about this hyper-homosexuality thing was on wikipedia I think, when I learned that some homosexuals view trans people as some kind of "traitors".

If you get the chance, check out Megan Sinnott's Toms and Dees.  It's about the Thai understanding of what we in the West would call lesbianism or FTM-transgender.  I loved it.

Lia

Please, do not confuse what a culture says and accepts about gender varient people with what those people themselves feel.  There have been people who have quietly lived as the opposite gender under the radar of their society since the beginning of time.

Quote from: genovais on May 04, 2008, 05:34:19 PM
If you get the chance, check out Megan Sinnott's Toms and Dees.  It's about the Thai understanding of what we in the West would call lesbianism or FTM-transgender.  I loved it.

Thank you so much for this reference, Lia. I'd like to read it. Could you summarize what it had to say about transgender and sexuality?

The reviewer at amazon.com seemed to think it was an interesting book, but he doesn't write clearly, so it was hard to tell what the book really says.

QuoteAnybody who has taken a women's studies or gay studies class will find it hard to understand how Thais fail to differentiate between sexual object choice, gender identity, and biological sex. In the US, the division between gays and transsexuals is very clear. One doesn't need the Empire State Building or Disneyland to see that. So it's hard not to look at this blind spot as kind old-school.

Not sure what the reviewer is getting at, he may be addressing the sorts of questions I was asking.

lemon's posts have given me a lot to think about and helped me look at this whole issue from a fresh perspective. Now I'm questioning the reports from other cultures about the gender identities of transsexuals, whether it's all really just filtered through the heavy transphobia that keeps them down-- wondering how the trans people themselves would define their own identities if free of coercion from their surrounding transphobic society. If they would understand themselves to be just women or men the way we do--if given the chance.

Posted on: May 04, 2008, 09:01:45 PM

---

Quote from: redfish on May 04, 2008, 05:40:21 PM
There's also the Western construction wherein sexual orientation was lumped in with general gender nonconformity issues under the umbrella "inversion".

Yeah, good old Magnus Hirschfeld. He also called us "->-bleeped-<-n" so he apparently couldn't tell the difference between transsexuals and crossdressers, let alone gays. He was gay as a jaybird, he meant well and did lots of important work toward gay liberation, which was all destroyed by the Nazis.

Anyway, Hirschfeld's model of gender identity is long obsolete. That's why I said our current understanding of our identities only goes back to Harry Benjamin (mid-20th century).

There's an autobiography of a gay CD from Germany, Ich Bin Meine Eigene Frau by Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (English translation published as I Am My Own Wife). Von Mahlsdorf came out in the Weimar era and somehow survived both the Nazi and the East German Communist periods despite being gayer than a jaybird. What I noticed about von Mahlsdorf's self-construction of hir own gender identity was maintaining self-identification as a gay man, while dressing as a woman the whole time. Like a living fossil from the era of Hirschfeld and the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. I wonder if someone like that came of age in present day Germany, if they wouldn't simply be a transsexual woman.

However, Lili Elbe, the first trans woman to receive SRS in the modern sense, was a lesbian. She was a patient of Dr. Hirschfeld, so I really have to wonder if her lesbianism didn't make him rethink his theories, just a little bit? Edit: I thought of Lili Elbe as a lesbian because she had been married to a woman before transition, but then I found out after her marriage was invalidated by the King of Denmark due to her female identity, she accepted a marriage proposal from a man, except that she died before that wedding could take place. So I really don't know about Lili, maybe she was bi.

I'd like to hear some perspective from our Hispanic transsexuals here-- including Chris, Jeannette, Pia, and Tink-- about the relationship between sexuality and transgender, the possibilities of being a gay FTM man or a lesbian MTF woman, in the Hispanic world. The individuals I named are all very assertive about being 100% heterosexual, but maybe that's just a coincidence. I don't think culture is or ought to be determinative about transsexual sexuality, there must be some counter-examples somewhere.

As for my personal hangups, I often find it hard being a dyke in a world made for heterosexuals, and the feeling of constant alienation grows overwhelming. Probably why I think about this stuff all the time.

Being Hispanic does not mean that you grew up in, or understand Hispanic culture.  And which Hispanic?  West Coast Mexican, New York Puerto Rican, or Miami Cuban?  Worlds of difference there.  My GF is Hispanic but has little to no understanding of any of that.  She grew up in an upper middle class midwest setting, her family has major money, and all the kids have college degrees. Only Mom speaks Spanish.  Her favorite band is Led Zep followed by Journey.  Not exactly that "Hispanic culture deal." 

I went to school with someone I'm still good friends with.  He is African-American.  His dad was a doctor, his mom was a lawyer.  At a party once someone asked him - a very white women - about Obama and Hillary saying  "So, what is the black perspective on this" and he answered, with his best Boston accent, "How the ->-bleeped-<- would I know b*itch, I went to Harvard."  And he did. 

So it goes.

Quote from: Hypatia on May 04, 2008, 09:22:00 PM

Quote from: genovais on May 04, 2008, 05:34:19 PM
If you get the chance, check out Megan Sinnott's Toms and Dees.  It's about the Thai understanding of what we in the West would call lesbianism or FTM-transgender.  I loved it.

Thank you so much for this reference, Lia. I'd like to read it. Could you summarize what it had to say about transgender and sexuality?

To answer your question, it's based on Dr. Sinnott's fieldwork in Thailand in the tom-dee community (if one can speak of a community).  Their concept of same-sex relationships is similar to the old Western framework of "gays" and "trade;" just like "gay" men (i.e. gender-variant men) would search out "trade" (what is now called heterosexual men) to sleep with, "toms" (Thai tomboyish females) search out "dees" (gender-normative Thai women) to get involved with.  Toms are regarded as something like men who have been bad in a previous life and punished by being reincarnated into the bodies of women.  Their essence is male, though they are legally female and mainly refer to themselves as women.  Yet, tom-dee relationships aren't really considered "lesbian," since toms are like a sort of man, so yeah... it's complicated.  An absolutely wonderful book though, and very accessible to general readers.  I was lucky enough to have both a class this semester where we read Toms and Dees (I'm getting my Masters in Anthopology) and another non-related class with Dr. Sinnott herself.  I'm a bit of a fangirl now.

Lia

Quoteit's like saying a vagina can exist only to accept a penis-- if a woman is born with a vagina, how dare she withhold it from men and reserve it only for other women? That's what this attitude implies.

I'm not sure its possible to leave the water and live if one is a fish. Lotsa people, probably everywhere, have difficulty imagining why a transsexual would want to be with someone of her, or his, same sex.

In fact, lotsa people probably agree with the major psychoanalytic bias that Bailey and Blanchard bring to their writings: that women are 'objects,' meant to be acted upon sexually, but to have no 'will to have sex,' that agency is suplied by males. Thus, to keep that basis in-line they pretty much MUST argue that TSes who practice as lesbians are truly men who have fetishized their own feminized bodies for the purpose of sexual gratification (->-bleeped-<-TS): they still have an 'agency' in their sexuality and, so, cannot be women.

OTH, the TSes who crave sexual objectification by males (HSTS) have a much lower, or non-existent, drive to agency. They wish to be passive, vulnerable, possessed objects. Although they are born with male genitalia, they do not have the agency-factor at work and so, to make the first distinction, B&B are 'forced' to make the second, that HSTS are men who are extremely 'gay' and desire objectification due to their lack of agency. From the psychoanalytic perspective that they operate with, B&B would both have to believe that there is some "problem" or "mental disorder" with both types.

Given their biases they cannot accept anything but a binary distinction. Anything else would break the paradigm and they'd have to form a new basis of practice. Besides, the HSTS quality gives Bailey an 'in' to working with trans people. His speciality is 'homosexuality.'

I think what we lose track of is the importance of those distinctions from the psychoanalytic schools. To think of anything except a distinct and exclusive binary is to break the theoretical model and cause the psychoanalysts to make a new paradigm. In most science this seems to be an awfully difficult way to go. Bohr, Schroedinger, Heisenburg and other early 'quantum' physicists were not easily accomodated to begin with. Their ideas were not 'practical' and could not be used to further weaponry and gadgetry that was possible to make at the time.

Even Einstein, who understood their work, could still not accept that 'God plays dice with the universe' even though his theories played directly toward the quantum understanding. He held on to the Newtonian clockwork universe as much as he could. There is a conservative element in most of our major academic and cultural work that makes it hard for 'breakthrough' theorizing to be accepted. 'Revolutions' tend to come from those that 'must' make them or from gadgetry that works and is 'practical.'

As to Redfish's notion about whether or not there were transsexuals before the terminology was made to accomodate them. Obviously there were, just as there were, just ss obviously, mountain gorillas long before westerners had the Linnean classification for them or had even seen them. 'New' species have a history before they are 'discovered' and classified.

How they viewed themselves? More difficult to imagine when we have no testament from the individuals themselves to indicate that. Although we do have some diaries and some reports and stories about transsexuals prior to the 1930s, Lili Elbe's is the first that would encompass the transsexual term as Hirschfeld had coined the term by 1923.

Societies and cultures tend toward being very exclusive and very constricting 'for the common good.' They are innately conservative as the world as defined can only be seen and acted on in prescribed ways without causing 'social problems.' Thus, one tends to swim in her own water and doesn't recognize always that another cultural perception might be coopted for her own personal good and would fit, in some ways, her own personal narrative better.

This is what you see, Hypatia, in your world travels. There is no overall transsexual culture as we are always embedded in the cultures we are born into.

An interesting topic and excellent replies with some good sources cited for reading some day? *smile* Especially Toms and Dees, Lia. Thanks.

N~   

 

Quote from: Nichole on May 05, 2008, 07:10:18 AM

Quoteit's like saying a vagina can exist only to accept a penis-- if a woman is born with a vagina, how dare she withhold it from men and reserve it only for other women? That's what this attitude implies.

I'm not sure its possible to leave the water and live if one is a fish. Lotsa people, probably everywhere, have difficulty imagining why a transsexual would want to be with someone of her, or his, same sex.

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."

Quote from: redfish on May 04, 2008, 10:01:56 PM
You should probably pick up The Transgender Studies Reader - there's a lot of articles about transsexuality and cultures in there.

Reading Foucault probably also wouldn't be such a terrible idea, if you have yet to do so.

Thank you!  I have added The Transgender Studies Reader by Susan Stryker to my reading list.

I have not read Michel Foucault, but we have studied him a bit in my Social Psychology class.