My Thoughts on Trans Women

http://jadehunter.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/my-thoughts-on-trans-women/
3/9/11

I started this blog on a note about trans women entering women's spaces and how their "rights" sometimes serve to undermine the things which make us women comfortable. For a while I really did not have very well formed opinions on the matter, but after reading more blogs of my peers and that which trans women write from many different angles, I have gone on to form a much more solid view of trans women as a whole and my issues with them.

First of all, I am not going to debate whether trans women are really women are not, but I stand with what I said in my first post here; if I get a "womanly" vibe (non-oppressive more or less) from a person and feel I can be open with them rather than feeling oppressed and in need of filtering myself somehow without fear of being mansplained, then what reason do I have to call out a woman as anything? If trans women are supposedly women, stop asserting it like men do and just be yourself. That is all you can do and if the person you are is someone I can feel a sisterly bond with, why fuss about with being exceptional as a trans woman?

Hi Natasha

I think it's a good advice, always be yourself.
I've always been myself and was presenting myself as every other woman.
But, nevertheless there were some people in the past trying to give me the idea that I was extraordinairy.
I didn't feel it that way and became tired of the discussions of being a real woman or not.
One of the issues were, but you can't give birth.
I had a neighbor who was very unlucky when the docters had to remove her uturus and ovaries.
She never had that discussions, she was a woman with back luck.
I didn't see the difference between us but others did.
So I think the position of exceptionalism is given by others, I don't feel special.

hugs
annette

I wonder how the writer would react to someone from another culture where people are a lot more abrupt, confrontational, self-opinionated and prejudiced? (South Asian village peasant woman for example) Would she consider this an oppressive male 'vibe', or just an example of a woman with a different cultural upbringing, who has had to struggle to be acknowleded to even exist. 
Sounds like yet another member of the  Americocentric, white, literary elite attempting to justify their position.

I am a human female, born with a medical condition in which my external genitals does not match my gender. As a female, I do not recognize any "cis- or trans-anything" unless we are talking  chemistry.

We have in many other threads discuss -to no end- what is to be a "woman" or a "girl." Beside the obvious medically definitions, which are based on external genitalia and genitals maturity, respectively, the definitions of "woman" and/or "girl" are but socio-cultural constructs. Thus, this definitions are but a personal choice.

I have attain a level of sophistication, education, emotional maturity, and financial independence, so that taken together allow me to respond and behave in any situation as a typical "American Lady." A "Lady" in my book is someone who never looses her "coolness", possess extreme "situational awareness," is witty, strong, self reliant, demonstrates a lot of compassion and empathy, is tolerant, shows integrity and honest with sensitivity and care....I can goo on and on and on but you get my drift. The same traits apply to males, and separate the men from the Gentlemen

Love,

Kate

Quote from: articleIf trans women are supposedly women, stop asserting it like men do and just be yourself.

Oh noes!  "Real" women can't be assertive.

And the stereotype merry-go-round just keeps a-turnin'

Quote from: VeryGnawty on March 13, 2011, 03:14:01 PM
Oh noes!  "Real" women can't be assertive.

And the stereotype marry-go-round just keeps a-turnin'

My reaction as well. That article was a whole load of bull.

In reverse, I guess FTM's that don't "man up" and who are obviously socialized as females are just women to her (and any cismale who has a very soft and feminine upbringing and behaviour as well for that matter). If they aren't women to her, she's being hypocritical.

I wonder if she would actually be more comfortable sharing showers with a fully transitioned shy and feminine FTM than an "assertive MTF".

It's sad enough as it is that cisfemales have to feel like they need to "become women" at all, just like it is sad that cismales have to feel like they have to "become men", the question is why a self proclaimed feminist would reinforce such gender roles so obsessively. Self-opression?

In fairness, I don't think her point is that trans women being assertive is in itself bad. (Disclaimer: What follows is my interpretation of what she said. I don't claim to know what she really meant.) She talks about kinds of assertiveness, as in, "If trans women are supposedly women, stop asserting it like men do and just be yourself." She is arguably in favor of women, cis or trans, being assertive, but from this and her followup post, "Gendered Socialisation and the Reality of Radical Feminist Goals", I gather that the heart of what she's talking about is male privilege. Namely, the affect male privilege has on trans women from their time living as men; there's a sense of entitlement we inevitably gain when going through the world with certain social privileges. The obvious example for most (white) people gendered male is expecting to have your opinions taken seriously or even heard at all.

Also at play here is the fact that we aren't talking about the same kind of gender. When a trans woman says, "I am a woman," that comes from self-knowledge. The womanhood Jade is talking about is the kind that develops through interacting in society while being gendered female, through socialization. It's not that she feels the need to become a woman; she's saying that the only way to be a woman is to become one, that womanhood doesn't exist outside of social contexts. So when she says trans women are men, she's not rejecting that self-knowledge; she's talking about the fact that trans women spend some part of their life being gendered male, and the longer they're gendered male, the longer they're socialized as male, the more they become men. And of course individual personality also affects how someone who's gendered male is treated, but even an effeminate gendered-male person receives some kind of male privilege. So when she talks about trans women "asserting [their gender] like men", she's not talking about inherent qualities. It has nothing to do with self-known gender. It's all socialization. She's taking exception, as I interpret it, to the colonizing assertiveness gendered-male people (usually white) are taught, to the fact that trans women who lived as men for however long, thus to her are men, suddenly say they're women, thus to her are saying that all the work she did to define what womanhood is to her was pointless because her idea of womanhood is less important than trans women's. That's why she says,

QuoteIf you really are a woman, then take the time to sit down and shut the f--k up for a while, take in your experiences of womanhood and cast all that past male socialisation aside while you do it. You do not know what it is like to be a woman until you live it, just as those of us who are FAAB people have no idea what our experience and idea of womanhood is going to be like until we get here. If you really want to be where we are, then take the time to get here and enjoy the ride. Life is about experiences, not inherent realities.

Her points about trans women and male privilege are important, I think. We learn things like body language and inflection, but we're rarely encouraged to look at how we learned to interact with people sociopolitically, even though transition is an excellent opportunity to see how differently (read: badly) one is treated without certain privileges. But none of that excuses her transphobia. She says in the comments, "I do not actively oppress trans women." Despite that (and leaving aside the fact that she doesn't deny passively oppressing trans women), she seems perfectly willing to call trans women men if they don't meet her standards. It's really unfortunate.

She also doesn't consider that just because trans women are socialized as males in the early part of their lives, it doesn't mean that their experience is not legitimate. For example, when I was a kid, as paradoxical as this may sound, I actually liked being a "boy" and I thought that being a girl or anything associated with girlieness was bad. When I saw commercials on TV directed at my age group, I got the message that boys are cool, rational, creative, and smart, whereas girls are nothing but a bunch of prissy sissies that do nothing but gossip. When I saw myself as an adult though, it freaked me out to think of myself as a gross, hairy, smelly man. I wanted to grow up into a beautiful woman. From my perspective, being a girl and a woman were different because I was exposed to negative messages about females my age group, but not so much for adult women, since as a child I mostly watched kids' programming. I was a very confused kid because even though I secretly longed to be female, I repressed it due to the negative messages I got about it. A lot of cis girls suffer from the same thing, because those same messages that are drilled into their head, leading to internalized misogyny. For example, I hear a lot of girls my age talk about how girls are catty and superficial and how they love being friends with the guys because they are "drama-free". Just because trans women are socialized as male doesn't mean that their experiences aren't valid.

Also, I believe that being socialized as male isn't a liability, but an advantage, because trans women have first hand experience of the social constructs that surround maleness and masculinity, which are relevant because it's those social constructs that contribute to the oppression of women. For example, being socialized as a male, I've observed that it's very common for men and boys to look at femininity as some sort of awful disease, to be avoided at all costs. Also, a lot of guys see femininity as being contagious. Just merely being around girls is enough for it to "infect" you. The only way to make oneself immune is to either have sex with them, or treat them like a sex object. If you're not sexually degrading women, their femininity is gonna infect you and turn you into their gay shopping buddy. This is very relevant to the oppression of women, because a lot of the reason men treat women like sex objects is because society expects them to. I believe feminists ought to see being trans as being a huge advantage, because of the fact that you pretty much get to spend a good portion of your life "undercover" as a male, and get first-hand exposure to the social constructs surrounding maleness and how they oppress women.

Quote from: Valeriedances on March 14, 2011, 10:19:49 AMShe makes a big point on womanhood being experiential. What makes her think trans women don't live and experience life as women?

Because for her, womanhood can only be experienced if people are treating you like a cis woman.

Quote from: VeryGnawty on March 13, 2011, 03:14:01 PM
Oh noes!  "Real" women can't be assertive.

And the stereotype merry-go-round just keeps a-turnin'

Oh good, it's not just me who had that thought.

Quote from: rar on March 15, 2011, 09:55:00 AM
Because for her, womanhood can only be experienced if people are treating you like a cis woman.

But what does a cis woman get treated like? A black teen mother in Detroit? A privileged socialite in New England? A butch lesbian in rural Texas? A geeky programmer in Silicon Valley? A mother in Congo, victim of bayonet rape? A sweatshop worker in Indonesia? Which is the true female experience? What binds them together, but excludes trans women?

Quote from: kyril on March 15, 2011, 10:05:42 AM
But what does a cis woman get treated like? A black teen mother in Detroit? A privileged socialite in New England? A butch lesbian in rural Texas? A geeky programmer in Silicon Valley? A mother in Congo, victim of bayonet rape? A sweatshop worker in Indonesia? Which is the true female experience? What binds them together, but excludes trans women?

That's what killed radical feminism.

Quote from: Valeriedances on March 15, 2011, 11:01:57 AM
What would make her think people (public) arent treating TS people as cis-women and men, and that we likely pass by her without her awareness and she socializes, herself, with trans-women and doesn't even know it?

She does grant that that can happen. That's her whole point. Trans women being treated in society as cis women is the only way they'll become "real" women to her.

Quote
Irregardless of passing privilege, trans women and men of all shapes and sizes deserve respect and love.

Agreed. If only the rest of the world thought so too.

QuoteI have seen too many trans women just take the patriarchal idealizations of femininity as how they feel they should be expressing themselves. When this happens, it drives me insane. I see someone who is going from one hell where they feel that they are hiding who they are, right into another one, trapping themselves in a swathe of lies that often is just as miserable. The slap in the face that so many women see in trans women who act this way is that these trans women, who don't see this, who don't learn to be THEMSELVES rather than someone parroting male created ideas, are clamoring to be treated and regarded as women.

I totally understand this person's response to the original post on the linked blog.  This kind of disgusted me in a way - I saw transwomen who just seemed to parrot archaic ideas of what a woman should be.  Not only did I see this commonly, but I saw oppression from them toward other transwomen for not being their version of a female.  The enforcement of this idea seemed juvenile to me and resoundingly "male."  It is one of the reasons I began to steer away from other trans people during my transition.  Probably the most destructive attitude I saw were transwomen, who were essentially "failed males" as far as society goes, and became women because they perceived being a woman was easier than being a man, that they could act weak and vulnerable and some guy would come and take care of them.  UGH!

As the quote suggests, I went from one box to another and couldn't find myself in either.  I was either hiding who I was while I was living as a male, or I was hiding my past living as a female.  My best self is the self where I am able to be myself while not denying my transsexual identity.  I will never be a woman, to say that I was is demeaning to the women I know.  I just don't have the experience to back such a claim - perhaps if I lived as a woman for 10 years I might start to understand.

The final straw that convinced me to stop going to trans support groups was when I heard one trans woman tell a newcomer not to worry about not liking girly things because she'd love pink and flowers n stuff once she was on estrogen.

Quote from: rar on March 16, 2011, 10:30:50 PM
The final straw that convinced me to stop going to trans support groups was when I heard one trans woman tell a newcomer not to worry about not liking girly things because she'd love pink and flowers n stuff once she was on estrogen.

LOL.

If only that worked, I'd have been a perfectly normal girl!

Quote from: kyril on March 16, 2011, 10:42:45 PM
LOL.

If only that worked, I'd have been a perfectly normal girl!

Yeah.  If only it were that easy.

QuoteThe final straw that convinced me to stop going to trans support groups was when I heard one trans woman tell a newcomer not to worry about not liking girly things because she'd love pink and flowers n stuff once she was on estrogen.

Oh good grief! *BARF!*

That makes me sooooo glad my wife's a granola-dyke! I loves me my granola dyke!