Visually, she appears such a normal woman that no one passing her in the street would nudge their companion and titter
I’ve been playing a game of spot the gender stereotyping with this article in today’s Telegraph: and what a surprise, I don’t fit the paper’s idea of what constitutes a “normal woman”.
As Kate Craig-Wood bends to grab something from the office photocopier she waves one wedge-heeled foot in the air. It’s a feminine gesture that matches her expressive way of talking while waving her arms about so that her bracelet jangles
I don’t wear wedges or heels, and when I’m photocopying I tend not to wave my feet in the air: sounds a bit too dangerous to me.
From early childhood, Kate knew she was really a girl. “I hated football and wanted to spend time in my tree-house, which was clean and tidy and had a stove”
From early childhood I also knew I was a girl. But I loved playing football, hated being clean and tidy, and I didn’t go anywhere near a stove unless I absolutely had to.
Nevertheless, she had a difficult time learning about being a woman. “I found myself in abusive relationships with men,”
Yeah ok, I’ve got no arguments with that one.
It amuses her to observe how she has become better at multitasking, and communicating
What?
Now she is hormonally a woman, does she have trouble parking? “No,” she says, with a girlie laugh,”but I have never been any good at map reading.”
Please. Just. Stop. Now. You’re. Fucking. Killing. me.
Seriously, I’m sorry, but this simplistic kind of “explanation” for why some people feel the need to transition is just complete and utter bollox. There’s surely got to be more to it than “When I was little I liked dolls and kittens and playing with my mum’s make up, so I always knew I wasn’t really meant to be a boy.” ‘Cos you know, I never did any of that (well ok, the kittens maybe) and I’ve never, not ever, felt that my failure to conform to what being a girl/woman is allegedly all about somehow means I’m trapped in the wrong body. No, what it does mean is that socially constructed gender roles are just that, socially constructed, and a pile of old shite to boot.
None of the examples used to illustrate Craig-Wood’s femininity have anything to do with being a “normal” woman, if such a creature even exists. We’re not born with innate abilities to multi-task, communicate effectively, or perform boring household chores with a smile on our face and a song in our hearts, those are the things we are taught to do, from day one: they’re the things that society/culture/whatever tries to instil in us because we’re born female, they’re not natural female attributes we’re born with.
Gender is not binary, as was thought, but a mosaic. Nor should it be confused with sexuality: sexuality is about who you fancy; gender is about who you are. It’s innate, not acquired, and you cannot change it
So what does that make those of us who were born women and who are happy being women but who don’t fit the stereotype? Those of us who don’t want to wave our dainty painted toes in the air when we’re doing the photocopying? Who don’t want to play house?
Numbers are doubling every five years as it becomes more acceptable to admit to a disjunction between mind and body, and 6,000 people in the UK have undergone “corrective” surgery. Very few of them are women becoming men. “That may be because it is more socially acceptable for women to behave like men: the stereotypical butch lesbian.”
Ah, I see. So “butch lesbians” are socially acceptable now (as if!), and therefore women don’t feel the need to physically switch sex in the way that some men do. But if that’s the case then how does it marry with the idea that gender is innate, and that corrective surgery is sometimes necessary to align a person’s gender with their sex? If it’s socially acceptable for women to “behave like men”, without actually having to turn themselves into men, doesn’t that contradict Craig-Wood’s assertion that gender and gender roles aren’t socially constructed? Is Craig-Wood actually theorising that if it were more socially acceptable for men to “behave like women.” then trans women wouldn’t necessarily feel the need to undergo sex reassignment surgery?
If so, isn’t that what Julie Bindel and others have been arguing for years? That if we do away with gender and all the limiting stereotyping and culturally ascribed roles that go with it, we’ll all be free to be whoever and whatever we want to be without any need for surgical intervention?
Confused? Yes, I have to admit I am, and after reading the Telegraph article I suspect I’m not the only one.
Too Much To Say For Myself 
From early childhood I knew I was a cow.
But seriously, I was just discussing this elsewhere. It is far easier for a female to pass as male than vice versa. All you need is short hair and baggy jeans. S’riously. I get read as ‘male’ all the time and it’s my hair. I’ve got noticeably female body fat distribution and feminine facial features.
Quite simply there are less females who want to transition than men. Why? who knows.
I think the problem is that simplistic reasons to transition are sought. And there’s no single reason. I think some people do transition for social reasons. But others. Well I really don’t know.
All I can say is I’ve met a lot of apparently sane and rational individuals who just said *my body felt wrong*. None of whom spouted the nonsense above.
I think the problem is that this discourse is now so prevalent that many people will feel the need to explain their experience in these terms. Apart from the fact that the way you get sex reassignment surgery on the NHS is to fulfil ridiculous gender stereotypes.
I tend to take a different line from the standard rad fem one on this. And certainly from Julie Bindel’s. A lot of what she said about gender is utterly true of course. But I think we may be putting the cart before the horse. Because trans people are forced to present their personal narratives in the dominant discourse of gender we assume that stems from them. Maybe it doesn’t.
I think the problem is that simplistic reasons to transition are sought
Wasn’t what I meant to say. should have been.
I think the problem is that simplistic explanations for the need to transition are sought..
This is a tricky one isn’t it. The thing I wanted most when I was seven was to be a boy. I grew out of it. I had an older brother and boys seemed to be able to have more fun. As I grew up I decided that I would just ignore what I was supposed to like doing and just do what I wanted to do.
If I had been gay I might have thought I had been “born in the wrong body”, and may have thought surgery was needed. I’ve just read Female Chauvinist Pigs and it seems that a lot more butch lesbians are taking this route than before. I don’t think that’s a good thing. As a woman I should be able to do whatever I want and still be a woman.
I think it’s very much a US based phenomenon still though Biskieboo. I’ve not come across mass transitioning, in a physical sense, over here. I think there’s a couple of reasons – firstly fashion, it just hasn’t hit here in the same way, and secondly the good ol NHS. It’s rilly hard to get treatment!
I mean I’ve heard a lot of peeps talk about being a *man* in the genderqueer sense, but very few who’ve actually transitioned for real. Though I did once hear some idiot woman speculating about what *recreational testosterone* would be like (I’d stick to normal drugs, love).
I agree with Biskieboo on this, its a tricky one.
I dont think I was a particularly girly girl, I have two brothers and I was aware from very young that they had different opportunities and more freedoms than me. That said I never once wished I was a boy, I just wanted to challenge the system so I could do all those things as a girl.
I dont understand what it may feel like to be ‘born in the wrong body’ because I have never experienced it, but I dont dispute for some it exists. I think its made worse for those because of societys rigid expectations of who can do what according to the sex they are classified as.
Anyway whats not to love about being a woman, we are fabulous. I wouldnt swap for anything.
And at some point someone is going to have to explain to me the whole ciswoman thing – cos I just dont get that at all.
Well since you ask – shamelessly plugs ye olde blog:
http://thesizeofacow.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/take-it-up-with-goddess/
Reminiscent of Iran, where homosexuality seen as v. v. bad, but m-t-f sex changes socially acceptable, and more are carried out there than anywhere else except Thailand.
Yeah, the gendered crap around this annoys me too though. It’s not about ‘ooooh I loved my Barbies’! Ugh.
Agree with Polly, though. I do believe there are some people whose body sex, and the body sex their brain expects just don’t match. There would still be those people, even if we were free of gender role crap.
But also, some people I think do transition for the wrong reasons. Absolutely, it should be hard to get treatment – but it also shouldn’t be about conforming to traditional gender roles.
That is true, that it is more acceptable for women to be ‘butch’ than men to be ‘femme’. It is very interesting that there are more MTFs than FTMs.
Incidentally I think it’s highly significant that the Torygraph, Male and similar rags love to run stories of high femme transwomen. Because they do.
What’s their not so hidden agenda? You too can be a *real* woman with some nice frocks, expressive feminine gestures and a desire to clean? Look it’s so easy, even a transwoman can do it! So what’s stopping you, you, you lazy FAB person?
I did start finding men attractive when I started taking female hormones
So why isn’t it working for me then?
There are a good number of feminist transgender folk out there who are equally disgusted by the type of nonsense promoted in this article. I’ve recently discovered and subscribed to this great blog by one such feminist (and I know there are others out there): http://secondawakening.blogspot.com/
Here’s a good post to start on (about intersections of privilege and oppression): http://secondawakening.blogspot.com/2009/06/crossroads.html
and also (about makeup and conforming to “feminine” beauty norms):
http://secondawakening.blogspot.com/2009/06/i-feel-pretty-i-feelcoerced-into-being.html
She’s bloody everywhere that Kate Craig-Wood, which wouldn’t be such a problem except she trots out every stereotyped cliche in the book.
But, yeah, Polly’s right…. the Torygraph/Male meedja like a good conformist trans story… after all, a trans woman dyke won’t fit their world view!
Butteryflywings:
“But also, some people I think do transition for the wrong reasons. Absolutely, it should be hard to get treatment – but it also shouldn’t be about conforming to traditional gender roles.”
The psych gatekeeping establishment don’t help that one too… by measuring a trans persons success to ‘pass’ or ‘transition’ by using traditional gender roles and rigid expectations of ‘man’/’woman’ dress/appearance/behaviour.
Some of us have suspected something like that for a long time, Cath! 😉
Although the good old Telegraph seems to have evolved just a little in recent decades – an article like that would have been Sunday Mirror/News Of The World copy back in the halcyon days of yesteryear!
Seriously, I’m sorry, but this simplistic kind of “explanation” for why some people feel the need to transition is just complete and utter bollox. There’s surely got to be more to it than “When I was little I liked dolls and kittens and playing with my mum’s make up, so I always knew I wasn’t really meant to be a boy.” ‘Cos you know, I never did any of that (well ok, the kittens maybe) and I’ve never, not ever, felt that my failure to conform to what being a girl/woman is allegedly all about somehow means I’m trapped in the wrong body. No, what it does mean is that socially constructed gender roles are just that, socially constructed, and a pile of old shite to boot.
Fucks me off too Cath…
So, thanks very much gender conformist trans people for reducing my fucking reality to only supposedly having reassignment surgery because I liked to play with dolls (which I didn’t) and so I could flutter my eyelashes in a nice frock (which I don’t).
And yet they call out Bindel as the bigot?
/rant
Yep, I’m subscribed to that one too Morag, and I’d second your recommendation.
It certainly gives more of an insight into the issue than the b/s being spouted by Craig-Wood in the Torygraph.
Hi Cath. I suppose trannies (is that the right word?blokey apologies in advance) have the right to be twee as much as anybody else, but I think you have to have had the proverbial humour bypass to write like KCW.
I remember reading some cringe-making stuff form Jan Morris a few decades ago but she’s left that stuff far behind – but as I say everyone has the right to embrace their inner twee!
Should we call this sort of thing tweeter?
You ever read Will Self’s “Cock and Bull”? It’s similarly ridiculous. The female protagonist starts growing a dick and finds she’s more confident drinking in pubs by herself. Like that’s a biological thing.
And the male protagonist is growing a vagina on the back of his knee (ugh, I know) and finds that he suddenly cries a lot for no reason.
Pissed me right off that book.
“No, what it does mean is that socially constructed gender roles are just that, socially constructed, and a pile of old shite to boot”
Gender is a statement of nature & applied science, & why are there two genders?
I remember a meeting in Amsterdam, “homosexuality does not exist” was voted through, and nobody voted for it existing, and I laughed and I laughed, the people voting, were all gay.
“I play with dolls, therefore I am”
Is not what I am trying to tell you, if gender was bollox, gender wouldn’t exist, because God or Darwin, would have phased it out.
Gregory
Interesting blog on Julie Bindel + ‘social constructivism’:
http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=2324
You can do experiments with very young babies that show gendered differences in behavior. And there is plenty of evidence that male brains and female brains show substantial differences in wiring, not all of which are the result of upbringing.
Does interesting now mean ‘complete and utter bollocks’ then?
Sorry, I can’t help being rude, my brains hard wired that way.
Oh absolutely Steph, they don’t at all.
HA at Polly’s last comment. Of course you can’t do experiments with young babies that show much of anything since, er, they’re babies! Sigh. They would tell you more about the gendered assumptions of the adults involved.
I would love to ban the term ‘hardwired’. There is no such thing. (Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield says so.)
NB. And I spent months in a student job laboriosly transcribing videos of babies. I didn’t get the point. They mostly cried so much the amount of data per time was crap.
But wasn’t saying that *no* useful experiments can be done on babies, I guess. Just that yeah, projecting gender roles onto infants is kind of stupid.
There was a Simon Baron Cohen (I keep typing Sasha Baron Cohen) experiment which he claimed showed that very young baby girls had more empathy than boys, but as I understand, no one’s ever been able to repeat it. Which suggests it wasn’t a very good experiment. I did have a link for this, but I can’t seem to find it.
I keep saying this but ‘sexing the body’ by anne fausto sterling is an excellent book on ‘sex differences’. They’re a lot less than you might imagine – particularly so called ‘brain sex’. And none of it explains gendered crap like Kate Craig-Wood or the Torygraph come out with. Even Baron-Cohen says differences are slight and only AVERAGE differences.
I love it when people say *science says blah blah de blah blah* and then don’t back it up in any way, shape or form. Weird science eh?
Tee hee hee:
And there is plenty of evidence that male brains and female brains show substantial differences in wiring, not all of which are the result of upbringing. Feminists who cling to the “gender = nurture” argument tend to claim that such evidence is falsified by evil male scientists (and brainwashed female scientists). I don’t know enough about the details to judge, but there does seem to be a lot of this sort of research out there.
Then, of course, there are transsexuals, who are remarkably consistent in their claims to have “known” that their bodies were the wrong gender from a very early age. Again feminists claim that they have been brainwashed, and have been coached to say such things by evil male doctors.
A bigger problem for the theory is that it has foundered on the rock of experience. Feminists mothers who have tried to raise their children in gender-neutral environments have discovered, to their horror, that their daughters still grow up to be women and their sons still grow up to be men
Noes, noes, female children grow up into adult females! And science has a lot of evidence of stuff, but I’m not quite sure what! And transsexuals *know* that their bodies are the ‘wrong gender’ from a very early age!
Well I’m convinced, don’t know about anyone else – what of, though?
Exactly Polly, they are a. small and b. average differences. And yes argh, I also want to ban the term ‘brain sex’. I am evol today.
Yeah, love it when people try to use science to ‘totally prove’ some idiot so-called point about menz and womenz….who actually don’t know anything about the science.
Oh I have heard of that book, I should definitely read it.
Apparently Sasha Baron-Cohen is Simon’s nephew!
Catch a trans woman early in her transition and she will probably not have quite got the hang of the whole fashion and style thing. Remember that, unlike other women, she hasn’t had years of experience, she’s only been doing this for a few months. Give her time, and she’ll settle down and look a lot less outlandish
Yes that worked for me. I have totally got the hang of the whole fashion and style thing by now after 40 odd years of femaleness. It does involve baggy jeans and hoodies doesn’t it?
I know, it’s interesting isn’t it – the *how the baron cohens are related* thing. A lot more interesting than brain sex.
I really want to go and see Bruno. Is that wrong?
Gender is a statement of nature & applied science, & why are there two genders?
Well there aren’t always. Plenty of societies have the concept of there being more than two genders.
http://thesizeofacow.wordpress.com/2008/07/26/im-loving-angels-instead/
Actually gender is from the root ‘genus’ meaning ‘type’. So it’s simply a classification method.
Oh for fuck’s sake!
Can’t believe I just googled that expletive to make sure I put the apostrophe in the right place.
I really need to get a life.
It must have an apostrophe, as the sake, presumably, belongs to the fuck. I suppose it could belong to a number of fucks, in which case the apostrophe should come after the s.
Exactly, that was my dilemma Stephen.
Okay, having devoured poor Cheryl’s mewsings in a few bites, here’s another for you and Polly to ravage. Same subject – Julie, social constructivism etc. And hey, this one’s with vids!
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/
Sorry, end of that link broke off. It should have read:
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2009/06/uprising.html
Stephen, I have got ironing to do. Just buy yourself a copy of *sexing the body* eh.
Plus I am famously anti political lesbianism. Not because I believe sexuality is hard wired, but because political lesbians are appropriating the sexuality of women who are solely sexually attracted to women. So I disagree with JB on that one as well.
I do agree that you can change your sexual preference if you want – as I always say, go to any prison, it’s full of folks who go gay if that’s the only option. Most human beings are bisexual.
But as an actual lesbian, I don’t believe straight women can’t be feminist.
And as I said before, I think it’s appropriating my sexuality for women who are primarily attracted to men to become *lesbians* for political reasons.
I would still be a lesbian even if all men were fabulously good looking, had wonderful personalities and were 100% committed to equality. AND did all the housework.
Polly, you’re talking a lot of sense. As a strait guy, I can imagine gay women feeling their sexuality appropriated by political lesbians. Perhaps more their voices than their sexualties? But maybe both.
Not sure about most people being bisexual, though, especially guys. It would be my sexuality of choice, but I can’t picture myself sufficiently excited by a male to be able to achieve what is expected of my sex, if you see what I mean.
Not sure about most people being bisexual, though, especially guys
Oh Stephen. Alfred Kinsey begged to differ. You know what they say.
Q. What’s the difference between a straight man and a gay man?
A. About ten pints.
Ten pints would even things up a bit. I wouldn’t be able to achieve what’s expected with anyone then.
Although I reject social constructivism, I cannot help feeling life would be very different if we weren’t all compelled to cover our naughty bits from toddlerdom. It can’t be healthy. Every other creature on the planet seems to manage quite happily without this strange compulsion.
Here we are in the third millennium, we can land on the moon and arrive back within seconds of ETA, and we can’t go as far as the local post office with our kits off. Bleedin’ garden snails can manage it, why not us?
Might that chap in Oxford Street managed it, didn’t he? Lot of courage, I thought… Can’t see him making the Honours List, though.
Takes me back to that poem of Larkin’s, “This be the verse.” Let’s see if I can manage it:
They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad,
They do not mean to, but they do.
They give you all the faults they had,
Then add some extra – just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By folks in old-style hats and coats
Who half the time were sloppy-stern
And half at one anothers’* throats.
Man passes misery on to man,
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as quickly as you can,
And DON’T have any kids yourself.
* Unsure where apostrophe goes here, Cath, any idea?
(Thanks Morag for the plug.)
It is a source of continual frustration that the media pays so much attention to trans women with bad groundings not only in feminist theory, but trans theory, as the source of their profiles. (Though to be fair: the subject of an article/film/piece on television has little control over the final product–take for example Kate’s foot rising in the air when she picks up something; that’s the reporter’s fixation about the “femininity” of the gesture. Me, I’d started doing that years before I transitioned, because I learned while taking martial arts that it was a good way to keep your balance.)
In trans circles we sometimes talk about the standard narrative, of which Kate’s story is a good example: played with dolls, felt like a girl, didn’t like blokey things, etc. Now, there are some reasons for this–decades of healthcare gatekeeping have enforced this model; in the 1950s and 1960s, many trans women lied to their therapists in order to get permission to start treatment (frex, if you were still attracted to women, you might lie, because back then the medical establishment had no interest in creating lesbians.) The actual reality for most people is probably different: I for example was a mix of “girlie” (had stuffed animals) and “blokey” traits (ran around fighting with wooden swords.) None of which had all that much to do with the prevalent sense of things being very, very wrong, a feeling that has largely gone away since my transition. But the standard narrative persists, because it confirms and reifies gender stereotypes held dear by patriarchal culture.
It’s just depressing to constantly have these women held up as models of transsexuality, probably in ways similar to how you feel, Cath–I mean, I’m a bit of a femme, but I know lots of trans women who aren’t, and always holding up the high femme trans women as the ideal is damaging to them, especially in that it encourages people to keep questioning their gender: why’d you transition if you don’t want to wear frilly dresses, huh?
(But as an aside: the NHS is still pretty barbaric here; I mean, to start treatment you have to live as a woman without anything to help you along? We stopped doing that in the States decades ago; it was a deliberate attempt by the psychological establishment to only allow “attractive” transsexuals to transition–nice how it wrapped sexism and transphobia up in one pretty little bow.)
I’ve been squicked out by Kate for a while anyway–I’m in IT, and had I been named to that list of powerful women, I don’t think I’d accept; I know how hard it is for women in IT, and would sure prefer it go to someone who had to deal with that for longer than me. Dunno.
The thing is: if you’re going to be a public person, with the desire to do some good, then you should try to ground yourself in, you know, what the fuck you want to talk about yourself–else, it’s just some sort of vanity. Nothing wrong with a little vanity; one of the reasons I write is because I think I have something to say, and like it when people agree. But I make sure I know what I’m talking about first.
(And thanks Cath for the love as well.)
Well I wondered if the B-Cs were related before discovering that. But I am sad.
And yes, wanting to see Bruno is wrong. Didn’t you get the memo about Approved Feminist films? 😉
Apologies for sidetracking.
As for ‘brain sex’, there is no such thing. There may be brain *gender* but frankly that is just ‘how much your brain fits into some stereotype’.
Has anyone seen the so-called systemising/ empathising test? *Coincidentally*, all the ‘systemising’ questions are about stereotypically male interests (sports, taking cars apart). Hmmm.
Cath, yay, a fellow grammar geek!
Ok I’ve just watched the trailer, I’m going.
Talk show host*how did you get your baby*
Bruno * I swapped him*
furious woman *You swapped the the baby – for what?*
Bruno *for an I pod*
Stephen
Extensive googling reveals that the apostrophe goes before the s in one another’s
Apparently you should always use an apostrophe followed by s to show possession with indefinite pronouns such as Another’s, Anyone’s, Nobody’s, Someone’s, One’s, and Everybody’s
Hope that helps 🙂
C.L.Minou
Spot on, and thanks for your comment.
Thanks Cath. With indefinite pronouns generally, I’m sure. But I have a problem with “one anothers” as one must be talking about more than one “another’s” if you see what I mean.
With “eveybody’s” etc it’s easy – everybody being a collective noun, hence “everybody’s pencils” or whatever – the pencils belonging to everybody. But “one anothers”?
Each other’s is easy, as it becomes the pencil belonging to each other. So I guess I can use “each other’s” instead. Trouble is I can’t get Larkin to re-write the poem.
I’ve been squicked out by Kate for a while anyway–I’m in IT, and had I been named to that list of powerful women, I don’t think I’d accept; I know how hard it is for women in IT, and would sure prefer it go to someone who had to deal with that for longer than me. Dunno
Thanks CL Minou, for actually acknowledging male privilege exists. Particularly in IT, which for some unknown reason a huge number of transwomen (at least those who make it into the meeja) seem to work in.
OTOH my female friend was in IT, very high up, and when she went on business somewhere with a junior male colleague they assumed she was his secretary.
What C Minou said.
But also, I’m a bit disappointed that in the mainly excellent article mentioned above the bit that seemed to get picked up on most was :
Catch a trans woman early in her transition and she will probably not have quite got the hang of the whole fashion and style thing. Remember that, unlike other women, she hasn’t had years of experience, she’s only been doing this for a few months. Give her time, and she’ll settle down and look a lot less outlandish.
Thing is, and I s’pose this is kind of trans 101 stuff really, but it’s kind of a catch 22 for a lot of trans women wrt both feminism, the medical profession and I guess the “general public” at large.
Sadly, many people still refuse to accept that trans women are women just as much as cis women are women.
So what do you do to prove yourself?
If you put on a dress and lippy and point out your little toe when you’re photocopying, the Telegraph and the gatekeepers in the medical profession might tick their nice little boxes and “allow” you to use the label “female” (how terribly kind of them
srsly until recently and yeah I bet it prolly still does go on, you had to absolutely prove you were definitely a woman by just luuuurving makeup and kittens and handbags before a doctor would even prescribe you the necessary hormones) and if you “pass” as a cis woman you’re less likely to get shit in the street but many feminists will point to you as a traitor and talk about how you’re reifying/upholding the gender binary and how you’re “really” a man because you’re playing up to a patriarchal version of femininity.
But:
If you’re a trans woman who doesn’t conform to more stereotypical notions of femininity, particularly with respect to mode of dress, then you’re laying yourself open to all kinds of shit again, just this time from other people. I can’t see the telegraph running a story on a trans woman who doesn’t go in for makeup, wears jeans and a t-shirt and identifies as a lesbian any time soon, can you?
And also, I still can’t see the feminists that blow up about wimmin born wimmin only toilets “allowing” trans women to take a piss in the ladies’ bogs whether they “present” as “femme” or otherwise.
As for “there are fewer trans men than trans women” … says whom?
And as for transitioning being a largely US phenomenon… again, says whom? Last time I checked the US was a far, far, far, far larger country than the UK and therefore obviously there are going to be more trans people in the US.
“there are fewer trans men than trans women” … says whom
Well this research by GIRES on gender variance in the UK for a start.
Click to access GenderVarianceUK-report.pdf
80% were assigned as boys at birth (now trans women) and 20% as girls (now trans men).
And the remark that to a US based phenomenon was referring to this.
I’ve just read Female Chauvinist Pigs and it seems that a lot more butch lesbians are taking this route than before. I don’t think that’s a good thing. As a woman I should be able to do whatever I want and still be a woman.
IE butch lesbians being pressured to transition physically. Because it is a US phenomenon. I have personally met two transmen who’ve actually had surgery/hormones. I’ve met loads of trans women.
And the article was mostly excellent only in the sense that it was a load of regurgitated nonsense about brain sex. And the reason the paragraph quoted was *picked on* was that it implied women *naturally* know about *fashion and style*.
And also, I still can’t see the feminists that blow up about wimmin born wimmin only toilets “allowing” trans women to take a piss in the ladies’ bogs whether they “present” as “femme” or otherwise.
Nobody has mentioned toilets.
Polly,
Oh, I acknowledge all kinds of privilege! I’m a radical akyriarchialist, what I am–I think the whole thing needs to get torn down, maybe starting with patriarchy but by no means ending there.
I have no idea about people’s brain sex. I posit my sense of gender seems to be innate, in that I have no memory of not being trans; but just because I had a sense of what my gender was supposed to be, doesn’t mean that I was guaranteed to play with dolls; that’s the socially constructed part. (In fact, I never understood dolls then and don’t now.) At this point I usually just talk about the tragiccaseofDavidReimer to point out there’s at least one case of somebody who rejected utterly the socially constructed gender (female) imposed upon him, as evidence that some part of gender identity seems inborn.
I’ve written about the double-bind Ms. Ruth Moss talks about on my own blog, so I’ll just say in passing: it’s not particularly different from the double-bind most women find themselves in (in re dressing to patriarchical expectations) except with the added spice of having to also defend your right to even be the gender you happen to be. This is thrilling the first five or six thousand times it happens to you but the experience rapidly degrades after that.
Studies about trans folk are notoriously problematic, but I’ll cautiously mention that the latest trends seem to show about equal numbers of men and women transitioning; this data does seem relatively new, but on the other hand there is a long history of trans men living completely stealth and under the radar of the doctors (Billy Tipton leaps to mind, as well as Albert Cashier.) As for pressure–well, now, hmm. I think maybe we should let the people doing the transitioning–trans men in this case–speak for themselves about that? And is this a case of butches being pressured to transition, or of trans men who used to be pressured to stay butches now deciding to transition? Like I said, maybe we could ask them–I’m sure most of them are consenting adults with a certain degree of agency.
Hi CL – the data I’ve just quoted is from 2009, and from a trans charity, so I have to say (from my personal experience) that I’m very sceptical about equal numbers of men and women transitioning.
The David Reimer case is interesting, but if you read sexing the body (page 71) the case is quoted of a born male who was reassigned at 7 months. Who didn’t identify as male. We have to bear in mind that everyone bringing up David Reimer knew his male origins. And this could easily have unconciously affected their treatment of him.
I’m not saying that it isn’t possible that there aren’t parts of the brain which lead us to expect certain sex organs – it’s impossible to prove with current techniques though because you’d have to be able to determine brain structure shortly after birth, and then monitor what happened as the children grew up. The very few studies on “brain sex” have been done post mortem so, as the brain is plastic, any differences observed could be the result of environmental factors.
I disagree with you about pressure to transition, though because it does exist! I’ve been asked if I’m *trans*. Any lesbian who is currently non femme is presented by the idea that she may be *trans* – the leading lesbian magazine over here is always featuring pieces on it.
If you look at the history of lesbian identities, from Radclyffe Hall (who acted as a*man*) to 50’s butch/femme to 70’s political lesbians, to eighties androgyny, there are HUGE shifts. What is causing them? Simple – lesbians don’t live in a vacuum, they’re subject to cultural pressures like everyone else.
In a small minority community these pressures are magnified a hundredfold. Because there’s nowhere else you can go. The phenomena that Ariel Levy described are a)real and b)a fashion. Lesbians are horribly prone to them. I know whereof I speak.
Oh and here’s one I wrote earlier on the subject.
http://thesizeofacow.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/prince-charming/
Polly,
I have no desire to deny your own experience! Neither trans men nor lesbians are my own particular balliwick (I’m a bissexual transsexual switch, which makes me a generalist on most of these issues, not a specialist.)
I’ve heard other studies, or so it seems to me, that the number of trans men has been rising of late towards equivalency, but like I said, trans studies is a murky, murky field, and most of the research is shite. You may say that the “pressure” for butches to transition is a US phenomenon based on the GIRES study, and I’ll say that the NHS and general UK Standards of Care are mired in the barbaric and sexist standards of the 1950s standards of care (the protocols you have to follow to achieve medical transition.) I’ve already cited the UK requirement to do your “real life experience” (generally, a year spent presenting as your desired gender exclusively) in order to even receive hormones! In the US, the RLE is the prerequisite for surgery, not hormones. That kind of gatekeeping exerts a not very subtle pressure against transition; and given that it’s generally socially easier for women to express gender variance than men (especially in the lesbian community), this might explain some of the differences in what I’ve heard and the GIRES study.
That, and this: as someone who’s transitioned, trust me, this isn’t something you do because of peer pressure. Even living in a very liberal city in a relatively liberal state, this stuff is a nightmare to navigate and if you don’t want it, you won’t start it.
That isn’t to deny your experiences–I’m well aware of the “butch crisis” and how that is shifting a lot of dynamics in the lesbian community; I’m as troubled when a cis person has their gender identity questioned as I am when a trans person has it happen to them.
But even so–with all the pressure that you describe, would you yourself ever start taking testosterone? I’m guessing not, because you identify as a woman. But surely you don’t mean to suggest that people who identified as lebians but begin transition don’t do so because of a character flaw?
I appreciate what you’re saying, CL which is the denial of agency, (and the resulting assumption that one’s own self is superior) which I do give serious thought to. HOWEVER there is a pressure there. Are some people more susceptible to social pressure? Absolutely.
As social beings we can’t separate ourselves from the influences we operate under. I went to work in clothes that I ‘chose’ today, jeans and a sweatshirt. Now there’s no dress code, though some people at work look down their noses at me a bit because of the way I dress. However I wouldn’t have gone in in pyjamas and a top hat…..
What I’m saying is that we make our ‘choices’ from the range of available options.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for the view that people should be denied sex reassignment surgery if they want it, because it’s all about *gender*. A)because I know it isn’t for a hell of a lot of people and b)even if it is, whatever gets you through the night….What I do care about is that it’s what’s right for that person and they fully understand the implications. I’ve been lectured endlessly by my doctors about the *health risks* of my own consumption of HRT, (very little in actual fact, because I’m still below the natural age of menopause) but it’s one eighth of the dose that would prescribed to someone transitioning.
You can’t just buy testosterone in the UK,(well you probably can on the black market of course) and I think that’s one reason why we don’t have medical transitioning to the same extent. I’m not trying to dictate to anyone, but similarly, we have, I think to realise that these are major, irreversible decisions (even’just’ taking testosterone alters your body permanently
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabolic_steroid
– testosterone is an anabolic steroid, and look what happened to the shot putters) and they’re by no means risk free. So I’m unhappy about seeing transitioning being promoted as a lifestyle choice. And I have seen it happen. Even in this country.
And yes I know about the nightmare of transitioning. I know of the difficulties someone who is going through it right now is facing.
Whoops I just wrote a long comment that got lost in the ether. I think it may be in spam Cath, cos it had a link.
Got it Polly.
Polly, before I say anything else, I just want to let you and everyone else know I greatly appreciate the civility of the discussion we’ve had–I’m the outsider here, but I’ve never felt dismissed or talked down to, and I thank you for it.
I can actually understand what you mean about pressure–amongst MtFs, there’s also a transition pressure (I wrote about some of that here.) You’ll never believe it, especially in light of the article that kicked all of this off, but the pressure actually came if you were less femme–the bitter joke was that if you were a crossdresser* who showed up wearing pants, that meant you were going to transition. (The logic went something like, most women don’t dress up in skirts or dresses all the time, so if you were dressing up how most women dressed in ordinary life, that meant you must want that to be your ordinary life–I guess.) As someone who was a crossdresser, and dates one now (my boyfriend is also a drag queen–we just got the whole carousel o’ gender down my way), I think crossdressers exist as much as butches do, and they don’t deserve any pressure to be something they’re not.
Likewise, if there’s a “butch crisis” in lesbian circles, there’s a “crossdresser crisis” in trans circles–there just seem to be less and less of them, especially amongst younger people, who are also transitioning earlier and earlier.
Except–and here’s where it all gets confusing–is it a crisis, or a natural consequence of the loosening up of gender norm enforcement? That is, are we putting the cart before the horse?
I’ve long held that if most people’s reaction to someone transitioning was, “how lovely, we must send flowers,” a lot more people on the MtF side would do it than you see today, and in some respects that’s held up by the number of younger trans people who identify as transsexuals rather than crossdressers. That is, there seems to be a “sunk population” of transsexuals or borderline transsexuals who were willing to ID as crossdressers when transition was a lot less approved of that no longer make that same choice.
Likewise, I think it’s fairly clear that there must have been a similar sunk population of trans men in the butch community, especially given that gender transgression among women and especially butch women has generally been more acceptable in times past than similar transgression for men. (This may also explain why there hasn’t been a parallel sunken population of trans women amongst gay men.)
I’m not going to disagree that peer pressure is a powerful thing–Malcolm Gladwell talks about a strange epidemic of teenage suicides in Micronesia that seems to have been caused by peer pressure–but at the same time, I reiterate: most women who identify as women, especially lesbians, would never take testosterone, as near as I can see–especially given that the effects of T occur quite rapidly. So I’m a bit loathe to assume that it’s only peer pressure that is causing the sudden rise in the number of butches who transition.
That, and how the argument can go both ways, and I really don’t like the idea of saying that it’s possible to talk people out of transitioning–heaven knows a bunch of people tried that on me.
Oops, forgot to explain the * in the previous post: I use the USAian “crossdresser” because on our side of the pond, “transvestite” has a pejorative connotation that it doesn’t have in the UK.
I think crossdressers exist as much as butches do
A short trip down canal street (local gay area) will tell you that. But again I agree the pressures exist. It’s the good ol’ gender binary again, you’ve got to be either/or. I don’t regard myself as *butch* at all, but people are desperate to stick me in that category.
And yes it is nice to have a civilized discussion. Must be because Cath’s nice.
I am indeed.
And here’s an article in today’s Times about someone called Miranda. Am I alone in thinking that Miranda didn’t really think this through enough beforehand?
Wow, Cath, that is quite the train wreck (I’ve known some people to use the cynical term “trans wreck” for a transition like that.)
And seriously: of all the ways you could botch up GRS, leaving in a testicle never ever crossed my mind.
The thing is, as much as Miranda is a pompous twit (and a reminder that as bad as our capitalists are, I sure am glad we dumped our hereditary aristocracy over my side of the ocean), I’m not sure any of it means she’s not genuinely trans or a woman.
That is to say: I have no problem recognizing her gender; it’s just then I will look at her the same way I look at other women, i.e., are they feminist, conscious of their privilege, not completely bollixed up tools, etc. Miranda is pretty effed up, but so are some of the conservative women politicians we have in ‘Merka; you’d never believe what kind of disasters they are.
Frankly, I don’t understand how any trans woman isn’t a feminist; there’s a dent on my desk that precisely fits my forehead from my encounters with the less enlightened members of my clan.
Except–and here’s where it all gets confusing–is it a crisis, or a natural consequence of the loosening up of gender norm enforcement?
The problem from my POV is that it’s a tightening of gender norm enforcement. If you have the gender expression, you have to have the gender to match. And then if you have the gender you have to have the body to match.
It works both ways. I think the job of feminism is to try to disconnect those three (well to make the middle one disappear as far as I’m concerned).
Yeah you can change sex, or you can change gender, or you can ignore gender (I vote for c) but they don’t all HAVE to go together in some horse and cart and passenger scenario at all. Unless you want them to.
There’s a lot of self/body hatred among women, particularly lesbians, and I’m concerned that for some women it WOULD be possible for medical reassignment to become a way of self elimination. We accept that women have other surgeries for sometimes less than good reasons – why not reassignment surgery?
No I don’t see dykes in the UK queueing up for gender reassignment, but they didn’t have mullets ten years ago. Fashion is a fickle thing…..
Polly, I’m with you right up until the fashion thing–that verges just a bit too close to the “on a lark” meme that you get thrown at out a lot when you have Teh Tranz.
Poor sack o’ nubblins that I am, I had no idea that body hatred was higher amongst lesbians–would have thought contrary, so another reason I’m glad to be talking with you here.
Permit me to be cynical, but I remain somewhat unconvinced that a tidal wave of fashionable transness is drowning all these dykes in T. I mean, what are the numbers? Out of X transitions, how many people are dissatisfied with the results (historically, the numbers have been astonishingly low in my tribe, but as I’ve said before, trans men have not been my study.)
And you know, FTM reassignment surgery isn’t exactly a nose job–it’s a double radical mastectomy. How many women are going to sign up for that without really wanting it?
Well I agree to an extent CL. And not being a USasian I have no idea what the real situation is in the USA. I only know what I’ve read/heard from others, which could be exaggerated of course.
But I was thinking about the (straight) journalist Liz Jones, who has written about how she has an eating disorder and had a breast reduction because she hated being woman shaped basically.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/jun/10/healthandwellbeing.features
You CAN’T just go out and get a bilateral mastectomy on the NHS, it’s hard. But what if it were available on demand or privately – I think most private surgeons would refuse to perform the op for non medical reasons as well. Would numbers go up? We don’t know. And even ONE person having surgery for reasons of outside pressure is one too many, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Agree, Polly–I have no problems with standards of care, just not insane, oppressive, sexist standards of care. Sure, by the time I was ready to transition, the gatekeeping seemed a tedious chore, but not everybody takes twelve years of gradually escalating amounts of time presenting as their desired gender to finally figure out what she wanted to be when she grows up.
I needed a psychological consult before I could start hormones and again before having my GRS. (Most surgeons in the States would require two letters, but the Thai surgeons are a little less restrictive.) Meanwhile I was in long-term psychotherapy; that seems about right to me as a course of standards. But it’s a tricky thing to balance. What could look like haste to some people doesn’t always look that way to the trans person; in my case, it took only nine months to go from starting hormones to living fulltime, and then only another 13 months after going fulltime to GRS. That’s a fairly rapid transition, but like I said–I’d been spending years gradually getting to that point, and once I finally figured out what I wanted, I moved quickly.
“I would love to ban the term ‘hardwired’. There is no such thing. (Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield says so.)”
Does she, in the round? I don’t think so, or I would be surprised if she did.
We are the only primate with our own little (human ) flea, because we adapted and became different to other primates.
A lot of that (social stuff) is hard-wired (I think).
Fleas take time to produce, and other primates don’t hang around long enough, unless they’re in a zoo. We do a lot of hanging around (and blogging).
We can also crank down instinct, can a deer do that? If not why not?
I remember looking at a great white, and I knew because it was not sunrise, and because I had 40ft of water above me, that I was probably okay.
(probably with a hate missile is still a win/lose completely scenario, it is not purple heart territory, imagine a pitbull that weighs the same as a VW Golf)
Six hours earlier a great white would kill anything it found, even if it didn’t look particularly like food. A great whit
I had the right zip code, and the right time zone, and I knew the shark was hard wired.
( so we can do (a) very smart and (b) very stupid at the same time, (b) relying on (a) to safe-passage a thrill)
I have seen people who were still asleep, do stuff, automatically, learned stuff, that is hard-wired, like when a boat capsizes, it is possible, cold & water is auto,
but to clear a gangway upside down, freezing water, with a red light, just gotta be hard-wired.
I think when we look at the stars, something is fixed, that we think of a God.
Gregory
The problem I have with standards of care, from what I’ve heard of them CL, is that they’re entirely based around models of *gender* circa 1957 so a psych can demand his FTM patients wear pretty frocks and present as appropriately feminine.
I think there needs to be a period where people can explore (not in predetermined terms) what surgery would mean for them, and if it’s really the right thing for them, and you need to rule out those who have underlying mental health issues which affect capacity to make a decision. I’m wholeheartedly against the state telling people what they can do with their bodies, but consent needs to be genuinely informed.
If stuff was hardwired Gregory, we couldn’t learn things. Brains change, neural pathways change. You have a reflex to shut your eye if an object comes close to it. If you use contact lenses, you learn to overcome this reflex so you can put them in your eye.
Sorry that should have said MTF patients. Makes no sense otherwise.
Yes, Gregory, she does.
I recommend her book ‘The Private Life of the Brain’.
And because something is learned, even to the point of being virtually automatic, doesn’t mean it’s hardwired – in fact, it means the opposite, as Polly points out. Neural plasticity (that neural pathways change) is a fact – brain cells constantly make new connections with each other which then grow stronger if used, or die out if not.
I do think some behaviours at the very basic level are ‘hardwired’ or ‘instinct’ but social behaviour certainly isn’t.
And as (I think) you say yourself, we can overcome ‘instinct’.
I live in London, I don’t *see* stars.
Completely agree with Polly; there does need to be a period of exploration.
Nod, Polly, in the UK the SOC are especially harsh. In the States, hormones are generally allowed after a psych consult, and in any case a lot of people use their “real life experience” time to experiment with things to make sure that’s what they want–hence the requirement to do it for a year before surgery.
Also, AFAICT, there’s a lot less gender-enforcement of trans folks here (at least Large Liberal Metropolis here, for me) than maybe you see in the UK: that is, nobody got on my case about wearing jeans to my doctor’s appointments 🙂
Unfortunately, the analogue may not work as well for FTM people, because estrogen takes much longer to act than T, and the effects of T are a lot more permanent–for example, once your voice changes, that’s pretty much it, ditto for facial hair. (As I am all too painfully aware.) I could see a SOC for trans men that might balance that with the generally easier time that FTM people have in achieving their desired presentation.
But bottomline, the best you can do is give people the right information and check to make sure that they have the capability to make an informed consent…after that, it’s up to them.
Agency. Weird, I know.
Butterflywings, I agree that social behaviors per se aren’t hardwired–there’s no “wear a dress” gene–but at the same time we can recognize that people are born with different capacities and inclinations. No amount of art or science classes will make me either Georgia O’Keefe or Marie Curie; that’s not where my talents/inclinations/positive feedbacks lie.
In other words, I do think that people are born with distinct potentialities, but society channels how they are used.
AFAIK though, you can get oestrogen CL while doing the real life experience bit, because I know of folks who are currently in that position who are using oestrogen – though I don’t know how far into the process you have to go.
And agreed on the effects of testosterone being more permanent and faster acting, one reason why it needs to be controlled.
Video that describes the process here
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/Pages/Introduction.aspx
Polly,
That’s good to know–maybe the difference is that you can’t get it via the NHS? I think the Miranda article mentioned that she wouldn’t have been able to start estrogen had she done her transition via the NHS.
The woman in the video I linked to (do give it a watch folks) transitioned via the NHS. I think Miranda just didn’t want to wait for surgery. It’s a long and tortuous process, and some NHS trusts don’t fund it, because they say there’s no clinical evidence to support the process being beneficial overall. It’s what we call over here a ‘postcode lottery’.
Arrgh! we have folks like that over here, notably the rabid conservative Catholic Dr. Paul McHugh, who shut down the Johns Hopkins Clinic–which I think was the oldest clinic doing transitions in the US–because of a rather BS survey saying that TS folk didn’t have a marked improvement in their life. (He ignored the part of the survey where much more than 90% of the patients said they were satisfied and had no regrets about what they had done–the rest of the survey basically showed they were living life.)
Good vid, Polly, sorry I didn’t watch it first–was at work, no streaming allowed. I stand corrected about the NHS, though I know I’ve talked with UKian trans women who mentioned a no-mone RLE–might be regional differences? I remember something about Wales being really bad about this sort of thing.
Wales is really bad generally. Don’t go there. I have a phobia of Wales acquired during school camping trips.