As a number of women of transsexed history have emerged from the shadows to speak out about the trans-jacking of the lives and histories and very core of their lives, the opposition has stepped up it’s refrain about how what we feel does not matter. Leaving aside the entitlement mentality and the out and out sexism evident in this, let’s take a look at the basic assumptions behind “transgender as umbrella” concept.
First, and most basic, is an underlining assumption that one can not actually “change their sex”, that you remain forever the sex you were assigned at birth regardless of whatever somatic corrections you make. I know, I know, this is not what they say, well sometimes the transgenders actually do come right out and say it, but it is the inescapable essence of their position. If post corrected women are defined as “transgendered” that is a basic and essential denial that they can correct what is actually now known as a medical condition and proceed with their lives on more or less a level playing field with other women. That they forever remain a third sex.
Transgender is a third space between male and female. If you doubt this, simply reflect on the speed and totality of the use of the prefix “cis” by their outspoken proponents. The very use of the prefix cis as in cissexual or cisgender sets up an oppositional class of just plain men and women to anyone “trans” anything forever baring anyone labeled trans anything from ever actually being “cis”, or a standard, garden variety woman or man. Language reflects thought, but it also restricts the concepts one can understand. If you do not have a word for a certain concept, it becomes extremely difficult to understand it until you do coin language that allows that concept. If you do have language that reflects a concept you have embraced, it tends to dominate your conceptual thinking to the exclusion of any opposing concepts.
Transsexuality has been around as long as there have been people. We know this, all of recorded history across literally all cultures reflect this. Cultures have followed either one of the two basic paths dealing with transsexuality. Either they allow full passage from one sex/gender to the other or they establish a third category. Third categories, as a rule, are almost always seen as “other” and the human tendencies towards xenophobia means they do not fare well unless endowed with attributes deemed valuable to the society. In many cultures this was shaman and healer and protected those in the third category, in early western cultures there was a tendency to walk the line between this and full passage from one side to the other, the transsexual priestesses of the ancient Goddess traditions were an example of this. Maximum body correction was a requirement and was possible, even then, to a degree most do not realize today. But in the Greek culture which was busy becoming a patriarchy, any blending of sexes was viewed with horror as was any exercise by women of equality openly. By the second century Christian apologists were openly attacking the transsexed priestesses of Cybele in Rome. Many scholars today believe that the Cybeline priestess Augustine had an affair with prior to his conversion was a Galla, or transsexual priestess and that explained his over the top post conversion references to such women as “castrated perverts”.
In the US following the media circus that came with Christine Jorgensen being outed to the country, we settled mostly on the full passage model with various States even writing into law rights of marriage and sex recognition of post corrected women. The medical community aided this with an unspoken compact that those they helped would basically blend in and not upset the gender binary applecart. Full passage, get married to a man and that was even better. Full passage IF you actually corrected your body. Drag was for comedy.
But following Christine Jorgensen emerged an entirely different sort of “trans”, transvestites. Known in the psychiatric literature, these individuals have always been around as well. They are men who get some sort of sexual kick, sometimes even sexually dependent on dressing as women for sexual gratification. As people with a strange sexual peccadillo in a culture that looked on such as weird or freakish or even probably gay, they suffered a great deal of internalized shame. One way to deal with such is what a transvestite named Arnold Lowman did. Under the assumed name of “Dr” Charles Prince, Lowman started lecturing about “femmephilia” to desexualize transvestism and present it as something different but ok. This began around the same time as transvestite film maker, Ed Wood, put out his trashy classic, Glen or Glenda to “explain” his own transvestism. Deeply homophobic himself in a society equally homophobic, Prince sold all this as totally heterosexual in nature.
Prince went on to organized Tri Ess, or the Society for the Second Self. These people became today’s transgenders. Women born transsexed mostly avoided these people although, sometimes early in dealing with their transsexuality, they crossed paths.
People born transsexed HAVE to eventually correct their bodies to the maximum possible and have always fully identified as the sex their brains are hardwired neurologically. It is criminal, almost to the point of a hate crime to degender them and that is exactly what the “transgender” umbrella does, it denies their correction, denies them full transition socially and is gynophobic in the extreme. So what harm? As basic an assault on personal integrity as possible, that’s what harm. Unlike the occasional bigot that denies identity, this is a movement with the appearance of some legitimate claim on those completely different from those making the claim by virtue of out and out erasure of even the language needed to understand the concept.
It is as pure an evil as it gets and as my prior entry demonstrated, it was done deliberately and with malice of forethought to people who maintained a separation when it was done. Women born transsexed were resented for their inclusion in the “special” rights of women in general(like having safe segregated space perhaps?) Women as elitists? Get freakin’ real. Only men could even come up with that. And make no mistake other feminist women, the goal is erasure of womanhood in general as well via “gender deconstruction” a concept filled with unintended consequences for the safety and integrity of all female bodied people. Far from a path to equality, it will lead to erasure.
August 18, 2011 at 12:28 pm
You know, I never get this. “Transgender” is a politicized identity that is so removed from any evidence-based and reality-based understanding of anything. Simply put “transgender” does not exist except as a weird social-engineering wet dream of certain people, who had just too much clout and male privilege to be able to push that to the mainstream. There is no “gender” called “trans”, either, sorry to break it to those PC-minded social workers and such. And the very history of “transgender” makes me think twice: the word “transgender” was invented by autogynephilic fetishists who are otherwise straight married men (who enjoy, otherwise, the full range of social and economic privileges) who simply abhorred the idea of being called gay — so this very deep-seated, internalized homophobia (and not to mention their sexism) led to the creation of the so-called “transgender community.” And its advance means setback for both the gay liberation movement and for the feminist movement alike.
August 18, 2011 at 12:49 pm
“Cultures have followed either one of the two basic paths dealing with transsexuality. Either they allow full passage from one sex/gender to the other or they establish a third category. Third categories, as a rule, are almost always seen as “other” and the human tendencies towards xenophobia means they do not fare well unless endowed with attributes deemed valuable to the society.”
It is interesting, too, to compare the modern social and legal situations. Thailand, for instance, have long institutionalized and tolerated this “third category,” but essential civil and social rights for transsexuals are virtually non-existent. The Thai government has gone so far as to establish special schools for the kathoeys, build kathoey restroooms, and even issue kathoey passports (with spaces for two photographs), but there is no legal protection against discriminations and there is no equal-opportunity laws that would permit transsexuals to live a normal life.
On the other hand, it has been countries that do not normally possess that level of “tolerance” that are the first to adopt laws to protect transsexuals from discriminations and facilitate normal life. Think of the USA, Canada, Australia and Britain.
August 18, 2011 at 1:02 pm
The sad position of the Hijra of both India and Pakistan also are examples of being placed in a third category. Currently this is happening in Nepal as well. We have Nepal’s first post corrected woman staying with us right now and seeking asylum in the US because she knows what would happen to her if she returned. This young woman worked with sexual and gender minorities in her own country for years and was raped repeatedly by police, threatened with death from family and elders of her village and was arrested and beaten several times with no real charges ever filed.
August 18, 2011 at 10:33 pm
It seems to me that once a woman is no longer “transsexual” via medical “correction”, and is negatively discriminated against, in the USA, that person can sue under Federal Title VII for sex discrimination, as for any other woman, so long as that person’s documentation ALL indicate “female,” and that the discrimination facts support her case.
Am I incorrect in my evaluation, or am I missing something?
jami
August 19, 2011 at 7:37 am
Well Jami the situation is sort of in limbo right now. Legally, following the Rene’ Richards decision, post corrected women were legally women but after a couple of bad court decisions, the EEOC routinely rejected all Title VII claims by women of history forcing them to sue them before they could actually proceed with a case. A friend of mine fought a long legal battle over this and they now are supposed to not automatically reject these complaints but I don’t know if they complied or not.
Naturally trans activists have totally ignored this situation because women of history do not count. This is why a simple federal law affirming the post corrected sex of women of history is needed. That would clean up all the messy marriage issues in Texas and Kansas, estabish Title VII and other rights and undo the bad court decisions once and for all. BTW the legal position the EEOC took was that post corrected women did not have a sex and therefore were not protected on that basis. Thank you gender deconstructionists.
September 3, 2011 at 7:04 am
http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/foia/letters/2007/titlevii_sex_coverage_trans.html
Historically, courts and the EEOC have held that Title VII does not prohibit discrimination against an individual because of transgendered status. See, e.g., Ulane v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc., 742 F.2d 1081 (7th Cir. 1984); EEOC Dec. 75-030, ¶ 6499 (CCH) (1974). In the past few years, however, some courts have determined that discrimination against a transgendered individual may constitute unlawful gender stereotyping in violation of Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination. See Smith v. City of Salem, 378 F.3d 566 (6th Cir. 2004); Mitchell v. Axcan Scandipharm Inc., 2006 WL 456173 (W.D. Pa. Feb. 21, 2006); Tronetti v. TLC Healthnet Lakeshore Hosp., 2003 WL 22757935 (W.D.N.Y. Sept. 26, 2003); cf. Schroer v. Billington, 424 F. Supp. 2d 203 (D.D.C. 2006) (disagreeing with Ulane and holding that discrimination based on sexual identity may be discrimination based on sex). Other courts, however, have adhered to the view that discrimination based on transgendered status does not violate Title VII. See Etsitty v. Utah Transit Auth., 2005 WL 1505610 (D. Utah June 24, 2005); Oiler v. Winn-Dixie La., Inc., 2002 WL 31098541 (E.D. La. Sept. 16, 2002). Whether discrimination against a transgendered individual may constitute discrimination based on sex in violation of Title VII is a factual question that cannot be determined outside the context of specific charges of discrimination and a complete investigation.
September 3, 2011 at 8:14 am
Tronetti v TLC Healthnet was based on the medical nature of Ms. Tronetti’s transsexuality. She is the dear friend I talked about and was fired two weeks before her surgery and on the day SONDA became law in New York based on legislative intent demonstrated during the run up to SONDA having reversed the Richards decision.
That Dr. McMahon-Tronetti had undergone full medical transition was the turning point but although this was a landmark case, the “transgenders” totally ignored it because it was a reality based decision in that it turned on the fact that prior to surgery Dr. McMahon-Tronetti was a biological male discriminated against for failing to met male stereotypes AND was following established medical protocol for treatment for transsexuality.
September 15, 2011 at 4:18 pm
You know, as a young (MtF) transsexual myself I’ve never really read or heard about this position until today and I must say–it really has some serious merit. After randomly coming across articles about this topic from both sides of the argument I’d have to say that you’re absolutely right. Not that being “transgender” is a bad thing from my personal perspective, but it definitely comes with connotations that most people view as socially deviant. All but the most socially liberal of individuals tend to consider crossdressers, drag queens/kings, transvestites and people of third gender/bigender people (Who are basically all the other people encompassing the transgender umbrella) as almost perverted in a sense (Even I do sometimes). Women’s space in particular is traditionally very private, something that I agree with personally as a woman as well–and when most people think of crossdressers, drag queens, transvestites, etc. and what they do, they think those people as invading that space. I think this has definitely affected the way people view me when I say specifically that I’m trans or transgender due to the transgender umbrella. I am definitely going to avoid the use of trans and transgender to refer to myself from now on!
However, there’s one point in this post that I disagree on that you seem to imply–transsexuals “losing” their transsexuality upon having SRS and/or full stealth. Due to social and bodily issues, even after SRS and/or full stealth, I don’t think transsexuals ever go so far in transition as to lose their transsexuality. Yes, it might make one more satisfied to think of themselves as being cisgender after a certain point–but such is forgetting one’s history and past life…not accepting what we all once were before transition is almost an act of running away from who we are and were as people, it’s criminal. I don’t think that anyone can be truly happy even after finishing transition without accepting the fact that they once were, if even but a shell, of the other sex and fought for the privelege to be their true selves. Nevertheless, transsexuals need to have full rights as the sex they transitioned to, transwomen ARE 100% women, and transmen ARE 100% men and both should absolutely go stealth, but they are and always will be transsexual–it’s a part of us that we should never just throw into the backburner.
September 15, 2011 at 10:29 pm
Contact me ten years or so post corrected and see if you feel the same way about your history. There is a huge difference between denying one’s past and accepting you have been cured of a birth condition.
September 26, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Amen to what catkisser said in response to jsybird2532.