OUR GENDERS ARE NOT DISORDERED!!

Not from me and not from many others here, thank you for taking the time to share your story.

Cross Product, what tremendous courage you have for what you've survived in your life, and also for sharing your story here. Thank you so much for what you've shared here and I hope you continue to contribute to babble.

As a moderator, I greatly welcome your voice, your experience and your views.

I agree with ennir. Cross Product I hope you stay. You'll find that the majority of us are allies. A big hug for you for laying it all out and exposing your vulnerabilities. That takes a lot of guts.

BTW Cross Product, have you seen the movie XXY yet?I bought it but haven't watched it yet.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0995829/

One of the comments from IMDB:

A Life Determining Conflict: Who Am I?, 27 October 2008

Author: gradyharp [4] from United States

The chromosomal abnormality of XXY has been labeled as Klinefelter's Syndrome, hermaphroditism, and Intersex. The 'conception' defect results in a child with both male and female organs and when detected at birth usually results in a decision between physicians and parents to surgically alter the child to be one or the other phenotypic assignments - male or female. In this remarkably sensitive film based on a short story 'Cinismo' by Sergio Bizzio and adapted for the screen by writer/director Lucía Puenzo, XXY becomes a story of understanding and acceptance of a diagnosis by both child and parents and the conflicts such gender variation can present.

Alex (Inés Efron) is the XXY patient of the story, having been raised on the isolated coastline of Uruguay as a girl with the aid of supplemental hormones until age 15, the age when her loving Argentinean parents Kraken (Ricardo Darín) and Suli (Valeria Bertuccelli) have decided she should have her 'offending member' removed, allowing her to become a completely phenotypic female. Alex is deeply conflicted about her situation, refuses to take her medications and enjoys being 'one of the boys' in secret. When Alex's parents invite their surgeon friend Ramiro (Germán Palacios) and his wife Erika (Carolina Pelleritti) to their home to advise them on the surgical alternatives, they are accompanied by their artistic son Alvaro (Martín Piroyansky). There is an attraction between Alex and Alvaro and this ultimately results in a crisis that results in the coming of age and self-acceptance of both youngsters. Lucía Puenzo and her fine cast sensitively explore the interaction between parents and children and the coming to grips with choice of identity. This is yet another challenging and rewarding film from Argentina, one that stands alone as a fine movie, but one that also would be wise to add to the film libraries of high school and college students and of patient resource facilities who deal with problems of gender identity. Highly recommended. Grady Harp

I can't imagine anyone not welcoming your voice here, Cross Product. Thanks so much for sharing your story.

Looking back on that thread started by RTTG, I do feel bad for how I approached that conversation. It was a learning experience and I do feel bad that it was hurtful one at other people's expense.

I am sorry for being a cause of some of those hurtful comments.

I have some problems with what some other people are saying but I have given up trying to discuss such issues here. But I have no problem and every sympathy with your story. I'm glad you're here. 

From the original thread referred to started by RTTG, I counted four of us who posted any oppositional comments. One of those posters also apologized later for her particularly inflammatory comments as she had been experiencing some mental or other instability. The thread was also closed by a mod so that the conversation would not get any further derailed or disrespectful. I don't think it's fair to come in here and characterize this board as being unsupportive of trans issues when clearly the majority who care to comment here are.

That said, thanks for sharing your story, Cross Product. It helps those of us who are skeptical of some trans issues to understand better.

Hi there!  Thank you all so much for your support.  It's always very disheartening to see trans threads go the same way over and over, with nobody learning anything.  Only one defensive reply!

j.m, thanks for your unqualified apology.  I appreciate it.  I would like very much to educate people, and I know some have changed their minds. It's something that's close to my heart, obviously, so it's hard for me not to get emotional about it.  The part of me from childhood screams in my ear to shut up and hide.  I'm going to try to use analogies and metaphors that others can understand.

To jas, those four of you were amazingly good at derailing, and went way beyond "disrespectful."  It's also bitterly ironic and revealing that someone calls us crazy who has, as you put it, some mental instability.  I think my characterization is fair, because in spite of some wonderful supporters I have been reading predictable threads like these for years.  The fact that RosaL doesn't feel like she can even discuss the subject should tell you all you need to know.  The fact that the last thread degenerated into open taunting should tell you all you need to know.  Your skepticism is unjustified and I will explain how, if you're willing to listen.  I suspect that you're not, but it would be nice if you would prove me wrong.

Stargazer, I'm a great fan of yours!  I have great trouble watching any films or television involving trans issues.  Just looking at promotional stills for XXY is overwhelming.  Most XXY people are raised as boys because we usually pass the "ruler test" (which is literally the only test they use to determine what gender to force you into).  I wish they had raised me as a girl.  It would have solved everything in an instant.  So simple, and yet somehow so unacceptable.

I recommend reading Stone Butch Blues, and watching Boys Don't Cry and Southern Comfort.  They're almost impossible for me to sit through.

One problem is that when even well-meaning people speak for us, they can never know what we go through.  So many times we get talked over, and there are so terribly few of us that we're always massively outnumbered.  Many of us are dismayed at this and decide it's better to leave and hide away in secret.  I'm mostly a lurker and don't post a lot, usually when I feel something's not being said that needs to be.

I usually don't emphasize being XXY, because it's only tangentially related to the central issue.  I was lucky to escape the central crime of involuntary surgery, which needs to be banned NOW and the victims compensated generously.  It is monstrous and barbaric, no better than prefrontal lobotomy.  I can't speak for them or their trauma.

I can say what is necessary, though: on-demand access to transition-related medical care, including for children.  We are not confused.  We are not crazy.  We know exactly what is wrong and how to mitigate it, and all of us that I have ever met have always known.  This is crucial to understand.  We know long before we have any sort of political or social awareness.  We know as soon as we are aware that there exist two different kinds of people, that we are the wrong kind.  Again, I have never encountered a transperson for whom this was not the case.

The wrong puberty must be avoided at all cost!  This is central to quality of life.  Denial of this costs lives.  A lot of them.  I am fortunate in being XXY that mine was very weak and I look like any other tall woman.  But even what I did have was disastrous.  It fucked up my voice.  I had to have my facial hair follicles burned and blasted out by laser.  It was the most painful thing I have ever voluntarily put myself through.

There needs to be some simple, easy and private mechanism for changing documents.  Provincial governments are too ashamed to include any help for us on their websites, so you have to go digging and badgering.  It would also be nice if, when you are changing your driver's license, they didn't loudly say "DO YOU STILL HAVE A PENIS" to a room full of random people, and then "accidentally" losing the documentation so you have to go in and do it again, and hope you get someone else.  That was an actual experience, btw.

Another experience that happened to a trans friend when she went to her doctor for help.  He said, "no I won't help you.  You should move to a big city before someone beats the shit out of you."  Actual verbatim quote.

I already have a medical phobia, and the surgery was incredibly traumatic.  The epidural (huge needle in spine) got fucked up, which was a horrifying experience.  My mental and physical state deteriorated with constant panic attacks and flashbacks and paranoia until they subsided when I flew halfway around the world back home and could sleep in my own bed again.  Since there are only a dozen or so well-known and reputable surgeons who deign to help us (and they are pariahs in the medical community), we often have to travel around the world.  Still, I developed a deep fondness for Thailand when I was there.  I want to visit again under better circumstances.

I paid for my surgery and travel entirely out of pocket.  I am lucky because I come from a blue-blood academic dynasty of a family and have education and money, and some extremely wealthy relatives as a safety net (I have never asked for money from them, but they are there.  It's the kind of favour you can ask for only once in your life).  Most have a much worse time.  Someone I knew (who has since killed herself) once mentioned that her grandmother pulled her aside and told her she had to commit suicide to save the honour of her family.  I wish I were kidding.  Mission accomplished for granny.  Now they can erase her out of existence and try to forget that their family was ever stained in such a way.

Anyway, I'm happy to answer any questions, including offensive ones (but expect snippy answers).  I tend to use direct and strong language but it isn't meant nastily.  I have just found that it's often needed in order to get the point across effectively.

Again, thanks to all the supporters.  Without you we would have no chance.

As long as you don't then complain about direct and strong language in return.

The fact that you reiterate this tells me that it will probably be difficult having a balanced dialogue with you.

Please phrase your response in the form of a question.  You didn't ask any.  Instead, you ignored everything I said and homed in on a couple of unimportant sentences.

Nonetheless: yes I can take strong language.  Seriously.  I give as good as I get.

I agree with your second sentence.  I don't think there's any reaching you, so if you wouldn't mind stepping out of the conversation so I can talk to the people who want to learn without wasting time and energy on you, that would just be precious.

tx bb

One thing's for sure, she's no dot product.

I for one appreciate you sharing your 3-dimensional views.

[For everyone else, I'm making a math joke].

:)  Yes, I'm a math nerd.

I'm normal to the plane, baby!

That's a good one, thanks !

No prob.  There's a lot more where that came from :D

For non-nerds, a cross product produces a vector perpendicular to the span of the matrix in the operator.  Actually, I guess that doesn't help much…

Hi Cross Product. Just a small technicality re your comment at post #10. babblers can't ask for certain babblers to refrain from posting in any particular thread. So, you can't ask or tell or suggest to jas or anyone to not post in this thread.

If a babbler has posted something counter to babble policy, mods can and will step in and may instruct said babbler(s) to no longer post in a particular thread, or even an entire forum such as the feminism forum, for example. This is not the case with jas.

I suggest that we try to continue with this thread in a positive way, and not focus on the failings of the past thread of the same name. And thanks to j.m. for your words at post #5.

Very funny, educational and trans-positive video here. I've posted it before but it's so wonderful and amazing I felt it might help to bring us a bit back on track.

Nope.  Not even a little bit :)

Maysie: that's okay.  It was more rhetorical than anything else, I don't actually expect jas to follow through.

I don't want to be positive.  I want to let people know when they're wrong.  The whole reason I registered an account and posted in the first place was to express my unhappiness about the atrocious thread that was closed.  As well as all the ones that have gone to the graveyard before them.

It's not about happiness and joy, it's about pain and misery.  I'd love to talk about sunrises and kittens and fresh linen sheets, but that's not what this topic is about.  We are one of the remaining minorities for whom it is still considered socially acceptable to hector and jeer at in public.  It is also acceptable on a supposedly "progressive" forum to state outright the following (more or less in order):

- We are not special.  [Our unique medical and social issues are irrelevant]

- We identify as trans.  [We don't identify as trans, we are trans]

- Intentionally misunderstanding what cisgendered means [How can this be so hard?  Cis is anyone who's not trans.]

- Trans activists actively push people into transitioning  [This is a lie, repeated by more than one person]

- We are only "apparently" successful [Transsexuals are sad and pathetic]

- Trans youth are "confused" [That word comes up a lot, the Family Research Institute uses it all the time]

- We should not be accomodated "at the moment" [Due to rampant confusion]

- Gender identity is (partially) culturally based [IT IS NOT, any more than sexuality is]

- You can label us, but we're not allowed to label you

- Feminists have already dealt with this, and that's the final word ["the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it," pretty much]

- Surgery is PERMANENT!  And hormones are DANGEROUS!  [We know, thanks.  You don't need to protect us from our crazy little selves]

- We should be "tempered" at an early age [Through beatings, perhaps?  That's what my father did.  It failed but gave me some nice PTSD]

- We don't know who we are / false consciousness [YES WE DO, and we do as small children]

- "I can't imagine what you're going through, so I shall use Occam's Razor and assume you're lying"

- People in lab coats know more about us than we know about ourselves

- Our experiences are mere "opinion," whereas your opinions are facts

- Our experiences carry no weight against your introspection and that course you took ten years ago

- You have never seen things turn out well [Bet you think you can always spot one of us]

- We are "carved up" like a dinner roast [I assume you won't be getting carved up if you need bypass surgery]

- We are disordered  [We are broken, defective, crazy, unstable, dangerous]

- Trans is just the same as cutting  [I know because of my learnings]

- Medical care for us is not a "God-given right" [Something Tony Perkins would agree with, no doubt]

- Potato soup is more important than our lives  [Thanks for letting us know you care]

- Transitioning is just like buying a coffee at Starbucks, only it costs ten thousand times as much [CASH UP FRONT, no loan for you]

- We are a waste of taxpayers' valuable coin  [WTF?  Is this Free Republic?]

- Humane slaughter is to be supported [of us, I guess.  Time to fire the ovens!]

- SRS is self-mutilation, just like cutting [It is NOT.  "Mutilation" means that it is involuntary.  Any surgery entered into voluntarily that is correctly performed is NOT mutilation by definition]

- Acne is an appropriate analogy [if only our help came in tubes you could buy at the drugstore]

And that's just in that one thread!  And I've heard those non-arguments over and over and over and over again, and I'm so tired.  It's just so offensive, so insulting, so patronising, so derisive, so spiteful, so infantilising, and so ceaseless, that words fail me.  If you can't see how trans people might have been upset by that, I don't know what I can say.  The fact that G. Muffin can say these things and not be banned or even warned (and the thread locked right after so that nobody can refute anything), whereas I am warned on my second or third post for a very minor breach of etiquette, says a lot to me.

Nobody has actually asked me a real question, yet, other than punny math.  People are always talking about us, or at us, but almost never to us, and even more rarely stopping to listen.  If nobody wants to hear, if I'm just talking to a wall, I'll leave.  All you have to do is ask, and I'm out of here.

I'll understand.

Cross Product and Red Tory Tea Girl have both posted up their personal experiences. Laid themselves bare for us at Babble. Probably hoping that someone, somewhere actually cares what trans people go through and how they feel and educate our ignorant asses on the issues. See Cross Product's post above.

If this were the feminist forum, or the anti-racism or FN forum, no one would be debating the very basics of these issues. Yet here come two new people, who share their story only to be met with this:

As long as you don't then complain about direct and strong language in return.

This little nugget was given a pass here. A complete pass. Can you imagine if this were the feminist forum, or the AR forum and a white had said o a POC or FN the exact same thing? There would be some strong words.

Jas, I am not trying to single you out but I have a general question for people, why is it that both RTTG and now Cross Product have to be subjected to US defining the terms of discussion? Why are both RTTG and Cross Product immediately put on the defensive? Why is it ANY OF OUR BUSINESS to speculate and hurl our own, completely uneducated and biased opinions, at either of these posters?

Why would anyone, as opposed to listening, instead ask people to suck up any crap that gets flung their way because we just don't get it?

I call for zero tolerance for this type of behaviour. Keep your moral opinions to yourself. This is not your life to dissect and to question the motives of someone, and then call them "confused" etc.

Seriously people, can we get with the times here? This is embarrassing. The last thread was hostile, repulsive and no where near the level of progressive thought given to other issues.

Reminds me of almost all the AR topics started by POC or FN - we drown out their voices with bullshit. I would like to see that doesn't happen in this case as well.

Brilliant post BTW Cross Product. What I know of Trans issues I only know from reading books and articles written by trans people (and that isn't a whole lot). So I very much welcome your voice here. I hope that you stick around. Don't worry so much, you should see some of the arguments that happen in the AR and Feminist forum.

Hopefully the type of crap that was thrown at RTTG in her thread will not be thrown here too - anymore.

I appreciate your voice and would like it if you stayed around but I will understand if you decide not to, some of the comments that have been made are extemely offensive.

ennir, we cross posted. What you said +10

BTW, I had no idea Cross Product was some type of math thing. No wonder I didn't get it!

Stargazer, thank you for your post, I competely agree.

I would welcome a society that does not decide on the basis of the penis whether or not to define a child as male or female, in my view no infant should ever be subjected to that.  I would rather that these children be given the opportunity to identify as they chose to.

Cross Product, I loved math as a child, dreamt of becoming a mathematician and am quite disappointed that I am not getting the math jokes.  lol 

As for questions, what do you think should be done or not done when a child is born with Klinefelter syndrome?

When I was studying chemistry, we used the terms, "cis," and "trans," to describe the configuration of various organic molecules.

So if it's good enough for labelling molecules, it's good enough for labelling people.

Uh, no; you insist on labelling.  Nobody should be called what they do not want to be called.  If I object to "cis-gendered" because I think it's a silly-ass neologism as well as an objectifying label, I don't think I should be called that.

Great start Sineed! Really. *Applause*

Yes, that was sarcasm.

Wow, that is what you have to say?    LOL  Truly you are correct, it is ALL about you.

Okay if we can dial down the personal angles here and stick with the issues, that would be great. So back off the sarcasm towards Sineed please.

Sineed, objecting to being labelled from the side of the majority and the dominant position isn't at all the same as having the majority name and label the less powerful.

I'm moderating this thread a bit more closely in the hopes that this will not go the way of the many previous threads on trans issues.

Thank you Maysie! You truly do rock.

Sineed: we need some terminology to determine not only who is us, but who isn't us.  Of course I understand that argument from authority via a cut-n-paste Wikipedia entry is worth far more than anything I could ever possibly contribute, but this term has common currency among transpeople, and it's not going to change.  Please get over it.  What should we call you?  !trans?  ~trans?  Trans-prime?  That-Which-Is-Not-Us?  How about the Normals?  The Mundanes?  The Muggles?  Cissies?  If I'm feeling grim, how about the Hutus?  The Elil?  See, really cisgendered isn't looking so bad after all.  It is a neutral, technical term, and it has NOTHING to do with stuff you learned in undergrad chemistry.

If we're not allowed to have a term that describes you, then we cannot talk about ourselves either.  Which I suspect is the point.

Stargazer and ennir, thank you so much for your support!  If it weren't for you, I might have given up by now.  You guys rock.

The problem with math is that they don't bust out the good shit until second year university, so the memories people carry away are endless multiplication tables and fractions, mindless grind work that isn't really "math" in any real sense, but mere arithmetic.  They teach kids to be human calculators, when math is more a way of thinking than anything else.  No wonder people are phobic about it.

As to KS, the best thing to do when they're born is nothing at all.  We can have some developmental issues which are probably good to look out for.  I am extremely clumsy (my first two school report cards say "has problems with motor control"), and writing is difficult and painful for me, which is why I switched to the keyboard as soon as I could.  I used to type school papers on an old mechanical typewriter because it was a lot easier.  I'm allergic to a huge range of things; many KS people have autoimmune problems.  KS people are sometimes prone to out of control rages, something I used to have but learned to control and neutralize as a teenager.  This can make XXY forums pretty fractious places, which is why I tend to avoid them.

The most important thing is that if your child says "I think I should have been a girl/boy," regardless of any visible medical issue, please take them seriously and please listen to them.  You will potentially be saving them from a lifetime of grief, misery, shame and death.

I'm always amazed at the level of personal investment so many people seem to have in denying and removing our agency.  Do you realize how few of us there are?  But the fact is that we, by our mere existence and out of all proportion to our numbers, threaten a lot of peoples' basic assumptions about the world.  Some people can take these new concepts and integrate them, and so learn and grow.

For others, our existence is intolerable, and our scary shadow must be neutralized somehow.  People construct cozy narratives about us - that we're crazy, deranged, pathetic, deceivers, invaders - in order to avoid facing whatever it is about us that is threatening their worldview.  Once that schema is in place, there's almost no shifting it, because to do so would require facing the shadow again.  To those people, I ask that you look at that shadow and think about what you see.

It's really the same sort of process that occurs with gay-hating Christian organisations, only on a smaller scale.  That is why the arguments directed against us are so familiar and recognizable (at least to us).  How can I get through, without people getting huffy and defensive, without the shutters slamming closed?

Thanks very much.  I am really writing from the heart here, and this is very exhausting and draining.  I want to educate, I want people to understand, I want happy things, but being Sisyphus grinds you down.

And now, I am off to get very, very, very high.

This is so incredibly powerful and applies to issues and social realities far beyond this conversation:

Um, how about non-trans? Is the extra syllable that much of an inconvenience?

My point in the last thread was that assuming that everyone who does not identify as trans is "cis" is incorrect. How can you possibly know who is cis or not, by your definition (being those who are comfortable with their assigned gender). You don't know that and it's arrogant and misleading to label a broad swath of people as such. "Non-trans" would cover all those people who may not identify as trans but who don't identify as cis. Is that all right with you?

They both came in here on the defensive. They both came in here presumably to initiate some discussion, although I'm still not quite sure on what.

Can you imagine if a feminist came into the feminism forum with some kind of diatribe, and then said something along the lines of "ask questions, but expect snippy answers...I tend to use strong language...I find it's needed to get my point across," basically asking for protected status, but retaining the right to be bitchy to those who respond. Is that a really great way to engage others?

Cross Product, thank you for being here and sharing your story and your views. I hope you stick around. 

I wanted to explore the thread title further, as the medical profession and society clearly still consider Klinefelter's to be a disorder. 

I am expecting and it is one of the things that the doctor called "a genetic disorder" and that can be tested for prenatally. I had of it before in university, but had never really considered it much up until that point. I turned down the genetic testing (it also tests for Down's Syndrome, etc.), as I had already made the choice not to terminate. About 50% of fetuses are terminated if Klinefelter's is detected prenatally versus 90+% for Down Syndrome, so clearly the attitude still exists that this is a disorder but not as many people who view a disability as a disorder. The doctor spoke of this as something negative from the get go however and likened it to a disability. 

I was wondering if you have encountered doctors who have been more progressive in speaking about your gender in a way that does not begin with the "disordered" assumption? I was also curious about whether you think this testing should be okay or what in your mind can be done on a societal level to reassure prospective parents about having a child with Klinefelter's? 

That's a problem with science in general, IMV; you have to memorize a whole lot of boring stuff before you get to the good stuff.

Re the whole cis-trans thing: I knew these as chemistry terms long before they were being applied to people.  But like jas says, there are people who identify on a continuum of gender identity and this labelling becomes inaccurate, because people are not molecules.

I suspect it came out of a chemistry textbook somebody on a usenet group picked up sometime in the early '90s.  If it ends up in the OED, jas and I (and some other people on babble) will just have to get used to it.  But in the meantime, I think it's useful to have a conversation about labelling, who gets to do it, and what uses it has.  Maysie makes a point about labelling from the perspective of a dominant group, and that's a point; however, if the dominant group (and I'm not all that dominant :) objects to the label, it doesn't help the dialogue move forwards with the oppressed group.  It's pointlessly divisive (and you want to multiply your support, not divide would-be allies).

Oh great, here we go again. Do you consider yourself an ally when all you've done is harp on about yourself? Same with Jas - again we see the obvious frustration of Cross Product _ ONCE AGAIN - having to defend themselves.

And no, Cross Product did not start out being defensive, and if that occurred no fucking wonder, given the base level of discourse on this topic from so-called allies.

Fuck. Just stop already. Check your privilege at the door. Listen and stop telling others they have no right to say what the think and feel.

And that is why you fail.  You don't listen, or at least you don't hear.  Even now, you primarily talk about me, rather than to me.

I am not personally asking for any protected status of any kind.  I can take care of myself and don't need any protection.  Remember the business about the blue-blood wealthy old money family.  I could fight a court battle knowing that there are millions of dollars standing behind me.  I have dual nationality, meaning I can up pegs and move any time I want.

It's not for me that I'm writing this.  It's for all the children, a few of those I have known personally.  It's for the people with no money, no power who get kicked out of their houses at 15, who are dropped off downtown by their mothers and told "good luck faggot" before roaring away.  It's for those that have to resort to survival sex because nobody, nobody will hire them.  It's for those who eventually take their grandmothers' advice and kill themselves to save their family from shame.  It's for the people who have their houses vandalized on a nightly basis by the local hooligans that the police do not and will never control.  It's for the people who have their skulls caved in with fire extinguishers by someone who then told the police "I think I killed it," just because they so desperately wanted to feel what it was like to be loved.

jas, the fact that you are taking this so very, very personally and insist unceasingly trying to make it all about you, tells me more about you that perhaps you intended.  I can't ask you to leave, so instead I will no longer be answering anything you say.  Good bye.

When something happens in downtown Eastside, nothing happens.  It's just another tranny dead.

Dead

Dead

hey CP - there is a handy Igorne tool here for IE and Firefox if you are so inclined. It works great.

??  This is when histrionics get in the way of dialogue.

Okay, then. Bye.

Maysie, please help...

Am I really crazy?  Am I really the one in the wrong here?  Is jas' e-psychiatry accurate?  Obviously I know jas' and Stargazer's answers.  It would be nice if others could chime in with their opinion.

I'm not going to talk to jas, but I will happily talk about hir.

Stargazer, Cross Product is a big grown-up. She is a blue-blood from a wealthy, old-money family and can fight court battles knowing that there are millions of dollars standing behind her. She has dual nationality, meaning she can up pegs and move any time she wants.

She said she can take whatever she dishes out.

Hi, (I assume you meant ignore :) thanks for the tip, I didn't know that.  It's like the old USENET killfile days!

Folks we need to keep the tenor and dialogue here respectful. Cross Product has shared a great deal of personal information. Anyone who is cis-gendered or non-trans, or a Muggle, needs to really watch their privilege here. 

What is theory and ideas for one person, is lived reality, pain and trauma for another. How many gajillion times have I said this to white folks about issues of race and racism? Can we all please try to make the connections? Is that at all possible?

Only if the oppressed group is willing to always be a supplicant rather than an equal. Since there is no derogatory connotation to the "cis" modifier, since it implies no handicap, "moral shortcoming", or failure on the part of those of us so gendered -- since it is not being used in a way that can, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered a pejorative -- I fail to see how it can be considered divisive.

It appears, to me, that objections to it are being raised in defence of the privilege of the dominant to control the discussion. It raises the spectre of the dominant group defending itself as "normal" and those outside the dominant group as "abnormal" -- and I don't think one has to go very far out on a limb to see the pejorative connotations of "abnormal" as a label.

Cross Product is indeed all that.  It's not a boast or brag, it's simply the truth.  She doesn't actually have any money (you don't get to have that kind of money by giving it away to relatives), so instead she has a successful professional / academic career. She works in a university.  Her younger sister is an up-and-coming scientist whom Cross Product was delighted to see reported about in the Globe and Mail and Quirks and Quarks, and Slashdot, and New Scientist, and the Guardian, whose Ph.D paper was published in Nature.  Her father is a successful, retired marine biology professor.  Her uncle is a Eurocrat who just spent €3.2 million on renovating his house in Brussels.  Her great uncle on her mother's side was a famous sculptor who has an entire room dedicated to his work at the AGO, as well as the sculptures in front of Toronto City Hall.  One of Cross Product's more obscure cousin-of-an-aunt type relatives is married to some sort of German nobility and lives the drive-the-Ferrari-for-a-weekend-in-Monaco sort of lifestyle and has the most spectacular drug problems.

On top of that, Cross Product as a teenager once illustrated a paper for Sarah McLachlan's father.

All these things are entirely true, and if someone wants to PM me I'll tell them names and they can phone them up and verify all this.

[Edit for grammar fail]

I agree with that actually. Or at least partially. Gender identity can be a pretty painful issue for a lot of non-trans (muggle) women, too. But TransProduct has described a painful history. We need to be careful of each others' wounds and tender spots and try not to hurt each other. But we also need to be able to disagree with each other if we're going to have a useful discussion. It should be possible to do both!

I don't doubt it's the truth. I don't doubt that your blood is actually, physically, blue. I don't doubt that this information is absolutely necessary and entirely relevant to the issues you are apparently trying to discuss here. Please, carry on.

I realize it raises that specter for you but that doesn't mean that's what's going on. I have reservations about "cis", too - not the label, but the definition. And it's not because I think I'm normal. (Quite the reverse.) 

Sineed comes from poor white trash.  Three of her four grandparents were alcoholics.  One of her uncles is bipolar and spent five years in prison for armed robbery.  Sineed currently wastes too much time getting into pissing contests on the internet.

I would be more than happy if you would provide an alternative explanation. I have been trying to follow the trans threads over the past several months and am somewhat surprised at the vehemence with which the non-trans have been expressing themselves. [Of course I bring along my own baggage and am drawing analogies in my head about the arguments against the appropriation of the word "gay" by my nearest and dearest...] I guess (and I am trying not to be sarcastic) I need a 101 from those who are opposed to the "cis" label as to the reasons for their opposition. If someone has clearly spelled it out and I missed the point, could you link to the thread?

Cross Product doesn't look down on anyone for their or their parents' circumstances.  Cross Product admits that she has been successfully baited by jas' (once again) taking a single paragraph and making it the central part of the story.  Cross Product does not get into pissing contests.

Cross product is a leftist in spite of her blue copper-based blood, because she has empathy and a conscience, and a very strong sense of justice.  Cross Product's only route, should she ever give up on the Left's ever being able to improve itself, would be epistemeological nihilism and a terminal case of misanthropy.  Beyond that, Cross Product cannot see.  Always in motion is the future.

Okay, back to first person, this is getting childish.

Great idea, and hopefully this thread will not be about those who object to the term, but more about what it means to be trans-gendered because frankly, I find the pile ups on trans people disgusting, unwarranted and seriously deeply screwed.Why? Because for the life of me I cannot figure out exactly why they are so freaked out and so judgmental. I would expect this crap from the right, but not from those on the left.

Okay, I'm done here.  This is too much for me.  I've been in tears all day from this.  I would chalk this up as another failure, but my blackboard is full.

Stargazer, please continue rocking (I am confident you will).  Maysie, please delete my account.

Good bye.

I really think it depends on how it's defined. If all it means is that you're not trans-sexual, I'm not bothered. If it means that a person is comfortable with social expectations and constrictions related to their assigned gender (and I have seen it defined that way, though I suspect Cross Product would not define it that way), I find that worrisome because it seems to leave no conceptual space for women and girls to resist and oppose the way "femaleness" is socially defined, unless they are trans-gendered (thereby - I fear - reaffirming and upholding all the old categories). That's all. I don't think I'm being vehement  (I'm still not saying this right. I need to spend some more time on it.)

ETA: OK. I guess it's over. I won't try this again. 

Christ. This makes me sad and angry all at the same time. Thanks to ennir, maysie and bagkitty and no thanks to jas and sineed.

I think some people really need to have a deep look at themselves and question why they are so freaking spiteful/hurtful/self centered.

Cross Product thank you for your response to my question. 

I am sorry that this is the way it goes here, I can't figure it out either, for me progressive goes with being open.  I find I am tending to post less and less because of that.

You did not fail.

BTW, there doesn't seem to be any way to delete my account.  Can a mod do it please?

TransProduct, I really hope you'll stay. But if you're determined to go, it's not necessary to delete the account. All you have to do is ignore the thing from now on. But I hope you'll stay. 

For the life of me I can't figure out why it oppresses anybody to disagree with something they say.  Isn't that why people come here?  Wouldn't it be boring if everybody agreed on everything?

But apparently, if I don't agree, I'm a hater.

Quote:

If it means that a person is comfortable with social expectations and constrictions related to their assigned gender, I find that worrisome because it seems to leave no conceptual space for women and girls to resist and oppose the way "femaleness" is socially defined, except through trans-genderism (thereby - I fear - reaffirming and upholding all the old categories). That's all. I don't think I'm being vehement  

This is nicely said; I'd reiterate that people are on a continuum of gender identity and to identify all people who are not trans as "cis" is just not accurate.

There's a fairly lively debate about the whole "cis" thing out there; here's a teensy sample:

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/12831/uniracial-vs-cisgender-why-lan...

At the end of it all, "cis" may enter the lexicon, and I'll just have to deal.  But in the meantime, folks will debate it.  Nothing wrong with that, IMV.

Thanks to you Stargazer

I've been near tears all day just thinking of how utterly vicious people can be, it seems to me much associated with fear and the need for control that arises out of that and while that gives me a way to comprehend it, it doesn't make it any easier to accept.

What is this mono-mind that says there is only one way to be? 

When I was sixteen, some forty years ago, I had a friend, a lovely young man and though at the time I did not know he was gay I did know that he was bullied by the biggest and stupidest of the other boys.  I hated them for that and it broke my heart to see how he was hurt by it. I have been thinking about him all day, he died of AIDS many years ago, okay now I'm crying.

Of course there is nothing wrong with that FOR YOU. But you and jas have effectively not only read someone spill their guts here, all their pain, all their positiveness, all their emotions, and then you figured it was a dandy idea to hey, just forget all that CP posted and start some stupid fucking bullshit about the label "cis". FFS.

ennir, I feel you. Completely. I am ashamed to be a part of babble right now. Deeply so.

Yes, the world would be boring if everybody agreed on everything. And it would be a frightening place too if everyone felt entitled to speak their minds and pick apart other people's personal experiences, as if other people were public objects of scrutiny.

In the larger context it's not worth continuing with this criticism.

Cross,

I didn't know what cisgendered meant before posting here, it never came up. I should have paid more attention in chemistry. Btw, "!trans", "e-psychiatry" is pretty funny. You're clearly the good kind of geek. The mundanes? Is that a babylon 5 reference?

You ever read the novel Glasshouse by Charles Stross?

Admittedly, the first time I saw a castration scene in a novel (Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson) I almost fainted, so I think people might have a psycho/physio resistance to listening/reading to some of the more physical aspects. Doesn't excuse belligerent behavior though.

I am sorry to see CP leave. 

Cross Product, if you're still reading, I will close your account. If you need to reach me by email I'm at bigcitygal(at)rabble(dot)ca. If you change your mind you  are welcome back anytime.

So, another train wreck of a thread.

I'm around now so I will keep it open. I'll say one thing, that I've said before, and in fact I will use the words of others since mine seem to have little to no effect.

From this post on racialicious.com. A completely different topic and issue, but the privilege analysis is similar.

Hm. I'd already left the thread and CP decides it's all "too much" for her blue blood. I'm sorry, this is just histrionics.

There was no attacking of CP here on the basis of her being trans. Babble has not been oppressive towards  trans people. Both posters indicated a willingness to engage difficult dialogue. Both tend towards overdramatizing the content of the discussion.  I am no different here than I am in any other thread when I feel someone's approach is questionable. I ask the questions I have because I want to inform myself. I argue on certain points because I like arguing. If you review the threads, i think you will find RTTG andd CP like arguing, too.

I also question this idea that Babble has not accommodated trans issues in the past. I've been here five years and I can recall all of two threads. One on Kimberly Nixon v. RR, which is a naturally contentious issue. Why can't we discuss this honestly? Look at the Ahoy trans-misogyny thread started by RTTG and you will see the seed of a useful discussion there. I was able to state some very unpopular and contentious viewpoints there - viewpoints I later questioned myself after I'd got them out.

We can have these discussions without either side being shut down. Thank you Maysie, for what it's worth, for being willing to see where it goes (went).

BTW, Ghislaine asked an interesting question that could have been validly discussed here. It seems to have been missed in all the focus on who done who wrong.

gimme a fucking break jas, you folks are transphobic.

just admit it and you'll feel better.

fucking babblers.  meh. please rock on CrossProduct, I'm a fan of math.

RevolutionPlease, what did we talk about regarding postings at 4am?

Please don't call people transphobic. In truth, everyone has learned and internalized all sorts of oppressions.

If there's any way for this conversation to continue without insults then I welcome the dialogue. I'm around for most of today, and I'll be here because I really think we can move, shift and learn from each other.

Since Cross Product has chosen to have her account closed, and therefore can't respond here, please keep all remarks to the issues and not about her personal story that she was brave enough to share.

Thanks for that link Maysie, delightful.

I think we are all hormonally challenged once puberty hits, as I am morhing into a crone I often feel I am waking up from a spell cast by those very hormones and from that persective I welcome diversity.  I think that for far too long the testosterone bullies have defined the game.

Sometimes among supporters or listeners, a few other voices will rise that appear threatening to those who experience risk from everywhere in this society. Its been a recurring theme that people who merely seek out a place to talk, to voluntarily inform from lived experience, and to dispel misunderstandings find things no different here than most other places where barriers of one form or another are thrown up. It seems we can always be counted on to present an all too familiar atmosphere, one where people quickly discover little difference from mainstream contemporary society and its challenges.  Its sad really when those that come here have to navigate through self appointed guardians who feel their station is to challenge and confront.

Often the way we approach an issue will set the tone for the kind of response we get.

... and then there are the times where there is an audience that has already prejudged the issue waiting to pounce.

If only there had been an issue to prejudge and pounce on ...

Anyway, I didn't realize there was this whole recent precedent to these threads from July '09, including one on Trans Inclusion and Feminism. The posters there who were raising questions handle the discussion much more intelligently than I. Unfortunately none of them seem to be posting here currently. Also appreciate Maysie's efforts to mediate (for lack of a better word) the divide.

Power in truth bagkitty! We know the truth. Shame that those who expressed the worst behaviour are still...well...expressing the worst behaviour.

Yes jas, like for example, when someone thinks there should be restrictions on transition because young women will find it somehow trendy, and they could damage their bodies with testosterone and such, and my response is that you're forgetting that thre are a far greater number of trans women who are currently being damaged with testosterone. When you approach trans rights from the perspective of making it all about 'saving women from becoming men,' you make trans women, who make up about 99% of the names read out on The Day of Rememberance, feel pretty ignored and invisible.

Further, I'd ask if anybody here finds the term 'breeder' to be offensive. I tend to as the intent of the words are to cheapen romantic love that is heterosexual in nature. It's not just qualitative, but it's normative, in that it says that someone should be someting else, but instead, through some failing, they're in this imperfect state. I'm a woman trying to correct a hormonal imbalance, and I, just as CP said am trans. I am NOT identified as trans. Someone with one leg doesn't need to identify as disabled to get the little sticker on their car that lets them park closer to the entrance to the grocery store. They also can't make ablism disappear by refusing to identify as disabled.

And lastly, CP, though I will say I'm non-op, not pre, scratching for hormones, and that I couldn't articulate my transness until a while later than you could, you're thirty-one flavours of awesome and you made my fiance laugh and cheer. I hope you don't go.

Certainly not my perspective, nor my intent. Nor have I ever advocated for restrictions on transition, but rather caution, as well as the right to question its eligibility for public funding. 

But I don't think I want to get into this if whatever I say is going to be deliberately misconstrued for the benefit of an argument I'm not even contesting.

Why do you think you have a "right" to question transitioning paid for by the government? Does it bother you so much to listen to what people want who wish to transition? Why do you think you have the right to determine who transitions (I say this because it is implied in your public funding eligibility).

Jas, how do you think this should go? People like you get to decide if the government pays or the people that are transitioning and their loved ones? Why is your voice more important than theirs? Or to put it another way, why the hell is it so important to you that you want to determine who is eligible for funding?

Jas, have you learned absolutely nothing?

Worst part is, to the greatest degree, we have expensive publicly funded gatekeepers. I have now waited SEVEN months. Seven months at the age of 26 for the right to pay for a medication that costs less than $25 a month out of my own pocket and haven't been granted it. That's goddamn ludicrious. It's not caution; it's needlessly extending my agony. If I could treat myself on demand, the public system would be saved a great deal, especially if I were in any way suicidal. Best estimates are that for every transsexual who's allowed to transition, there are about 0.19-0.18 less suicides. Based on the 20,000 that SRS costs, and the $35,000 that monitoring, a great deal of which would otherwise occur, over a generously estimated seventy years, the state pays $55,000 per transitioner. The state also, according to a study done by the Government of New Brunswick, pays $850,000 per suicide, or on average $153,000 for each frustrated transitioner.

So if the perpetuation of this institutional cissexism is to cost us ninety-seven thousand dollars per erased trans woman, I'd say your stated goal of protecting the public purse is, quite frankly, better served by supporting the same agency and autonomy for trans women as almost everyone on this forum does for cis women.

I don't think it costs the government anywhere near $850,000 per suicide.

Here is the link from which you probably got that figure.

For a number of reasons, I don't believe in the validity of a "loss of productivity" analysis in general, and it also happens to comprise the highest portion of the cost cited here. I think the reality of our job market in the last thirty years renders such conjecture dubious. Moreover, such a model could also be used in calculating the costs of loss of life by abortion or other legal means of life termination.

How many potential productive workers have been aborted and what is the loss of productivity cost there? Maybe we shouldn't allow abortion.

Thing is jas, that we don't have to pay the low-to-mid six figure amount it costs to educate your theoretical aborted person. A suicide is normally in the prime of one's productive life, after the vast majority of human capital investments have been made, so the comparison is rather invalid. If we had to put every trans woman through another 13 years' compulsary education, you might have a point.

I find the implication of your rhetorical point on abortion, (the fully funded provision of which, I thoroughly support for the same reasons that I support on demand access to any element of medical transition,) to be somewhat vexing, as you've also stated your fear is that young cis women will find trans masculinity trendy. Do you think this was also the case with freer access to termination of pregancy?

I will admit, having agency and autonomy over one's body is one of those things that will never go out of style.

Well then, I shall quote your own words back at you:

Firstly, I will encourage anyone to be genuine to themselves, and since there are a lot of closeted trans women and trans men out there, yes, that does mean supporting people who have decided to transition, instead of looking at it like some tragic, drastic, solution that I should invariably respond to with 'are you sure?!'

I have heard people refer to my decision to transition as an affliction, a disability, but really, the injury is not in taking estrogen and being with a woman who calls me her girlfriend, there's no loss there. The loss is people who are determined to make transition very unpopular and unhealthy. And yes, this sort of attitude, that being trans is some rash decision and phase instead of, well, a fact of our lives; this attitude is what reinforces cissexism.

CP put it best when she said that it's not so bad that the right hates us, we expect it; it's that so much of the left hates us too.

Well, I'm not sure when the division began between certain schools of feminism and mtf transexualism, but you do seem to bring up a lot of old arguments, unsolicited. In doing so, you are bringing up those old debates again. In fact, I don't think I would have known about Michele Landsberg's article, which is already ten years old, or whatever Mary Daly's position on transsexualism was if you hadn't brought it up, so I would suggest that you are in part creating your own bogeywomen, as there are apparently only one or two of us here on Babble who would have questions and arguments about transsexuality (and who don't feel intimidated to speak about them).

And yes, I'm concerned that making access to transitioning therapies available without much question, as is happening more now, might make things too easy for some people, for example, young women who have, say, butch leanings and who see the kind of ease and freedom with which young men move about and are adored in our society - adored for all their apparent faults and scruff and bad behaviour. Transitioning, especially if so many more people are doing it now, might look like the thing to do (again, especially for ftms, due to the easier process initially for females to acquire male physical attributes hormonally). Indeed, who wouldn't consider it, if you're already butch? And I know, or at least I trust, for now, there's a difference between being butch and being transsexual or transgender, but does a 15-year old female (for example) know the difference?

And it brings up your earlier post (can't remember where) about the increasing incidence of transsexualism to where it's now at, you claim, 1/100 people. Or maybe that's just transgenderism -- a figure which wouldn't surprise me at all, by the way. I think it should and will go much higher than that, given that, imo, humans have naturally fluid sexual and gender expression. However, CP asks the question upthread:

which directly contradicts what you're saying. So are there "few" of us/you? Or are there many? Which is it? And if there are many, and the incidence is really more like 1/100 or higher (as I suspect) and we are saying that people have the "right" to transition surgically, this has profound implications for public funding of these medical services. Health budgets are already by far the biggest chunk of provincial budgets. And we by no means have afforded everyone a university education, for example. Have we? But you would have us prioritize surgical transitioning for people even who think they might be transsexual?? And then what if they change their mind, as some do, later? We should pay for them again to reverse it? What exactly is your argument.

As I wrote down the example of university education, it occurred to me that we have student loan programs which make university accessible for some people. Perhaps we could have some kind of surgical loan program as well for trans people, and others, to access. But I would want to see some form of personal responsibility taken for that kind of money outlay.

Jas, it's interesting how you focus on the $20,000 surgery and not the gatekeepers who actually cost more than just letting people access medication on their own. Out of pocket. It costs far more to keep estrogen from trans women than it does to let them purchase it. Same for testosterone for trans men.

But yes, $200 per person per lifetime does seem like a large amount of money to set aside for genital surgery, doesn't it?

Tuition for all costs $30,000 plus for EVERY person, or about $10,000 per person based on university enrollment. Surgery for all who want it will cost about $200 or less. Lifetime. (remember, not every trans woman wants vaginaplasty. In the US, for example, about half of trans women are post-operative and half are pre-op or non-op)

Many trans men don't get phalloplasty, for the same reason. Some of us aren't nearly as genitally obsessed as the people who are policing gender. Some of us will be happy with the effect that hormones will have on our sex organs. A woman's penis looks and acts differently from a man's. A man's vagina acts rather differently from a woman's.

But, as you have declared, you've found the bravery to question our right to self-expression on whatever grouds seem most convenient at the moment, be it fear of young women joining in with what is apparently the transmasculine vanguard, or dredging up drag queens who identify male to try to tar trans women because somehow the misogyny of the gay community is the fault of the trans community. Now you say it's the incredible cost that you object to, and I point out that the restrictions aren't centered around the costs, that I've waited more than half a year to have treatment any cis woman would have ON DEMAND, that I would be obliged to pay for out of pocket, and that my story is in no way unique. The establishment delays young trans women when the clock is ticking, just to reduce the number of women who find the courage to go through with it all. Instead of letting us transition on our own terms, at our own pace, they make it an all-or-nothing propostion.

Lastly, I would submit that we do have a method of financing of health care costs that are elective: We call it taxation.

On this point we would have agreement if what you are saying is true. I have no argument with this, except that we need to recognize the differential effects of testosterone vs. estrogen (or whatever it's called) therapies. One has permanent effects, the other doesn't. So the consequences are different for those entering such therapies, depending on which one they're taking.

You are continuing to misrepresent me on the issue of human sexual and gender expression, which I believe, and have always believed, is and should be allowed to be, fluid. And that all of us should be fighting for freedom of expression on that front. Please see my post above.

As for the rest, I will withold reply for now and give it a chance to sift in.

You do realize there are queally permanent effects to estrogen as well, don't you? Just because decreased sperm motility to the point of infertility and irreversible breast growth aren't considered bad things by you or I doesn't mean they're not permanent. And yes, a beard is as permanent as electrolysis, and thicker vocal chords are as permanent as learning to talk from where you gargle. Just because they're more visible and make trans men more likely to pass quickly and well, does not commend itself as a legitimate reason for preventing people who are, in aggregate, at worst, 98% right, when they say they want to have access to testosterone, to have said access. Yes, one in fifty of one in a hundred people may come to the decision that they made a mistake. It's not worth punishing the rest of us for their sake, I'm quite sorry. Many women regret abortions too, does that mean we should restrict their rights to terminate a pregnancy which they might want later. Does this mean abortion should be publicly funded? Yes! And what is good for the goose is sauce for the gander. My body, my choice. No compromise because I might not know as well as you do who I am. If that's the case, it's still my choice.

just wnat to express my opinon.. I often feel like i live in no man's land (no pun intended) being a pre op or non op trans woman..the worst is when i have to show my ID or do a police check, it makes me feel so vulnerable.

I still dont know if i wnat to have any surgery at all, but there are so many economic worries that i really dont even have time to think about that..i found the hormonal effects quite satisfying already.

Well said takeitslowly!

Well, not to nitpick, but a man can still look like a man without a beard. You also neglect the reality of hair loss for some trans men, which can begin as soon as other changes start taking effect. And... training yourself to talk at a certain pitch becomes as permanent as a physiological change to the vocal chords? That is surprising to me.

But yeah, I wasn't thinking about the breast growth Still, removing breasts will cost you something, but once it's done, your appearance can return to some kind of masculine normal.

anyone can look like a man if they put efforts into it.

Jas, I've seen a lot of transmisogyny in my day, but this here is an impressive display of transmisandry. You're really freaked out about the female-assigned getting testosterone, and seem to care not a lick for the male-assigned who would like to prevent it. I am a slacks-wearing, makeup-eschewing, Maddow-watching, trans lesbian, and I am sick and fucking tired of seeing the radfem left mourn or venerate straight trans guys as some sort of lesbian vanguard.

Trans men. Aren't. Women. And most of them, the ones who are man enough to give up access to womens' space: They'll tell you as much. And if you disagree, guess what? They know themselves better than you know them!

I'm not mourning their loss - they haven't gone anywhere. I'm questioning the seeming rise in transgender identification leading to transition, and whether easier access is causing some to make the decision to transition for reasons other than being genuinely trans. Especially for those who possess no political understanding of how sexism, heterosexism and heteronormativity operate in our society. I mean, you ask why the definition of womanhood has to involve a vagina; one can also ask why it has to involve breasts and a higher-pitched voice and a lack of facial hair. Why does masculinity have to involve men's clothes, muscles and body hair and a lack of breasts? Why can't trans people feel masculine or feminine in the bodies they have? In other words, why base masculinity or femininity on certain physical attributes? I thought that trans people officially reject that notion. But at the same time you're selecting superficial physical characteristics for yourselves based on normative binaries. How is that genderfucking? It actually contradicts what you are saying about gender binaries.

If being a woman doesn't involve having breasts or a vagina or a higher softer voice, why adopt those attributes?

Wow. I don't know where to begin.

You have rolled out three tropes here:

-Trans people are reinforcing sexism

-All parts of the body are equally crucial to all people's body maps

-All binary presentation is inherently sexist

I don't have the energy to teach you trans 101 when you say you have a few concerns regarding public funding. If that were the case you wouldn't be questioning the very nature of our existence. From this point on, please discuss in good faith, because I've been talking to you for weeks and I was under the delusion that you didn't need a course of trans 101.

Maybe I can respond. I never felt like physical attributes is related to how I identify with my gender. I think the hormonal treatments helped me to be the gender that I am. I didn’t have to learn to be a woman nor do I have to look female to be a woman, the hormonal effects help me to be who I feel I am psychologically. I never remember having to consciously learn how to be a socially approrpiate female, it just happens on its own.

Interesting. I wonder if you would problematize a man with erectile dysfunction for taking viagra under the same logic. Could you claim that enhancing one's sex is a radically different practice when it is performed by a trans vs. cis person?

I do, however, remember having to consciously learn how to be a socially appropriate male. From spending 2 weeks practicing how to look at my nails, to trying to become comfortable with what is considered platonic male contact. (never managed that) to learning to shut my mouth around sexist behaviour because men (straight or otherwise) often feel comfortable intimidating other men who call them on their bullshit.

I remember that my fiance said that one of the things that attracted her to me were all those female mannerisms I couldn't learn away. How I flirted like a girl, in that I would continuously make eye-contact and then look down and away, that my speech patterns, my stance, mannerisms, when I no longer felt constant pressure to present male, just became more feminine, more natural. I didn't have to think of what to say, though sometimes I'd be aware of how much more femme my mannerisms had become, just by doing what felt natural. It's amazing the way society generally squeezes femininity out of those it perceives boys. I almost hadn't remembered what I had taken from me until I reclaimed it.

It now having been 8 months and 6 days since I asked for treatment, and my not having gotten any estrogen as of yet, I thought I might do something constructive with my time and reply.

That's odd, because I'm looking at the historically low rates of medical transition before we'd learned to synthesize estrogen, and OMG you're right! Nobody was trans before Christine Jorgenson!

Well, except Lily Elbe, or the Chevalier d'Eon, or Elagabalus (classic case of acting out, by the way, poor girl.)

Lucky for me, instead of learning how to call Warren Farrel a misogynist, I was in economics class looking at price and its effect on demand. For some, the price of transition, from the violence and the threats, and the humiliation of the Real Life Experience (Oh, I wasn't aware I wasn't really living up to this point doctor!) discourage transition. If the price is lowered, then more people, who are still trans, still expressing a demand for medical transition, will obtain services. Just like some women are too poor to afford to terminate a pregnancy, due to the high short-term costs, or too poor to have a child due to the high long-term costs. Removing barriers does not increase demand, it just increases the population of people who will then buy.

Well, despite some really unisex t-shirts and slacks, when I was not transitioning, I had no visible musculature, visible breasts, and talked higher than most people I knew.

Same reason the cis do. They want to stop seeing things on their body that generally horrify them. Electrolysis wasn't invented for trans women, you do realize, right?

I'm selecting things that bother me personally and dealing with them. I don't, and I will strenuously resist, the notion that because I don't wear heels, or have an outie instead of an innie and see no pressing reason to change it, and am not too concerned with breast size, that that makes me any less of a woman. It's no more genderfuck than the last decades of presentation were, when I wore the most comfortable clothing I could that did the most to hide my physique.

And also, I have little interest in genderfuck as some sort of political statement. I'm just doing what's comfortable, and sometimes that's being very much the binaristic little femmegirl, and sometimes that's being a wonderfully geekish chapstick lesbian. The thread tieing these all together? I do them so that I can look in the mirror and feel good about myself. My instincts don't have to make logical or political sense. I choose not to reproduce too, and there's no logical evolutionary reason for that either.

Because these are, for individual women, the things that seriously stress them out. Why do cis women with an intersex condition often have it surgically corrected, you might as well ask. Because for some women, it's what bugs them.

Also, have you lived years of your life being uniformly misgendered? I don't mean on a regular basis, and from some angles, I mean: All. The. Time.

When someone treats me like they would treat any other woman, that's water to someone dying of thirst. First time it happened at work this month, and I'm still dressed in slacks and sweater and sneakers, mind you, I was on air. I floated home. It was like a fundamentally unrecognized part of me I had been trying to scream at the world had finally been heard. I can't make you logically understand what it's like to have the disconnect between brain and body and socialization begin to ameliorate, I just can't, because you haven't lived it. I consequently also don't know what it's like to be cis, though I used to talk a good game.

My gender will not make logical sense to you. I also don't know why people become men, jas, but when I say that, I mean, I don't know why half the population becomes men. I have to assume, that it's just hard wired. Same way I'm a lesbian and don't like to have romantic attachements to or even spend too much time with men, I have to assume that other people feel the same way I do, but replacing one variable for another. They are really happy with the way their brains work and can't conceive of feeling another way. Sure they may like the political or social advantages that come with being another gender or orientation, but ultimately they can't overcome that self-loathing by trying to go around it, so complete are the walls, and attempting to do so will only destroy them.

I adopt these attributes for the same reason anyone else does: They make me feel most comfortable. I like having a voice that sounds, well, proper. I don't know any other way to say it. I like my hair shoulder-length even though I could shave it bald and still consider myself a girl. You may as well go to all the other chapstick lesbians and start telling them how their gender presentation makes you politically uncomfortable too.

I leave you with this thought: If I had been cis and asked for the morning after pill, instead of having come to the doctor seeking help to transition, and I had been treated with the equivalent levels of disdain, dissemblance, and general antipathy, I would be 2 weeks and 3 days away from my due date. And still pregnant with a child I knew all along that I did not want. I am not equipped to carry a boy any longer. I don't want one and will only treat him badly.

thanks RTTG! So glad to see you back!

Jas . . . oh my! There is so much to be learned if we will allow other people to tell us what their experience is -- without trying to argue them out of the experience they are living!!!!! You need to do some reading and then come back to this: Gender Trouble by Judith Butler; "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough" by Anne Fausto-Sterling; and Gender (2nd ed.) by Raewyn Connell (who, if you pick up the 1st edition, was R. Connell for Robert).  One other suggestion might be Entre Nous: on-thinking-of-the-other by Emmanuel Levinas: "Is our relation with the other a letting be?" This whole string has been incredibly disturbing. (Enough so that I've taken the time to post.) We need to move beyond gender binaries first of all. The trans/cis thing is quite offensive. Gender is a continuum and it's performative and our bodies are deeply implicated in that whether we like it or not, not because of biology but because of the discourses around what is 'properly' feminine or masculine that get attached to particular bodies in this society.   

Nelle, I don't believe in gender binaries. I do believe that gender is essentially a two-party dominant system, and that there's so much room for overlap that I don't know where to begin. I like where I am, and that's pretty much on the binary, but that's not for everyone, hell no.

Very sad to see that CP felt driven away. I think all the labelling conundrum could be mitigated easily enough by respectfully borrowing terminology that some First Nations have coined - i.e. by using the term "Two-Spirited". My feeling from the little experience I've had with transgendered people is that transitioning is less about following peer trends than it is about realizing an inner knowledge about what one's "true essence" is, as it were.

But I'm definitely not an expert on the topic and would have loved to have heard more about CP's experience that she had so bravely started to bare. I suppose we will have one less diverse voice now to reflect those experiences to all of us who are "not in the know" about this.

Well, and this is in a spirit of education, since you're trying to dialogue here instead of debate my right to exist. (Yay for that BTW) I really don't like that label as it implies some degree of confusion or being some sort of gendermutt. It's kind of erasing to people who know what they are and are of one mind on the subject.

RTTG, I agree. The available discourses would like to have us believe there are only two possibilities, i.e., male and female, and that these are performative in very specific (and constraining) ways. It is very good to see the available discourses around gender begin to broaden through threads like this even if it is frustrating and painful. We will have begun to make progress when we teach kids in school that there are really female, intersex, and male for a start and open up the discussion to an understanding of gender as fluid, not fixed. There is so much policing of gender performance through harassment and bullying in the schools (and elsewhere, too, I know). Yes, we need to control offensive behaviours, but I also believe we need to educate kids fully. (My apologies to all for the double post.)

CP had mentioned that every trans person she knew, had a conviction from early childhood "what they were/are". Red Tory, do you feel that transitioning should begin when a child starts asking about it and says something like "I should be a girl/boy"? I'm just curious about this. It seems we're doing everything wrong about this, at this point.

I didn't mean to offend with the term "two-spirited", I just thought this was one of the few positive - and dare I say - celebratory terms I have heard referring to transgendered people. From what I've seen it's not meant to be a "confused" term about one's gender but rather an inclusive word meant to acknowledge one's physical reality as well as inner feeling or sensation about who one is. But if it's not considered a very accurate or appropriate term I can understand that too.

I appreciate the analogy of carrying an unwanted baby (boy, in your case) and wanting to terminate while having to endure all the external humming and hawing about something you're already sure about!

Thanks for your post RTTG. 

I'm also sad that CP felt she had to leave.

Well, honestly, I think people should do the least amount required to make them feel right. So maybe you let your child be gender variant, and choose more or less, how they want to present, and where, and at about 11, you have a talk with hir (trying to let stuff go both ways here) about hormone blockers. I mean, from the age of 12 on, we don't let parents assign a new name to a child without their consent, and, if a parent knows about a child's transsexual expression, and does nothing, really, they're assigning a new gender without the consent of that child.

I'd say you tell your child they can do as much or as little as they want, that some things will be permanent, like height, and bone structure, and voice. I would, ironically enough, tend to agree with Jas, that it's easier to go boy than go girl, and recommend, in the case of all things being equal and undecided, a female puberty with freedom for masculine expression, rather than the other way round.

I know you didn't. And celebration is not necessarily the same thing as respect. Quote Julia Serano, (99% certain on this) regarding the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival restricting their policy restricting access to women-born-women. (There's a minor disagreement with the radfems there. I think the term is redundant, they think that gender is genetalia. And by minor I mean it's fundamental.) She said:

They don't let us [trans women] on the land because they don't respect our identity.

They welcome trans men with open arms because they don't respect their identity either.

Ha! Point taken.

RTTG, I'm still chewing on the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival comment -- I was there when the first protest happened. I'm not sure the comment is totally fair to them even though I fully respect the protest and some of our group stood with the protesters. Legally, we have to declare a sex for a child at birth -- male or female. There is no box where you can check "pending" and we 'know' statistically that 4% of live births are ambiguous genitalia to begin with. That's without any consideration of inner identity. On top of this, society privileges maleness. As an embodied female I can wear male clothing, do male identified things publicly, etc. because of the power differential. One of the things feminism has done is to open up a broader performance for embodied womanness. The reverse is not true. I believe this is the next piece of work feminism has to do. As Connell says, "[The binary opposition] does not have a way of understanding change as a dialectic within gender relations." As a woman-identified woman I believe men/maleness/masculinities are my concern and 'problem' because this has such a huge impact on my life as lived. I see trans and gender 'variant' (variant to what??? do you see this as a judging, pathologizing and 'othering' word by the way it establishes a norm from which to distance some people?) as both caught in the middle (pun unintended but I'll let it stand) and terribly important to the process of change. We need a new definition of 'normal' that is inclusive and empowering to all!

I'm not really sure how to respond to the whole of your comment, though yes, I agree that we need a new definition of normal. I would reply specifically to this:

To hide behind the law is not really fighting oppression. Might I suggest, at least for my fellow lesbians, a new maxim:

Render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's

And render unto Sappho what is Sapphic.

I'm not hiding behind the law, but merely stating what 'is' right now. Parents are compelled to make choices they are ill-equipped to make sometimes to register a birth. To argue that the solution is to refuse to register the birth is to then deny citizenship rights and recognition to the child with big implications for social entitlements. India has now included male, female and other in its census information. This is a start perhaps.

And the pathologizing of homosexuality is a recent construct in Western society (check out Foucault on this) and does not hold across all societies (see Connell) -- or at least not until the Europeans and missionaries catch up to them. It is connected to the institutionalization of psychology as a discourse.

That said a clerical error is not a very good excuse for excluding a trans woman from womens' space.

I wouldn't say that it's a clerical error; it's more of a legal conundrum. I would say that the first place for activism is to create open space between male and female on the birth certificate from the get go. I'm not sure if intersex should be lobbied for as a term or not, but something should be, because what gets institutionalized has power. Of course, there is still stigma attached to this. One of the reasons surgeons and parents initially thought they were doing intersex babies a favour by rendering them 'normal' as quickly and early as possible. 

There are many ways some women are excluded from other women's space. And that's ok. There is no generic 'woman'. That's why the term feminism has become feminisms. To return to Michigan so to speak, there are spaces within the festival for particular identities. The Womyn of Color tent is separate space, as it the Womyn Over Forty tent, women of differing abilities have separate space within the festival, etc. At the time it would never have occured to me to picket or protest the fact that I was excluded from these spaces. Theirs is not my experience, and I respect that. Similarly, it is a very different experience to grow up socially identified as female as opposed to re-crafting the body to be socially identified as female later. One might argue that this is indeed grounds for the festival as separate space. There is a privileging that goes with a male-identified body even if there is a choice made to abandon that identification later. That experience is alien to the majority living lives in women's bodies.

One last thought, I think it is really important not to conflate gender identity with sexual orientation. The two are mutually exclusive. The social 'we' likes to make assumptions about who we believe people to be -- 'we' like to categorize and get folks into their proper little sexuality box (coffin?) pretty quickly.

Thank you, nelle. This is what I have been arguing all along.

And subvertisement, 'two-spirited' is a term that most accurately describes my experience of my own gender expression and sexuality. Much more so than 'trans', 'cis', 'gay', 'straight'. I don't use it in everyday discourse, but when I first heard it, I thought, "that's exactly what I am."

I'm sorry, but there are three fundamental points I must raise here:

One, I fail to see how a forced boyhood is privileging for any woman. It is an unending trauma of ostracism, stunted expression, both social and economic, and mutilation by negligence. If any woman was abducted and filled full of testosterone, and forced to be a man, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't call that privilege, even if she was recognized as male. I'm pretty sure we'd call that horiffic. Just because the majority have not been so traumatized is no good reason to exclude those who have been.

Two, howabout we go with pick-your-own for gender. We have lots of boxes on forms that aren't binary decisions, and yet still have modal, bi-modal, or poly-modal answers given.

Three, to say that a space is for womyn-born-womyn is much like founding the No Homers club, especially when that space initially said that they welcomed womyn, and then decided to add the distinction that they must be cisgendered, or if they're trans men, to fall back on the cachet that having originally had an F stamped on their birth certificate would give them.

I don't know what to say about the gender-identity sexuality thing myself, other than the general public does not think there is such a thing as a trans lesbian, and, for that matter, I doubt Lisa Vogel does either. And yeah, I'm pretty sure that's a warranted dig, but of course, we haven't mined the transmisogyny gold that's on the michfest forums yet, if you need me to underline my point.

This statement about Michigan only works if trans women are considered more privileged than cis women, which seems to be the ongoing attitude of the MWMF organizers. Spaces for women of colour, older women or women with disabilities would presumably have been created in recognition that these women may be marginalized, and are less privileged than women who are not. (Women over forty? Really?) What should be the case is that trans women are welcomed to the festival as women, and hey, if there's a need or a desire, create a trans women tent, in recognition of the privilege that cis women experience.

Do you think there is privileging when growing up socially identified as female when you also identify as female? I do. More than any male privilege that might be incidentally garnered by someone who has been misgendered and has struggled against it for most of their lives, and who has the strength and resources to defy pretty much every social convention regarding gender if they transition ... only to face the intense opprobrium that is meted out to anyone who does so.

Alright, then let's follow that logic.

Peter Lougheed, being 1/16th aborignal by ancestry, does not have white privilege, should not be labelled as white, because race is a continum, and to deny his identification is unfair.

Stephen Harper may not identify as straight, and thus it's unfair to say he has straight privilege, unfair to label him as straight, or heterosexual, or in a heterosexual relationship.

Class is a continum, therefore we ought not offensively call David Asper a bloated plutocrat, since class is performative.

...

Plainly this sounds completely fucking ridiculous to most of you.

Yes, gender is expressed, but it is also constructed in response to instincts and impulses. To erase the discrimination people face when they attempt to act on those instincts, be it femmephobia or transphobia or the intersection of the two, is one of the last acceptable bigotries in Western society. (Not one of the last practiced, but definitely among the last acceptable.) That you are so concerned with finding some way to ascribe gender guilt to a gender that isn't ours, that was forced despite our best attempts at subversion, defiance, and escape, is, quite simply so at odds with your stated values that I simply do not know where to begin.

This does begin to become frustrating, after a time, being the lone champion of something as simple as not allowing a dissonance to persist when it can be easily corrected.

RTTG, we live in a society that privileges men, preferably white, heterosexual, and European. The more your gender performance matches that of a white, heterosexual male, the more privilege you can pull -- get taken seriously when you make public complaints, not have to be constantly alert to strange men and places like parking lots after dark, etc., etc. Whether you wanted it or not, the penis and matters.

I'm not going to debate oppressions. You can never fully know my experience. I can never fully know the experience of a woman of colour. I can never fully know your experience.

I may be an ally, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with you in all things.

Class is neither a continuum nor performative. It is learned. Think of "My Fair Lady" or "Educating Rita." Bourdieu refers to it as a "habitus." We are acculturated into language, manners, relationships, i.e., ways of being in the world, that are different based on whether we have money or not.

Race, too, is neither a continuum nor performative. It is definitely a signifier, and no matter how hard Michael Jackson tried, he could not make himself white. Nor can Obama, even though he is biracial.

I choose my gender performance daily by the clothes I choose to wear, my hair, makeup, what I choose to do. For some situations I "girly" it up -- not my favourite choice, but there are better social results to be had by working with the situation if that's what's important.  What I'm saying is, we are given bodies that can lend themselves to a particular gender performance. How we choose to work with that depends on how safe we feel, what we need from the situation, etc. and this changes daily, if not more often, as we move in and out of social situations. What is most important to me is allowing other people to make their own choices about their own gender performances. 'We' make judgements about other people in so many ways based on the bodies they have and how 'we' think they ought to be. (Fat is a good example here.) And I'm using 'we' because this is so deeply implicated in the society of which we are a part, that it's an illusion to hope to escape it. 

RTTG, the "gender guilt" stuff is yours. I'm just saying there are spaces and places for all of us, sometimes together as women, and sometimes not. Sometimes the signifier "woman" is not the only ticket you'll need for admission. (And believe me, this really ticked off the white women with biracial daughters who were denied entrance to the Womyn of Color tent when their daughters went in.) 

Really. Because of course it's visible on the outside of my clothing now? And yes, see Tehanu for the rebuke to the 'residual male privilge' argument.

And if you want to have a music festival that's trans exclusive, that would be fine, if I could still get into a domestic violence sheleter if I'm battered by my girlfriend, or get HRT like any cis woman, but no, this exclusion permeates.

I think though, I'm actually going to quote someone from the Michfest forums who puts it far better than I:

RTTG I'm so glad you're back and posting.

Welcome, nellemason.

And hey, a Tehanu sighting!

With great regret I have to close this for length, but please continue the discussion.