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Faceplams: Hula, do you identify as transgender or transsexual?
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Hula, do you identify as transgender or transsexual?
Throbbing Member
Misogyny is so prevalent, accepted as mainstream and impossible to get away from in the media and society at large. I don't believe that any of the above apply to misandy (please correct me if I'm wrong). I've never felt singled out, victimised or scared to go outside based on my gender alone, whereas it seems I can't go a day without witnessing misogyny in some form. I'm not saying misandry doesn't exist or isn't an issue, but I personally believe educating others about and attempting to limit/eliminate misogyny (and homo-/transphobia) is a much more critical area of focus in today's society.
Stubby Member
Transgender. The definitions I've been socialised with always make me feel like 'transgender' is more of an umbrella term for people who identify outside their birth gender, whereas 'transsexual' to me feels more like what I'd be if I took steps to change my body (my sex) to be more like the gender I identify with. As for whether or not I'll actually do that, hah. It was a big enough deal coming to terms with the fact that all those years of trying to be a 'normal' girl were a waste of time and energy.Originally Posted by orestes
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Good for you, my dear! <3
Active Member
Not to stray too far off topic (sorry), but I'm with you on that one. I use 'transgender' even though I might end up being a 'transsexual,' but until I'm actually sure that's what it is, and not some other gender disorder, I just use the word transgender, because it's an umbrella term.
Throbbing Member
Yeah its quite horrible. Not a week goes by where I can walk in the street at night and not have some creepy car drive up to me and either cat call, say something disgustingly offensive, or ask me to get in the car. This happens even when I'm not walking alone.
Active Member
Probably a good time to bring up (if you're in another country and can't see that, just google that phrase). Like you two, there are a couple of people on there that don't really desire to change their sex and are therefore transgender, and some for whom having the designated organs is essential. Shows how much of a spectrum it is - a rainbow as opposed to black and white. Until you brought it up I actually thought (probably naively given all the shit I wrote on the last page) transsexual and transgender were basically the same thing.
Well as you can see I'm pretty vehement about it (and other things I stand for) so I can definitely take on those people! It's even a bit fun, sometimes. If I were someone on MTS I'd probably be Donna. I never get people driving up to me though, and I wear some pretty provocative stuff. I've only ever had gross behaviour from Indian guys (and this is also the only kind of racism I've ever encountered) where they look at me like some kind of unfathomable being and/or ask me where I come from and if I'm married. I haven't experienced it in LA either, but then I was always surrounded by people I knew.
Last edited by icklekitty; 12-17-2011 at 06:33 PM.
Hairy Member
I have always found the perception of gender and society interesting. I myself have been a victim of teasing from not fitting into one of the categories of gender my school mates had. I was eventually affixed with the title of tomboy and was then accepted into the general school society, since I finally had a label. As I got older it morphed into the "eccentric-might be lesbian" since I found none of my classmates date-able. As I look back it was very fascinating, though it hurt like hell at the time. I know I've taken tons of "gender tests" for shits and giggles and I get a neutral result every time. I don't consider myself transgendered either, I'm just me. I guess people are confused by the fact I have "masculine" and "feminine" personality traits and enjoy things that are considered boy or girl stuff. I'm not an subservient emotional wreck who needs someone to save me. Nor am I trying to be "one of the guys", I just act what feels natural, and I guess that intimidates/offends people. Though this can be applied to all things, since people are scared of/frustrated by something they can't understand or goes outside of their categories.
Active Member
Just to clarify (and again going off-topic, sorry) but I don't know yet if I'm going to change my sex. It's a definite possibility, but I haven't figured it all out yet. I figure since transgender is a blanket term that kind of covers anyone who doesn't fall strictly into the "accepted" gender norms of society (at least that's my understanding of the definition), it's a good enough term until and unless I'm sure about things.
But yeah, there are definitely lots of different types of people who fall under the umbrella. And the gender norms of society absolutely do apply to men, too. That's why I can't be myself around most people. I have to behave a certain socially accepted way, at least for now.
Stubby Member
To commandeer what you, theruiner, have said and continue to cleverly twist this conversation to the original topic—it's a lot easier for me to present in a way that fits my preferred gender than it is for the transwomen I've met in my town. I was going to this trans group every month for a while (too busy these days, unfortunately) and we met up for its second anniversary at a local gay bar. There were gay men in that bar heckling some of the transwomen. Granted, these were older men and thanks to societal conditioning they probably wouldn't be okay with the drag part of the gay scene either, but I was still stunned.
It seems like it's easier for me to also openly admit I'm a transman than it is for a lot of transwomen, as much in real life as online; being trans is a big deal in and of itself, but when you throw in that your preferred gender is female, that you want to go from being a ~red-blooded male~ to wearing dresses and growing your hair long, it's like it's a thousand times worse. And god forbid you announce you're a transman only to show that you still have a feminine side...
Throbbing Member
First of all: you go Hula! I'm glad that you're being yourself, whatever that is.
I wanted to say something about misandry, because I think pitting it against misogyny it's doomed to come out like not a big deal at all. But like people have said before: you can't reduce feminism to being just about women. Maybe first wave feminism was (though I'm not convinced of that either), but second and third wave feminism are as much about male stereotypes and breaking through the binary heteronormative matrix as what's currently dubbed queer studies.
Look at it this way: if the dominant idea is that a woman is weak and needs protecting, needs a strong provider; then the dominant idea is that man is strong and a providor, a protector. Men, for all the time that women were victimized and oppressed, were not allowed to be weak, were not allowed to fail, were not allowed to want or seek protection. Not only do we link violence and masculinity in a both a positive and a negative way with surprising ease, we don't seem to willing to face the consequence of the masculine mold: if a man who is deemed weak is mocked by his peers and possibly ostracized, then a man is going to do everything to not come across as weak. When faced with problems he can't solve, be it at home or at work, he might turn to those aspects of strength that are within his reach. The hyper prominent link between masculinity and brute force, physical strength and physical control, will ease the path towards violence, maybe even make it a logical next step in making sure weakness is covered up. [Not enough work has yet been done to verify this theory, but I do think it's a very interesting research path to follow.]
The violence that we see in men, directed not only at women but at other men, and that we condemn when it's misogynic or homophobic, might not be about asserting domincance or the sheer ability to use force; but about pure fear.
Just like women will try everything to fit the female stereotype, for instance by being beautiful or appearing nurturing; men will try everything to fit the male stereotype.
To liberate biological men from the confines of that matrix, is to liberate everyone, I think.
24.24.1.1397
Same here (makes me wonder how many transpeople we have here) and I have come across a few people (online) that get that way after transitioning, both FtM and MtF. I can understand where it comes from, the intense hatred of being born the wrong sex could easily skew your view of that sex. That doesn't make it right, but I can understand why that happens sometimes. I don't personally feel that way about females, btw.
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I couldn't agree more. Real men don't cry, real men don't talk about their problems, real men get on with it. So real men end up cheating on their wives, beating up people, and drinking themselves crazy. It's a real transcendent moment when you realise that a violent person isn't someone to be feared, they're someone in fear themselves.
I'm also reminded of those "strong women" that put on a front of being brave and holding their families together while hiding their own fear/abuse/pain. Most people either act out or behave bolshy when they're terrified. It makes me wonder if this has something to do with the fact that "behaving masculine" is the desirable thing, in that all that's happening is that the crisis is shifting rather than disappearing. The solution, as you say Elke, is to (re)invent the mechanics of sexuality altogether. Take away the chains of the existing rules, rather than assign aspiration to one extrinsic role.
Throbbing Member
I do think that it's migrating rather than actually disappearing. I see a lot of women around me who seem to think that being an independent woman means taking on some stereotypically masculine traits. I see that in a lot of my gay students, too, by the way: the gay boys and the gay girls and the gay inbetweeners - they all want to be men, in some respect, or how they think men would or should act. Because the link between masculinity and strength, strength and respect is so strong, imho.
On the other hand, I know from my own teaching experience that I get respect from my students in part because I try to be as honest with them as I can: when I feel like crap, I feel like crap; when someone is upset and it moves me, I don't mind if they see me cry... So I know that respect can not only be gained through being tough and hanging in there, on the contrary even, but still a lot of coworkers tell me I shouldn't show so much weakness to my students, because they won't respect me anymore.
I'm part of a duo heading our school's gender team, and we both go insane over the questions and problems thrown at us. For instance: our closeted gay principal doesn't want us to discuss homosexuality too much. It should be about gender, not orientation. So when I quickly ran through the terminology at our first meeting of the year, because we both felt we were just not using the terms correctly and that using them correctly is a starting point for changing things in the school, he started throwing daggers at me when I brought up sexual orientation because I wanted to explain how you can't use a persons sex or gender expression to guess at their orientation, but that our social gender codes do steer people to exploring or not exploring certain types of relationships based on their supposed gender roles. However, when I said: Assuming that little girly boys will one day come out as gay is probably as harmful as assuming little boyish boys won't, he almost cheered. Because, in his mind, that wipes the issue of orientation off the table.
The more I work on the issue of gender in education, the more I feel like it's such a futile effort - you can't change an entire culture by giving gender neutral examples in class. And on the other hand, I feel like we should put in so much more effort, because the existing codes are destroying people.
However, when we talk about it in the team, it's always about the obvious exceptions like How would we handle a transperson in our school? and never about the tiny little things, like Why does the principal kiss the women for new year, and not the men? Because, hey, let's all act normal.
The whole field of gender and education is focussed on neuroscience, though, which is not something I'm a big fan of. So while I'm itching to do something, science isn't really giving me anythign to do.
Bite me
I believe ETS was down when Stephen Ira wrote this piece; I think it's really interesting (I had to go look up a few of the terms).
What do you all think?
Throbbing Member
Well, first of all, I'm not sure Chaz is making Chaz a spokesperson for the trans community (there's not even a real trans community, since a lot of transsexuals for instance identify completely with the binary gender of 'their choice', and cut all ties with other transpeople once they've had their surgeries completed). I think he's just the most accessible transgender for the media at the moment. I think he's also very clearly describing his journey, and how he feels right now. When he was doing interviews about being a lesbian, coming out as gay all those years ago, I seem to recall he was equally radical about that (he didn't do too many interviews, and most of them were about Cher, but I should probably look them up again).
However, one of the things that struck me is that all he's actually doing, is parroting the patented lgbt reply to questions about sexual orientation: But we can't help it, we're born this way. I remember a thread a whole while back where there was a discussion about the question whether you could even posit the hypothetical If homosexuality were a choice... because that's opening the doors to all kinds of therapies and whatnot.
I think biology is the easiest counterargument to give, and it's given everywhere nowadays. It's hormones, it's memes, it's birth defects... All of this is better than saying I don't know what it is, because that means you might be able to help it. That means it might be socialization, it might be upbrining, it might be nurture instead of nature, it might even be a choice. The horror!
It's why I hate the idea of Lady Gaga's Born This Way as some kind of queer anthem. It's reinforcing the idea that it's okay to be different, because you can't help it, not because it's simply okay.
The fact is that a lot of things are natural, a lot of things are biology: rape, for instance, is biology. Warfare, violence, greed, selfishness, murder, territorial spats... they are all rooted in biology, but they are clearly not okay. And a lot of things we do approve of and even think of as human ideals, don't seem to be natural at all: monogamy springs to mind, as well as altriusm of Father Damianeque proportions, peace, amoral science and human equality.
Without wanting to bring up the very difficult nature/culture debate (which is difficult because gender is a large part of it), but pointing to biology simply doesn't cut it.
However, it's the dominant lgbt narrative, and so I don't see how you can blame a guy for actually using it.
[And, within the narrow confines of The World Accoring to Chaz, I've just proven myself to be at least partly female, because I obviously talk too much. Sorry for the rambling post.]
God is an American
It starts with a slightly stuffy, overly academic way of looking at Chaz's quest to bring attention and understanding to the plight of trans people. Chaz used an example from "men" in the classic cis sense and Stephen took him literally to mean all self-identified men, trans and cis, which leads to a contradiction. I mean, score one point for academic rigor, but it only proves that most people don't yet have an everyday grasp of language that's evolved enough to really handle these distinctions in everyday discourse. Accommodating that by using a slightly fuzzy/un-evolved example just to make the point is different from being "prescriptivist" or exclusionary.
Like you, I had to look some definitions up as well. But that's because you and I are already sympathetic enough towards the issue and care enough to try and understand. You can't go on the national news and start throwing around all varieties of trans terminology before gaining the public's sympathy a little; this topic is confusing and not well covered by the media yet. The first step towards acceptance is getting people on a broad spectrum to accept that these issues exist and are a real problem, not forcing them to use the proper group-specific pronoun.
It's hard to grasp for people who can't even begin to imagine a non-binary gender system that someone could identify as neither a man or a woman, or both man and woman, or some fluid combination. Right now I can't even imagine how a reporter in the mainstream media who understands that and can write in such a way to communicate the heart of the piece could do it without alienating some non-binary identifiers. Did the ABC piece also incorporate misogynistic attitudes? Yes. Does that mean Chaz is misogynist? I don't know because I've never met him and have no idea if that's a true representation of his character. Was I shocked when I read Chaz's "birth defect" example? Yes, but well-meaning people make insensitive remarks like that all the time. Those were careless remarks and, rightly or wrongly, he's being brought down a peg for making them.
But I would have thought, in the wake of his "outing", that Ira would have more empathy for Chaz because they've both had what I can only imagine are harrowing confrontations with how the mass media machine works; maybe that Ira would cut Chaz some slack for the way his examples (while not academically correct and certainly incomplete) weren't meant to be true representations of everyone. Ira can't have it both ways: he doesn't want to have limiting terms and examples pushed on trans people as a whole, but he also feels comfortable labelling Chaz "a misogynist" for some remarks that whether Chaz wanted them in print or not are now somehow his defining moment as a spokesperson.
Last edited by botley; 12-18-2011 at 01:20 PM.
Hairy Member
I love reading this thread because--full disclosure--a big part of my major in college is gender and queer studies (the others are critical race studies, and postcolonial studies). I can't tell you how happy I was to see Irigaray mentioned. She's one of my favorite theorists (along with Foucault, of course, whose theories permeate my entire field of study--critical theory and social justice). It is true that there are many feminisms out there, some more gender-centric than others. But there's a reason it is called "feminism", still, and that's because the immediate liberation is for women. But, like colonialism, and other forms of oppression, the very first thing that the movement fails to recognize is that the oppressors truly end up oppressing themselves as much or more than the oppressed. Both in that men are forced into their own binary role, and everything else mentioned in this thread, but also in the moral cost of being male (or white, or heterosexual, etc.) and existing only to prop up the patriarchal, racist, heterosexist structures of power in society. To borrow a term from Frantz Fanon, men (especially white men) are reduced to what Fanon called "enfranchised slaves", meaning they have the illusion of investment in society, that they will benefit from the status quo, and may not be actively prejudiced, but are not actively anti-sexist, or anti-racist, etc., but in reality, are being used by the same structures of power for that very purpose. To prop up the system. The Sex Which is Not One, which you refer to, icklekitty, is really wonderful, and I encourage everyone to read the chapter entitled Women On The Market for an amazing anthropological lens into just the kind of feminism that I think is most important.
Last edited by Aaron; 12-18-2011 at 01:16 PM.
Active Member
Given what the people above has said, he shouldn't be referring to himself as transgendered but transsexual if the physical components are this important for him (I think). Also:
“I think of it as hormones that, you know, went in the brain but not in the body, and that’s all being transgender is. It’s just that the sex of your body and the gender of the brain don’t match up.”
is just plain wrong on so many levels. Sex and gender aren't there to "match up". And I naturally have more testosterone in my body than oestrogen, but I have absolutely no desire to make my sex "match up" with that; quite the opposite. I am not trans anything.
I've got to admit that I also find women who talk for ages boring too. But it's the result of having more testosterone in your body?! I don't know if this also implies that all men who can tolerate a woman talking should get a hormone test and if there isn't enough testosterone "in his brain" be advised to have a sex change. The high sex drive thing I don't think can be true either - his girlfriend says the sex is more frequent. So his sex drive still matches hers. Ask any straight man out there whether it's his sex drive that dictates the sex life between him and his partner(!) Getting over the problems of hormone treatment and becoming comfortable with your body is probably what helped that, IMO.
HOWEVER - it's a slight leap to say that Chaz is being prescriptive. A bit misinformed and not the best articulated person, yes. Sure, he could have made it more explicit that he was only talking about his experience, but similarly, in the context of his interview, I'm not sure that you would generally deduce that he was saying "and therefore this is how all transpeople feel". There's always a danger that people are going to see these sorts of explanations as blanket terms. Arguably if you're in the public eye it's a great opportunity to represent your people, but given how subjective each of these experiences are and given how stressful and scary it is, the extra pressure of being obliged to be a figurehead for his cause shouldn't be expected of him.
A lot of people seem to misconstrue personal expressions as prescriptivism in general - but that's not for here.
Your course sounds a lot like my undergrad - this was my course.
Last edited by icklekitty; 12-18-2011 at 01:54 PM.
Administrator
For the mainstream media, transgender and transsexuality is a gray area so when it is highlighted it is often with embarrassing results, as evidenced by this ABC segment.
Such insensitive and rude questions to ask.
Also, if I have to hear Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like a Lady" one more time, I'll puke.
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Throbbing Member
Damn, that really is awesome.
Active Member
That is incredible. Thank you for sharing, Orestes!
Throbbing Member
That's a very interesting example of how it can be done. I'm going to make this reading material for our next gender team meeting. Thank you!
Active Member
They're thinking of implementing this here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education...ansgender.html
Throbbing Member
What saddens me is that many people who read this are bound to be outraged by the "corrupting" methods of the teacher.
Stubby Member
I find it quite fascinating, and a good argument for the truth behind gender/sexual differences, that you can see it in brain structures.
What do people here think about the process of delaying puberty to give a chance at gender change?
Stubby Member
I'm for it, to a certain extent. I follow a lot of FTMs on Tumblr and one of them isn't yet on T, but has been taking hormone blockers for months to prevent oestrogen building up in his system; the results are about as radical as if he'd been taking testosterone in that time because he's quite young, so his body seems to be doing its own thing and filling in where transitional therapy would've.
Active Member
That's such a tricky question, and one I'm on the fence about.
The only thing that would concern me about delaying puberty, as great as the benefits are, would be the risks. This is not something I've really researched, admittedly. If there are some sort of permanent changes that can arise from even that, I'm not so sure it's a good idea. On the other hand, it would have been a GODSEND for me, for example, because now I've got broad shoulders, big hands and, the coup de grāce, hair on my chest and abdomen (a lot of it) and that's going to cost me upwards of ten grand to get rid of, on top of the probably 15 to 20 thousand it'll cost to actually transition. And for me that literally might be what stops me from transitioning, because I don't know that I can ever swing that. So there are real, tangible and BIG advantages to delaying puberty for someone who ultimately decides that transition is the way they want to go.
Active Member
My friend wrote something hilarious on the Internet which you might enjoy http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/...ust-for-girls/
