queen emily posted about what it means to be trans earlier this week, and i’ve been thinking about it non-stop since then. and while i’ve written about it before, i don’t know that i’m any closer to a definition now, than i was then. wikipedia has a page on “transgender”, and even includes a picture of an actual, honest to goodness transperson, perhaps as one example.
i don’t know, but she kinda looks like a regular type of woman to me.the wikipedia definition is fairly good however, especially in that it states “The precise definition for transgender remains in flux…”. emily says that “there’s no one meaning to being transgendered”, and i’d agree. i do feel that we share in a set of common experience and attributes. though i’ll stress that most trans people do not share in all those experiences and attributes, but only some of them from a larger set that may be included in “transgender”.in a less than appropriate analogy, it reminds me of jeff foxworthy’s comedy bit and book “you might be a redneck if”, in which he makes light of all the various behaviors and attributes that *some* rednecks *might* engage in, based on all the common stereotypes. and in a very real way, i think the definition of trans works the same way. one problem, i believe, is the state of flux surrounding all the terms we use in our attempts to define trans, including, but not limited to:
• gender
• gender identity
• gender role
• sex
• male
• female
• man
• woman
• identity
and several others.so i thought i’d put together a few of these in the “jeff foxworthy” format:
- you might be a tranny if your gender identity doesn’t match your assigned gender.
- you might be a tranny if the sex assigned to you at birth doesn’t align with how you see yourself.
- you might be a tranny if you exhibit attributes and/or behavior that falls outside culturally assigned gender roles and/or stereotypes.
- you might be a tranny if you consider yourself trans.
- you might be a tranny if you take sex hormones.
- you might be a tranny if you’ve had surgical or cosmetic procedures done that target secondary sex characteristics.
- you might be a tranny if you regularly visit, or have visited a therapist who specializes in “gender issues”.
- you might be a tranny if a significant number of people believe your self-identified gender and/or sex is invalid.
- you might be a tranny if people accuse you of being “confused” about your sex and/or gender.
- you might be a tranny if your genitals don’t match the cultural norms of what a man or woman ought to look like.
- you might be a tranny if your social security data doesn’t match the cultural norms of what a man or woman ought to look like.
- you might be a tranny if people beat you up while accusing you of being a fag, because they feel deceived after they take off your clothes.
- you might be a tranny if you’re afraid to, or feel uncomfortable with the use of, any public restroom that is gender-segregated and identified.
- you might be a tranny if you have curves and/or bulges in certain places where they’re not commonly found on other humans.
- you might be a tranny if you were assigned male at birth, and buy your clothes in the woman’s department.
- you might be a tranny if you were assigned female at birth, and buy your clothes in the men’s department.
i’ll add to this as i develop this thought further.
[…] Nexy responds to Emily’s post here. […]
Pingback by Some Links « Questioning Transphobia — November 24, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
You might be a tranny if everyone else feels obliged to tell you who you really are.
Comment by Lisa Harney — November 28, 2007 @ 6:11 pm
there’s a great discussion over on feministe also stemming from emily’s post in which i added some additional thoughts. i’m crossposting that comment here because it further clarifies my feelings on the topic. it’s pretty rare i write more than a couple of paragraphs these days - i just can’t seem to focus like i did in the old days, so this is somewhat unusual for me.
Comment by nexy — November 28, 2007 @ 8:21 pm
That’s a pretty substantial and interesting comment, too.
I think you were the first person I’d come across who was trans but didn’t specifically identify as man or woman. This was on Technodyke years ago, and it sort of rearranged my beliefs about what trans meant. It took awhile for that to shake out, though.
Comment by Lisa Harney — November 29, 2007 @ 9:06 pm
Also, my best answer is that I think I’d still want to be female-bodied, and I don’t think my body discomfort comes from gender roles, but rather my perception of gender roles is tied up in my body discomfort.
Comment by Lisa Harney — November 29, 2007 @ 9:07 pm
as it stands, my body would be considered female by most standards, though just barely. i’m post-op, so my genitals are certainly female, at least externally. and i’m happy with that. i never really developed a chest, and while at first i considered implants, the further along i go on this path, the less likely i’ll ever get them. i’m growing more and more comfortable with a relatively flat chest, being a double “a” for the last 5 years or so. most of my body hair has gone, though i’d still consider doing more removal in that area, if i ever come across the funds to do so. if not, that’s ok too.
i never understood the whole identity thing. i fully accept that most (if not almost all) trans people identify with a particular sex, it just doesn’t resonate with me. i’m not sure why.
as a child and teen (and lets face it, even now), i still spend a good amount of time wishing i was born female. transitioning was a method i saw to come closer to that dream. i’m happier moving through the world being seen as female than i was being seen as male. though if i had a choice, i’d dispense with the whole gender thing.
did we meet on technodyke? i remember posting on that board for a while a few years back. then someone made some kind of comment that was something like “what the fuck are you doing here if you’re not lesbian?”. so i left. i usually avoid confrontation. i’d never make much of an activist :\
Comment by nexy — November 29, 2007 @ 11:29 pm
i’ll add too, that someone pretty recently, argued that since i live my life as female, that i must exhibit a female gender identity. i don’t remember the whole discussion, but in the end, i did admit that it made sense. i still tend to think though, that in order to claim a particular identity, one must “feel” that identity. and for pretty much my whole life, i still don’t know what it “feels” like to feel like a man or a woman.
many trans women i know, irl or on line, claim that they always felt more comfortable with women, or get along better with women, have mostly women friends, and so on. and while before transition, i might have said the same, these days, i tend to hang out with the guys. i sometimes joke that if i weren’t trans, one could accuse me of having penis envy.
Comment by nexy — November 29, 2007 @ 11:35 pm
I don’t know that we met as such, I just remember you were posting there - and I saw you on Ms. Magazine (I think) back in 2003-2004. I didn’t know you left because someone got on your case for not being lesbian, but that’s not cool.
I don’t think living as female means having a female gender identity so much as being comfortable with having a female body. I mean, lots of genderqueer women live under such a definition without too much (or any) cognitive dissonance.
I have to say that I’ve socialized approximately equally with men and women, and I get along with both about the same. It’s like when I was in my early teens and still into toys, and about half my toys were action figures (Star Wars, Transformers, etc) and the other half were stuffed animals (I played with dolls, but I never owned any).
The idea of gender (or whatever) just seems, on a personal level, to be far too complex to collapse down to “man” and “woman.” On a social level, it is those as well as “other,” but that doesn’t say anything about how people see themselves.
I also think that gender - constructed from nature or nurture - is separate from, I guess, the “neural map” that says which sex your body is.
Comment by Lisa Harney — November 30, 2007 @ 5:01 pm
“ The idea of gender (or whatever) just seems, on a personal level, to be far too complex to collapse down to “man” and “woman.” ”
give that lady the prize on the top shelf! it’s especially complex because it’s constantly in flux, and means different things for different people. not to mention the fact that gender manifests differently in different cultures, and subcultures. as one mere example, long hair in the first part of the last century, in america, was considered “woman”. then came the sixties. now it seems it’s back to being a woman thing. who can keep track?!?!?
and to be honest, the “neural map” thing is as alien to me as “gender identity”. i never saw that, or felt that, my body ’should’ be female, instead, i just ‘wanted’ it to be female. i was always pretty aware of my body, and it was, well, for lack of a better word, “normal”. not the way i wanted it to be per se, but i never felt like it didn’t fit - it wasn’t like a pair of shoes that pinched my feet, if that makes any sense.
my motivation for transition was firmly rooted in my desire to be female, not that i had a “female neural map”, or gender identity, or played with girly toys. i mean, i like a few traditionally girly things, like a few stuffed animals, but i like to play with guns, audio/video, power tools, and motorcycles mostly.
but anyway, i’d imagine that you’re right - it follows that gender would be different than the feeling that one’s body is wrong. at least in the context of how i understand the term “gender”.
Comment by nexy — November 30, 2007 @ 10:41 pm
It’s like, okay… I’ve been overweight, and I’ve been trans, and while I want my body to be thinner, I don’t feel like there’s any part of my brain expecting my body to be thinner. It’s not a dissonance beyond me not liking how I look.
With the sex thing, my body was dissonant, I knew it should be one way, and it was another, so I had to change it in a way that I don’t feel like I have to lose weight, even though I didn’t like having a male body or being overweight.
Of course, I also feel I have a clear gender as “woman,” so it’s another way we’re different, but I don’t think it’s a big deal that we are different. It’s just, like this thing.
My identity was “girl” even when I was young, even though I tried to hide it. I picked up social cues for boys (to protect myself) and girls (because that’s who I was), which probably got me into a lot of trouble, because my mask-ulinity wasn’t perfect, and I know that pretty much everyone ever thought I was gay before I transitioned.
So I loved girly things, and have always been feminine, although I’ve never had a perfectly smooth relationship with my femininity.
Comment by Lisa Harney — November 30, 2007 @ 10:46 pm
now the weight thing is something with which i can identify. i’ve been skinny all my life. for many years, people would ask if i was sick, because i was so skinny. until i transitioned. then people, mostly women, would ask me how i managed to keep my “girlish figure”, and asked me for all my “dieting secrets”. that, in itself, speaks volumes about how our culture sees beauty and gendered bodies. i’ve had the body of a 16 year old boy since i was 16. now, why men (and women) see that body type as attractive is just down-right weird.
for the past couple of years, i’ve been working in a call center. so i sit all day. i find the work extremely stressful, so i’ve taken to eating as a coping mechanism. and as a result, i’ve put on maybe 20 pounds or so. and on a skinny body, 20 pounds makes a big difference. and it bothers me. it’s like it’s not my body. my “neural map” has a body that is skin and bones. so it’s weird for me to be carrying around this extra weight.
regarding all things “feminine”, i hesitate to equate “girly things” with a female identity, because there are too many exceptions. specifically, i know men who enjoy girly things, and women who enjoy manly things, and they each have what i would imagine are “standard” gender identities.
when i was maybe 9 or 10, i had a friend who was fairly feminine. our classmates would tease him because of it. we’d play “dress up” on occasion, until my mom caught me one day, and made it clear that i wasn’t to do that anymore. and since i saw how my friend was treated, i purposely avoided being feminine as a child. not that i didn’t want to, but rather it was socially dangerous. and being the non-confrontational, compliant person i am, i went with the flow. if playing baseball (even though i never really liked the game, or played it very well) meant the other kids wouldn’t tease me, well, i saw that as a small price to pay.
i have a wide variety of interests. so i always tended toward traditionally masculine things for survival. or things that are neither manly nor girly. i can be happy doing all kinds of things, so it wasn’t a great loss not doing some of them. which is perhaps why, now, i’m a bit uncomfortable wearing skirts for example, even though my friends say i look nice on the rare occasion i do (usually when all my pants are dirty).
perhaps i’m just androgynous, but so much so, that it drove me to transition away from maleness. or, perhaps this is part of my quest to find that “middle ground” i always tend toward. “male” and “female” always seemed so extreme to me. i never really identified with either. even as a child, i have clear memories thinking about how “ungendered” i felt. or perhaps, a lack of feeling a certain gender. or sex.
Comment by nexy — December 1, 2007 @ 9:44 am
I wasn’t equating girly things with a feminine identity so much as equating my feminine identity with a love for girly things.
I’ve been thinking lately about how much violence this culture does to people whose “gender” doesn’t fit neatly into “man” or “woman,” and what it meant in other cultures that do have room for fully valid thirdgender roles. I’m having a hard time finding a lot of discussion about this online.
I mean, seen as valid, as opposed to this culture which pretends they don’t exist at all. Not that they’re not valid if society doesn’t make room.
Comment by Lisa Harney — December 1, 2007 @ 2:29 pm
“I wasn’t equating girly things with a feminine identity so much as equating my feminine identity with a love for girly things.”
sorry, i didn’t mean to imply that you were. i’m wondering how much a feminine identity is tied into a love for girly things. i always imagined that was something that feminine “identitied” people were conditioned to enjoy.
if one were to give a human baby dolls to play with, and encouraged their play and enjoyment with that doll, and give another human baby trucks to play with, and encouraged their play and enjoyment with trucks, how would that pan out in the end? would enjoyment of trucks or dolls be equally distributed across gender, or would masculine babies always tend toward trucks, and feminine babies always tend toward dolls? would the type of play with each of those objects also follow suit?
i tend to believe there’d be no gender distinction. assuming one could keep current cultural influences out of that equation. which would most likely be impossible.
regarding violence in cultures against third genders, we seem to hear that some cultures do (or did) have valid space for “not male/female” people. but at least these days, i never seem to find that actually happening. and i wonder if that’s a result of “modern” western society’s influence (or contamination) on those cultures, and at some time in the past “not male/female” (or maybe that should read “not masculine/feminine”, or not male feminine/female masculine”) were accepted as valid people.
somehow, i just don’t think that anyone outside of any specific culture’s gender roles were very safe or valued. maybe i’m just tainted. it’s just that people tend to other those individuals who do not conform.
Comment by nexy — December 1, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
Yeah, but some cultures apparently made room for those who didn’t conform to the sex binary.
I read a story somewhere about a mother who gave her son stuffed animals and such, no guns, and at one point she caught him “shooting” his stuffed animals, pretending that one was a gun.
Anyway, I don’t know what would happen without any influences. It does seem pretty clear to me that I absorbed what I did because I saw myself as a girl and I wanted that life.
Comment by Lisa Harney — December 3, 2007 @ 3:38 am
Er, that is, because I saw what life was like for girls, not because seeing myself as a girl meant I inherently wanted those things.
Comment by Lisa Harney — December 3, 2007 @ 3:38 am