Gender Identity is a new buzz phrase
among gay, lesbian, feminist, psychological professionals and political
activists and there are almost as many pronouncements about what it
means as there are people discussing it. The simplest starting
point is one of what one sees themselves as: male, female, neither,
both or something else entirely. Being self defined in essence,
defense of one's own viewpoint becomes highly personal and therefore
coupled with a high emotional investment when someone else defines you
in a manner different than you see yourself. The one voice almost
never heard on the subject is that of the post-transitional and post
operative transsexual woman other than the occasional psych
professional among this group, but ironically, it is this group that is
most often defined, discussed and dissected by everyone else as "proof"
of their own place in the debate! In my own essay on
"The Transsexual Mirror Effect" I
discuss the historical and modern tendency to use the "classic"
transsexual as a reflection of the insecurities and identities of
others, here I shall attempt to delve a bit deeper into how this has
essentially led to the erasure of "post-transsexuals" from the very
debate they caused simply by existing. When I use the term
transsexual, I do so in a very specific fashion meaning the classical
definition of someone who's own gender identity fits within the
bi-polar model of male-female and is
driven to and changes a
born body opposite that identity as much as possible. Both parts
are important to the understanding of the "classical" form of
transsexuality. It is not just the changing of the body that
defines the condition, but the resulting comfort within a bi-gendered
worldview as well. This condition, despite the apparent explosion
of so called transsexual/transgender identified identities challenging
gender roles and promoting a third gendered or fluid gender worldview,
is quite rare. Recently, given the almost complete colonization
of the term transsexual, some of these people have redefined the
condition as Harry Benjamin Syndrome just to be able to self define.
Many years ago I came to understand HBS transsexuality as a
neurological form of intersexuality which the past 15 years of limited
research on these specific individuals apparently confirms. To
the apparent horror of those who have colonized the term transsexual,
it can be diagnosised based on this model quite specifically and a
smallish number of psychologists and psychiatrists have begun to
quietly use these diagnostic tools to distinguish between HBS
transsexual women and autogynophilaics and transgender people.
Often HBS transsexuals show additional signs of intersexuality
beyond neurological. The fear of the non HBS transgenders stems
from fear of being denied access to surgeries and hormones if this
becomes widespread. Personally, I believe anyone should have the
right to their own identity
and
the means of expressing it and the vast majority of today's gender
professionals seem to share this view. It is ironic that
gatekeeping concerns have transferred to the non HBS gender community
when it was originally strictly a transsexual issue in the early days
of the Standards of Care of the Harry Benjamin International Gender
Dysphoria Association, since renamed The World Professional Association
for Transgender Health. This change of name reflects a desire of
gender professionals to widen the net of influence beyond the classical
transsexual which carries it's own implications for good or ill
depending on one's viewpoint. Personally I still am uncomfortable
with a decidedly patriarchal approach that uses gatekeeping in any
fashion to replace adults being responsible for their own life choices
while recognizing that social costs of gender non-conformity in any
fashion can cause a myriad of allied adjustment problems that
then become associated with it. It's not the lack of gender
conformity that is the actual problem but the sociological pressures
that accompany it.
The two polar opposite philosophies on gender identity are those of the
gender essentialists and those of the gender deconstructionists.
The average person tends to default towards gender essentialist
because, frankly, it's rarely more than a passing concern to their day
to day life and a world view that serves them quite well until they
occasionally bump up against the gender deconstructionist viewpoint or
encounter someone who doesn't fit the pattern. This actually has
large scale impact on the politics and civil rights issues on those
outside the gender boxes and so when these conflicts arise, everyone is
very invested in their own viewpoint and thus often forced into quite
rigid positions. Toss in the confusion often present between
sexual orientation and gender identity it also often becomes a
religious battlefield as well. Homosexual "panic" is not just a
reaction to a threat to one's sense of sexual orientation but rather
also, although largely unnoticed, one's own gender identity which often
is more the cause of the "panic" than being confronted with someone of
a different sexual orientation. It is much more a male reaction
than a female one for sociological reasons.
Penises and the Patriarchy
Today's world is almost completely patriarchal and this colours every
single aspect of philosophy and identity either pro or con. This
is so pervasive that even among feminists who oppose the patriarchal
worldview it is hard to escape some of the assumptions that underlay it
and of vital importance to a patriarchy is who is a man and who is a
woman because it simply cannot exist without this distinction.
Sliding scales can be applied so the effeminate male can be seen
as male but also "less than" a "real" man and the masculine woman still
a woman but less desirable as a woman in male terms. This sliding
scale contributes to gender identity panic, which I define as fear of
not being seen in absolute conformity with gender roles, because in a
very real sense most people, but men in particular, define themselves
against the standards imposed. Since within a patriarchy a
woman's worth is measured against desirability, a masculine woman does
not move up the gender scale while a feminine male goes down.
With a patriarchal worldview, it is the penis that defines who
isn't a man and who is and it becomes so important that even a ghost
penis, as in a post-operative male to female transsexual, can still be
used to define her as male. Female genitalia becomes almost
invisible and womanhood more defined by the lack of the penis, even
medically in the case of intersexual birth, than in terms of wombs and
vaginas. The first well known modern transsexual, Christine
Jorgensen, never did have vaginoplasty but rather an orchietomy and
penectomy instead which ironically enough is the most ancient form of
"sex change" dating back far before written history and it was
only in the past twenty or so years that surgeons doing sexual
reassignment surgery for male to female transsexuals gave any concern
to functioning beyond the ability to receive a penis in doing the
surgery. It should not be surprising then that penises became the
battleground in modern gender identities as well. It is
interesting to note that having a functioning penis is not at all
essential to a male identity as any female to male transsexual can tell
you but then their POV is often ignored. I suspect this is also a
result of the importance of the penis overall to the patriarchy.
It became of vital importance to insist on the removal of a penis
from someone who identified as a woman in order to place her in "proper
content" within a patriarchal world not just because of her desire but
because women are also defined by desirability and it was unthinkable
to have someone potentially desirable to men also having a penis.
For this reason, the lives of post-operative transsexual women
predating the "transgender revolution" and the rise of gender identity
politics and fitting neatly within a heterosexual centric and bi-polar
gender model often consisted of marriage and a reasonably "normal"
(whatever that means) life. You almost never heard of a
post-operative transsexual woman being killed in a "homosexual panic"
prior to the gender revolution, indeed, you almost never heard of
transsexual women at all unless they had some public position before
transition that made them noticeable after Christine Jorgensen..
Heterosexual female to male transsexuals you just never heard
about at all unless they were "discovered" after death or serious
injury for the simple reasons that women are often much less prone to
homosexual panic when confronted with the lack of a penis on a male
identified partner and hormone treatment for female to male
transsexuals renders them almost invisible to the general public.
In the case of homosexual identified female to male
transsexuals, the partners, being homosexual men, didn't rate fully as
males in a patriarchy. Further, a patriarchal worldview has
little trouble understanding why a woman would rather be a man but
cannot easily grasp why a man would want to become a woman, one being a
step up and the other a step down in position.
The first real conflicts between HBS transsexuals and gender identity
politics came within feminism and emerging gay pride movements and
arose from a desire to politicalize the identities of HBS transsexuals
based on penises or their lack of them. Homosexually oriented HBS
transsexuals and transgenders found community among the gays and
lesbians precisely because of the gender non-conformity of that
culture. The rise of the radical lesbian separatists within the
women's movement ironically focused similar importance on penises or
their lack as the very patriarchy it opposed and for exactly the same
reasons. Lesbian identified HBS transsexual women suddenly found
themselves the enemy within their own chosen community and they were
told that if they were truly gender radicals, they should
not
have surgery to "challenge" gender norms and "oh by the way, you aren't
real women either". From this point forward most proponents of
gender deconstruction, which became quite fashionable, became
intolerant of HBS transsexuals of either orientation with the exception
of the "third genderists" who were the darlings of the movement.
The real problem, overlooked by almost everyone on both sides, is
not who is right but the simple respect of self identity. The
rather simple notion that traditional gender works quite well for some
people (the majority outside the movement as a matter of fact) but that
in no way should invalidate the identities of those who don't fit
within it. The warfare comes, not from differences in
philosophies but rather from the need to
impose the
world view on those who do not share it and a total lack of respect on
both sides of the basic right of the other to simply define themselves.
Faced with this disrespect, both sides become ever increasingly
entrenched in self defense. The true irony is this need to impose
one's own world view is the ultimate expression of what is wrong with
patriarchy but those opposing patriarchy became highly invested it's
own worst elements while making enemies of those who, given the simple
respect of their own identities, would naturally be their allies.
I see hopeful signs of this insanity ending coming from the younger
feminists who's range of gender expression and self identity is all
over the map while still seemingly having little trouble respecting the
rights of others to their own identities. Within the gender
communities the prospect is much less rosy as almost everyone within
the mostly male to female side seems hell bent on the right to define
each other in total disrespect of self identity of others. When
the two groups intersect, maybe things will get better. I suspect
I'll be long dead before that happens however.
Babes in Genderland
In the middle days of second wave feminism we saw the rise of the
radical lesbian separatist movement. Having originally been cut
out of the movement by the middle class women who first wrote to the
principles on the basis of "too much male energy" they ironically then
proceeded to root out the transsexual women in their midsts, the most
well known case being Sandy Stone, the sound engineer for the now
defunct Olivia Records. Although mostly forgotten by almost all
feminist women today, Janice Raymond wrote a disjointed and illogical
book against transsexuality that seems to be remembered now only by
transsexual women. The ideas espoused however live on in a few
vocal remainders of this school of thought including Lisa Vogel of the
Michigan Womyn's Music Festival fame. The knee jerk reaction to a
transwoman openly discussing her background at the festival was to
eject her from it. This set off a war of ideologies between the
womyn born womyn set and the transgendered civil rights movement.
Both sides see the issues in terms of black and white but they
are far from that simple. Camp Trans, the counter festival set up
outside "the Land", seeks to "educate" about the womanhood of
transgender women but this would include what the festival organizers
call "penis people" as well as women of transsexual history (post ops).
This has touched off a long running series of debates over who is
a woman, how long does a transsexual woman live a woman's life before
she is seen as one, is anatomy destiny, and a myriad of other debates,
some well reasoned and some just rhetoric on both sides. The
ultimate truth of the matter, in my opinion, is that Lisa owns the
property the Festival takes place on, is uncomfortable with transsexual
women making her own save space less safe to her and set a policy that
called for self policing based on her principles. She has every
right to do so and have that respected. That is the least popular
opinion even among women of transsexual history but to me the central
issue is the same problem I have with the transgender community, a
total lack of respect of someone else's identity and boundaries.
I've had my own experience with setting a clear boundary within a
religious context only to have it violently objected to by
transgenderists despite the boundary being set for specific historic
and religious reasons. It almost completely distroyed my life's
work and left me almost homeless after five years of actively trying to
help those who were homeless in the name of transgender justice.
work in progress........