Radical Feminism on Transgenderism
Hi Annalee,
Many years ago I read your essay "Gender Slumming" on Carnegie Mellon University's gopher. I'm a MtF transsexual, but at that time I read your essay I would never have said that. I felt so much self-hate and confusion. I was looking for information everywhere. Your essay was one of the first works of feminism I read. After reading it I was extremely upset.
My search for information had only led me further away from self-acceptance. Some psychologist say we're mentally ill. Some theologians say we're enemies of God. And some feminists say we're agents of patriarchy. There was a time when I was so angry at all the people who define us. But now transsexuals/transgenders have begun to define ourselves and we can read things (like the writings of Leslie Feinberg and Kate Bornstein) that don't begin with biases against us. I no longer spend much time thinking about how other people think about me.
Today I found out you wrote a "reconsideration" to your essay. It seemed so unbelievable. Most people who take a public stand on an issue won't ever reconsider. Sometimes just saying a firm belief makes people close-minded no matter how much evidence mounts against their view. Reconsidering your original essay is an incredibly impressive act of open-mindedness. Thank you! I'm also pursuing a Ph.D. and I'm so happy to see another graduate student express so much intellectual integrity. I wish you the best of luck with your future academic career!
Madeline
When I told my closest friend that I wrote the above letter, she was completely astonished. My friend knows just how much the negative stereotypes of some feminists have influenced my self-concept and my life. She also knows that "Gender Slumming" hurt me much more than I really express in my autobiography (on this site). To paraphrase my friend: "Why shouldn't you continue to be angry at Annalee? If there wasn't information back in 1993, doesn't that just make her hateful writing worse?" She's right. Ignorance is not an excuse for hate. But it also didn't occur to me that I should hate Annalee.
http://www.genderpsychology.org/gender_queer/gender_slumming.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Are you wondering if society didn't have such a strictly binary view of gender, then fewer folks might actually transition? Especially such a strictly binary view that says "women are like this and men are like that"?
In other words, if society were more accepting of gender fluidity and people with blended gender identities, and variations in what "man" or "woman" is expected to be, would fewer people transition?
I have wondered the same thing, just as a "what if" exercise. I don't have an opinion about the answer.
I fully accept any gender identity anyone assumes. I also get very frustrated with a world that thinks gender is binary.
I don't even understand binary gender. At all. Gender is a big old mishmash continuum to me.
I am female bodied and present as female but don't identify as female (or should I say as a "woman"
. I don't identify as male (or as a "man" either. I have a lot of traditionally "masculine" traits but look like a woman and I am completely fed up with a world that wants me to be one gender or the other.
I have a lot of respect for people who transition. It seems like a really tough and brave decision. Though I gather it doesn't feel much like an option, but more like an imperative.
morning with a male body. Try to imagine that you have no culturally induced or external experiential concept of your gender identity as you've always known it, but you are still you, your essential core identity is intact. Were you born a woman, were you made a woman, or some of both?
Consider the ramifications of this scenario, internally and externally, and how you would negotiate the role oriented minefield of this world, particularly how you would relate to men and women individually and collectively from that point forward. You'd probably feel very substantial dysphoria over your situation.
This may give you a hint of an idea of what many trans folks feel like fairly soon after they exit the womb, and as they begin their wade through the muck of self and social existence.
As awareness grows, there's that first "something's really wrong here" moment in infancy. Maybe the next total "Huh? What the heck?" moment often comes when a transperson begins to express their essential core gender ID relative to the gender group with whom they perceive they identify, when they are old enough to self-present themselves as who they are. Often as toddlers, whose first experience of coming out may literally be coming out of the closet - mom's closet, at 2 1/2 yrs old, dressed in mom's stilettos, pearls, lipstick, and the prettiest dress she could pull down. Or vice versa, with dad's stuff, in the case of transmen.
"What do you mean I'm not this? I most certainly am this. How can you tell me I'm not, when I know I am?" (And, possibly, a very shocked, and why are you beating me because of this?" .
To deny the existence of collective social groups, women primarily socializing and relating to other women, in many situations, based on their perceived gender identity, and men primarily socializing and relating to other men based on their perceived gender identities, is not realistic. So, why would a transperson not feel internal and external pressures to relate, socialize, and normalize in the same way that the rest of the group that they identify with does? For example, why wouldn't a transwoman feel the imprinting of her mother, essentially feel the same societal pressures as that of other girls, and later express the consequences of sexualization that most other women experience? :
Sexualization of Girls
Or reject sexualization as much as is consciously possible, tell society to frack off, and work on finding out who she really is and who she wants to be and defining herself on her own terms to the greatest degree that she is capable?
Something I have often found distressing and frustrating is the tendency (from my POV) of how many women consciously, or unconsciously, generally buy into the ingrained cultural social schtick that men are somehow overall superior to us and have more value and therefore it is more acceptable and desirable for us to be more like them. It drives me up the wall.
From that standpoint, it appears to me that far too many women often wish they could be a lot more like men, and, therefore, may possibly attempt to extinguish and subsequently deny their essential core female gender identity, because, as you very well know, almost every woman in our society has relentlessly had it driven into them since birth that all women are intrinsically inferior to all men. At the very least, I believe that this is certainly something valuable for any woman in our society to ponder when assessing her essential core identity as a human being.
Conversely, I have little conscious definable experience of observing men attempting to extinguish and subsequently deny their gender identity. IMO, very few of the men that I have interacted with have exhibited any discernible serious conflict/doubt regarding their own gender identity, at least in the respect of presenting themselves as solidly rooted in their male self-identity/persona and their understanding of themselves as men, with little or no thought of being genderless or gender conflicted, because they are already a privileged part of the dominant culture, and see mostly, or only, negatives to being "more like a woman". From their personal perspectives of what "like a woman" means to them of course.
I don't want to be a man. I don't want to be more like a man. I like some men, some I don't. They're the dominant group right now. I hope to help change that. I like being a woman. But that only relates to my core identity. My mode of external stereotypical gender presentation is whatever I choose. I'm an athlete. I can often fix cars. I sometimes dress in somewhat stereotypical men's apparel. Sometimes I may wear a dress and plant flowers. I may love a man. I may love a woman. The point is, no matter what I do, it does not alter my core identity as a woman or my cognizance of my core identity as a woman one whit.
So, in answer to the question, "from a bigger society institutional point of view, does the societal gender dichotomy cause many transgendered people to feel that they have to be transgendered?"
The answer to your question is the same answer you would arrive at by answering this question:
From a bigger society institutional point of view, does the societal gender dichotomy cause many womaned people to feel that they have to be womaned?
I can only relate here, and try to help answer your question, by relating what I feel is true for me, based upon my own experiences/genes.
You may find these links and terminologies valuable/helpful:
Transgender or Transgendered?
DUer Evasporque's classic explanation of transgender vs. transgendered
Transgender 101: 15 Things to Know
☮☮☮☮☮☮
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I don't understand what the OP has to do with people who hate sex. It's about gender identity, not about sex.
I can't make heads or tails out of how my reply to you has anything to do with my own awareness of trans hatred, so I'ma gonna drop it.
Have a great night. 
Response to William769 (Original post)
