Lots of introspection has taught me that the answer I eventually come down to isn’t something reducible to any single factor among gender performance, another person’s self-identification or any “essential” connotation of sex. I’ve never been involved with a transwoman, but I know I’ve met transpeople I’ve found attractive. But before I can form that judgment, I have to have figured out where that person fits in. It’s similar to, but different from, the sorting process that hapless, sensitive dudes like me find ourselves going through when we try to decide whether a woman’s lesbian or not. It’s like there’s a part of my head that needs to know whether the other person would be bothered if I found them attractive before I can decide whether I’m attracted to them or not.

For me this is no big deal — once I’m conscious I’m doing it — but to a lot of people it’s threatening to be attracted to somebody who doesn’t fit their accepted notions of what they’re interested in. An awful lot of people seem to confuse fantasy and desire with sexuality, and when you stir in patriarchy (i.e. when the received “common sense” / imposed dichotomy of gender is threatened), things get ugly pretty fast. The thing that’s so incredibly enraging about so many high-profile acts of violence against transpeople is that trans victims are forced to suffer the consequences of someone else’s inability to reconcile their own desires with their self-image. They feel humiliated by their own desires and turn that around into believing that they were “tricked”, that a conscious act of deception was perpetrated on them, when in fact the transperson they were dealing with was being more honest about who they were, rather than less.

Because I think desire is so close to the heart of who we are, I think this way of looking at things keeps the attention squarely on the party it needs to be on: the person doing the sorting. Piny, you have the freedom to spend your whole life figuring out who you are. It’s not your responsibility to make anyone else comfortable with your sexual and gendered identity. I have a friend who’s been wobbling back and forth between male and female for the entire time I’ve known him / her, and my only real concern is that s/he understand that I support him / her, while at the same time figuring that at root it’s his / her business, not mine. I mostly just feel lucky that my gender, sex and sexual identity align with American norms as closely as they do, because it’s treacherous enough for me even so.

If you don’t fit into any neat categories, other people’s inability to file you away is not your problem, it’s theirs. If there weren’t some element of projection involved, why would they even care? I mean, really? Isn’t that one of the fundamental questions of feminism? Why does it matter whether we’re men or women? There are very tightly proscribed domains of human biology where the difference is relevant, but the existence of transpeople should highlight that those domains are even smaller than the population at large is conventionally accustomed to thinking of them as being — or at least more interchangeable.

I’m trying to get over this learned behaviour. But the discomfort is so strong I know that the hierarchy is strongly ingrained.

Maybe the way to get over that learned behavior, is to no longer think of it as a hierarchy. Not easy, admittedly. But perhaps the trick is less getting over it, than getting out from under it.

Let’s reframe it instead as a set of free-floating attributes, categorized in a range from ‘feminine’ to ‘masculine’, called gender; previously, historically, associated with physical sex, but over time ‘detached’ from the body; now understood as behaviors and modes increasingly available to all, without penalty, irrespective of either physical sex or sexuality.

This is nothing but the legendary distinction between sex and gender, not as some theoretical toy thing, but as a demonstrable historical fact.

A lovely vision. Put it in a bottle. Make a million dollars.

Feminism has often simply announced changes already in progress for which it has taken credit and for which it has been held responsible.

– Gayle Rubin

well that’s just it, isn’t it. women are their functioning uterus’ (uteri?) and men are their penis’ (peni?). and the rest of us are just, well, freaks. or something.

I guess my good friend who had a hysterectomy because of severe endometriosis is a freak, too.

And then there’s the man in my choir I met only after he’d transitioned, and didn’t know for months that he was trans. But he still hasn’t had his bottom half surgery (bureaucratic delays). Funny how I’ve known this guy for nearly two years and never had reason to see him naked, thus would be oblivious to his lack of a penis if he hadn’t mentioned it himself.

You can’t see a uterus, at least not without specialised equipment. And you have to be pretty damn intimate with someone to see their penis. As markers of femininity and masculinity among platonic friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and strangers, they’re pretty useless.

The present dispute, then, can be seen as one over definitions of terms. Kim contends that the category women should be reserved for women-born-women; others have a more liberal interpretation of women.

Yes, some of this is over definitions of terms. Without wanting to misinterpret Kim, I think it might be more meaningful to say she contends that the category woman should be reserved not for women-born-women, but for people-born-female. But to do that is to align woman with female, and man with male — to align gender with sex — to the point of their inseparable conflation.

I think it’s important to maintain terminological awareness. If we’re going to accept and use a distinction between sex and gender (which I think must inform any progressive feminist and trans analysis, which I believe coincide), then the terms of sex should likewise be differentiated from the terms of gender. It’s never “only semantics” coz semantics is the only thing we’ve got.

In this sense, there’s no such thing as a ‘women-born-women’, but rather only women-born-female, and women-born-male; men-born-male, and men-born-female: a gender born a sex.

As soon as we use the ‘this-born-that’ construction, we’re navigating the sex-gender divide, however unacknowledged that may be, since the construction itself emerges from and reflects that divide, and is only meaningful in its light.

Kim: Feminism has been trying to hammer in the point that men and women are the same at their core, and this feels like a blow against that idea.

Ya, I can see how it can feel like that. But is it possible that what feels like a blow to that idea, actually confirms it?

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y167/NicoGrrl/NotAllWomen.jpg