Thomas Beatie’s Rabbit Test.
(Note: This is *not* Thomas Beatie)
Thomas Beatie is a pregnant man.
Before I learned the details, I just kind of thought, “Oh, the aliens have come.”
But that would actually be more straightforward. Beatie was born a woman, biologically, but decided to go through gender reassignment. He took testosterone and had his breasts removed, but kept his vagina. He and his partner decided to have a baby, she couldn’t, and so he went off his testosterone injections and became pregnant. In a personal essay in the Advocate, Beatie described the difficulty he had in getting a doctor treat him. It seems ob/gyns find pregnant men icky.
There’s one big thing I need to know: how is it possible for Beatie to become pregnant!?! Sure, he still has a vagina and, I assume, all of its concomitant parts, but if you look at the pictures it’s clear he was on testosterone for some time. If just a tiny little bit of estrogen can completely knock your cycle off kilter, how is it that an egg can become implanted in a body that has clearly been flooded with the wrong kind of hormone?
It seems Beatie’s not the only man who would go for it.
What is interesting to me is that someone who feels that they’re a man and that they have been their whole lives and were somehow born into the wrong gender, would decide to become pregnant. Pregnancy, until now, has been the surest female-only realm.
Which brings me to another point: why are all of these young college students who say they’ve actually known they were men on the inside their whole lives be drawn to all-women’s colleges?
As a graduate of a liberal, all-women’s college, I’m no stranger to people who identify themselves as transgendered. While I was in undergrad, a young woman decided she was actually male and did everything short of beginning hormone therapy and undergoing surgery; she took on a male name, dressed as a he, began referring to herself as a he, and in the wider world began passing as a he. She asked the administrators what they would do if she actually did become a man, physically, and at the time (2000, i think), they told her she would not be welcome there. It is, after all, an all-women’s college. He transferred out.
But why did he want to go there in the first place? If you feel that you’re a man, why would you be drawn to a college that celebrates its single sex status? And don’t say it’s because it’s a safe-haven; there are plenty of former single-sex institutions that now admit men (like Sarah Lawrence, Vassar, etc.) that would be more than welcoming. To me, that presents some sort of conflict. A certain kind of woman wants to go to a school like mine, Bryn Mawr, and I don’t see how that can be the same kind of woman who would really be a man.
And that’s my problem with what seems like a gender-reassignment wave, if I may be frank. It’s not very polite to question the transgendered community, but if you have more people switching genders and you’re not talking about it, then we’re not really having a conversation about gender that we clearly need to be having. If I slowly or suddenly decided that there’s something about my character that is not feminine, and I want to change it, then I am defining female and male in particular ways (or vice versa). Rather than making the world accept that I’m a woman who may be at odds with what “womanhood” means to them, I’m redefining myself so that the larger society will perceive me in a way that I can predict, rather than forcing society to see me as something less circumscribed by how they want me to be. To me, that seems more limited. Rather than letting everyone span the spectrum, on which genders and their ascribed “characteristics” can be fluid and overlap, we’re defining sex and gender more rigidly. Rather than floating happily in a middle, we’re switching from one end to the other.
Except for Beatie, who seems the least rigid of us all. I don’t know what led to his decision to keep her vagina, but I guess it’s come in handy.
Being gay I feel like I’m hating on my more awkward cousins twice removed when I feel downright confused, scared and dissaproving of transgendered people. If you go to the club often enough and to the right ones, as a gay person, you can’t avoid them. In fact, they often approach me and several times have said I look like the kind of guy that “likes women like them”. (I don’t even know how to begin to tackle that LOL).
There are so many different ways to look at it, though. I mean first off I think there is a gigantic difference between FTM and MTF’s in terms of why they want to change gender, what pressurse and motivations they might have. I think at least for some FTM’s its like..hey people thought I was masculine anyways..let me make it easier and fit into the box. (Although many lesbians have disdain for FTM’s because they believe they take advantage of male power without owning up to lesbianism or womenhood).
I think in general though, it’s an identity on the far frontiers of acceptance… I mean in very politically correct circles its not ok to take dissaprovingly nor even skeptically of transgendered people. but at the same time, terms like “tranny mess” are well indoctrinated into popular culture.
On a personal level, though, I gotta admit that a certain sense of fear and confusion is invoked within me when I see trannies. Perhaps because I’m programmed to want everything to make sense together, which means I ascribe to gender roles but then again so do trannies.
And, finally, I can’t at all wrap my mind about MTF’s. In fact they are rarer and there is ALOT less research on them.
This is a really tough subject. When I was studying at Smith, there was a whole debate as to whether the language of the student government constitution should become gender neutral. It did.
Anywho, I know you don’t want to hear the safety argument, but I think that it’s important, considering that some people begin to explore this part of their identity more aggressively in college. You’re likely to find a larger community of transgendered students at a women’s college because women’s colleges have been at the forefront of these issues. They tend not to have the institutional setbacks that one may face at a coed liberal arts college (gender neutral spaces, flexibility in terms of housing), although Rey (from the NYT story) did face these things at Barnard. Also, I imagine that there is a lot of fear in identifying as transgendered. Maybe some students are afraid that they may not be totally accepted by their male or female peers at a coed college, while there will be a smaller community of transgendered students to draw support from.
“I think at least for some FTM’s its like..hey people thought I was masculine anyways..let me make it easier and fit into the box.”
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I think in our rush to be really accepting, we’re not talking about how that’s problematic. Especially with women who go to all-women’s colleges, who strongly identify as lesbians, and then decide to become men, it’s like, those are two completely different things. In some ways, I think some women wake up and decide their lives would feel more seamless if they were male on the outside, they wouldn’t be butting up against prejudice every day. And I think that’s a problem.
But when people always say, on the inside, I was born (the opposite of what I am biologically), my immediate response was, no you weren’t. You were born as a woman who was either perceived or feels that she has male qualities, or vice versa. Why isn’t accepting that none of us fit neatly into one of two categories a better thing?
Also, you think FTM is more common than MTFs? I totally disagree. I think there is more attention now on FTM because it is more rare, it’s a newer phenomenon, and surgically becoming a man is more complicated.
April,
I agree with you that this is part of what women explore once they get to women’s colleges, but my question is this: these women are often saying they’ve always know they were ‘meant’ to be men, so what happens to that argument if we accept that the questioning, accepting environment at schools like Bryn Mawr and Smith helps spur these self-discoveries?
And about things becoming ‘gender neutral,’ i find that a problem at an all-women’s college. These colleges still exist because there’s still an argument to be made that girls face serious disadvantages in school. So we’re obvious not a gender neutral society. If we try to make our language gender neutral, then it doesn’t disappear, we’re just not talking about it.
April/Potts:
I’ve had this conversation countless times with both of you. It seems deeply problematic for someone to suggest that they were ’supposed’ to be a woman and have always felt psychologically female. What does that even mean? I would hope that being a ‘woman’ isn’t as simple, as say, wanting to play with Barbies growing up (or, conversely, being ‘a man inside’ isn’t the same as liking to play in the dirt).
It may make daily life a lot smoother, but it seems to reify ideas about gender, not challenge them.
Well I think those who get the SURGERY..there are more FTMs than MTFs… Cross dressers/drag queens/etc. are not considered MTFs…I know that’s kinda nonsensical..but many of them want to go back and forth between genders but not CHANGE their gender..
But lemme try to get stats on this.
and yes it does basically reinforce gender identity roles. It’s funny how something on the one hand is about being “revolutionary” but its clearly supporting the norms. Kinda like in law school we talk about a “reasonable person” standard (IE. is it something a reasonable person would do)..feminist legal criticism says reasonable person is gendered…toward men…but saying that only implies a gender difference in judgement and beliefs and fortifies the man/woman binary. So there is always an irony to alot of these things.
OK so this is what Wiki said on FTMs but I cant find stuff on MTF stats
In the United States the ratio of transmen within the general population is unclear, but estimates range between 1:2000 and 1:100,000.[12][13][14] Female-to-male (FTM) transsexuals and transgenders usually self-identify during their teens, 20s or 30s, often following a long period of self-identifying as lesbian.[15] Although there is still some disagreement as to how gender dysphoria begins and who should qualify for hormonal and surgical intervention, there is a remarkable amount of agreement in several important areas. Most psychologists now agree that gender dysphoria qualifies as a subject of clinical attention separate from other disorders. Further, most clinicians agree that the gender identity beliefs these people hold are profound, deep seated, and non-delusional. Even more significantly, outcome studies now clearly indicate that when three conditions are met: a proper differential diagnosis, a significantly long trial period of living in the gender of choice, and a satisfactory surgical result, there is only a small incidence of post-operative regret. Indeed, in a review of the outcome literature Pfafflin (1992) reports that less than 1% of the female-to-male transsexuals who had undergone sex reassignment had any regrets.[16]
There are good MTF stats on lynnconway.com and I think your whole conversation could be clarified by understanding that not all transgender people want or need full transition. That many really do defy all gender boxes by walking middle ground. Only some feel such discomfort between their physical sex and gender identity that they seek to modify their bodies.
Havasumoma:
I know that some people feel that they are between male and female and do not modify their bodies. The question here is, why do some people modify their bodies at all? I don’t mean to sound argumentative, but how is it honestly any different from any other type of plastic surgery? Because it’s more extreme? Because it’s new? How is it any different from a woman saying she would feel more womanly with larger breasts?
Wow! I hardly know where to start. All of the questions everyone has asked here are very important and very difficult to address point by point. If you really want to start to learn about trans women and men and why we do what we do, you might start with these “trans 101″ posts, which should begin to start to answer your questions:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2006/02/06/trans-101/
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/11/28/what-trans-means-to-me/
I’ll post another comment and try to answer a few of your other questions.
Abby
For me there’s something more than a little problematic about trying to dictate how another person negotiates such a complicated issue. Speaking from a position of privilege- and I do consider it a privilege to not have to endure constant questions about my vagina from people who have no valid reason to need to know- how is it fair for me to ignore the struggle a trans man or woman is already going through and demand that s/he shoulder my agenda? The implications that trans folk have a responsibility to challenge gender roles (G.D.) or become the spokespeople for a cause/movement that the individual may or may not believe to exist or care to speak on (quadmoniker) smack of entitlement and of a second wave feminist-esque forced politicization of a matter that is actually quite personal. Your lack of understanding or desire to change the way we define/perform gender is not their responsibility.
“If just a tiny little bit of estrogen can completely knock your cycle off kilter, how is it that an egg can become implanted in a body that has clearly been flooded with the wrong kind of hormone?”
If your ovaries (FTM) or testes (MTF) aren’t removed, they will begin producing hormones pretty quickly after the cross-sex hormones are removed. The surprising thing is that Beatie’s ovaries were still capable of producing an egg. Most MTFs are sterile after only a few months on estrogen.
“Rather than letting everyone span the spectrum, on which genders and their ascribed “characteristics” can be fluid and overlap, we’re defining sex and gender more rigidly. Rather than floating happily in a middle, we’re switching from one end to the other.”
There’s a lot of theory out there as to why I don’t agree that we “reify gender.” For example, read this discussion and the comments: http://questioningtransphobia.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/transphobia-and-sophistry/. I realize that some of this is pretty dense and may feel like you’re coming in on the middle of a conversation, but it will help you to begin learning about us, and especially what trans people say about themselves.
Personally, I think it’s important to separate theory and the actual lived experience of most trans people. I don’t necessarily accept the concept that by transitioning to living as a woman, I am reinforcing the gender binary. More importantly, however, the vast majority of the world see trans people as “gender rebels,” not “loyalists.” Most people see trans women and men as challenging the concept of gender, especially the assumption that gender always follows biological sex, at the most fundamental level possible.
Also, it’s important to understand that being trans is not logical, and it’s not theoretical. IT JUST IS! I don’t understand it any more than you do. Furthermore, I didn’t transition as some sort of political or philosophical act. I transitioned because I had no other choice if I wanted to live with any semblance of peace and happiness in my life. My being trans is no more political or theoretical than is your own certainty that you are a woman. I just know without question that I am a woman, have always been a woman, regardless of what the doctor thought on the day I was born.
I spent the last 13 years taking workshops, going to therapy, taking antidepressants, developing my spirituality and trying virtually everything else I thought might help me to find the happiness I had never had. Although all of those things helped, none of them brought me consistent peace or happiness. It was only when I began to acknowledge to myself who I really am and began to find the stories of other people like myself that showed me that transition was possible and, more importantly, could bring me some hope of what I had always sought, that I began, for the first time in my 50+ years on this planet, to have hope in my life. And let me tell you, living without hope is painful beyond measure.
When I told my family that I was going to transition, my sister told me that she still loved me, but didn’t agree with my “choice.” I told her that being trans is not a choice and that, the only choice I had was to die or, if I was lucky, live the rest of my life in misery, or transition. I chose to transition because I believe that we all deserve to live and be happy.
I know that it’s hard to accept something you don’t understand, but we have to do it every day in our lives in different ways. I hope that you can do it with trans people too. Like everyone else, trans people just want to be happy. Please allow us that and support us however you can.
Abby
A few more comments.
The words “tranny” and “trannies” are normally used as perjoratives. Most trans people don’t think those terms are acceptable to refer to us, except, in some cases, by one trans person referring to another. Trans men (FTMs) and women (MTFs) are the terms I prefer.
Actually, MTFs are probably more numerous and, at least until recently, have always been more visible. I think Lynn Conway’s site (http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TSprevalence.html) has the best statistics available on this issue.
“Also, I imagine that there is a lot of fear in identifying as transgendered.”
You have no idea of the fear that we experience before, during and after transition.
“I think in our rush to be really accepting, we’re not talking about how that’s (FTMs transitioning) problematic. Especially with women who go to all-women’s colleges, who strongly identify as lesbians, and then decide to become men, it’s like, those are two completely different things. In some ways, I think some women wake up and decide their lives would feel more seamless if they were male on the outside, they wouldn’t be butting up against prejudice every day.”
It is extremely important to keep sexual orientation and gender identity separate. Sexual orientation is about who you love and gender identity is about who you are. Trans people can be gay, straight, bi or asexual, just like cisgender (non-trans) people.
Let me tell you, no one transitions to escape prejudice. Trans people are murdered at rates 10 times or more higher than the rest of the population. The few statistics that are available indicate that 50-75% of them are unemployed and most of the rest are underemployed. A study of trans people in Washington, D.C. found that their average income was $10,000 a year. Only about 1/3 of the U.S. population is protected against employment and other discrimination based on their gender identity, i.e., because they’re trans. Last fall, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi decided that gender identity protection should be removed from the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), so that it would only protect gays and lesbians from discrimination based on their sexual orientation. Although ENDA passed the House last fall, it has yet to be taken up in the Senate and has no chance of being signed into law as long as Bush, or probably any other Republican, is in the White House.
Most importantly, no one transitions because they want to. We transition because we have to. For many of us, it is literally a matter of life and death.
“It seems deeply problematic for someone to suggest that they were ’supposed’ to be a woman and have always felt psychologically female. What does that even mean?”
No one knows what a “woman” or a “man” is. We each just have an innate sense of who we are, including our gender. I wasn’t “supposed” to be a woman, I AM a woman.
“I would hope that being a ‘woman’ isn’t as simple, as say, wanting to play with Barbies growing up (or, conversely, being ‘a man inside’ isn’t the same as liking to play in the dirt).”
If only gender could be that simple. My life and the lives of millions of other trans people around the world would be much, much simpler.
“It may make daily life a lot smoother, but it seems to reify ideas about gender, not challenge them.”
It definitely does not make daily life smoother. Instead, life gets MUCH more complicated and often much lonelier and insecure. Do you begin to get the picture that no one “chooses” to be trans and transition, that no one would choose to go through all of the problems that trans people face on a dalily basis if they had another choice?
“Well I think those who get the SURGERY..there are more FTMs than MTFs…”
Genital surgery is many times more expensive for FTMs than for MTFs and much less successful and aesthetically pleasing. Consequently, far fewer FTMs get genital surgery. Most, however, do get “top” surgery (double mastectomy) to feel more comfortable with their bodies and help them to be more readily accepted as men by others.
Well, I hope my efforts to respond to everyone’s questions here have been helpful. The only hope I and other trans people have of living a life where we are accepted and treated with the same respect that everyone expects and deserves is to educate others about who we are. Thanks for your interest.
Blessings,
Abby
Verdeluz,
Thanks for recognizing the privilege that comes from never having to worry about one’s gender. It’s the same as for white people in America who are rarely confronted with the need to consider the consequences (nearly always positive in the U.S.) of being white. The same can be said of men who fail to appreciate the privilege they enjoy just for being men. I remember many times while living as a man thinking about how grateful I was not that I didn’t have to face the discrimination and condescension that women face in our society. And, yet, I was more than willing to give that up, and, indeed, to face even greater discrimination because I’m trans, to be comfortable with myself.
Many trans people are deeply concerned with issues of gender and sex on a philosophical and political level, as some of the links I provided will reveal. At the same time, for most of us, our primary concern is simply to live a life of peace and happiness, just as it is for everyone. Besides, personal safety and financial security have to be firmly established before anyone can spend time and other resources debating whether the concept of gender helps or hurts any of us. Yet, those matters continue to be highly uncertain for many, if not most, trans people.
I’m into parkour and martial arts, both probably considered somewhat masculine pursuits. Likewise, as a child, I was as likely to have played with my he-man dolls or lego as I was to throw a tea-party for my dolls. Granted, most of the time he-man and skeletor gave up the good fight for a while to attend said party, but there you go.
It used to be that, to get treatment, you HAD to be homosexual in regards to your birth sex. So trans-people would go into therapists’ offices and lie through their teeth. Thankfully that is no longer the case, but in many respects that conflation between gender and role still persists, so trans-people still go into therapists’ offices and lie through their teeth, only different lies. There is a fundamental disconnect between the absolute certainty a trans-person has in their identity and what society and the medical community to expect of them, and unfortunately that feeds on itself, skewing the understanding further. Keep in mind, to BE us, we need to correct a rather severe birth defect, which costs a lot of time, pain and money, not to mention that the medical community, scared witless by something they don’t really understand, puts all kinds of hurdles in place to protect themselves from litigation as much as to protect the odd patient with schizophrenia or some other disorder masquerading as GID.
I have many ‘feminine’ traits. Equally I have quite a few ‘masculine’ ones. Doesn’t change the fact that I was born a woman. One would think that feminism of all movements, most concerned with breaking down the gender=role conflation, would understand this. The addition of a rather nasty physical birth defect notwithstanding.
And that is a SERIOUSLY cool picture. Thomas Beatie is the latest addition to my list of seriously cool role-models.
I found the Dr’s reactions worrisome. For a profession that supposedly prides itself on …professionalism…it just plays into my personal prejudices about male ob/gyn’s frankly
Tasha:
I know. It is disappointing. You can’t not treat an expectant mother just because you don’t approve of whatever life choices she’s made. That opens up a whole can of worms, and, you’re right, it isn’t responsible medicine.
Quad:
It makes me question male gyno’s in particular and their reasons for choosing a profession that tinkers around in female anatomies. but yes medical professionals ‘weirded out’ by this sort of thing in general get a raised eyebrow at the professional aspect
This here:
You should ask trans men why they transition (FTM isn’t a noun, btw, nor is MTF), rather than speculate against their will. Or, to be more polite, look up writings by trans men and read what they have to say because asking is rude.
Quadmoniker,
You’re positioning transition as something that it’s not. You’re talking about it as if people decide to transition because we’re not masculine or feminine enough, or that we identify in such a way that not transitioning is really a viable option. Transition by itself is not a deliberately political act. It’s not something that’s typically done to break down boundaries or transgress gender.
I didn’t wake up one day and think, “you know, I feel a bit too feminine to be a man, I think I should become a woman in order to accommodate that,” which is the tone I get from your example. Rather, from my earliest memories, I had a self-awareness that I was a girl - and when I was corrected, that I should have been a girl. My brain continued to expect my body to be female, and nothing I tried made it possible for me to convince myself otherwise. I sought transition so I could be comfortable in my own skin, so I could live my life without constantly hating the fact that society gendered me as male when I didn’t see myself as male and couldn’t stand having a male body.
Yes, trans people who go from male to female or female to male don’t particularly violate gender expectations just by virtue of that act (well, except beyond the whole “man becomes a woman” or “woman becomes a man,” thing, which is a massive violation of societal expectations). It can be argued that by wanting to fit into male or female - even if it’s not the same sex we were born into - that we’re reinforcing gender norms, but this is something that 99.99 and 44/100% of the world’s population also does in their respective cultures. Okay, maybe not quite that many - but still, the vast majority of people who never transition, who never consider transition - and by that, I mean the vast majority of humanity as an entire species - reinforce gender norms.
It’s really unfair to expect trans people to lead the way to a genderless or multigendered or pure freedom of gender society, and to criticize us for not doing so. That’s not to say no trans person desires something like this - some do. Many do. Many who do not transition or who only transition partially don’t necessarily see themselves as fitting into a binary, instead placing themselves on a spectrum somewhere outside strict masculine, male, feminine, or female.
I hope Thomas Beatie gets adequate care for his pregnancy. Another similar case with a tragic ending would be Robert Eads,, who was refused treatment for ovarian cancer by over two dozen doctors. By the time he found a doctor who would treat him, it was too late and the cancer killed him.
if i may join this conversation..? i was wondering if someone (abby? lisa?) could expound some more on what you mean when you say:
“I wasn’t “supposed” to be a woman, I AM a woman.”
“Rather, from my earliest memories, I had a self-awareness that I was a girl”
i don’t understand what that means. :/
i’ve never conceived of gender as having an innate essence that one feels one is, so i am finding it really difficult to understand what you mean when you say that you identify as *something*, as if that thing has an existence before the identification.
if anyone has previously written about this, i would love a link.
many thanks.
Here you go: http://imatyfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/american-academy-of-pediatrics-6-2007.pdf
This is all about the early development of gender awareness and identity.
It means that my earliest sense of myself was as female, and female people are gendered as girls, and thus I knew I should be gendered as a girl.
That’s a very simple way of putting it, but children really do pick up a lot, and are not unaware of gender at all.
Ask any young child if they’re a boy or a girl, and they will tell you. If they can speak, they’ll know, right?
How is what I said unusual or unexpected?
lisa, when you say your earliest sense of yourself was as a female, do you mean as of a person with a female body? or the gendered category?
i am certainly not saying that children are unaware of gender, that would be silly! children are aware of their bodies as fe/male, and of themselves as girls/boys. but are they not aware of this b/c they are told so? b/c there already exists categories into which we must be assigned?
what i am trying to understand is that some of the comments above are postulating the category ‘woman’ (as gender, not as body) as something which has an innate existence. something that exists and then we attach ourselves to it, rather than an entity created by way of a productive act. meaning, does not the act of assigning ourselves / being assigned a gender create the category? or are you saying that the gendered categories exist in an essentialised and innate sense, prior to any identification by self or others?
if the latter, i’ve just never heard that before (in a feminist context) and so i assumed i must be misunderstanding you.
thanks again for helping.
vm: you beat me to this question; i was just mulling this over on the subway.
does/can gender exist outside of socialization? lisa says that ‘children are not unaware of gender’, and while i agree, i wonder how much of that is because they are existing in gendered spaces even at very young ages. (i remember my little cousin doing the whole ‘boy’s toy/girl’s toy’ bit as a toddler.)
verdeluz:
“The implications that trans folk have a responsibility to challenge gender roles”…
uh, did you read the Times article? of course all trans people aren’t necessarily challenging gender roles, but the kids in that article explicitly stated that they were.
also, i kinda don’t see how tossing out normative ideas about identity can not be political, even if these are fundamentally and primarily personal choices.
Is it fair? No. But if people see political agitation when black women eschew straightening their hair or women opt to keep the surnames they’ve had their whole lives when they get married, trans/genderqueer folks certainly ain’t gonna have it any easier.
Abby:
Thank you for sharing your personal story.
I just wanted to note that when I pointed out that young women are strongly identifying as lesbian, and then becoming men, I wasn’t unintentionally joining two disparate groups of people. These are women who say they are lesbians, who are politicized, active in the lesbian community, etc., and then go through gender reassignment surgery. This has angered some in the lesbian community, as noted a few years ago by a Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/fashion/20gender.html?_r=1&scp=24&sq=lesbian+couple+transgender&st=nyt&oref=slogin
Also, a really excellent edition of This American Life called “Testosterone” featured an alum of my school, Bryn Mawr, who said she had strongly identified as a dyke.
GD: in regards to socialisation. i know that in some places outside of the west, there are more than two genders. for instance, in india, intersexed people are not assigned a fe/male body (traditionally, this may be changing now), but rather left as they were born and tend to also be given certain societal roles accordingly. if memory serves me correct, being born intersexed is a positive thing, and is understood as that person having greater access to a god (or two). i know there is another example like this, but i can’t remember it.
anyway, the point is that it seems to me that gender refers to the role we are assigned b/c of the body we have. the more bodies that are accepted as socially existing, the more roles that are defined.
There are some societies that recognize a third gender, including India, but I would be careful not to romanticize them. They have societial roles, and only those roles, I believe. But I do think it’s important to realize that gender is particularly compartmentalized in the West. That’s part of what I wanted to get at in the post. I don’t want to trivialize anyone’s personal experiences or trauma, but I do want to make sure that we balance a need to be understanding with an honest talk about gender in our society. I certainly am not arguing that anyone would be forced to further my agenda. But I do think that, at the point that you’re writing personal essays in national magazines and are being interviewed on the front page of the Times, you can no longer honestly claim that these issues are only personal.
vm, this right here:
I had a sense of myself as having a female body, and when I realized I didn’t, I knew that I should have a female body. Because of that knowledge, that awareness, I saw myself as a girl, even though everyone insisted on treating me as a boy.
I do try to pick my words carefuly.
quadmoniker,
I wish we could have an honest discussion about gender in this society. There’s so much that needs to be said - not just how gender’s used to oppress, but how it’s used to express.
What damage does enforced gender expectations do? I mean, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are all rooted in gender and its enforcement, and I’m probably missing a few.
I think at least for some FTM’s its like..hey people thought I was masculine anyways..let me make it easier and fit into the box.
Sorry I’m immediatly on the defensive regarding a comment like that, but most transmen I know would find that extremely, if not horribly, offensive. Let me explain why. You and many other commentors acknowledged that the butch/dyke/lesbian community often has problems with transmen, and view transition as a “betrayal” feminism and what not. I do not understand how one can respect a transwoman for her choices, but not a transman for his. Gender, as has been discussed, is clearly a very fluid thing, so why is it something that should be bandied around and joked about? I’m sorry, but transitiong makes NOTHING easier. I have suffered ridicule, hatred, and obscene jokes at my expense from my family, friends, and peers. And besides, I also know many transmen who are most definitely not masculine, but still identify as men. I know cisgendered men who do not act masculine! Masculinity and feminity have been struck down again and again and it needs to stop being so closely associated with gender. I am a GAY female to male transexual. Meaning I’m a boy who likes boys. Does that mean that I’m trying to fit into a box to make it easier for myself? If anything, I’m screwing myself over. Meh. Sorry.
lisa, thanks again for responding.
if it is the feeling that one’s body is wrong, i am no longer confused! i felt confused b/c it seemed to me that people were saying that their gender was wrong, and that didn’t make any sense outside of essentialised constructions of the human, which i thought we’d left behind!
I didnt mean for my comment to by offensive I was more kinda summarizing how people might look at it ignorantly… since I cannot in any way go as far as to say I have any real idea what goes through the mind of a trans person as I often get offended when a straight person does the same thing with gay people.
But I think that… atleast my point about some lesbians resenting transmen…I took it at they find transmen to take on the socially dominant gender in society and then take advantage of that power… I don’t think it possible to have an inverse example with transwoman…does that make sense?
I’m a transman, I live in Australia.
Couple of quick comments.
Firstly about the single-sex school thing. Just as with many people who are GLB, who go into massive denial about their sexuality and try to be super-heterosexual, so many transgender people go into some denial and try to be uber-masculine/feminine to compensate. A single-sex school would definitely fit into part of that. It seldom works though - I note that the person at your school you alluded to transferred out. Once the denial stops, you’ve literally got no choice but to confront the reality and make the changes.
As for why a transman would still have his vagina. Genital surgery for transmen costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s major surgery involving multiple operations. The end result, honestly, doesn’t look that good, doesn’t work that good, and sensation can be pretty crap if not entirely lost. As much as many of us would gladly submit to the pain and the cost to finally have a c*ck.. many of us also don’t want to sacrifice being able to enjoy sex. I am sure most people can understand how that decision.
This is a very interesting debate which I have many divergent thoughts on. I have known trans people in the LGBT community for 20 years, and at present am having many interesting conversations with a trans lesbian who wanted to have a baby and saw a consultant about it. He is a very well respected fertility specialist, and he treated her absolutely with respect (the same man once told his staff that he was very disappointed that they could not agree to treat a HIV+ woman who wanted a baby), but the biological challenges are too great at present, or at least when she was considering it about 15 years ago.
I have known a number of trans men through the lesbian community -I have never met a trans man who identified as hetero in female persona, though I have met a trans man who began a relationship with a man very shortly after commencing transition. He has teenage children and they have been very supportive - children CAN handle all types of unusual family arrangements.
Getting the ordinary person to accept a simple transition is hard enough, but these complex issues are really beyond their scope of understanding and acceptance.
Going back to the woman I first mentioned - one of the things she said was that there were many people presenting to the doctors as trans who would be completely dishonest about their motivation. They would not live full time as women, but tell the doctor that they were. This doctor had a reputation for being really hard on people, but she felt that he was absolutely fair - her point was that if you were honest with him he would treat you well. She met a number of people who treated it as some kind of sexual tittilation, and just wanted to stand out and have their 15 minutes. She sees these people as wanting to live as transsexuals, not as women (this was just m2f people). I do not get the same feeling about f2m people at all, but I do know of one woman who went through a lot of the process, and then realised that she had made the wrong choice. It happens.
I saw a very good docu about Robert Eads, it was absolutely heartbreaking.
I wish Thomas Beatie and his family all the best, but this media furore, and the fact that it appears that they will get a huge amount of money from Oprah and other media deals makes me pretty disgusted - if that is true it cheapens what is a private matter, and I do not understand why they would wish to feed the media sharks
Ellesar
two things.
-Are you stating that Oprah paid Thomas Beatie to come on the show?
- So far thomas agreed to two, i will watch the show tonight, but he seems to be very circumspect about where he is choosing to interview.
Frankly I think this matter would have been private for only but so long, i appreciate they are taking the opportunity to allow the rest of the world walk a bit of their journey.
*SHAKES HEAD* I have heard the reason must FTM’s don’t have reassignment surgery from a Vagina to a Penis is because they (the medical community) still can’t do that type of surgery as well as the MTF. Who wants to have something that doesn’t work as well or you don’t get much pleasure from? As for FTM going to an all Womyn’s College, I do believe they would feel safer there for a couple of reasons, one being how many womyn have you seen or heard of beating up LGBT people? I have also heard that quite a few of FTM’s like womyn before & after so why wouldn’t they want to be around them? Duh! Open your eyes people and see each other with love not hate!
Lisa,
“Ask any young child if they’re a boy or a girl, and they will tell you. If they can speak, they’ll know, right?
How is what I said unusual or unexpected?”
Yes, because that’s completely wrong.
Ask a 2-3 year old whether they’ll be a boy or a girl when they grow up, and they’ll often answer randomly, or according to preferred parent, or person, and even change their answer as they get new ‘favourite people’.
They’ve been ‘told’ they are a boy, or a girl, and they understand that the same way as they understand that ‘this is what this object is’, and by trial and error they learn gender cues as to what a ‘boy’ is versus a ‘girl’, just like the difference between a ‘duck’ and a ‘chicken’.
Often those cues are wrong, and will be unrelated to gender or sex, such as long hair, or skirts. It’s a lot harder to identify specific physical cues.
Children are usually surprised to find that their naked bodies do not look like their primary caregiver - they are learning by comparison.
Ask a 2 or 3 year old whether they’ll be a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl’ when they grow up, and they won’t understand that this is a fixed state, or what it really means. I tried this on my young girl cousin and got ‘boy’. She’s now a teenager and has no apparent gender identity issues.
It’s not til they get to about the age of 4-5 that they start understanding classifications better, and that many properties do not change over time - that water poured from a long narrow glass into a short wider glass is actually the same amount of water.
I myself, have no deep understanding as myself as a certain gender, in fact, often I forget in certain contexts, just as I’d forget some other classification (this thing is only for goths, for geeks, for girls, for boys) and then remember.
Most people I’ve talked to are the same.
I fit into particular roles as far as clothing goes, because it’s easier to fit into cultural roles (this is what this subculture wears, this is appropriate business attire), but it’s fun to go to alternative events where it’s more acceptable to ‘play’ with appearance in all ways.
I think that many people have become much to rigid and particular in what they call male and what they call female. I’m female but spend most of my time around boys. I’m the only girl in my group of friends I ‘hang around’ with at lunch times, but that doesn’t change the way that they treat me. I’m just the same as they are apart from the obvious physical features. I don’t think that people should have to change themselves to feel better, although if they want to it’s up to them (I’m not going to stop them). I do think that girls shouldn’t be made to ‘act like girls’. I don’t even understand what acting like a girl is. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that it should be our gender that defines who we are. I’m just as male as my male friends are.
To round this off I think I’ll quote one of my male friends. (Talking about me by the way) “you’re like a girl I can talk to like a boy.” A person’s personality is much more definitive than their gender.
Opps just notice a mistake with my last entry… instead of ‘I suppose what I’m trying to say is that it should be our gender that defines who we are.’
it should be… I suppose what I’m trying to say is that it shouldn’t be our gender that defines who we are.
What defines each of us on the day we are born is our sex organs…simple…I do not agree that Thomas is a man having a baby because the baby is in his she parts and without the she parts Thomas would not be able to varry and have the baby…the press is turning this into some super story when in reality Thomas is have a baby because Thomas is still a female…by birth and by giving birth Thomas is a female…sorry I see no man in the relationship only 2 lesbians having a baby…imo Thomas may have started becoming a man but his biological clock ticks just like the rest of the females in the world…at 34 they had to decide to use her womb and female parts…any 34 yr old would have to be considering the risks and the ageing process that comes with child bearing years…I do think its great that they are having a baby but the hype is silly since Thomas is not a man…because we all know a man does not have a womb…women have wombs….hmmmmm that makes Thomas a man from the waist up and a woman wait down.
Tasha,
I do not know anything about the money involved with any of the interviews - I do not believe a lot of what I read. It just strikes me that the transmen who had the baby in 1999 did not get this amount of attention (I doubt, because surely I would have heard about it!), and even if it does get out that doesn’t mean that people have to do the works. I would not trust any of them, and anyone who has their head screwed on wouldn’t would they?
What about just being happy with who you are and how you were born? Except for those who are born with some kind of disease, disfiguration etc… It’s mutilating the body what bothers me. Future Frankenstein’s because of the operations gone wild and wrong. There are sooo many unhappy people because of their images. Sometimes they make it worse. The doctors are the ones having the most fun with all of the cash coming through. The media love these stories. Even the people who do piercing and tattoos etc… Hey, don’t get me wrong, I would like one or two tribal tattoos, I love art. Here’s the thing, how much is too much when you can’t even recognize the person, your son, your own daughter, parents etc… Do we love our selves less each day? I cannot applaud a parent who helps a young child change their sex with hormones and with what ever there is out there. We need to teach our children to love them selves more so, than just helping them change their image. A child can change his/her ideas in any time. At least wait until he/she is an adult.
It’s interesting to hear that Thomas Beatie did not feel that she was a boy trapped in a girls body. It’s interesting to know that she was first interested in the same sex in her twenties. I get confused because some say she’s a lesbian and she calls herself a man, now a “legally” man. This is a crazy and confused world. Just because a person has dark skin and his skin has changed because of a disease like Vitiligo, it does not make them a caucasian. A person should not forget where they came from. I can change a lot of my features but it will never change who I really am since birth. People tend to want to be something else or somebody else except for themselves. Take Jocelyn Wildenstein who has features of a cat. It does not make her cat although people call her cat woman. What made her so unhappy of herself and her looks? What triggered this change… genes? Everything is about genes these days.
People can go about their business, but why go through the media? They are making this issue everybody else’s business. It would have been better for them if they kept it private…. Why? Not for their sake, but for the Childs sake. Although, one would like to educate the children about all of theses issues they have to deal with other people in school, in the family etc… I think they are making there child’s life difficult. No matter what, no matter where you hide the truth always comes out from people you least expect. We have to put ourselves in the child perspective.
What makes a boy a boy and a girl a girl? How do we explain to our children all of these cases? As for myself I try to include it in my multicultural lecture and at least try to have children respect others, their ways, their culture, religions, beliefs, etc… Trying to explain Thomas Beatie’s case to my child, a nine year old boy, has been very difficult because he just can’t figure it out. It does not make him stupid or ignorant. He simply does not understand. He saw it on the news after watching a kids program. Thomas Beatie daughter will not be a different case. She will wonder and ask a lot of questions. No one can assure she will understand.
On the birth of Thomas Beatie little girl; would she prefer the doctors to say: “Congratulations on your child!” instead of “Congratulations on your little baby girl!” The first thing any parent, who’s had a child, always asks: what is it? Is it a boy or a girl? A baby cannot name him/her self. I cannot name my self; I am either a man or a woman. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, transgender … My apologies in advance, but I’m afraid of what’s coming next. These are being “accepted” by society a bit. I’m happy in one hand because it will stop most of the abuse and discrimination against them. Then we have zoosexuality or zoophiles, ‘consensual’ incest, ephebophilia, pansexual, polysexual, asexual, pederasty, necrophiliac, pedophilia, nymphomania, satyriasis and so forth. Sooner or later some of these would love to fight for respect, acceptance and there human rights in society. These human behaviors have existed through all our history and in all culture. Is true identity being lost? I guess nobody will ever be “sexually”, “humanly”, “emotionally”, and “spiritually” satisfied. Would we have to accept every change with in time? This makes me think… how far will human rights go? I’m afraid because politicians would accept anything for a few votes even if it means to destroy a whole society, a country, or our world.
Mary, I would be careful to not compare transgenderism with behaviors associated with sexual fetishes. I see what you’re trying to convey, but such a comparison is damaging and invalid.
if this woman still has her female parts she isnt a man. that is what clearly defines what a male or female is. if your baby is born they tell you the sex of it by looking at what parts it has. A nurse doesnt say it has female parts but it still might be a male. Adopt a child if your wife cant have one, I think it is very self-righteous for these people to force others (medical personnel) to have to be a part of this twisted slice of life these people are living. Dont have a problem with trans or gay but this is going way too far.
People should do whatever they want and if it is on their own body as long as they’re not harming anyone and are happy with it. One should only listen to what ONE like and not of what OTHERS like.
If they want to change their body, it’s none of your business. You have your own and you’re happy with it, and so they are. It is about FREE WILL. Screw the critics, and Cheers for the couple!
I agree with the point yung_irish made…they truly are going too far with this. Crossing all the boundaries of humanity, there are things we human shouldn’t be doing and this is one of those things. This concept is reaching to the point where some people getting confused whether it’s a male or female. God didn’t make the different between a male and female to be altered. Anyhow Thomas Beatie was born as a female, from what I read I understand that she didn’t go for a sex change procedure, which means that she still has all the essential female parts, such as uterus, ovary etc. surely she was on a testosterone treatment but she also stop the treatment for a period of time, as she planned to getting pregnant. So I don’t really understand the concept of “a pregnant man” as this person isn’t a male.
I’m really glad Abby has been in here commenting and trying to educate. I am not trans, but I’m an ally. I think that a lot of the comments as well as the original post are full of transphobic remarks, and that although I can see why people would be confused/scared because they’re under educated about transgenderism I still think that throwing around remarks of how “scary trannies are” are horribly offensive. Who wouldn’t be offended if someone started commenting on how “weird fags are”? (for example)
We’re taught in school about homophobia, about racism, classism, etc. but transphobia is rarely, if ever, addressed. I think this is terrible, but I think that if people are so afraid/weirded out/confused by trans people then it should be THEIR jobs, not the jobs of the transgendered, to educate themselves.
Their is a lot of information on the web (although there is also a lot of transphobia as well).
And I just have to add this : yung_irish and T.S. I think you completely missed the point and that you should think about the difference between “female” as a sex, “male” as a sex and both as genders. There is a difference. To say a dumb quote, that I don’t truly even believe “sex is between your legs, gender is between your ears”. When these two things don’t match, there’s a problem that needs to be fixed (and do NOT say it’s a problem with the brain), and like Abby said earlier, sometimes it’s a matter of life and death.
Alimae:
I agree with you in that some comments have been problematic. While I certainly don’t believe that I am transphobic, I accept that you may take the original post that way and there is nothing I can do to change your mind.
I do have a problem with the phrase, ‘trying to educate.’ You really don’t know that the people commenting are “under-educated about transgenderism:” you have decided they must be because they disagree with you. I am actually not a stranger to the community about which I speak or the arguments they make. I attended a liberal, elite, all-women’s college in the northeast and these are still the circles within which I dwell. At the risk of sounding trite, I encounter on a daily basis and count among my acquaintances many people who eschew traditional gender and sexual identities, and that includes transexuals.
I also applaud Thomas Beatie, and appreciate the fact that he has shared his brave struggle to have a baby. Though I do wish more people who have trouble conceiving would consider adoption.
Obviously, I am not talking about persecuting individuals or denying them acceptance, and I hope that comes across. What I was trying to say is that this is an increasingly common phenomenon, that advances in medicine make it increasingly easier to do, and we as a society don’t have a particularly open dialogue about what is going on and what it means regarding gender and identity. It tends to boil down to people who find it ‘icky’ versus people who try to disarm honest conversation with accusations of phobia.
Is it really possible to have a gender identity that is entirely separate from ones biology? On what is that gender identity based-societal norms or some innate sense of being? I don’t know the answer to those questions, but then, neither do you. People talk about knowing, beyond all doubts, that they are a woman or a man, and that is at odds with their biological sex. But their biological sex is also a fact. I’m not saying that gender or bodydysmorphia isn’t truly experienced, or that people shouldn’t be free to explore how best to solve their own very real, personal problems.
It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it. It doesn’t mean that some of the things that some people say aren’t troublesome.
Letting young kids play freely and refuse to conform to gender norms is probably a really good and healthy thing.
But a 4-year-old boy isn’t a girl just because he wants to play with dolls, grow his hair long and call himself one. In all likelihood, the 14-year-old version of the kid isn’t going to feel the same way, for a variety of reasons. Gender identity is more complicated than that, and I do think that we have oversimplified the issue. With this, as with many sensitive topics that have to do with identity -race, religion, gender- there isn’t much intelligent discussion.
I don’t doubt that many were offended by the post and by the comments, and obviously that is fair. I also think it’s fair to say that no one here will hedge their comments at the risk of offending though, of course, pure hate speech is not ok.
Much of the information on the web is one-sided and just talk without much substance. For those who want to start a real discussion, or take part in one, don’t just say that people are wrong. Try to persuade them that they are.
“But when people always say, on the inside, I was born (the opposite of what I am biologically), my immediate response was, no you weren’t. You were born as a woman who was either perceived or feels that she has male qualities, or vice versa. Why isn’t accepting that none of us fit neatly into one of two categories a better thing?” - quadmoniker
I was born male but grew up knowing that there must have been some kind of mistake and that I was really a girl. I played with barbies (liberal parents I guess), liked to dress in girls’ clothes and all the rest of it. Then from the age of six my gender-identity slowly changed and I thought of myself as a boy. I’m not and have no desire to be a ‘manly man’ but am very comfortable with my body and biological gender.
Thus my own experience leads me to take the perspective quoted above. ‘True’ gender should not be about behaviour, roles, interests, role models, ways of thinking or brain structure for anybody who is against gender stereotyping. But if ‘true’ gender is not about the biology of a person’s body either, then all that true gender describes is what a person believes themselves to be. To me that doesn’t seem very meaningful, especially as what I myself have believed myself to be has changed over time, in tandem with my own personality, beliefs about gender and social setting.
“There is a difference. To say a dumb quote, that I don’t truly even believe “sex is between your legs, gender is between your ears”. When these two things don’t match, there’s a problem that needs to be fixed (and do NOT say it’s a problem with the brain), and like Abby said earlier, sometimes it’s a matter of life and death.” - Alimae
I think that what most transpeople actually believe is that true gender is indeed based on all or a subset of “behaviour, roles, interests, role models, ways of thinking or brain structure” - the ’stuff between the ears’. This comes across in the quote above and in most transpeople’s stories once you dig beneath the surface. Perhaps this is because cultural-psychological conceptions of gender are simply impossible to erase from our sense of identity, even though they will always lead to some level of stereotyping.
So basically I think there is a very real conflict between transpeople’s concept of gender and an anti-stereotyping concept of gender. I do get the impression that liberals are encouraged to ignore this conflict for the sake of not being called transphobic on the one hand or sexist on the other.
certainly it is our nature and our right to discuss this interesting story. in our ever-changing world, it is healthy and reactionary to do so. but i’m not so sure it would do any of us good to judge the motives behind what beatie chose to do. after all, we are not him. i can’t begin to imagine the pain he must have gone through in his life–yeah, we all that some of that, and so i think it is important to recognize that it is impossible for us to make sense of something that is beyond our own experiences. there is no difference in me trying to make sense of your own thinking. why must we all want everyone to explain themselves for us? why do we expect anyone to take on unnatural behaviors (to them) for us?
Wow, I completely forgot about this post.
It’s been awhile, so I don’t expect most of the participants to drop back in to see this response.
Mostly:
Quadmoniker,
First, you must be aware that just having trans people for friends or acquaintances doesn’t automatically mean you know and understand everything about them. For example, I would consider most people who are educated about trans people would understand that we’re women and men, and that referring to us as “transsexuals” erases that fact.
Second, many of the comments on this post have been downright ignorant about trans people, making assertions about who we are and why we transition that are simply not true in my experience - and that’s not just my own life experience but the life experiences described by numerous trans people - both men and women.
Do you understand what most people define as “honest conversation?” I don’t find it honest, nor do I find it conversation. I find it oppressive, privileged, and generally speaking the people who want to talk out transgender and transsexual issues don’t seem to be particularly interested in listening to or believing what trans people have to say about ourselves. They often make assertions about what trans people are like - and I will use you as an example here:
In general, it’s normal for people to want children. Now, in cissexual society, men fertilize the eggs and women bear the babies. But with Thomas, we’ve already stepped out of cissexual society. Thomas can’t, according to current medical technology, ever ever get working testes. His wife can’t bear a child. They wanted a child, and the options available to them were adoption (and do you know how hard it is for queer couples or couples perceived as queer to adopt?), for Thomas to carry a child, or to find another woman to carry a child on their behalf.
It’s cissexism to assume that Thomas has no place, no right, and certainly shouldn’t have the desire to produce a child with the only means available to him. Why should cissexual normativity be enforced upon him or anyone else? Would you also argue that trans women shouldn’t use sperm banks before beginning hormone therapy? And if so, why?
Why is this a conversation that we need to be having? How do you know these conversations aren’t happening? Why do you think these conversations should involve you? You seem to propose here that transitioning is a trend, perhaps, something people are doing because
you describe transitioning as something people do because they decide there’s something about them that is not feminine (or masculine) and so they change sex for that to fit.
But that doesn’t even make sense. There are feminine straight men, feminine gay men, ultrafeminine gay men, straight crossdressers, and drag queens, most of whom are pretty comfortable being men even while having feminine traits. There are masculine straight women, masculine lesbian women, butch lesbian women, who are comfortable being women. I think this should make it clear that transitioning can’t be pinned down to masculinity or femininity, and it’s oversimplifying to try to position it that way. And if you talk to any trans people, you’ll find that they usually say what I was saying in this thread - that it was who they are for as long as they could remember.
Here you center the conversation on the rest of the world. Changing the world, trans people forcing the world to accept them as they are rather than transitioning to who they know they are (that is, you seem to not understand why trans people don’t want to live a lie).
And then you complain that trans people aren’t doing enough to smash the gender binary, that we’re somehow at fault for maintaining a stranglehood on the definition of humanity as being divided into men and women and never the twain shall cross.
And you’re making it sound like that transsexual people are somehow forcing transgender people, genderqueer people, thirdgender people to not be transgender, genderqueer, or thirdgender people. That by transitioning, we’re somehow betraying the cause. How can you not acknowledge all of the various ways people express gender here? Not just the butch lesbians and the feminine gay men and the straight crossdressers and the genderqueers who don’t identify as men or women or the bigender and two-spirit people who identify as both men and women. There’s so much more to the whole transgender thing than just transsexual people.
And you’re also trying to position transsexualism politically, when it’s not a political stance. People aren’t transitioning to reinforce or break gender roles. People aren’t transitioning to make political statements. People are transitioning because life as their birth sex is not tolerable to them. It might have been for a time - everyone has different coping mechanisms and people can go for decades before they finally say “No, not one more day.”
But that’s your original post - and I don’t find it very educated at all about transsexual or transgender issues. You know people transition, but you have a lot of cissexist assumptions about what that means. I see you’re not opposed to the idea of Thomas having a baby, but you don’t understand why a man would get pregnant - without acknowledging that sometimes people want to have children and we all have to work with what’s available to us. And that desire to have children? It’s normal. Heterosexual couples the world over desire children. Not all, but those who do aren’t typically interrogated as to why the man should want to fertilize the egg and the woman should want to carry the babies.
From your last comment:
You’re begging a question here. I, personally, never stated that my gender identity - my identification of myself as a girl from a young age - was entirely separate from biology. I doubt any other trans people in this discussion did so. Why would you assume that? Do you think that just having a male body is entirely separated from having a female identity? I don’t think so, because that was my life for 20 years.
I think you’re making a dodgy assumption here that male and female sexes are biologically at odds. I disagree - male and female are biologically compatible and complementary. That’s the whole point of male and female.
As fetuses develop in the womb, all fetuses are female. Approximately half develop to be male while the other half continue to develop as female. Already, there’s a common origin point for males and females. There’s already a biological connection, the basis for a spectrum, not a rigid opposed binary.
But why is my biological sex important to you or anyone who isn’t me? Why should it be a topic of conversation?
Also: One of the contraindications for body dysmorphia is that the desired bodily alterations actually satisfy the person the seeking them. Transsexual people tend to be satisfied with transition. There are a list of modifications that trans men and trans women seek, and that’s about as far as it goes. A person with body dysmorphic would not be satisfied and would seek further modifications.
The big problem with “conversations” that cis people want to have about trans people (and not exactly “with” trans people) is that they move the goalposts. For example, I stated in this thread that I was aware of my identity as a girl by the age of four. Someone asked me to explain further, I did, and I got a lecture about how two year olds don’t know their gender, but four year olds do.
What?
But it’s not just that, the terms shift and change. People use language to define us against our will - such as you did by asserting that trans people claim a gender identity that is both at odds to and completely independent from biology, which wasn’t actually a claim that was made, and is based purely on assumption.
I’m not saying you’re a transphobic person, nor am I trying to silence you here. I’m saying that you said cissexist things about trans people that made it pretty clear you don’t understand us very well at all. And when you say:
what it tells me is that you feel entitled to talk about trans lives and realities while not feeling obligated to listen to trans people talk about our lives and realities. Several of us posted throughout this thread and explained ourselves, and you asserted things that were at odds with what we said about ourselves while claiming to be educated on the topic.
And also, if I say “You don’t sound like you’re educated about trans people” I am saying this as a trans person who read what you have to say and find that I identify with nothing that you said. It has no bearing on my life, my reality as a woman. It doesn’t illuminate for anyone why I transitioned. You talk about aliens at the beginning of the post, but you might as well be talking about aliens because you’re not really talking about trans people - or at least, you’re not talking about transsexual people whose experiences are like mine. That is to say, a very large number of transsexual people. I’m not saying I speak for them, I am saying when you ask them for their stories they will tell you very similar stories to what I’ve told you.
Oh, and this:
I would never make that claim - that a four-year old boy who plays with dolls must really believe he’s a girl. I know that a lot of kids gravitate toward play that would be considered crossgender (although I hate that categorization because of its essentialism) turn out straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and so on without ever being trans.
But for kids, you’re not going to get complex gender theory out of them, not at four. But from transsexual children, age 4+, they will clearly tell you (if they’re not afraid to say so) which gender they see themselves as. This isn’t any different from cissexual children, who will give you the same information. The difference between the two is that the transsexual children’s gender identity won’t match their physical sex. That is the only difference, and there’s no reason to try to make this out to be some vast, complex thing that requires multiple justifications and explanations to be accepted. It’s cissexism that says trans identities must be interrogated and (usually) discredited.
And this is just unfair:
It’s cissexist again to demand that we should take the time to persuade you. I’m willing to talk about this stuff at length in some circumstances, but it’s not because I owe it to you or anyone else. I’m not here at your convenience. I’m here at my convenience.
Also, why do you define most of the information available online as “just talk without substance?” From what you’re saying in this thread, I don’t get the impression you’ve read very much of it (or believed what you did read), so how am I supposed to take your judgement about people’s words about their own lives as “talk and no substance” at face value?
Why, for that matter, do you position this as trans people have to prove you wrong? Why isn’t it the other way around? Why isn’t there any burden on you to prove anything to trans people? Why is all of the justification supposed to flow toward you?
Why, in short, is all your talk about the “conversations that need to be had about trans people” focused entirely on what cis people need and want, and dismissive of what trans people need and want?
And I’m certainly not arguing that you’re anti-trans or transphobic, but I am arguing that you’re not as educated about trans people as you say you are.
The first trick is actually believing what trans people say about ourselves, not writing our words about our lives off as “lacking substance.”
Also, here’s some of the reality that trans women have to live with. This is more likely to happen to a woman of color, but white women are also at risk of the same kind of violence. Don’t let the “Angie deceived her murderer” rhetoric fool you, either. The murders happen to women who have had surgery as well as those who have not - and the trans panic defense is…well, described in that post.
That’s one of our realities. How about some conversations about how violence against trans women is acceptable and in some cases practically a misdemeanor? About how no part of the media has pointed out how, when Andrade grabbed Angie Zapata’s crotch, that he committed sexual assault to determine whether she had a penis so he could justify bashing her head in…twice? Is it that trans women who still have penises can’t really be sexually assaulted, not like “real” women? Or is it just elided because people seem to be inclined to accept Andrade’s story as reasonable?
And why are so many people taking Andrade’s story about what happened with Angie Zapata at face value. He’s given the confession that is most likely to get him a relative slap on the wrist. Angie can’t speak for herself. All we have is the murderer’s word for what happened - and because people sympathize with the murderer (because he’s a cis man who was “tricked” by one of those deceitful trans women), his confession is largely going unquestioned and taken at face value.
These are the kinds of conversations I think people should have about trans people. Not theoretical underpinnings for our existence that cis people are likely to reject because they don’t understand or care about them.