genderiffic with the emporer

[kaigou]

[Heh, easier: if new, read this first. Okay, easier for me, but there it is.]

Awhile back during the LLF debacle, I recall one of the earliest speakers identified herself as being transgender. While I'm vaguely aware that "transsexual" has fallen out of favor, with "transgender" replacing it, the use always throws me. Perhaps it's because I first learned the terminology in the academic world (and specifically in the study of feminist existentialism), but I've always found it handiest to use the finer granulations of the words, with 'sex' as one's biological state of two legs or three, and 'gender' being one's social construct related to that sex. In other words, one can be born male, remain male, and adopt feminine-gendered aspects into one's self while remaining cis-sexed and heterosexual, just as much as one may be born male but feel it should have been 'female', in which case one is likely to also adopt the socially constructed gender that correlates with the body's sex (be that given or taken).

Which may seem like common sense, but it's undone when I see a term like "transgender" -- because to me, with finer-tuned definitions at my fingertips, to be saying that one's sex is cis, but one's preferred social construct is non-cis. More simply, it's saying, "I'm biologically female, but I'm not feminine as this society/culture defines it."

And the problem with that is that I can only think of, uhm, maybe two or three women I've known in my entire life who could really say they fit the laundry list of all the US/Western society defines as "feminine". For that matter, I've known about the same rare number of men who could do the same on the masculinity list. Not a lot of actual, real live, honest-to-goodness people -- because frankly, those gender definitions are highly nuanced, contradictory, often ambiguous, frequently lagging compared to the real world and remarkably fluid all the same (that is, changeable via social pressures but just really slow to get around to it).

The result is that when someone says they're transgender, I don't read that as "and I'm going to have an operation to bring my biological sex in alignment with the social construct that feels 'right' to me", I read that as "I don't fit societal notions of the behaviors/beliefs most commonly associated with my sex". And that, to me, seems like such a big fat duh: because those societal notions are insane. No real person can fit into them, and no real person should be expected to have to put up the crazy-making that's the trying.

Before anyone jumps, I don't mean I dismiss in a sense of saying the person doesn't know what they're talking about, or is wrong-headed in some way. It just seems a bit redundant or obvious (especially when one's sex is not at issue); admittedly my response becomes considerably more sarcastic when the self-label is trotted out (as it was in the LLF debacle) as though it's some kind of street cred. Then I really want to snark: what do you want, a fucking cookie?

Because if you take the finer-tuned definition of gender as a social construct, to lay claim to 'transgender' or 'crossgender' means you're continuing to buy into the social construct. It's like the genderiffic version of satanism: sure, you're saying you worship the world upside-down from the mainstream, but your reverse process has, as its very root, the existence of that mainstream. You can't be a Satanist in the absence of Christianity, because you're not worshiping a distinct deity, you're worshiping the opposite of someone else's deity. To declare oneself 'transgender', then, relies on continuation of the dual-gender game: it's a definition that requires the dual-gender system exist so that you can declare yourself opposite the definition society would hand you by virtue of biology.

And I guess I see social constructs as, well, just that: constructed by people. Gender has its value (setting aside whether this is a 'good' value or 'bad' value) in that it's half of how we identify other people in the sexuality game. I'm thinking of the men I've known who were just so damn good at cross-dressing that you really couldn't identify them as biologically 'male' because the clues were hidden so well: adam's apple, a bulge at the groin, facial hair, etc. Identifying someone cross-dressing gets considerably harder when the person's made concerted study of the social constructs around 'Being a Woman' or 'Being a Man', and learned to give off the behavioral signals that mean 'feminine' or 'masculine'. It's the way a person walks, the speech one uses, even the way one reacts to, say, kittens versus violent contact sports.

When I meet friends who are working to adapt gender (usually as part of their crossover from one sex to the other), I'm reminded of meeting new immigrants to this country. The little rules we take for granted are sources of strong, sometimes near-obsessive, scrutiny and anxiety: what gift to give, how to compliment someone, how to reciprocate on overtures of friendship, even when to laugh and when to just smile. More attention is paid to language, on many levels, like careful mimicry of American accents, or noting slang that I sift through and ignore without a second thought.

That attention to the minutiae of existence is what you have to do when you lack a lifetime of acculturation -- be that of nation or of gender -- and thus are a stranger in a strange land. With gender roles being so difficult to grasp even for us born to it, I don't hold it against anyone new to the gender role working double-time to out-feminize (or out-Americanize) the natives to compensate for lacking a lifetime's firsthand experience.

Outside that exception, I've seen all sorts of self-labels, like co-gendered and cross-gendered and pan-gendered, and various other intriguing variations on a theme. I have to say I've reached a point where I just ignore all of it. It all pivots off an assumption that there are two genders, and that these social notions of feminine and masculine are immutable, or near-immutable, and thus one can 'move away' or 'bridge' them.

That would be great if you could, but what exactly are you moving away from? I'm not saying there isn't masculine, and I'm not saying there isn't feminine -- these are loosely-defined, fluid, ambiguous, hardly mutually exclusive, and often contradictory sets of behaviors and beliefs grouped under each label. They're handy in the same way that it's handy to be able to say "motorcycle" instead of "large bicycle with engine attached but not the kind you have to pedal," which would be really a mouthful and not nearly as much fun as saying you ride a Fat Boy.

It's like in identifying with a gender (or a reverse gender), you're saying, "and I also believe the moon is not made of cheese." That illustration is silly, but it does capture the sense of the ridiculous -- maybe even a bit of the absurd -- that I can feel bubbling up when someone self-labels as one gender or the other, regardless of biological sex. Because the moon is not made of green cheese, so why should the people with the good sense to realize this have to waste the breath to clarify? Isn't it the ones running around who continue to believe moon+cheese who should be justifying themselves?

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that it's not possible to be born one sex and realize that one is, emotionally or psychologically, the other sex. That's a completely different situation, I think, from turning over a social construct and saying, "y'know, this whole girls-wear-dresses and boys-like-baseball crap is, well, full of crap." Gender is socially constructed, and as part of society, it's not just that we can construct our own interpretation of 'gender', but that we do -- and I mean that for all of us, yes, even cis-gendered, cis-sexed, heterosexual anglo-saxon default generic person inserted here.

Self-construction is the guy who feels comfortable considering himself masculine, but who still cries when his parent dies, or gets all mushy when he adopts a puppy, or splurges on flowers just because he likes seeing his partner smile. That kind of nurturing, loving, affectionate behavior isn't usually on the broad list of masculine. Yet "protective" and "parental" (as well as "filial") are considered masculine behaviors, and who's to say that one can't be a good family man if one would cry when one's child is severely ill? Self-construction is the woman who would never doubt for a second that she's female, and feminine, but who also knows how to change a tire, can be hard-nosed at work when needed, is in charge of the family finances, and doesn't own eighty pairs of high heels: for every feminine quality one could say is deducted by these behaviors, I could name two other stereotypical 'feminine' traits that would encompass them.

---

We all self-construct, perhaps from the very beginning, even if we're not consciously aware of it. We pick and choose, according to our familial upbringing like parental expectations and older (or younger) sibling behaviors, according to our personalities and our growing interests, our skills and our innate talents. And sometimes, we pick and choose based with a fair dose of self-awareness -- which, in adolescent years, most often seems to be based on what we don't like.

Me, for instance, discarded a very specific set of feminine attributes my freshman year in high school, and all because of a girl with naturally curly hair.

Our crew (rowing) team was tiny, my freshman year, with about twenty-five guys and five girls. Stroke (Four-seat) was a senior, with a mannish style but sweet and soft-spoken, who always wore earrings to practice (but never makeup). Three-seat was a junior, and everyone's friend, the girl-next-door who listened to Christian music and remarkably had an on-again, off-again thing going with a senior on the team who was one of the best-looking guys in the school. (I never did figure out what she had that turned the heads, because she was all Mary Ann and no Ginger.) And then there was Two-seat, a sophomore who was, for lack of a better descriptive phrase, built like a brick shithouse. Really. The girl was stacked. The problem was that she knew it -- and with our cox busy being a punk rocker, and Stroke keeping to herself, and Three-seat already wearing someone's class ring, Two-seat had the attention of twenty-four guys -- and sometimes even the twenty-fifth who was purportedly dating Three-seat.

Now, this wasn't exactly something I was all pressed on, since the last thing on my priority list was Find A Boyfriend. I'm not saying I was a social pariah; there were several seniors that year who asked me out that year, but it always ended in disaster. Most amusing example: the one who waylaid me in the hallway between class and asked me if I wanted to go out sometime. (Talk about vague.) I managed a cheerful, if startled, reply of, "sure! any time!" -- and then I ran away. Really, really fast. (The poor guy actually chased me, so I hid in the bathroom until the bell rang. Yes, I was a dork, but I could barely interact with classmates as a person -- interacting as a sexual being was a level I just wasn't at, not yet.) I was bookish, not much with the fashion, and unaware of any reason I should care -- so, for the most part, Miss Two-Seat tossing her naturally-curly hair at the boys was something I viewed with slight amusement, when it occurred to me to even care.

There were two times, every day, though, that her head-tossing strongly-feminine-gendered behavior really got on my nerves: carrying the shell to the dock, and bringing the shell in at night.

So we're clear on what this means, with us being an entire girl's team of a coxed four, we used the team's Kaschper four-with. It was a wooden shell, not the new-fangled fiberglass (and even the then-new fiberglass is a fair bit heavier than the incredibly light shells you can get from Kaschper these days) -- so, fully rigged, the damn thing probably weighed in the neighborhood of a little over 200 pounds. Yeah, so fifty pounds per person might not sound like a lot -- especially since, by the time spring rolled around, I could leg-press double my own weight and didn't even break a sweat at the notion of a hundred pull-ups -- but you need to also be aware just how we each carried our share of fifty pounds.

TL;DR version: imagine a piece of wood only a half-inch thick, that weighs fifty pounds. Once you've managed to wrench the boat out of the water (or heft it out of the racks), you raise it over your head bring it down to rest on your shoulder. Then you walk the boat to or from the boathouse, about 150 feet, and go through the opposite maneuver -- onto the water, or into the racks.

Normally, as bow [FYI: say it like the verb 'to bow' in 'to bow to a king'], I'd be looking at three-seat's back, as starboard rowers come down on one side, and port on the other side (so you're carrying the boat opposite your own rigger). But for reasons of height, our coach had us carrying the boat out of seat order -- which put me a rigger's stretch behind Miss Two-Seat.

Being a girl with naturally curly hair, big hips, and a generous chest, who also had an eye for all the boys and a certain determination to bring all of them to her yard, this meant I would've gotten an eyeful each trip, if I'd cared. But no, I was too busy trying to think of some way to knee-cap her while not jeopardizing the team (since it wasn't like we had a replacement for any of us).

Why, you ask? Think about how a woman walks who's playing the sexualized feminine card: it's all swinging hips. Knees aren't really bent, because you want as much height as possible so that when you bring your weight down on the forward foot, the shift downwards happens in the hip rather than the knee. It's an off-balance movement, though, which means the natural instinct is to counter this by throwing weight off on the other side in an equal amount. Less abstract version: when the hip goes down one side, the opposite shoulder goes down an equal amount.

You know what that means? Every other step Miss Two-Seat took, her shoulder would drop below the gunwale's shared height -- and what had been a fifty-pound share for me suddenly became a hundred pounds as our entire side of the shell came down on my shoulder. We'd walk the boat down, and my left shoulder got pummeled; we'd walk the boat up after practice, and it was my right shoulder's turn. Every goddamn step, and there's only so much padding a sweatshirt can provide when it's that much weight shoving down on you.

I didn't actually care about her as a person, one way or another. I loathed what her behavior said to me, though: it said she was so focused on putting on as much of a sexualized show as possible for the boys that she couldn't be arsed to see how her actions were making things that much harder on the women around her. It's not like I was alone in this; my teammates each said something to her as well, when it was their turn to take the brunt of her shoulder-dipping action. Walk straighter, they'd say; stop letting the boat drop like that. She'd ignore them, and the message I got was that if I wanted to be feminine, I'd be doing so at the cost of my compatriots. To mangle Gore Vidal, it is not enough to be sexy; one must also endeavor to make other women un-sexy -- and that was a price I wasn't willing to pay.

With a bit of practice I mastered the art of walking with even shoulders -- well, basically, I studied how the guys walked and mimicked it until I had a perfectly steady gunwale. The rest of my high school career, and throughout my crew-time in college, I always ended up compensating for at least one girl on the team who'd hip-sway. The ones who adjusted their stride when called on it, I liked; the ones who couldn't see why we'd be fussed, I disliked intensely.

Incidentally, when I lived in DC, a girlfriend tried to teach me The Proper Way to Strut in Boots, but despite her best coaching, I never really got it. Even knowing I wasn't forcing someone else to take unexpected additional weight as a result of my own sexualized showing-off, I still couldn't do it without a great deal of self-consciousness. Casting it purposefully aside also made me acutely aware of how much that lazy hip-drop sway signals "available" to any onlooking men -- and that in its absence, there are very few other behaviors you can use that turn heads even half as much.

What, exactly, I learned to do as replacement is beside the point (and besides, this is enough for one night!) -- but I do find it ironic that years later, in turning this stuff over in my head, I realized that the movements I'd adapted to become my substitute 'feminine' markers were, in fact, masculine.

Imagine that -- and then you can imagine how it is that I see gender as amusing, sometimes informative, yet mostly hollow all the same. It's a whole lot of the Emperor's new (or old) gender: everyone's running around obsessed with the details, but the social construct is an illusion. For all the noise and admiration (or criticism) of the onlooking public, the joke's on them as much as it is on the person peacocked out in the gender garments. There just isn't anything there.

---

[later edits]
When I say "the social construct is an illusion," that doesn't mean the construct doesn't exist, only that it's a false representation of reality. Like a good trompe l'oeil, there's something there -- it's just not as solid or real as the impression you get from eyeballs alone.

When I think of social constructs, I think of Barbie -- yes, the doll. If you've ever seen the critique of Barbie's figure, you're aware it's pretty damn unrealistic, even with the slightly-thicker waistline she got in '00. Generally speaking, we can say "Barbie is a representation of X," and it's true, she is a representation -- but she's constructed as an ideal, and as such, she's freaking idealistic (and begging the question of whose ideal, anyway).

So I'm not saying that a part of one's identity as gender-defined -- that is, adhering (or not) to a set of gender ideals based on one's biological sex -- carries an automatic value judgment. Nor am I saying that it doesn't exist at all. I'm saying it's an illusion. It's a handy set of reference-points, social and cultural in origin, and since none of us want to bother with saying "a two-wheeled vehicle propelled by a combustion engine" when we could just say "motorcycle," we get used to the language of what-is-masculine and what-is-feminine.

At least with Barbie, we can say, "this is a Barbie," and there it is -- but with masculine and feminine, there isn't even a discreet thing that we can say, "here, if you're ever wondering, this is the pinnacle of this -inity" -- because one society's pinnacle is another culture's reject. That's another part of what makes these -initys illusions: they're ambiguous at the best of times, tenuous and changeable just by travelling a few hundred miles. Taking the metaphorical language of the social construct and attempting to treat it as a legitimate, separate, near-tangible (or at least somewhat immutable) thing is a fool's quest and can only end in tears.

My point isn't that gender-definitions don't exist, per se, but that cleaving to them as though they're written in stone -- and judging oneself or others by these nebulous unrealistic targets -- is just a fast-track to either shaming one's compatriots, or hating oneself for failing to meet these illusory targets. It's like beating yourself up because you can't quite seem to become a Real Barbie, and I'm saying that we need a little less drawing the lines between who's-a-Barbie and who's-a-Ken and a little more awareness that, come on, people, it's a goddamn doll. These gender definitions are a construct, and letting those constructs -- especially as damaging and sexist as they've been for so long -- define you, in toto, is taking the handy basket of culturally-grouped terminology and turning it into a ball and chain.

---

As for the issue of whether I should have anything to say about what a group of people prefer to call themselves, well, there's that -- but I have no issue with anyone's right to use this term or that. I'm only clarifying how this particular term has specific, additional baggage ladled onto it (although it's not like its forerunner, 'transsexual', is winning any awards in the baggage-free category). And, no surprise here, I'm once again coming to a conclusion that what we need is a better word -- because 'sex' has a concrete meaning, and there's so much good we can do (for society in general) to put a border around 'gender' as a social construct outside one's biological (physical or psychological) sex -- but that, like folks have mentioned in comments, there's a lot more going on in the situation than just those two concepts.

Like the very duality that 'transgender' is trying to bridge (or perhaps surpass), the two-point definition is limiting -- this is what my body is, and this is how society expects me to behave per the body I have. But in some ways, the terms 'transsexual' and 'transgender' both give rise in me to the same quiet critique I mentioned in re a woman with a male gender-identity but a female sex-identity: it's using the same words, the same two-way, binary system, and when youse only got two words, you're gonna be pretty limited in just how many different sentences you can create.

It was bell hooks who said the famous words that you cannot construct a new house using the master's tools, and I think the basic argument applies here, too: to be trans -- of sex or gender or sexuality -- and to maintain that binary state is to deny, in and of itself, the experience of being trans. It's accepting life in a shoebox, willfully looking away from the fact that life itself (in all its permutations) transcends the simple binary of the socially constructed shoebox. I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't like the idea of anyone forced to live in a shoebox.

If I'm right, and language is the leading edge of the wave of any change -- that the words we use will quietly and subtly shift our understanding -- then, yeah, there's got to be a better word, be that for sex, or for gender, or for something that represents the unique way the two can collide in a single person.

---

See comments for further clarifications, since that seems easier than continuing to edit this post, when I've got the followup on the GFY trope still bubbling in my head.

Comments

[dharma_slut]

This was a pleasure to read from beginning to end (first thing in the morning, no less)

My only comment though is that, when I say I am transgendered, I mean that I wake up, each and every morning, grabbing for a piss hardon that does not exist. And I have no intention of going in to surgery because there is no surgery yet that can fix that. That can give me a working, pissing, ejaculating, penetrating, penis.

I am a butch bisexual dyke, and pretty damn happy with that-- but if somehow I were able to, I would leave my female identity, and the feminist principles I have fought for these fifty years, all behind, along with the vagina I don't really care so much about and that has defined my identity all this time.

I would be a campy queeny bi guy with a penchant for pink and paisley. I would not be a masculine man-- but I would no longer be transgendered.

[dharma_slut]

and... dammit. I keep thinking about your separation of biological and social sex markers.

I guess that "gender" has become the fashionable substitute for "sex"-- which in our society now means "fucking" and not "biological functionality."

But;
everyone's running around obsessed with the details, but it's nothing more than an illusion of a social construct.

Umm... no. it's exactly a social construct, and no illusion at all.

[kaigou]

it's exactly a social construct, and no illusion at all.

you're right, and that's bad phrasing on my part -- writing late at night always gets me in the end. I think I'd intended to add two metaphors together there, except I don't see the second (illusory) metaphor noted anywhere above. whoops.

will edit later. first, must recover from an hour with the orbital sander...

[kaigou]

along with the vagina I don't really care so much about and that has defined my identity all this time.

I get that genderqueer and feminism are trying to do different things with the terminology -- that genderqueer is looking for a way to squish the two ingredients together to get a different kind of cookie, while feminism is trying to unbake the cake to see just what the two ingredients really are -- but the value of the feminist deconstructionist approach that it's much of what's moved our society forward to being able to see that one's sexual organ is not the same thing as one's social identity, but also to what degree others' impression/assumption of our sexual organs does impact and put limits on our identity.

Or maybe I should just delete all the edits I made and finish up with that simple statement: that I'm clarifying the feminist path of deconstructing the cake, but what the genderqueer half of the equation needs is some way to adapt or reinvent those same ingredients for the goal of baking a better cake.

[dharma_slut]

genderqueer half of the equation needs is some way to adapt or reinvent those same ingredients for the goal of baking a better cake.

yes, this is the goal of genderqueerness :)

[kaigou]

And my point as a deconstructionist is that to reinvent/reselect those ingredients, first you need someone to come along and unbake the existing cake so you have a clear idea of the ingredients used in the original recipe, and can see more clearly what could change and what that might get you. Otherwise you really are just trying to bake a new cake with the father's soufflé recipe -- so to dismiss the feminist critique in this case is, IMO, unwise, because it's the precursor that got us to where we can even raise the questions (and answers) of what it means to be 'genderqueer'.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

So here's hoping no linkage will be happening,

Your wish is my command.

This is a fascinating post, and I expect to be back with actual substantive comments, but if you were concerned enough to put up that ETA I thought it wouldn't hurt to reassure you about metafandom right now.

[kaigou]

It's actually more of two other matters for me, when it comes to linkage.

First is that it's best when it's delayed, because linkage usually brings people who read once, respond, and don't return -- and I find that my best posts don't happen in one go, but develop as I edit (and as comments clarify). That means controversy-seeking missiles don't realize, or stick around to see, the ongoing edits (which are sometimes pretty comprehensive, as you've probably seen). A single post is a work-in-progress, so immediate links undermine my process. A few days leeway gives a chance to undo/redo any real stupidity in there.

Second, I've got a fair-sized reading audience now, and it acts as my springboard and as my sounding board -- and, at times, has jerked me back into line when I've meandered off into wacky places. I'd say I'm pretty used to most of the tones employed by the group -- that is, who tends to be curt, who will be silly to make a strong point, who'll give me their own experience as counterpoint, etc -- so stronger criticism is easier to take because I have a 'feel' for the person; I'm somewhat used to the person's delivery, have a decent idea of the person's priorities/perspective, and have interacted/read enough of the person that I don't feel any comments are going to come totally out of left field. That is, you, or someone else on my list, might say, "my god, you're so totally full of it!" and I'd be like, "okay, I hear you, I'll scale back" -- but that's not at all the same if a complete stranger says/writes it, y'know?

Which means delayed linkage (if linkage were to happen at all) allows for the known critics to speak up, possibly deflecting any idiocy before the unknown controversy-seeking critics show up with flamethrowers in hand.

[kathmandu]

"The result is that when someone says they're transgender, I don't read that as "and I'm going to have an operation to bring my biological sex in alignment with the social construct that feels 'right' to me", I read that as "I don't fit societal notions of the behaviors/beliefs most commonly associated with my sex". And that, to me, seems like such a big fat duh: because those societal notions are insane. No real person can fit into them, and no real person should be expected to have to put up the crazy-making that's the trying. ... Because if you take the finer-tuned definition of gender as a social construct, to lay claim to 'transgender' or 'crossgender' means you're continuing to buy into the social construct. It's like the genderific version of satanism: sure, you're saying you worship the world upside-down from the mainstream, but your reverse process has, as its very root, the existence of that mainstream. You can't be a Satanist in the absence of Christianity, because you're not worshiping a distinct deity, you're worshiping the opposite of someone else's deity. To declare oneself 'transgender', then, relies on continuation of the dual-gender game: it's a definition that requires the dual-gender system exist so that you can declare yourself opposite the definition society would hand you by virtue of biology."

Word word word. Gender is a system for chopping off half of each person's characteristics, and then stuffing each person in a labeled box. The second-wave analysis of gender as a system of social oppression was part of a campaign to stop being cut in half and confined in boxes. Declaring oneself transgender (with respect for Dharma_Slut, who sounds like she's having an otherkin-type experience) registers with me as a request to transfer to a different box you think would be more comfortable: maybe so, but the effect is to support the oppressor's claim that stuffing people in boxes is ever reasonable or tolerable.

[dharma_slut]

I understand that "otherkin" means... non human?

That sounds awesome, but I am completely human.

And yes, a transfer to the other box sounds right to me, generally speaking. A lot of people DO buy into the social constructs of masculinity and femininity.

I do. I subvert them, but I acknowlege them.

As a dyke, I identify as butch. In other words, as a more masculine, active, agressive, partner. I expect to relate to my femme in ways that might subvert the male/female paradigm but do honor it. Likewise, I'll fight for top position with another butch. As a man though, I could relax that need to be the aggressor, because I would no longer have to prove my manhood. My penis would be enough.

I am used to this landscape of dual genders-- and used to subverting them, too.

See, my missing penis doesn't care about "oppression." It want to bury itself in another body.

[kaigou]

I thought 'otherkin' was a euphemism for "I'm actually a magical beastie", and only one step removed from "I'm actually a fairy". Or maybe there's a really subtle tongue-in-cheekness there about one's inner fairy. I should probably refrain from such irreverence, should I? Oh, wait, I'm incapable of refraining. Genetically incapable. Honestly! I'm a born heretic.

A lot of people DO buy into the social constructs of masculinity and femininity.

This is true. But that doesn't mean I have to give them any extra weight or value for doing so -- or thereby judge as lacking anyone I meet who doesn't match up to the standards, or refuses to even play the game in the first place.

[dharma_slut]

I have no freaking clue as to how I "might be having an otherkin experience." It might be pleasant, it might be sneering, I can't tell.

Still, she is right. Declaring oneself transgender does, indeed, mean that one wants to climb into the other box, to one degree or another. Whether or not you or she see this as a good desire or not is rather beside the point for those individuals, yeah?

Because telling me that it's all an illusion to make me miserable... yeah, I know that. I got this illusory dick, like a phantom hand, reminding me day in, day out.

(getting some poetic lines in here, me!)

[kaigou]

I think we're temporarily at cross-purposes again. I'm not saying it's good or bad to want to be in a box. I'm saying that if the existence of the box is solely to make a person feel like they're "not masculine enough" per their sex, or "not feminine enough" per their sex, then the social construct is more destructive than constructive.

Also, you're continuing to take "illusion" as though I mean to say it's not-real, while I'm using illusion in its full definition sense: something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality. If I wanted to say it's all in one's head, I would've called it a hallucination, which may be related but is not the same at all. I say "illusion" because it's definitely there; it just gives you the wrong impression of how things are. As relates to my argument, to judge oneself as failing or succeeding based on these gender constructs is to be deceived (in my opinion, obviously) by a misleading impression of what it really means to be a person: the illusion is that we should all fit in freaking shoeboxes, and the reality is that we're a lot messier than that.

And finally, all of this is independent of the body/mind issue over one's biological sex -- that is, the issue you grapple with, as you've presented it, is absolutely and utterly separate from what I'm saying is a more common issue that strikes people regardless of sex. To whit: those who say, "I'm perfectly fine being cis-sex, but I just wish I didn't have to live with this pressure to have babies, just because That's What Women Are Supposed To Want -- but I don't." Desiring to get out from under the gender constructs that squeeze us into a shoebox -- even when we're able to live quite happily as the sex we had at birth -- is a completely different issue from feeling one's biological sex is out of alignment with one's psychological sex.

That dis-alignment, yes, is currently referred to as "transgender", and my point is that when one uses the term (or is used to the term) of "gender" as "social construct", then it undermines the valid and valuable purpose of the "transgender" label, because it's muddying a definition rather than being intuitively graspable for those on the sidelines.

Regardless, stop putting words in my mouth: I never said that wanting to be a different sex is an illusion, or that the sense of dis-alignment is due to a social construct gone wrong. What I did say, and have kept saying, is that not feeling right in the gender roles is a product of one's awareness that those social constructs are too restrictive -- but sex is a biological (and psychological) state, and is definitely not a social construct. To say otherwise trivializes the experience of being trans, by making it into something that's rooted in not being able to handle social pressures (of being one's gender or sex), instead of coming from something deep within that says the biology went wrong and the psychology has the clues of where to go right.

I'll say many things, and often at too much length, but I refuse to trivialize -- or allow you to represent me as trivializing -- the issues of sex-identification as nothing more than a footnote to issues of social constructs.

[dharma_slut]

I getcha, and thank you very much for your clarification. It makes me feel much better, because honestly, I wasn't sure. and it's kinda awesome to be part of the hashing-out process.

I would say though, that social constructs are not illusions, not even in the way that you are defining it. Social constructs are incredibly real. They are a "real" that can change over time, to be sure-- and that's what you are advocating here, is a change, and quite rightly. But the sheer mass and wieght of the damn things make it difficult. We tend to not want to buck the current too far, being tribal critters as we are. Mutual support makes the biggest difference for individuals who want to change their paradigms, and that's something you are offering right here, right now.

[trickster_tree]

Which would be the harm that comes from rhetoric like “Mostly I just skip [the question of gender] altogether and consider it irrelevant,” as Kaigou said (and with apologies to her, since I’m somewhat taking that out of context for the sake of making an example); it’s easy, in trying to loosen the hold of gender (roles, norms, preconceptions) on people who don’t want them, to make illegitimate their importance to people who have to care, because their bodies don’t express their sex, and if they don’t conform to the gender which correlates to their real sex, others won’t respond to them correctly.

So even if a person doesn’t give two hoots about how others perceive their sex, I think it’s important they remember, in the midst of theorizing, that it’s a life-changing matter and – even when negative, if not especially when negative – something that deserves to be treated with respect. (Like big predators, sort of. Big socially constructed predators that will eat you.)

Which is to say, I see where you're coming from.

[dharma_slut]

Yes! the cultural constructed gender clues are more important to me than they might be-- *because* of my physiological disconnect.

But I am convinced that Kaigou is feeling the other way; that people like me, who do attach so much credence to gender roles, make people who don't want them seem less important.

And that's not right, neither. And it isn't true, neither; if i were biologically congruent haha, I would be fighting nearly as many gender stereotypes as I now embrace.

"Time is important to butterflies and angels; the former have too little, the latter too much." ~James Thurber

[trickster_tree]

Right, I don't mean to question your ability to accept other peoples' self-identified sex/gender, and I definitely don't want to question your right to lay claim to sex while abandoning gender, because that would be horribly hypocritical of me (also, rude). What I'm trying to suss out is why we're having this conversation rather than a feminist one in which we could all agree that sex determining behavior is a bad thing (and I think we all would agree on that). I'm not going to lie; your phrase — the term "irrelevant" particularly – hit a raw nerve; and while I know you don't mean that statement in the way that I've seen it used before, my first response is still to say "ow" and to look at you funny. Which might be why both myself and dharma_slut (I think) reacted the way we did – with uncertainty about whether or not you thought gender-as-construct made illegitimate different alignments of sex – because it's so common to see arguments that go from gender-as-construct to "and you trans people are just wishful thinkers", or whatever.

Which is not to say that you're "not allowed" (seriously, not my place anyway) to say that gender is irrelevant to you, because I actually I find that rather heartening! I am just trying to explain why my knee jerk reaction involved raised hackles.

[kaigou]

okay, still asleep here and just deleted instead of edited, because edited is a no-go once someone's replied so of course the spot where you'd click on edit would be replaced with "delete" and why on earth did I just immediately click "yes" anyway? omg I'm going back to bed.

aha, okay, BAD WORD CHOICE. Y'know, for someone who fusses about semantics, you'd think I'd have more of a clue in my own words, but sadly, not always. Yes, I can absolutely see how "irrelevant" raises the spectre of "that doesn't matter even if it's an important issue to you" -- it's definitely a more dismissive-feeling word than, say, uhm... lemme think. Peripheral, or tangential -- something that implies being related but not at the main focus -- instead of irrelevant's worse connotations of "immaterial, inconsequential, insignificant".

Because our behaviors are significant; they're much of how we interact, and I don't actually have a problem with the way anyone acts -- my problem is solely with the notion that we can use some nebulous set of socially-constructed (and by whom?) standards to make people feel miserable for not measuring up, or to make them feel like certain areas (modes of being) are off-limits. And that it'd be more to the point, I suppose, to say I refuse to let someone put those limits on me, and when someone's within my sphere, I refuse to stand by and let limits be put on them, too.

gender-as-construct made illegitimate different alignments of sex

No, but talking with both of you has clarified for me (yay! always good) that what we need instead is some way to see sex and gender as the x and y axis, because even if we managed to shove the western world into more than a binary of sex, and get the masculine/feminine to at least become a range (which I might say it's getting there already) -- it's how the two overlap and intersect that create each person's alignment, because that's not just to one's biology but also to the behaviors one has adapted.

Thing is, what word works for representing the place where sex and gender meet up?

[dharma_slut]

*dryly* I use the word "queerness."

Maybe the other end of that particular spectrum is "straightness?"

We will have to coin some new words, actually. Our society has never before come to this point in the dialogue!

[kathmandu]

I didn't mean to sneer. And this probably calls for a longer answer than I can compose right now. What I meant about 'otherkin-type experience' was that some people under the otherkin umbrella say they have persistent physical sensations of a body they do not actually have: their nonexistent wings are cramped in the elevator, or they feel their nonexistent tail swinging as they walk. They know they don't have such body parts, but the sensations remain. It is a lot like phantom sensations from an amputated hand or leg, except they never had the body part to begin with, so the origin of the sensation is a mystery.

From your first comment I got the impression that you wake up every morning, not merely hoping for a visit from the Penis Fairy, but with proprioception telling you you already have one. Those otherkin accounts I summarized above were the only analogues I'd ever heard of for such an experience. If I misparsed your first comment, I apologize for generating so much confusion.

[dharma_slut]

Oh, that's interesting! Proprioception is the name of the game.

The mind is a clevver little critter, isn't it? I ought to address this (on my own blog-- not here)

[kaigou]

Gender is a system for chopping off half of each person's characteristics, and then stuffing each person in a labeled box.

...and then beating them over the head with anything leftover that didn't fit in the box with them.

A lot of what really irks me (if not outright infuriates me sometimes) is that gender is essentially a construct designed to make people miserable -- that's why I keep saying over and over in the post that it's illusory. You can never freaking match up. No one can. Someone really bonkers, I might even say obsessed (or brainwashed) might come close, but no one can ever catch up -- and the list of catch-22 requirements for satisfying the "feminine shoebox" are, as you probably well know, destructively contradictory for women. See also "madonna, whore". Sigh.

As for 'otherkin', that's a term I've most often heard in the pagan community, to indicate non-human -- unless you're using it a broader sense of "outside the mundane boundaries"? It's been awhile since I first heard the term, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's evolved to encompass a larger (and more generalized) sort of existence.

[mishalak]

I'm going to come back and read all this, but I have an funny observation. An outside observer from the future might make the assumption in the future that our society is so masculine that like Sparta that women started adopting masculine traits so as to still be sexually attractive to the men who'd otherwise prefer to spend time in the company of their male friends.

[kathmandu]

What makes you say that? Is it based just on Kaigou's high-school experience, or are you thinking of other things too?

[kaigou]

...women started adopting masculine traits so as to still be sexually attractive to the men who'd otherwise prefer to spend time in the company of their male friends.

I don't know if that's really what's going on, so much as the fact that women are adopting more and more behaviors that are signals of self-empowerment and agency -- and these are behaviors that have traditionally been defined as "masculine". So, sure, from an outsider's POV, it may appear that women are becoming more and more "masculine" in general, but I'd say that instead, the behaviors related to empowerment and agency are becoming more egalitarian. Those behaviors -- making decisions for oneself, managing one's own money, expecting (and demanding when you don't get it) that mechanics and doctors and teachers take the time to explain it to you instead of brushing you off as an airheaded woman not worth the explanation, refusing to be a doormat for jerks, taking ownership of (and pride in) one's sexuality and sexual experiences, and on and on and on: these were once things we'd say were masculine, but it's not that women are becoming more masculine, so much that (I hope) we're becoming persons accorded all the rights and honors as any other person, and by "person" I mean heterosexual, cis-sex, cis-gender, anglo-saxon, christian, male.

[dharma_slut]

yes to this.

[trickster_tree]

(We haven’t spoken before, so, hi! I subscribed for the writing-related talk, but this post is like an unexpected chocolate at the bottom of a box of toffees – it’s all good, but the surprise makes it better.)

I hope you don’t mind me throwing in my two cents as someone who identifies as genderqueer but who agrees entirely with your post re: gender as a social construct.

Semantic messiness seems to be a plague on gender/sex discussions in general – transsexual vs. transgender aside (which at least has a useful social function in defining those who intend to surgically alter their bodies and those who don’t), there’s a very harmful tendency to confuse sex, gender, and gendered behaviors. If gendered behaviors were gender, as some seem to take them as, everyone would be crossgender (or whatever term they preferred); which rather muddies the waters for those who experience their sex as dissonant but nonbinary, like myself, and thus want to label our genders – the social category based upon physical sex – as non-cis but also non-trans.

... In fact, now that you make the semantic issue explicit, I’m wondering if I really shouldn’t identify myself as “sexqueer”. Hmmm. Except that sounds like something the handkerchief code has a color for, eheh.

[kaigou]

As I understand it, the origins of the sex/gender explicit re-definition is in feminist theory and the second generation's struggle to divorce "what it means, biologically, to be female" from "how society expects a female-person to act" -- that some semantic clearing of the muddy waters was required to begin any discourse. Despite the semi-recent shift from "transsexual" to "transgender" as the term du jour, if one goes with a clearer semantic definition then in fact "transsexual" is a better fit -- because, as you note, we are all transgender to some degree.

If gendered behaviors were gender...

The thing is, when you start deconstructing "what is femininity" and "what is masculinity", what you end up with is a pile of, well, behaviors. There are simply too many variations on physical theme for one to say that "broad shoulders makes one masculine" or "having large breasts means you're feminine" -- so in practical application, it's behaviors and modes of being. Being "feminine" means wearing dresses, or liking makeup, or owning way too many shoes; it means speaking softly, being complimented when a man asks you out even if he is a jerk, wanting to have babies, wanting to get married, not wanting to crush all one's coworkers in a single blow... and so on.

Actually, come to think of it, that stupid book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" was one of the hallmarks in my attitudes towards the so-called gender divide and the social behaviors. A friend had picked the book up and was devouring it, telling me repeatedly that it explained everything about her communication difficulties with her husband. Being polite (and baffled), I asked, and she regaled me with things from the lists -- what men do vs what women do. Every single bleeding example she gave me of "what men do", I also do. Every single bleeding example of "what women do" prompted a reaction from me of, "I'd freaking shoot myself before I pulled that shit." Even on the stupid things, like asking for directions -- I don't -- and liking fast cars and power tools -- I do -- or enjoying wearing pretty clothes -- I could care less -- or having a natural affinity for caring for babies -- like hell.

I ended up sitting there saying, "what, does this mean I'm secretly a guy? what the hell? the fact that I do everything that's on the From-Mars list doesn't make me less of who I am, biologically, and do I want to be reduced to nothing more than biology, anyway? Does anyone? who wrote this crap?"

Which is also the source of my oft-repeated phrase that I'm secretly a boy. Not because I dislike or don't feel comfortable in my own skin -- I do, even if I get annoyed at not being as strong or sturdy as I once was -- but because in terms of gender, I fall hard on the Mars side, and tend to look at the Venus side totally askance, the majority of the time. Yet I wouldn't say I'm masculine, nor would I say I'm non-feminine. Mostly I just skip that question altogether and consider it irrelevant.

(Oh, and I never mind two cents, especially when it's well-argued and civil. Hell, I welcome five cents and even ten cents, if you're ever that inspired. Discourse is good!)

[trickster_tree]

Right, gender defined as the gestalt of gendered behaviors is useless in describing real people, and granting that definition of gender real existence is hugely harmful to any attempt at parity between the sexes (and is abhorrent in the same way that dictating individuals’ behavior based on any physical feature is abhorrent).

But! I feel as if there’s a difference between how the word “gender” would be used in a feminist conversation vs. a trans/genderqueer one.

Given that there are people who feel uncomfortable with their sex (whether for biological, psychological, or socially-driven reasons), and given that there needs to be a term for “the sex I feel myself to have regardless of my biological sex”, I think that the term “gender” can be useful – and, further, only has value so long as it is not assumed to predict behavior. I’d personally separate “one’s sense of sex” and “one’s sense of how to behave as it is informed by gendered expectations, one’s sense of sex, and one’s decisions to ignore or accept these things” into two separate boxes, and I think one of the huge flaws in trans discussions is that these two things are not kept separate.

Of course, that separation is much easier to do so long as we are talking about a sex binary, in which there are males and females (and men and woman who might fit into either of those biological boxes); I think your issue is with crossgender/genderqueer/etc. people, though, who feel they fall between the sexes?

I am, in fact, puzzled and uncomfortable with those who label themselves as crossgender or genderqueer or transgender but don’t have issue with their biological sex – because that does grant gender-as-gendered-behavior an existence that is harmful. No woman should have to claim genderqueerness to like power tools; on the other side of the coin, a genderqueer female person shouldn’t feel obligated to like them, either.

(Thank you for providing the opportunity to have civil discourse! But wow, do I ever need to brush up on my conversational skills; to clarify, because I don't think I'm managing my tone perfectly, here: I don't think there's anything like The Truth in this particular discussion, where it's all social constructions and subjective experience. Just differing experiences of those social constructs.)

[dharma_slut]

But! I feel as if there’s a difference between how the word “gender” would be used in a feminist conversation vs. a trans/genderqueer one.yes, and thank you-- this is what I am seeing here.

[kaigou]

Ehehe, you people keep talking and I'm EDITING! I edited, and stuff -- and put in all the stuff I'd, uhm, thought I was putting in last night when I was typing with my eyes closed.

Shorter version, though: yes, we have 'sex' for biology, and 'gender' for behavior, which is a useful dissection when you're trying to deconstruct where one begins and the other ends, and how they impact each other. What those two words cannot do, however, is capture the unique state that results where sex and gender meet in a person (as I just said in the big honking edited-added part, but I'm used to repeating myself).

I'm pretty presumptuous (on bad days, just plain ornery), so I've no problem carrying that forth and saying that this third word would be one that represents our point where the x-axis of 'sex' meets the y-axis of 'gender'.

[trickster_tree]

Oh! I see your edit and I see what you’re trying to do, now. I cannot agree more with how frustrating the pressures surrounding gender are; and while I understand that role is very serious for some people, granted my choice I’d prefer to play – and given the current social attitudes, it’s very hard to do so.

Also, a million times "yes" to the cake-baking analogy and the need for a thorough raking-over of our current modes of thought and the language we use in talking about sex, gender, and their meeting point (the sexus? eheh). In my experience, even where some attempt has been made towards a critical examination of the issue, it’s still like cooking in someone else’s kitchen.

[kaigou]

I’d personally separate “one’s sense of sex” and “one’s sense of how to behave as it is informed by gendered expectations, one’s sense of sex, and one’s decisions to ignore or accept these things” into two separate boxes, and I think one of the huge flaws in trans discussions is that these two things are not kept separate.

I wasn't aware the issues aren't separate, which is why I've been continually confused by the 'transgender' label -- because for a long time, I thought it was in distinction to being 'transexual', and just couldn't grasp why anyone would bother. I mean, it's behaviors. It's not at all at the level of changing one's sex.

Of course, that separation is much easier to do so long as we are talking about a sex binary...

But is that really true? I mean, if we say "sex" and we mean it as "the state of your biology" then wouldn't we already have a non-binary system anyway? I mean, it kinda raises the question of how we define what qualifies as a "sex". If you have an extra chromosone? If you were born with rudimentary organs of the opposite sex? It's already a messy question, if you really deconstruct it under society's simplistic answers, which are usually for the sake of not having to see the messiness underneath -- but that's why we have philosophers and artists, to ask the messy questions anyway.

Anyway, snark about artists aside, I can see that the mainstream western culture presumes "male or female," but this isn't true for all cultures, nor, I would argue, is it a biological truth. So I guess I fail to see the good in going along with societal simplifications that it's just a shoebox when that shoebox, in other lights, is an entire mansion. Although perhaps this may be segueing into the whole 'take-back-the-words' kind of thing that it seems every subculture goes through at some point, in some way.

I am, in fact, puzzled and uncomfortable with those who label themselves as crossgender or genderqueer or transgender but don’t have issue with their biological sex – because that does grant gender-as-gendered-behavior an existence that is harmful.

I actually find it duplicitous, depending on the use or apparent intent. I have that reaction (and it is partially what prompted this post in the first place) when it feels like the person is claiming cross-gender (but without cross-sex issue) for the sake of saying they're equally oppressed. I try to be supportive (or at least refrain from bursting out in mocking laughter on the person's journal), but come on. The fact that you prefer to wear jeans and know how to change a tire may make you unconventional in your femininity per the more narrow-minded among our culture, but it does not freaking make you an object of oppression. Maybe sometimes a bit of pressure to be less mechanically-inclined, but that's just not the same at all as someone living in a skin that doesn't fit them, and I resent anyone who tries to play on my sympathies as though the two were equivalent.

[And when I feel very snarky, I want to say: yes, and last week I went to the drug store and they had NO ORANGE FINGERNAIL POLISH. They're discriminating against redheads who can't wear pink tones. BAHSTAHDS! I'M BEING OPPRESSED! ...because that's about as seriously as I can take the claim when my spidey sense tells me someone's jerking my chain solely for the purposes of winning a spot in the oppression olympics.]

[trickster_tree]

But is that really true?

Nope, it’s not, which is what I meant – that is, when I said "if we're talking about a sex binary", the "we" was "mainstream culture" and the "ease" was in conceptualizing trans experience from a cis (gender and sex) perspective; I wasn’t sure if you were simplifying past intersexed individuals and non-Western views of gender, and was trying to get a feel for where you were taking issue with the transgender label. I think we might have been having two different conversations – yours about terminology, and mine about experience (and you are clearly not taking issue with experience, as seen re: dharma_slut).

[kaigou]

I wasn’t sure if you were simplifying past intersexed individuals and non-Western views of gender,

hah! I went into that entire answer because I was thinking, hmm, what if this person hasn't gotten past the only-two-sexes into seeing the whole scope of human behavior?

ehehe, no, I think we're on the same page now, or pretty close.

[maire]

Even on the stupid things, like asking for directions -- I don't -- and liking fast cars and power tools -- I do -- or enjoying wearing pretty clothes -- I could care less -- or having a natural affinity for caring for babies -- like hell.

I'm pretty stereotypically girly, but at 18 I used to really notice the way /Cleo/ and /Cosmo/ both seemed to think I was a guy -- not in look, but in relationship behaviour. The idea that women might find long-term commitment scary just seemed completely out of their world-views.

[kaigou]

Oh YEAH. Because of course you must want to get married! You're female, right? And everyone knows being female = being feminine = wanting babies and a big wedding and the damn white picket fence.

I hated that assumption. I still hate that assumption. Then again, I'm still kinda baffled as to the fact that I'm actually in a long-term commitment. Still not exactly sure how that happened...

[maire]

*grins* I *literally* have a white picket fence at the moment (down at the bottom of our very overgrown section) as well as being legally married and having a three-year-old child.

The only bit of that I ever really saw as a goal was the enormous party and the pretty dress, which I didn't really see as relating to the marriage bit too closely anyway. (My theory was that when I hit 30 single I'd have a 'wedding' party for myself where I got to wear a ball gown and had a huge formal dinner event with speeches.) But I found myself in a permanent relationship, and we wanted somewhere to live that we could alter to suit what we wanted, and I really didn't like the idea of growing old without people round who understood my family culture (that one's a bit of a long shot, I know, since there's no guarantee that having kids will ensure it -- it's just that not having them kind of ensures I won't get it).

What has always bugged me is the idea that 'this goes with that'. I've always been drawn to the bits of 'femininity' that were actions, rather than inactions (dressing up and painting the skin, dancing, singing, pretty accessories, and so on), but I've also always felt insecure in my identification as 'female' because I'm not very good at the bits where one *doesn't* do things because one's female. I talk a lot (which, contrary to popular culture, is a thing men tend to do more than women in our society), I read sci-fi and comics, I like combat sports more than other sports (fencing, judo, and kung fu), and so on.

My partner has made a couple of posts in his blog recently that really rocked me. I hadn't realised how much my self-image has been limited by this issue really until I read his post about our daughter being called a tomboy at her preschool.

I was initially pleased, because 'tomboy' to me (and from what I can tell, to the teacher) meant 'girl who has social approval for being strong, healthy, and active', which is something I want for my child. He saw it as a suggestion that she wasn't a normal girl and therefore needed a label to explain her oddness, and his post held me up as a model -- a woman who sees being herself as normal behaviour for her gender, including being strong, healthy, and active. I wish I did.

I'm glad I'm co-parenting with someone who honestly believes that if a girl does something happy and healthy, then it's good, *girlish* behaviour, whether that's fighting her cousin with a light-sabre or playing tea-parties.

I think the thing with white picket fences and so on is that they get treated like signs of success, which suggests gender is a competition.

[hl]

Uhm. What strikes me as odd is that you seem to consider social constructs and non-existent in some sense. I mean, it's true they're ideas with no palpable material reality, but that doesn't mean they don't exist or they don't have real consequences to the people living in them. I will always fight for everyone knowing gender is a social construct with no biological counterpart (or at least, while I believe it to be true), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist--just that we've some hope of changing it towards a future of more flexibility and tolerance.

People can get away with being not entirely conventional gender wise--'til a certain point. I don't doubt that if the behaviour/modisms/type of clothes differs from the 'norm' what is considered too much, people can get a lot of shit about it. So I don't really boggle at people being oppressed that way having an identity. (And words' meaning change--I tend to think that people using the identity have more right than anybody in defining that identity.)

[kaigou]

Guh. *tongue-in-cheek* I was editing away with everything I'd thought I'd written when I was, uhm, typing with my eyes closed near the end of it before posting, and... no, I didn't put those other things in. Which means that now that I have, some of what you're saying is addressed in there (I think) -- and hopefully it clarifies better that I'm not saying that social constructs are non-existent, only that -- after a certain point -- one realizes they're such clunky and nebulous collections of disparate ideals that they are, in the end, not worth really stressing over. Not entirely irrelevant, just... not as important to me, I suppose.

But then, perhaps that attitude is, in itself, just me getting caught along in the overall social paradigm shift I've seen just in my own lifetime. That is, in moving towards a more egalitarian set of gender expectations. Not that we're there yet, but we're still a long way from the world when I was a kid.

[dharma_slut]

Like the very duality that 'transgender' is trying to bridge (or perhaps surpass), the two-point definition is limiting -- this is what my body is, and this is how society expects me to behave per the body I have. But in some ways, the terms 'transsexual' and 'transgender' both give rise in me to the same quiet critique I mentioned in re a woman with a male gender-identity but a female sex-identity: it's using the same words, the same two-way, binary system, and when youse only got two words, you're gonna be pretty limited in just how many different sentences you can create...

I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't like the idea of anyone forced to live in a shoebox.


So your essay is not really about the differences between the two words, but what people ought to do with those words-- reject them entirely, evidently.

See, this, I think, is the meat of your thoughts.

Noticing that some women want to change the box they live in, you want them to leave all boxes behind.

But not all of us want to do that, in fact...
http://kaigou.dreamwidth.org/344966.html?thread=3586182#cmt3586182

[kaigou]

So your essay is not really about the differences between the two words, but what people ought to do with those words-- reject them entirely, evidently.

Erm...not entirely, really. More like, recognize that sex is "biological state" no more or less, and that "gender" is as limited as any construct and while useful as a vague shorthand, hardly worthwhile to turn oneself inside out trying to live up to that nebulous changing-goalposts ideal. I guess you could say part of that would be to take out the value judgment in "feminine" and "masculine" -- that to say, "that's so feminine" would not be an insult when the subject of the phrase is male, just as to say "that's masculine" wouldn't make a woman question not just her identity, but the value (and validity) of her sex as well.

Take away the teeth our culture(s) currently invest in these general if idealistic labels -- at least the label of gender as it applies to one's identity. In which case, to rephrase you, that were you to become male, you would be male, and it wouldn't freaking matter whether you're the most masculine or the most feminine, like polka-dots or hate stripes. That any kind of so-called gender identity is not a yardstick against which we can measure your success or failure of being 'male', and that we (society) no longer have the power to take that rough set of grouped concepts and beat you over the head with it.

That, really, is what bothers me the most. Not that the terms (any of them) exist, so much as that they're used to make people freaking miserable for not measuring up to something that's at best an ideal and at worst a freaking delusion.

[dharma_slut]

I gotta love you for this.

And i see what you are getting at. But I think you would be kicking away a crutch for some of us. I mean-- I publicly ID , as I said, as a masculine woman. I do this because it's the next best approximation, in my estimation, to my inner state-- *because* this bundle of behaviors is nearly universally agreed upon as being "male." I don't have my dick, but at least I have that.

If my persona does not culturally indicate my male nature... and I do not have a penis... How do I satisfy my inner identity? Because without that general agreement about perceived sex roles-- I will be read as a woman. A straight-walking, deep-voiced, somewhat aggressive woman.

[hl]

I've come back to this, and read your conversations in other threads, and I don't think we're in that much of a disagreement.

I guess my only true beef with the argument is that from 'current gender dichotomy is a tool of oppression' does not necessarily follow that 'all gender identities are tools of oppression and thus we ought to forget about them'. I agree that for me, in our society, it would be easier if there were no limited identities regarding gender--just sex (as messy as it is), and maybe sexual orientation (idem), though I'm guessing those would be easier to navigate without gender in the middle. But... as I said, I don't think it follows. And I don't think it's possible culturally, to just drop all gender markers. What I think it's possible is that it becomes less of restrictive and more flexible, thus being less (or not at all) a tool of oppression.

(It would be an interesting anthropological research, I guess, to see if other societies/members of other societies feel gender markers are oppressive, though I'm guessing that implying the existence of gender markers already flaws the research in a meaningful way.)

In the meantime, those identities are identities that are formed by the very existence of that oppression, and those that adopt them are the ones more directly oppressed by this system, so I don't think 'you should just drop them and everything would be better' is something other people should say; by which I mean, it's not something I would be comfortable saying, even if I believed it, which I don't.

[kaigou]

No, the comments are really the source of clarification to your point, but I'll rephrase here ('cause I guess there are a fair number by now, eh). I'm not saying gender roles are useless; what I'm saying is that they're too limiting, and oftentimes destructive. I'm also not saying that someone -- who is not me -- does not (or should not) have the choice to take on this or that role, or live up to whatever gender construct as they feel comfortable. What I am saying is that I refuse to play along, and that I staunchly defend my right to defend anyone else within my sphere of influence who also wishes to be free of gender constructs/constraints. IOW: I won't stand by and watch someone else have gender roles shoved down his/her throat.

I think what's possibly most constructive, when it comes to gender constructs, is to simply be an example, and live life pushing at those limitations, to show that one can be all kinds of things usually associated with 'masculine' and still be undoubtedly feminine, or vice versa. For the majority of society to see that neither should have sway over the other (ie, "masculine behaviors are bettah"), I can't change all that but I can act as living proof that you don't have to play the game.

Which is great, because I'm not going to play the game anyway, but it's nice to believe that perhaps it might serve to help someone else realize it's possible to refuse to swallow the cultural constructs wholesale -- and to still be a happy healthy person.

YES!!

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you. Thank you very much! You have just written my exact feelings on this whole subject - and with more clarity than I could hope to achieve. As well as a kinder tone. A few years spent in the Bay Area queer scene left me cynical and angry about the whole subject, and it still rankles occasionally.

Really nicely done :-)
and I don't have a dreamwidth account, but fyi am girl_amphibian (at) yahoo...so as not to leave an anonymous comment (fair is fair!)

Re: YES!!

[kaigou]

It's a tough subject, and can be a touchy one, and good to hear I can manage some sort of diplomacy. (Trust me, you'd probably find me anything but, in person, but then again I'm working on being the neighborhood curmudgeon anyway.) The comments have further discussion and lots of good points, and helped me clarify my points much better, which is always a sign of a great discussion. Feel free to add in wherever you like.

Also, if you want a DW acct so you can comment, just let me know. I've got plenty of codes (and been meaning to make another post offering them up to anyone who wants one).