shoring up the levees
Okay, so Blackamazon and Brownfemipower have thrown up their hands in pretty understandable frustration at the Various Messes going on right now.
I know things will chill out soon, but in the meantime, if anyone wanted to continue the conversations going on in their threads--I know BFP's place was developing what I thought was a very interesting discussion of postcolonial feminism and the impact of colonial history on trans issues and multiracial identities--please feel free to continue in comments on this entry.
I am not interested in reproducing the bickering going on in both those threads, involving a certain commenter, that is scuttling those excellent discussions. You know who you are: you're welcome here, but I will be moderating this thread.
In the meantime, BA, BFP, put your feet up, seriously, and have a drink on me. You've been heroes here. Let me host some mess at my place for a while so you can catch a breath, if you want. Thank you.
Look, guys, we've already lost a really excellent blogger recently, probably for good. (And kudos to her for doing what she has to to take care of herself.) I don't want the pressure-cooker doing any other ones harm.
So. Talk amongst yourselves.
I know things will chill out soon, but in the meantime, if anyone wanted to continue the conversations going on in their threads--I know BFP's place was developing what I thought was a very interesting discussion of postcolonial feminism and the impact of colonial history on trans issues and multiracial identities--please feel free to continue in comments on this entry.
I am not interested in reproducing the bickering going on in both those threads, involving a certain commenter, that is scuttling those excellent discussions. You know who you are: you're welcome here, but I will be moderating this thread.
In the meantime, BA, BFP, put your feet up, seriously, and have a drink on me. You've been heroes here. Let me host some mess at my place for a while so you can catch a breath, if you want. Thank you.
Look, guys, we've already lost a really excellent blogger recently, probably for good. (And kudos to her for doing what she has to to take care of herself.) I don't want the pressure-cooker doing any other ones harm.
So. Talk amongst yourselves.
Labels: building blocks, feminism, metablogging, postcolonial, trans, unifying theory
posted by little light | 5:05 AM
79 Comments:
Now I'm mad. It's always the bloggers we really can't afford to lose.
I think they'll be back, Winter. They're badasses, and they just need a well-deserved break. Honestly, the pace those threads were going, I'm impressed out how long they both stayed calm.
Losing Nubian is, unfortunately, one of those things that happens. We had the benefit of her insight for a while; hopefully someone new will rise up and show us something new and fill the hole, some.
In the meantime, we've got to carry on the work, you know? Especially us little fish, who've proved that we can move a lot of words and energy when we get together.
The world grinds on, and we never run out of people to get out from under the wheels.
Yeah, i think they just needed a head-shower. i hope so. i don't blame them for it. it's that time of year, too. fun for the whole family! whee
meanwhile, thank you for starting this.
Okay, so, let's crack our knuckles then, shall we?
I talked at BFP's about parsing anti-trans attitudes as a product of cultural imperialism--but I also brought up multiracial identities.
To wit: some of my heritage is pro-transgender identities, roughly, and some of my heritage is the folks who made them give that up.
So where does that leave us?
Further, given the problems of cultural imperialism, how can we still find this model for someone who's, say, not a person of color? If someone's heritage has nothing to do with a culture that's got an alternate conception of gender, how can they find my ancestral culture's example handy, and will they be able to incorporate its positive points while adapting them to another cultural milieu without mucking things up?
For instance: I would never claim a Two-Spirit identity. I'm not First Nations, let alone of the group that held that idea in the first place. It's part-and-parcel of a culture to which I don't belong and have very little connection to, and without understanding its context, I couldn't really justify claiming it. I'd feel weird about a black friend claiming to be bantut, or a southern European friend claiming a Sworn Virgin role, for that matter, even leaving aside that both of those have relevance to different branches of my family.
So what do we do with this?
I think that's another thing you're onto, Nanette--there's no backwards, especially with culture. Our fundamentalist friends have proved that.
I guess the question is, then--in building something new--how will we take advantage of the chance to choose our tools and materials? What can each of us bring to the table?
Awesome title to this post, little light. I am also saddened to lose the insights of BA and BFP even if it really is only for a little while. I agree, though: all power to them if this time gives them comfort and rest.
I'd like to ask an ignorant question. One of the more sensible arguments that some radfems make against transgenders is the idea that you are choosing to mutilate and drug your body, therefore are some kind of dupe of the medical establishment. So I'm thinking, does the fact that I wear glasses make me a dupe of the optical establishment? Are there links or books that I can check out to counter that kind of argument?
P.S. I've been seeing wonderful comments by you all over the place, little light. You have quite a way with words!
One approach is to work with modern frameworks and to see how they already accommodate multiple identities and what leeway they provide.
Another approach is to create a new framework entirely that draws from multiple influences in a way that doesn't dishonor or discard their relevancies.
Those two are the main ones that stand out in my mind (right now).
(Oh, and hi, I'm Sylvia. I kinda followed your link from Feministe, and I've seen you post around during this whole incident.)
Nanette, you answered the question I didn't ask very well. I meant "sensible" only in that it sounds less crazy then "they are all nutjobs" which is pure bigotry. But I love your analogy because it cuts to the hart of what's wrong with that argument. I'm just trying to collect good responses to statements that are poorly thought out and just, well, wrong.
I hope black amazon comes back! i knew bfp couldn't stay away (thankfully!) :)
...
i don't think it is necessarily culturally co-opting to claim oneself to be a two-spirit--if the person truly believes that they are, that is. it is a legitimate theory based on a legitimate ideology. sort of like claiming oneself to be a lesbian or bi-sexual. these are identity constructs thought up by europeans and people of other cultures use those--even at times when they do not consider it the best description because it is the terminology with power and people will understand it (i'm sure it is easier to say "gay" or "Bi" instead of "two-spirit" in many circles).
i think the idea is to learn a less colonial way of looking/categorizing/critiquing humanity from other cultures--many of which are around today to talk with us about these things. (they are not all ancient, they exist in moderity just like the rest of us).
(i hope that does not sound snappy.)
on another note.
"The only way they can make that argument, in my view, is if they feel the same sense of ownership over the bodies of transfolk as the right wingers and others feel they have over women."
Nanette, well said.
The funny thing is, it's not like the medical establishment is really all that eager to provide hormones, surgery, etc. to trans people.
If it were, then more trans people would have health care. We wouldn't have exclusions specifically ruling out any transgender-specific health care from coverage. State governments wouldn't be writing anti-trans exclusions into their Medicare administrative policies. Surgeons who operate on trans people wouldn't be getting kicked out of their hospitals due to hand-wringing about insurance. But no -- trans medical care has been considered "experimental" for ages despite a very high success rate (i.e. lack of regret). The patriarchy must be a bit confused on this subject, at the very least.
Most of the people providing health care for trans people are on the fringe somehow -- either they're researchers into sex & gender, or clinics trying to help underserved and at-risk populations, or part of the small cottage industry that's popped up in response to the small number of trans people who have a lot of money to throw around. (Of those groups the only ones I would extensively trust to not foist a bunch of patriarchal crap on trans people are the middle group, by the way...)
And speaking of medicine on the fringes... I think a lot of trans people feel a certain amount of kinship with body-mod communities and practicioners. There are a lot of new traditions and practices around the body that are springing up, sometimes connected to older traditions. There are European traditions of gender-transgression as well, there are some trans women of euro descent who have talked about feeling connected to the Gallae, for instance. Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg is a catalog of stuff like this from all over.
Then there are other "newer traditions" like punk and goth with their own revisions of what masculine, feminine, androgynous, or gender-bending expression can be. And BDSM or leather communities, socio-sexual practices and spaces where gender often becomes less important than other things. And then there's cyborg-feminism and authors like Donna Haraway, which I often feel like makes a huge amount of sense when your body is mediated by medical technology, when all of our identities are mediated by cultural technology.
Of course, not a lot of this stuff is "in touch with pre-colonial traditions." But I think there are often traces that go back somewhere, back before the modern era. There are a lot of different lineages and descents, and I think it can be really worthwhile to pick up the traces and see the connections, and form common bonds across a lot of different traditions and communities.
i looked at some Donna Haraway stuff, very briefly. i have to say the whole "cyborg feminism" concept i found a bit, well...
maybe i need to look at it again.
just, you know: i -saw- the Terminator.
what can i tell you, i'm a luddite. stuff like "posthuman" and so on, i get where the impulse comes from, but the concept kind of gives me the wig.
sorry, having a flip moment--
yeah, well, the Patriarchy can be sinister like that, with the double bluff. the same way it tries to convince all women that prostitution is cool! be a prostitute! while still keeping prostitution criminalized in most places. i guess.
... it's not like the medical establishment is really all that eager ...
I assume the medical profession would be more eager if medical insurers were more accomodating, & moving the insurers is politically a different problem from moving the doctors, no?
This is a classic, constituency-driven area of health care politics, & other constituencies' experience of with negotiating the obstacles may help elucidate the options.
Yeah, "cyborg feminism" is kind of wonky, it's not really an alternative to some other kind of feminism, and it really only exists in one text, the Cyborg Manifesto. I do think that text is useful as a sort of hatchet for chopping up existing assumptions.
For instance, the way she points out that there's this constant search for "the essence of woman" and feminists always in search of commonalities that bind all women together. "The tribe that bleeds," anyone? The cyborg alternative is in affinities and connections between, not in stable categories, and she points out "women of color" is a phrase like this because it's about other-ness in general and has room for all sorts of difference and specificity of experience.
That's the stuff I find the most interesting, and pertains to feminism the most. There's a lot of other stuff in the Manifesto about marxism, the global working class, public/private distinctions, information technology, etc. and it's very techno-heavy but I don't think it's techno-utopian, more like... pointing out how technology has changed everything.
Basically, the cyborg is a metaphor that points out how instead of trying to play "win or lose" with the fundamental contradictions in feminist theory and between people's lives and abstract conceptualizations of them, we ought to just join these things together and accept that it's a "cyborg," a hybrid of all sorts of things, and that's OK, powerful even. There's no "natural" or "essential" etc. because everything is constructed.
Hmm I guess I remember and like more of that than I thought!
Even among the medical profession, I think there are a lot of people who are super-leery of providing any care to trans people. And I don't think this all comes from lack of insurance. It's a very common experience for trans people, even when going for a regular checkup, to be told "oh we can't treat people like you here" or "I'm not trained in transgender medicine." Even if you know, it's more about just getting blood pressure and general health checked!
Many medical professionals need training even to be able to feel like they can do routine stuff with bodies that are so "weird" -- and the reason it's weird is because the differences have to do with gender, which is a squick zone for so many people.
Then there are actually outright bigoted doctors who won't have anything to do with trans people, of course, but that's a whole other (and more obvious) story.
Also, I think a lot of the medical profession is confused or reluctant about trans health care because it seems to violate some sort of notion of a "healthy body." Trans bodies call into question all sorts of assumptions about what a "healthy body" or a "natural body" is and whether that's really equivalent to maximum wellness for a given patient. I don't think medical ethics has really been able to tackle this. Obviously it's related to some rad-fem comments about trans people being "mutilated" and it's another interesting idea for the cyborg manifesto too: is there really a "natural body" that needs to be safeguarded and held up as the ideal?
Yus, not to deny. I’m mostly thinking where I’d put my marginal dollar if I were a rational activist, & I suspect (forgive the idle speculation) that, money talks & all, insurance would leverage changes in training & practice. It’s vertiginous to contemplate that so much turns on something so glacially large as health insurance politics, but in a way it does.
The problem of existing nosological presuppositions in some ways seems easier to rationally address, as the whole thing looks, from where I sit, like a house of cards, & trans people are far from the only ones trying to blow it down. How far formal debates in this area affect the average clinician, I don't know.
Holly, excellent summary of Harroway and what I found useful in reading her.
Luisa wrote: "i think the idea is to learn a less colonial way of looking/categorizing/critiquing humanity from other cultures--many of which are around today to talk with us about these things."
Holly wrote: "we ought to just join these things together and accept that it's a "cyborg," a hybrid of all sorts of things, and that's OK, powerful even. "
Nice.
There has been some activism around the adoption community (I adopted my daughers) about the medical profession's poor response in treating adoptees. Another source of good ideas.
Holly basically brought in all the stuff I was going to bring up next, because we are apparently sharing brains and she's a rockstar. I was gonna start out paleo-, you know, and lay all the foundations of precolonial stuff, and then point out the old European stuff, and then move up into--anyway, damn, y'know? I'm just gonna take a moment to be giddy about how much more interesting this conversation got while I was asleep. Back in a bit to jump into it with both feet, comrades.
So in other words, the shift moves from being more detached in theoretical discussions of identity to more interactive and developmental approaches. Rather than focusing on parts, fragments, and aspects of society, we'd focus on the whole and then work our way through each segment.
...Right?
I mean, I've noticed that a lot of colonialist thought, as well as other modes of study, deals with detachment and observation and experimentation. Even some levels of immersion that precede full immersion have a detached, "watch-guess-wait and see" element to it.
(I'm sorry if I'm being too abstract...but that's where my mind lives.)
Ravenm, though Holly got at some of your question, the idea that we can be free of these medicalized realities is, at base, pretty ablist. Some of us need medications. Some of us need glasses, or wheelchairs, or pins in our hips. Some of us, temporarily, are able-bodied and so on, but eventually, we become dependent in one way or another on, well, technology. Glasses have been normalized in our society, but they're medical technology, and so are organ transplants, and antidepressants, and so on.
These are all tech-based body mods, when you get right down to it, and to deny them to people on some kind of purist principle is elitist and ablist in the extreme. Even having the luxury of choosing to augment your body to improve your quality of life--like wearing glasses--is a fine thing, and to lecture other folk about doing these things is, to m, a mockery of all the people who don't have the advantage.
I get twitchy about technology's ubiquity in our lives--in my life--but that's because I forget that my house is technology, and so is alcohol, and belts, and indoor plumbing. The thing is to not let it rule our lives, but to bend it to being used to improve them and still remain human.
And this is where the transhumanist and posthumanist and body-mod movements come in really handy. While I get leery of a lot of the notions that come out of them on a matter-of-taste level, they have a couple principles I think can do all of us a great deal of good.
The first is physical self-determination. It's hard for me to integrate because, religiously and culturally, I tend to believe that other people--society, those in need, my family--have claims on me and my body and any strengths I have, that we're obligated to each other in many ways. But the body-mod movement especially declares that we have ownership of ourselves, on a radical level. If we're not harming others, whether or not they find what we do with our own bodies distasteful, they have no business telling us what we like or want, and no right to determine what our bodies mean to ourselves. Someone else may find my changes to my body disgusting--whether they're tattoos, or piercings, or scarifications, or implants, or surgery. That doesn't mean they own me and my choices. After all, plenty of people might find my body distasteful before modification in the first place. They can keep me out of their private spaces, maybe, but their rights don't extend to whether or not I get to exist in public spaces.
I think that can be very usefully integrated into a 21st-century progressive feminism.
The second is that technology is not our enemy, and that we're already in a way transorganic organisms by virtue of our use of technology to modify and improve our lives--even to the point of directly altering our bodies around the clock in order to make our situations more pleasant, as with the wearing of glasses and shoes. There is no backwards in culture. These things will become part of our lives, and by pretending they don't exist, we let them master us, instead of the other way 'round. If we grapple with our technologies, we can make sure they're ours. We're conditioned to think they're sinful and "unnatural," but "natural," among anything else, is yet another cultural construct. Queer sex isn't "unnatural," and neither is using machines--even simple machines like levers and lenses--for ourselves, so long as we're mindful.
Another angle to bring in is the vegan movement. A lot of people in the vegan movement think of themselves as closer to nature than omnivores, for instance, but they're missing something: without technology, their lifestyles would be impossible. Leaving aside any referendum on their lives and choices, to be vegan is to use technological advances to get further away from the animal in human existence and choose to go against the grain of "nature" for moral reasons--even if your reasons are in support of that "nature" in the first place. Vegans take advantage of technologies like vitamins and vegetable-oil products and synthesized proteins to change their biological realities and make it possible to live in accordance with the principle don't-use-animal-products. "Natural" is a funny notion, even if it's one I'm personally attached to.
So there's that.
Attaching these fragments of movements to a postcolonial, progressive, trans-positive, mindful feminism is, I think, a fruitful cross-pollination.
I posted this over at bfp's, but i have a feeling it might get modded out because i think that particular thread is meant very specifically to be about woc, trans and otherwise. i did want to put it somewhere, though.
Just: yes, again, what we were starting to talk about, “liminal spaces.”
and, i was thinking of it in conjunction with Kevin (Slant Truth’s) notion of “transformative politics,” which is an idea i think still in the formulation process–
but, just, maybe that’s the connection, between what piny was also starting to get at with “marginalia” (although just speaking personally, i don’t like the idea of fixing on ‘margins,’ because it is, as you say, about recentering. i think piny feels that way about it too, ftr)
–anyway, that maybe that’s what that’s about, “transformative politics.” That trans-formation happens in the liminal spaces. And there are so many kinds of liminal spaces…
Really brilliant post, LL. I think my experiences navigating medical frameworks and all sorts of notions about the body, as a trans person, have really helped me question "naturalness" a lot more than I ever did when I was younger and more enamored with "the natural," and I have found a lot of the same theories useful.
In particular about bodily self-determination, culture, and family... I definitely had a lot of major hurdles to overcome here. I come from a family -- on both sides, really -- that believes strongly in bodily integrity and not modifying "what you've been given." In part because in certain ways, your body kind of belongs to your family (especially reproductively). Obviously that presents a lot of problems for a lot of people in different situations.
The only way I was able to resolve it, at least in my head, although it took some more doing in the rest of the world, was to realize that if I got myself sorted out and to a place where I didn't feel like gendered systems were affecting me so debilitatingly, I probably would actually be a much better member of my family. And I kind of hope I have been since (although once I really start thinking about it, I get guilty all over again).
Belledame brought Judaism up on bfp's blog, and it's worth noting that I've known a number of Jewish trans people who've had similar struggles with regards to Jewish strictures (which I'm afraid I'm not real familiar with) about body modification.
I think we make our own. I'm sure something like two spirits existed in any number of cultures (of course, I'm sure of that on the basis of no evidence at all, but still) - so, create our own, that is all inclusive, with a nod to the ones we know about.
Most people are divorced from their ancient cultures and stories anyway, with all the other stuff that's been laid overtop of them, and the lost histories and so on, so one can just recreate something that would have more significance and relevance in a very messed up, modern world, yet that still reaches back to the old ways.
This has been the approach to neopaganism i've found most attractive, fwiw.
oh yes--no tattoos, say. otoh, given how many secular and/or lax practicing Jews there are, i don't know how often that necessarily comes up. the tattoo thing does have a special resonance though, i think, since the Holocaust (the numbers), for some people at least.
the only other way i also tend to hear it, at least among circles i'm most familiar with, is, like, you know, getting nosejobs vs. not, but that's the same assimilation/kowtowing to mainstream ideas of beauty thing as you get in a number of cultures.
otoh it's always been a very pragmatic religion/culture, and devoted to fairness and arguing over nuances to the .0001th degree. at any rate i think that most Jewish folks, at least Conservative and down, orthodoxy-wise, who were comfortable with lgb people would not have a problem with the idea of transgender, physical transition included.
have cochlear implants (some in the non hearing community oppose that, as well)
Yes, that is an interesting comparison.
Ultimately what it boils down to is just -how much- this culture has invested in the male/female dualism, and male means y and female means x and never the twain shall blur, glory hallelujah, world without end.
...it is sort of interesting: i wonder if there's a case to be made that -all- so-called "identity politics" in the U.S., at least, suffer a bit from that cultural heritage of...what is it, Cartesian dualism? maybe the first real important culture-based split here is the mind-body split, idea-wise. shrug.
but i say this in part because i have more than once had it observed to me by friends from other cultures that they found it odd how person ___ (a U.S. person) was -so- invested in being a "real" whatever it was. one example of "Jewish realness" (second-hand, Argentine Jewish friend was talking about her host for a conference she was attending), i was thinking of that;
and how in that described instance, along with so many others i can think of, with Americans (U.S.) who have become passionately invested in this or that "identity," how in fact, perhaps not coincidentally, the person in question was coming from a rather shaky sense of identity within that culture. in other words, he'd never been to Israel, but was now vehemently pro-Israel and planning a kibbutz at some future date; wasn't raised religious, but was now learning Hebrew and immersing himself in all the finer points of this and that, kosher, yadda...
...you know. in a way--this isn't nice, but: it sort of reminds me of the classic phenomenon of men "insecure in their masculinity," Hemingway, you know, performing this exaggerated macho as a kind of undoing of the anxiety. overcompensation.
and: what i was starting to say. oh. that i wonder if in the U.S., this sense of...anxiety, this I-don't-really-know-who-I-am-and-I-need-a-box-to-fit-in, isn't exaggerated because, one, our heritage in the culture you're talking about, Protestant, Cartesian, Enlightenment, "Western," what have you;
and two, because we are of course a nation of immigrants, and there are probably far more of us who can't really trace our "family tree" back more than a few generations, much less our various cultural heritages, than not.
of course this is no doubt especially true for anyone who's been part of a "diaspora," but i think even yer average white "mutts" must feel it from time to time. the "melting pot," you know. it is hard to reconcile the idea of the "melting pot" (yeah, it's still around) with the whole, "this goes in THIS box, and that goes in THAT box, and..."
luisa: (they are not all ancient, they exist in moderity just like the rest of us). Thank you, thank you, thank you. I didn't stress that enough.
Nanette: The only way they can make that argument, in my view, is if they feel the same sense of ownership over the bodies of transfolk as the right wingers and others feel they have over women born women. I think that novel of a comment I just left might have been better if I'd just left it at what you said right here. People try to claim ownership and custodianship over trans bodies very much in the same way as radical anti-choice activists claim ownership over cis women's bodies and reproductive capabilities. That absolutely connects.
Holly, I pretty much want to repeat everything you say, I'm afraid. Clearly this brain-friend thing was a good idea.
More on that notion of cultural resistance to body mods and the feeling of outside ownership on one's body--you mentioned reproduction, and I forgot to involve that earlier. That's absolutely wrapped up in this.
By transgendering my body, I am explicitly choosing to render myself infertile. I am currently capable of producing genetic offspring, technically, though the days are running out on that. In a matter of months, that will no longer be true. And that's a big deal, especially for someone who's so culturally oriented toward family. Especially when you consider that though I consider adoption a matter of real family connection, adoption looks like less and less of a viable option for me, too, since there's only so many agencies willing to deal with trans people in the first place and the process is arduous enough for potential adoptive parents without having to convince a bunch of strangers that on top of everything else, this doesn't make me unfit for parenthood.
Parenthood was one of my dearest-held dreams growing up. I'm still interested in it. I'm going to a fertility clinic to discuss options any day now. But I might have to give it up, and content myself with helping to care for my brothers' children and so on.
Add into that the heartbreak for parents who're culturally and emotionally wrapped up in the continuity of the bloodline, like mine, and it gets messier.
Fertility and reproduction are a huge part of negotiating physical realities of transition.
My dad's Jewish, Belle, and always forbade his children to ever get tattoos or piercings of any kind. The Holocaust association was explicitly referenced during my childhood, in regard to this rule, and underscored its seriousness. We were taught that it was sad and shameful for a person to want to modify the natural state of their bodies, and an explicit giving-of-the-finger to ancestors who'd suffered to avoid being forced into body modification.
As soon as tattoos were put on a spectrum of body modification with sex reassignment surgery, funny enough, he was like, "Go ahead, kiddo! Experiment! Get a little tattoo or something, get it out of your system!"
I'm really glad to see these conversations are continuing to take place. Not just that, but such personally-based as well as overarching stuff that seems to all be going in such a positive direction.
I'm sorry to say, though, that I really need -- for my own personal health and safety -- to drop out. If anyone needs an explanation, I'll gladly give one, but I don't feel at ease with giving one since I've already once nearly triggered someone else into a depression and I don't want to make a big deal about it.
Please know that I'm with everyone in spirit, full of support and love for all of you and for all you're doing.
(please delete this if for any reason it derails anything and if someone feels the need to dress me down for anything, let me know and I'll give some sort of contact information so such can be done.)
Oh no, we keep saying everything the other one was going to say, we might become totally redundant! Clearly the blogosphere might not need two multi-racial asian-american trans women. HA, as if. I say more, more! If we all think exactly the same way it'll be easier to take over the world.
As far as major world religions go, Judaism seems to have a pretty good track record as far as trans people go. I mean, the Conservative rabbis not long ago put out an edict on transgender issues that was accepting (and actually lets trans people change gender officially) even if it is at the very... well, conservative end of acceptance (only trans people who have undergone genital surgery).
Tikkun magazine published an article a while back about how some Jewish communities are opening up rites like mikvahs to trans people more and more too. And they have another article up now too:
http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0509/article.2005-08-10.3345465137
But yeah, the serious soul-searching about body-mod was from Jewish friends who themselves or in their families held pretty strong beliefs about stuff like body mods and tattoos, not exactly the norm I guess.
As far as what belledame said about American identity-searching, I think it is right on. You see it in all sorts of different ways, some more productive than others. Appropriating other cultures for convenient identity shore-ups falls squarely into "others." I've definitely seen white Americans in their teens and twenties complain about not feeling like they have any cultural identity, when confronting the problematic aspects of this kind of thing. I kind of wonder -- is this what happens when you try to foist your culture and way of thinking on everyone else as a global culture? When what might have once been a local culture of some sort becomes a sprawling octopus that encompasses the whole landscape? Something gets left behind and people feel empty, the price to pay.
Oh, and little light... fertility is a very funny thing. There are more and more trans people these days who are having children after being on hormones for a long time, something that people used to claim was practically impossible. I know a couple who have two kids now; both of them are trans and stopped taking their respective hormones to conceive (and him during his pregnancy).
Of course, I think this is still a crapshoot. You can't expect to be able to stop hormones and then have a kid, not for sure; and some people are waiting anxiously to make sure that kids of trans parents who have been on T or E are healthy.
Everyone I know who has chosen to have a kid this way has definitely done so with a lot of medical advice, but I don't think anyone knows 100% because mainstream medicine just doesn't bother to know about trans people's reproductive capacity to any real degree. They just don't tell you everything at the doctor's office. Or in the "conventional wisdom" resources. Because we just don't really know everything.
Still, when you meet a burly balding guy with a full beard who is also pregnant, you can't help but think... this is definitely messing with gendered assumptions and structures somehow!
The only way they can make that argument, in my view, is if they feel the same sense of ownership over the bodies of transfolk as the right wingers and others feel they have over women born women. I think that novel of a comment I just left might have been better if I'd just left it at what you said right here. People try to claim ownership and custodianship over trans bodies very much in the same way as radical anti-choice activists claim ownership over cis women's bodies and reproductive capabilities. That absolutely connects.
Well, and you know, I have to say this: the way Heart was talking about TG folk, particularly the "this fight doesn't concern you [outsiders]" business and the whole, we ("radical feminists") "know" TG folk very well, many of "us" having dated them and blahblah...
...i made the connection, make of it what you will, to a white antebellum or Jim Crow era Southerner expressing outrage at those meddling Yankees, interfering; you don't know "them" like we do, we have a special relationship, we take care of our own...
"speaking for," patronizing, acting as though it were only about an internecine battle between two very marginalized groups of people (and as little light suggested elsewhere, it is disingenuous to try to draw an equivalence between an -ideology- and being transgendered)...i found it all very -off,- let's say.
I kind of suspect the "ideology" as straw-man to attack got set up because people kept pointing out that no, not all trans people are the same. Before it started getting popular to make claims about some abstract "trans ideology," a lot of these same people (Heart, Questioning Transgender, etc) just made about trans people in general, luckynkl style.
If they talk trash about "trans ideology," unwitting observers might just think they're talking about particular authors or theorists (which they're not? who?). And keeping it abstract means they're not talking about anyone in particular, means they can't be refuted.
Really "trans ideology" seems to mean "my impressions of a bunch of trans people, most of whom I argued with online, and some web pages I read, and some things I read about what Camp Trans and Riki Wilchins did, other random news clippings, and this one trans woman I was grossed out by at a conference once."
Or something like that, give or take an actual friendship or two.
little light,
Hello there! :)
I find the comment on your dad and body modification really interesting. Because his opinion makes complete, complete sense.
And yet here I am as a woman with a physical disability, and my body has never really had a "natural" state -- I was seeing physical therapists for my legs, wearing braces, wearing an eye patch in a feeble attempt to correct a vision impairment, etc. for as long as I can remember. My first surgery happened at seven, and the experience of my parents not letting me refuse to consent is one of my creepiest memories. (I was later physically abused by a physical therapist, as well, though I'm straying a bit from my point here.)
So for me, voluntary body modification... well, first of all, I've already got a "constructed" body so there's nothing to spoil. This is why some of that Janice Raymond shit drives me bats -- calling transitioning bodies "constructed" and non-trans bodies natural is just delusionally dumb.
And second, voluntarily modifying my body means saying that I get to choose how it changes. If I saw the only "acceptable" way of reconstructing my body as handing myself over to a doctor so I can be "fixed" (interesting how we use that word also to mean "neutered"), I think I'd really have a strongly reduced sense of my own agency. I haven't modified my body much at all but I have, and I'm glad I have.
And so... this is another intersectionality thing, really. Because my point of view makes perfect sense AND SO DOES your dad's. And that I think is where people get lost. Different histories give different things radically different meanings.
Like when I mentioned porn and anti-porn feminism on my LJ. A lot of feminists speak very soulfully about the use of women as sexual objects. Where, for me as a WWD, I know much more about NOT being assumed to be a sexual object. Being assumed to be untouchable. Is it any wonder that I like some porn, or that I enjoy doing BDSM play in front of others and hearing that they enjoy watching me or like my body(!!!) when you realize that? Not really, no -- and that's the way a lot of this is. SO multidimensional.
Hey, Trin!
(Yes, that was me in that other corner of the internets, by-the-by. I try and keep this blog not-so-connected to that one, mostly for privacy reasons--that one's much more traceable to my workplace and so on.)
I'm at work all tonight, so I can't respond substantively yet, but yes. Just yes. I'm attached to "natural" as much as anyone, but it's all constructed, and the purist view is a whole lot of ablist.
Anyway, I'll be back.
Come 'round any time.
People need external stuff to sort out their sense of identity -- existence demands reflection, demands distinctions to be made. And some of that will be "I'm like that", and some of that will be "I'm not like that" and some of that will be "I want to be like that", and other sorts of questions.
The reflections that people need vary wildly.
I can go into, say, questions of power exchange and say that I want these reflections; other people only see pain reflected there, or oppression, or restriction, or patriarchy. And without recognising that we have different shapes and are looking in different mirrors to reveal different secret crevices of our souls, we get stuck on "This is freedom" vs. "This is oppression".
There are mirrors I don't use because they scar me when I try to reflect that shape. Other people use those mirrors all the time, illuminating themselves, illuminating a world that they would rather see -- and sometimes that world is one I would prefer, too, but I can't use the tools they're using to get there.
Mirrors have sharp edges, especially if they crack. That's a thing to remember too.
dw3t-hthr,
Awesome awesome observation. I agree totally. The thing I wonder is: how do we best respect people who choose to use mirrors that we don't choose to use?
Because that's the thing I see so many people hung up on. Oh, you use dildoes? BAD COPYING YOU! Oh, you like porn? OH NO NO NO. Oh, you're going to transition? WELL I CONSIDERED THAT AND THEN FIGURED MY POLITICS MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE SO DON'T YOU DO IT!
I don't know what the solution is. I don't want to make anyone do anything that doesn't work for them. But I do often think all the "questioning" comes from a place that's really harmful. I think we have to be mature enough to see that others can often do things that would harm or scar us.
But how to get that idea simmering through all of feminism? That I don't know.
One way to start is to be open to the possibility that other people can think for themselves, and just because they do something you might not doesn't mean they've been brainwashed, have false consciousness, or are dupes of the system, incapable of thinking critically about their own situation or using the same political analysis as you. Sadly, that's the kind of assumption some people seem to make all the time.
Little Light and I talk about that occasionally, often in the context of feminism (which is, I note, a particular mirror).
I think it takes recognising things are mirrors -- by both people involved. Because then one can look at the mirror without necessarily assigning moral value to its use, one can say, "What are you trying to reflect with that?" and have a chance of hearing that answer. And one can also say, "I don't see anything useful to me when I look in that mirror" or "When I use that mirror, I cut myself here". And that can be heard, too.
And one can get into the nuts and bolts of the use of the tool, rather than wandering around with (to abruptly change metaphors) nothing but hammers and treating each other with nails.
And maybe my issue with using a particular mirror is because I'm mispositioning it or don't understand what I'm seeing -- and maybe, shit, the edges on that thing are wicked sharp and other people don't grip it the same way, or maybe I don't have the bit that other people are looking at in it in the first place, or am storing it somewhere else on my person. But none of those questions can be even addressed without putting down the "How dare you offend against my sacred mirror!" attitude and actually look at what we're doing with the things.
(Also, I am overcome with entertaining irony -- the goddess referenced in my handle counts mirrors among Her sacred symbols.)
Hi Little Light,
Thank you for this post.
I just want to add on to some of the comments about "cyborg feminism" and notions that as a transsexual I am duped by the medical establishment.
To clarify, Haraway is using the term cyborg in its original meaning, i.e. a cybernetic organisim. Roughly, a cyborg uses synthetic instruments to extend its consciousness.
For humans, the most basic cyborg unit with which we operate is...the pencil.
A penci is unnatural to human existence. With it we extend our consciousness and have inextricably altered earth forever.
Blogging is cybernetic.
So when certain radfems blog about returning to nature, then I respond, "well, then no more pencils baby. Only live in caves, etc."
For Haraway and others "cyborg" feminists, they are essentially arguing that we stop arguing this false dichotomy between natural and unnatural, since human existence in 21st century, in varying degrees, is completely unnatural.
Cars, books, cell phones, blogs, electricity, water pumps, wheelbarrows....
One of the ways that this false dichotomy gets played out is that people who option medical modalities to alter our bodies are called "unnatural." Well, so is taking vitamins, weight lifting, coloring ones hair, nail polish, oh and let's not forget taking insulin for diabetes; nexium for heartburn, oh and there are prosthetics of all kinds....
I personally have no problem with being unnatural. We all are.
Jay,
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still have pins in my legs that haven't been taken out yet. I actually also have broken pieces of metal embedded in one of my femurs where other pins broke. No, broken stuff isn't cyborg-useful. But it still means I am part metal part biology even if I get the other plate taken out, no matter what happens to me.
You're totally right. The cyborgs are already here.
dw3t-hthr,
Yes. Exactly. Oh my, yes. I remember getting into discussions with anti-BDSM radfems where they'd be like "Well, I tried BDSM, and all I got was abused." I find that these people very often assume I'm going to tell them that they go find a new, nice Dom Daddy. They seem puzzled when I say nothing of the kind. If it didn't work for you, it didn't... and that may be totally independent of whether or not your dates were assholes.
I do sometimes think that some of the women working tirelessly to purge their brains of sexual fantasies they think are anti-feminist are doing the wrong thing. But that's not because I want to see these people using dildos or acting out rape fantasies or something. It's only because I think blaming yourself for thoughts and feelings you've been unable to get rid of for years isn't productive.
I don't think it's antifeminist to say to yourself, "Okay, this is here. I don't think it would be healthy for me to indulge these fantasies, because that worries me" and just leave it at that, rather than climbing on the OH MY GOD I THOUGHT ABOUT VIOLENT SEX AND I GOT OFF O NO hamster wheel.
My problem with a lot of the "These fantasies are antifeminist" or "These desires are antifeminist" or "These life goals are antifeminist" things boils down to:
It's just another "good woman" vs. "bad woman" dichotomy.
I mean, the feminism I grew up around had the "good woman" as the professional go-getter, the corporate winner, the ambitious, the one who's out there and Proving That The Man Can't Keep Us Down. The "bad woman" was the one who 'limited herself' to home and family, had a domestic focus, was basically betraying feminism by not going out there and holding the space that Our Foremothers had claimed.
The closest I'm ever likely to come to corporate go-getter is my stint as a legal secretary in a tiny law firm. And when I quit that job because I needed to (for psychological reasons) I sobbed on and off for a couple of months -- because was the fact that I was letting my then-fiance take care of my material needs a sign that I was a Bad Woman?
I came out of that just flatly opposed to "good woman"/"bad woman" ideology.
Hi Trin,
You know, I was thinking about this cyborg thing on my lunch walk and remembered when I had my bike accident and the cast they put on my arm and the fancy xrays they took and the plastic surgeon specializing in facial traumas who stitched up my broken chin...
I wonder if the anti-human rad fems want all that taken away in their natural worlds???
Little Light: I guess the question is, then--in building something new--how will we take advantage of the chance to choose our tools and materials? What can each of us bring to the table?
Personally, the biggest thing I'd like to see, based on what we know, is the definitions coming from the people they apply to, not the people they don't apply to. There's a long history on Earth of humans defining other humans from the outside in (American Indians, anyone?); personally, when I meet people who have different experiences from mine, I like to learn their names for themselves. I'd hope we would have learned to let people categorize themselves, or not, if so they chose.
I also think there's a distinct difference between people who are physically and chromosomally one sex or the other and people who are not; an XXY individual will have a very different experience from an XY individual who identifies as female, for example. The reality of being born indeterminant and having your parents chose a gender for you is very different, but no less tragic, than being kicked out of your house for gender switching. Personally, I'd like to see if there are things these different groups of people can give to and teach each other, too.
Personally, the biggest thing I'd like to see, based on what we know, is the definitions coming from the people they apply to, not the people they don't apply to. There's a long history on Earth of humans defining other humans from the outside in
Well the thing that's really crazy-making is, as feminists, THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THIS. and they do...as regards their own sweet selves.
For Haraway and others "cyborg" feminists, they are essentially arguing that we stop arguing this false dichotomy between natural and unnatural, since human existence in 21st century, in varying degrees, is completely unnatural.
I'm going to play devil's (witch's?) advocate here. I don't think radfems are arguing for a more "natural" body. I think they are saying we can't know what our natural bodies are because our gender definitions are created by the patriarchy. Once the patriarchy is smashed, a transgendered person will be accepted as whatever gender sie chooses, regardless of the body sie is in.
Holly said:
"One way to start is to be open to the possibility that other people can think for themselves, and just because they do something you might not doesn't mean they've been brainwashed, have false consciousness, or are dupes of the system, incapable of thinking critically about their own situation or using the same political analysis as you. Sadly, that's the kind of assumption some people seem to make all the time. "
Sing it, sister!
but ravenmn, to toss the ball back at you: what if there exist some transfolk, or whatever you call 'em, post-revolution, who still want to modify their bodies? Is it a no-no because it's "mutilation" or is it "hey, anyone can have hormones and/or surgery because we're all free now?"
Sing it, dw3t-hthr! It IS all "good woman"/"bad woman", and if we really ARE in the business of looking for "patriarchal influence" I say that kind of division is something we inherited from patriarchy, from virgin and whore.
I'm really glad deoridhe brought up intersex people in this discussion too... because although I don't think it's happened in this thread, I've often seen a tendency to use intersex people as a sort of object lesson in gender, sex, and biology. They're just pulled onstage to prove some kind of point, then they disappear again. To me this is still too much like the scientists who paraded intersex bodies around like fascinating exhibits they'd discovered, proving something about biological "oddities." Intersex people have their own voices and agency and their own feelings and politics about gender, too.
I'm not intersex and it's important to note that, and understand that trans & intersex are two different things... because all too often trans people trying to grasp after some sort of (badly needed) legitimizing force take intersex and appropriate it for their own ends. Which often have nothing to do with the lives and struggles and suffering of intersex adults and infants. So that's all I'll say on that and just let IS people tell you if you want more info:
http://www.eminism.org/
http://www.intersexinitiative.org/
http://www.isna.org/
Hi Ravenmn,
I'm going to play devil's (witch's?) advocate here. I don't think radfems are arguing for a more "natural" body. I think they are saying we can't know what our natural bodies are because our gender definitions are created by the patriarchy. Once the patriarchy is smashed, a transgendered person will be accepted as whatever gender sie chooses, regardless of the body sie is in.
I know they say this. Underneath the argument, though, is a belief that by a transsexual changing the body, that is somehow a warped patriarchal choice, right?
Notice the desired outcome they believe will arrive. I won't have to change my body since I will be accepted in whatever body I came with. So the undesired outcome is manipulating the body because it is "unnatural" to do so.
In very clear terms trans hating radfems have stated that I, and presumably others like me, are tools of the pat(triarchal)man because I rely on the medical establishment to change my body.
I believe that underneath this mythology about how la-la happy we will all be in in their fantasy land of no patriarchy (but what about racism, you might ask??), exists a bottomless well of ambivalence towards technology and science.
The desired outcome - no changing of the body - crystallizes that fear.
me: Personally, the biggest thing I'd like to see, based on what we know, is the definitions coming from the people they apply to, not the people they don't apply to. There's a long history on Earth of humans defining other humans from the outside in
Belledame: Well the thing that's really crazy-making is, as feminists, THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THIS. and they do...as regards their own sweet selves.
That's one of the interesting undercurrents of this, and I think it extends beyond even just this issue. There's a real tendency to stake out claims of what is defendable and what isn't based on personal preference. Universalizing beyond that can imply things people don't want to - for example, o paraphrase Carlin, if seeling is legal and fucking is legal and we support the right of individuals to do what they want with their bodies... how can we NOT support legalized prostitution?
And that's the point where you lose half the room; they're there ideologically, but not practically.
jay,
Yeah. Just YEAH.
I'm not trans myself so I wouldn't know, but somehow I really don't think that after the (mythical!) Revolution REALLY COMES, no transperson will want to modify hir body. I do think some people who feel like they have to do it now to move safely through the world (just think of the violence and hate toward people who look gender-deviant) would not feel the same pressure and choose not to. But I think MANY other people change their bodies for other reasons or a different mixture of reasons, and would choose to.
And I don't see that as a bad thing at all. I think we all have a right to modify our bodies and we don't need to explain that. (In some cases it's definitely best to make sure we know what we want; extreme body modification isn't reversible. But I don't think any of the current forms of body mod, for any purpose, would suddenly stop after the Revolution.)
The transfolk I know who have spoken on the subject have commented that they feel their brains work better when bathed in a hormone balance more appropriate to their post-transition sex.
I can't speak to that (while I consider myself genderqueer, I have no personal knowledge of the feelings of discomfort with one's sex), but I do have experience dealing with different sets of brain bath chemistry problems. (I have had a pretty much lifelong struggle with depression.) When I'm doing the dietary things that keep my chemistry close to where my body appears to think it should be, I'm fine. If I miss a vitamin pill, everything just gets more difficult -- little things in my cognition just don't work quite right anymore, and that gets worse the more of them I miss.
My body just doesn't produce the optimal chemistry for my brain function on its own. I've heard transfolk talk about their emotional patterns getting easier to handle (including a transman who stopped being prone to rage attacks when he went on hormones, how's that for fucking with stereotypes), depression and anxiety issues getting less or even vanishing, generalised 'reality is easier to deal with', all related to having the right chemical brain bath.
Lots of us out there don't synthesise the right chemical bath ourselves. Which bits our bodies don't handle right vary a lot, how much we can fix by tweaking our diet or taking supplements or biofeedback or whatever and how much we need to get injected every so often varies, but it's all basically the same thing -- getting the system the chemical bath the parts need, even if the component that was supposed to produce that system crapped out somewhere along the line.
I think the anti-trans argument goes something like, well if you want to change your body right now, then you must be influenced by the patriarchy's demands. And therefore if the result of your body modification is that you're more acceptable somehow -- or even if you're less acceptable, but you're not doing "enough" to challenge the system, then what you're doing is either giving in to the patriarchy or just serving as a false distraction to the real important goals.
Which is just another way of saying "we don't care about the things that people like you have to go through in order to get to a place where you can actually be yourself and deal with the world."
The real kicker of course is that there are plenty of non-trans feminists who gender themselves all the time, every day, and don't ever turn the harsh magnifying glass on even the little things they do or don't do to ensure the world keeps seeing them as women (or men).
The reason it never seems to get through when you point this out to certain radical feminists is that they already believe that sexism is the prime oppression, that being a woman is already as bad as it gets. And that nobody who knows what it's really like to be a woman could possibly want to "move in" to woman as a category when really all women with proper feminist consciousness want to "move out" by destroying gender. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure this is the "get in / get out" thing that some people like Heart have mentioned.
The thing is, obviously women are punished and targeted for violence under a patriarchal system. But so is anyone who departs from gender norms or finds themselves outside of accepted categories, for whatever reason, no matter how they identify. There's a difference between being oppressed for being a woman, and being oppressed for being a gender-outcast. (Plus I don't think it's productive to try and "rank" or "prioritize" those differences... as usual...)
This seems to be the fundamental "not getting it" point for a lot of anti-trans feminists, or feminists who are just bewildered, who say things like "all women are already gender-variant."
Or who assume that trans people are trying to prove that we're "more oppressed" than women somehow. Different oppressions, but definitely interlinked (similar to how homophobia is connected to gender too) and you know what? They can overlap! Things are complicated! You can get shit for being a woman; you can get shit for being a not-man; and you can definitely get shit for being an outcast. Unfortunately in a purist approach to the world, anything that's not "exactly" a woman ends up getting categorized as a man... even when the oppressive system itself ends up being more complicated, inadvertantly.
I was hoping that after the revo, we'd have access to a lot more body modificaiton, not less!
The other problem with any "dupes of the patriarchy" argument is you have to consider other people to be fairly stupid. And yourself, of course, incredibly smart for having figured it out.
Even if you do believe that shit, there isn't much benefit to our movements by saying so out loud. Do people really think someone is going to say, "Well, gee, you're right. I am a stupid dupe of the evil patriarchy. Thanks for sharing!"
Dw3t-Hthr, I like your comments about hormones helping a brain work better. That makes so much sense.
After the revolution, we'll all have designer hormone levels. With nanomachines, according to Twisty!
It's true about hormone levels and your brain feeling different, in my experience. If there weren't so many other weird ramifications, socially and biologically, I'd suggest everyone try it and see.
holly,
I've always felt that if I could easily do it and it wouldn't mean I'd grow massive amounts of unwanted body hair that would not later go away, I'd try taking testosterone. I've always wondered what it would be like.
Especially since... my body absolutely HATES any added estrogen. I fall to pieces on the pill. Also it has made my body more "feminine" in shape, and I really, really, really don't like that.
I honestly wonder about myself and gender a lot. I'm definitely a woman, but I'm weird. I think if I were more involved in the queer community and hadn't been told over and over by the "real" dykes that I'm not, I'd ID as butch.
Hi again,
Nothing to add but to say thanks to Trin, Holly, and dw3-hthr for their words.
I'm just gonna second Jay for a moment: if it's not already clear, this conversation has make me giddy with joy.
i think part of the problem is that we are forced to live in a world that is not of our own making. in an effort to make life as bearable as we can, some of us make physical changes. we are *all* shaped by our biology *and* our social environment - that's part of what defines us as human beings.
it's easy to look at behavior from the "outside", and pass judgement. and it's easy to fall into the "more oppressed than thou" mindset.
from my perspective, i find i'm a lot more effective in everything i do after i pull the proverbial thorn from my paw.
(Coming late to the conversation by way of BD's place)
In relation to the question of cultural appropriation of other models of gender, I'd like to caution against only validating identities that can be traced through cultural and/or historical traditions; we need to accept as many identities as there are people who wish to claim or inhabit them. (I can't tell you how frustrating it is for me when people insist I'm 'two-spirit' or 'shamanic' because I'm gender variant.)
On the issue of the brain being 'awash in chemicals', it may be true for others, but for me, I don't notice much of a difference after two and a half years of endocrinological tinkering. I've seen no gain or decrease in empathy, spatial skills, verbal or mathematical abilities, or any other traits usually associated with one or the other of the usual genders. Again, just my experience, but I do want to claim it as my own, and to stake some territory as a nonbinary, nontrassexual transgendered person.
prosphoros,
Thanks for saying that. I see a lot of people in feminist circles really get bamboozled when faced with the supposedly incontrovertible evidence that.. how's it go? Something like "FTMs can never cry and fly into rages and fuck anything that moves and MTFs cry at the drop of a hat and suddenly cuddle rather than have sex."
All of which I've met (well, mostly online, I only know a small handful of transfolk offline) people who fit and people who totally don't. A couple of the horniest people I know are trans women.
"...MTFs cry at the drop of a hat and suddenly cuddle rather than have sex."
well, fwiw, i've always cried at the drop of a hat, from my earliest memories. and i like to cuddle *and* have sex.
like you prosphoros, hrt had little if any effect on me as far as my personality or any gendered traits are concerned. it didn't really effect my body very much either. in some circles, i am considered a "worst case scenario".
nexy said:
"like you prosphoros, hrt had little if any effect on me as far as my personality or any gendered traits are concerned."
Just in case I wasn't clear initially, I don't really believe in gendered traits in any absolute or deterministic way. What I do believe is that there's an ongoing mistake in arbitrarily splitting all of human experience into two parts.
Nexy: cuddling and having sex = awesome! :)
and now I pretend to have something interesting to say! TA-DAAAAAAAH.
I just wanted to clarify that although I said "it's true about hormone levels and your brain feeling different, in my experience," like other people who posted on this thread I don't feel that my personality has changed or like I've acquired some set of gendered traits, change in emotional processing, spatial abilities, or any of the usual stereotypes. The stuff I've heard some people say in the name of hormones boggles the imagination (that testosterone causes you to take up more physical space with your body posture?).
Although I don't want to deny that everyone has their own set of experiences and reactions to changing their hormonal balance, I also think there's a widespread tendency to confuse or conflate the biological effects of hormones with all sorts of other things that change due to being gendered different socially, from outside and inside, as well as going through a major life change. I think that culturall, our society tends to jump right to biological explanations and "science," especially when social effects are diffuse, semi-conscious and hard to put your finger on.
As far as what I do think effects of hormones are on the brain, my experience is that they're both subtle and hard to describe, but the kind of thing that you could see getting blown out of proportion due to how they intersect subtly with other behaviors and feelings. The nearest analogy I can think of is that of different lenses on an expensive camera that make things look slightly different, or at an opthamologist's, during an eye exam. The part where the opthamologist says "which is better... #1? Or #2? Again, #1... and #2." Things are in focus in a slightly, subtly different way, but you can't quite put your finger on it.
However, add in all the social stereotypes about what a hormone is supposed to do (aka the placebo effect, one of the most powerful forces known to medicine) and the effects may start to feel more "definitive." This is kind of evident in how trans women seem to talk in pretty vague, hazy terms about what estrogen feels like, but there is a ton of discussion of precise effects of testosterone amongst a lot of trans guys, that sometimes includes all sorts of stereotypes. We just don't have as many cultural ideas about estrogen, except as it relates to femininity in general (and then usually as a joke) and a bunch of stereotypes about the effects of withdrawal and levels changing during menstrual cycles.
A lot of mind-altering chemicals have effects sort of like this but many of them much stronger -- at least the ones used recreationally do, maybe for obvious reasons. Unlike most recreational drugs, all sorts of hormones including both testosterone and estrogen are already naturally found in everyone's body, so it's no surprise the effects would be more subtle.
"The stuff I've heard some people say in the name of hormones boggles the imagination (that testosterone causes you to take up more physical space with your body posture?)."
Yep. I've heard some FTMs say they "can't cry any more, even about important things" and... well, I don't mean to say that they're lying of course. But it strikes me as truly odd, because I know non-trans men who definitely cry when sad, hurt, even frustrated. It makes me wonder.
Prosphoros wrote:
<<
In relation to the question of cultural appropriation of other models of gender, I'd like to caution against only validating identities that can be traced through cultural and/or historical traditions; we need to accept as many identities as there are people who wish to claim or inhabit them. (I can't tell you how frustrating it is for me when people insist I'm 'two-spirit' or 'shamanic' because I'm gender variant.) >>
yes! and the thing that makes me wary is because this is precisely the way essentialism slips in therough the back door. it's an attempt to legitimate identity practices by reaching back to an historical root.
we don't *need* that to demand anything. i'm not saying it's wrong if you do it, but as some sort of political strategy, it's seems not only a form of cultural appropriation but a superfluous political gesture that bolsters an essentializing posture that only ends up messing with our heads.
*nods* Thanks, piny.
I didn't mean to say that I thought it was bunk, that they'd never noticed anything, etc. I'm sure there is some hormonal effect. I just think it's odd, because I know so many non-trans men who cry. And I think there may be some internalized sexism in the way some guys report changes... I've seen some people talk about themselves as though T has singlehandedly transformed them from fainting flowers to the Incredible Hulk, complete with uncontrollable rage problems, and... eh. I doubt it's that extreme for most people, and if it is that extreme for someone I'd wonder if his dosage is off.
I'm just as positive that there are some effects from hormonal changes as I am that any of those effects are refracted through a whole bunch of very individual social & psychological things, even before they're interpreted.
Actually I saw a survery recently (which I participated in) for trans people about whether people have difficulty crying, even when you want to, while on testosterone. I said I hadn't noticed any difference, but I never had much problem crying. I think it's quite possible that my psyche adjusted itself, in the process of growing up and having rising levels of T, to being able to cry while on T. Whereas an adult who's gotten used to one hormone level and then rather abruptly switches might experience something quite different and more significant-seeming.
In any case, it's interesting and might be scientifically fruitful somehow, although I'd be worried as usual about all sorts of gender stereotypes popping up when people try to interpret this stuff. Still, ideally we wouldn't let the existence of stereotypes stop the process of actually finding out what these substances do to people's brains, which could be really useful. Ideally...
And indeed, tonight on the season premiere of the L Word... yes, I admit it, I was in a bar watching it, although I haven't been following it since the first season. Anyway, there was a scene with a support group for trans guys where they were both talking about how testosterone made some of them unable to cry -- I was so glad that they had one guy saying that he didn't have the exact same experience -- and about how the trans guy character, Max, must have having personality and rage problems because he was taking way too much T, which he got under the table.
True that, piny. Since going on the Pill, I've gone through all kinds of crazy mood stuff and experienced a certain deficit of Cope, but I don't think it can be imputed to estrogen qua estrogen, per se; I think it's much simpler to say that when you rearrange your damn endocrine system, stuff gets upset for a while.
Give it a couple years, y'all, and I'll get back to you on whether or not I'm a Completely Different Person, which I sorta would be anyway.
Still. Dw3t-Hthr has a point about chemical baths, all this notwithstanding. These are powerful chemicals, and they do fiddle with your brain-goo. It strikes me as eminently plausible that someone's brain chemistry might go from 'imbalanced' to 'balanced' with the introduction of hormone treatment, even if that's not a universal for all of us. And hey, it makes for interesting questions.
Oh that discussion is totally annoying. There are some hard-line "anything trans is suspect and bad" people arguing in there that I don't even think are worth responding to. I got off on a tangent about essentialism because honestly, if one trans person can think more about essentialism (I think ArrogantWorm is trans?) which IMHO is a major ideological construct that plays havoc with trans lives, that's worth way more than any amount of fruitless arguing with people who don't want to change their minds.
The thing is, I think we have to understand theories about social construction and essentialism in order to see exactly how wrong the ways they're being applied to trans people are. To find the mistakes. It's tempting to just throw the baby out with the screaming, hateful bathwater, but on the other hand, these theories actually have a lot of good in them for trans people too. We don't have to rely on essentialist theories of gender any more than arguments for gay rights HAVE to prove that homosexuality is genetic.
Especially since these sorts of turf wars, as we both noted, have very little to do with the immediately pressing concerns of survival for vulnerable trans people... I think it's worth taking the time to get the theory right, and build bridges across multiple strands of feminism, at least with the people who are not dead-set in their rigorous opinions.
There's too much fear of feminism in a lot of communities of trans people and even in political movements trying to help trans people survive, and that's because this stuff has been going on for more than three decades, all the way back to when a radical feminist woman denounced Sylvia Rivera at a rally in 1972. But there doesn't have to be, not in principle. These ideas ought to be aligned.
Piny, if it's off topic, I may have to start a new topic. It's pissing me off, too. I am having increasing trouble refraining from just cussing a lot.
No, that makes sense, Piny. What do you think would be a good starting point, if I just throw on another thread?
I'm starting to suspect that Minerva = Renee "Rainsong," notorious internet troll on trans-related subjects. I've never actually been involved in a discussion before but I've watched her act from a distance.
Actually I'm sorry, LL you might want to delete these last couple posts in case mentioning names invokes some sort of summoning.
It's okay, Holly; my mother's a curandera, and I know a thing or two about summoning and banishing when it gets down to brass tacks.
Post a Comment
<< Home