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lavendertook Jul. 5th, 2009 12:09 am)
lavendertook Jul. 5th, 2009 12:09 am)Right before I became aware of the conflict on using the term cisgender that is occurring on Pam's House Blend and journals of LJ and DW, I had listened to an NPR segment for Gay Pride month that interviewed a gay man who was rhapsodizing on the image of the map for states with marriage equality in the US resembling the Big Dipper and what a great gay symbol this could be. He was being cute, and I was smiling along with him until he went on to proclaim its phallic shape and how that made it such a perfect gay symbol, and hello! just like "men" sometimes means people and sometimes means just males and how such a dual use promotes the exclusion of women from the concept of what it is to be human, so the use of gay I was being included under was suddenly yanked off of my table and I was banished to the corner, as this guy considered me nonexistent in his movement and never included under his use of the term gay to begin with.
And yeah, I'm used to seeing this myopic shit from many gay men forgetting and resenting that other queers exist. And they wonder why gay isn't a good enough term for all of us all of the time and why we keep adding letters to the LGBTIQ mix. When I go to the DC Pride celebration in a town where the majority population is POC, the majority of the participants are white and male, and my quasi-gay white hobbit dolls fit in there better than I do.
So, I was inclined to just write off the white gay men's objections to the use of cisgender as privileged discomfort, since it's a term coined to reveal the privilege of the unmarked category of feeling that your gender identity lines up unquestioningly with how you and other people perceive you. Autumn's forbidding of the term cisgender was not helpful, and Pam callingkynn's use of the term "weaponizing," is overkill, as well as Bush-quasi-military-industrial-complex speak, which really can't be a good thing, and I do think they really dumped badly on kynn.
I do have big reservations about the term cisgender from a different angle, about the kind of work describing a binary does and what this particular binary elides, but I didn't think I was seeing that angle being brought up in the posters' objections to the term and I do get the strategic importance of marking the unmarked category. So it looked like privileged objections to being marked to me.
I finally readeftychia's post that browngirl linked to, and it got me thinking, as good posts do--it really gets across the strategic importance of marking the unmarked as the term cisgender does. I'm now, however, reconsidering how I wrote off the objections coming from gay men and how the term cisgender/cissexual applies here and wondering if Pam shares this consideration of the intersections of lived experience that are clashing here.
Some background I'm thinking about: Euro-American/western culture is still in a state of transition in how it regards sexual orientation in relation to gender identity. It is progressing toward separating out these categories, but it is not there yet. It is still mainstream in this culture to question the masculinity of a gay man and the femininity of a lesbian--to assume a gay man will exhibit what is considered feminine characteristics and a lesbian masculine ones. When someone asks who is top and who is bottom (my fellow slashers--I is looking at u, too) it is part of this conflation of sexual orientation with gender identity and the way we regard sex acts as a determinant in how we regard someone's gender. I have reservations about whether or not separating categories of sexual orientation from gender identity is a liberatory development (progressive and liberatory are not synonymous), but this process is inescapably in progress.
Much of Latina/o cultures historically have not made this separation--if you identified as male and you took a dominant role in sex with another man your masculinity was not in question. Gay, transgendered, and feminine identities, and sexual practice are all intertwined here. There are similar models in some Asian and African cultures and some Native American groups, and most of these cultures, Euro-American included on this one, are not as concerned where people considered female fit into the equation because women, you know, aren't as important--it's who gets included in male identity that counts, so marking sexual orientation as third gender becomes important. The transition in separating out sexual orientation and gender identity is very culturally specific to only certain cultures, Euro-American being among those (with Hispanic cultures liminal inclusion in Euro). And some Native American groups where women are important, have a whole different way of looking at gender and sexual orientation as well. My knowledge here is really superficial, and there are other Asian and African cultures I know nothing of. And keep in mind there is a variety of intersections between Native American, African, and Latina/o cultures with multiple sensibilities in regards to gender and sexual orientation, with Euro-American culture influencing all of them.
With all this in mind, there are some problems with calling a gay man, regardless of color, cisgendered, because there is a strong thread in mainstream Western culture that denies him this identity. Now, the violin I pull out here to play for white gay men may be quite small, since my first thought is "Welcome to the unsafe world the rest of us live in!" but the fact is, he is being denied the privilege of being considered unquestioningly male and the top of the pyramid that other people regarded as male and white feel entitled too, and may be subject to the same violence that a transgendered person who does not pass is subject to, and that is oppression--very real lived oppression.
Also the fact that cis- has an uncomfortable aural resemblance to the term sissy does make it a really, really, really unfortunate term to apply to gay men who are policed by such terms.
With these issues in mind, a gay and bi man's objections to the term cisgender, is not the same as a straight man's objections, and does deserve consideration. And one has to keep in mind that straight men are also policed by the term sissy, so this is an issue for them as well. In the process, all people who identify as women are reminded that we are the lesser category of being that male identified people are fearing to be associated with--yay!
Although the association with sissy does not affect lesbians and bi women as a policing term, our cisgender status is also under questionno matter how we identify by gender, especially a lesbian who is regarded as butch, whether or not she considers herself/hirself transgendered or cisgendered. Straight women regarded as butch get all kinds of fun thrown their way too, as do straight men perceived as feminine regardless of their gender identity. And race figures significantly into how feminine or masculine a person is regarded by mainstream white culture. Not all people who would be considered cisgender actually have across the board cisgender privilege if they don't pass other people's conceptions of gender.
How much the term cisgender really does apply to anyone's self-identification is also a question for me. Lyrics like "You make me feel like a natural woman" would make absolutely no fucking sense at all and not have such mainstream appeal if the average person really did take their gender status completely for granted--I don't think they do. They may not have noticed since they were knee high that gender categories and what gets ascribed to gender is a total crock like I did, and felt that de Beauvoir's formulation that no one is born a woman is a given, or they may not have regarded these categories as totally real and feel their bodies do not fit the gender identities they were assigned, but I'm skeptical on how seamless anyone's gender identity may be.
eftychia's call for more consideration of terms here is a really good one because this shit is really, really complicated. Some of the liberatory potential I see in transgender as an identity category is in expanding or breaking with the gender binary of Euro-American culture, more so than in reinforcing a binary that marks "the" unmarked gender category of the moment. So I'm more inclined to go for the overlapping of the categories of transgender/genderqueer/cisgender/intersex, rather than one simple binary myself. I regard the whole gendering system as largely incoherent, anyway. And I'll get into the bogusness of separating sex from gender while using socially constructed language--the only kind we've got--to describe the biological another time.
But in the current moment, cisgender does not neatly map onto any other queer identity, including that of gay white men (even the ones who think their trauma over having to add more letters to the movement they think they started is paramount over the need of others to feel included), and I think that needs to be noted. Matthew Shepard wasn't murdered only because he was gay, but because he troubled his murderers' sense of their own masculinity and status as male. This stuff isn't simple. It's not simple at all. So I think it's a good idea to tread a little more lightly on each other's oppressions here while at an intersection.
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*Yeah, I'm from New Jersey, yo--you guys wanna make something of it?**
**The US state of New Jersey, where I grew up, is famous for its insidious preponderance of traffic circles, but I'm not certain how worldwide that fame may be, hence this footnote.
My standpoint here in regards to gender identity and sexual orientation--I identify as genderqueer, and hence transgender fits me better than cisgender if a binary must be applied. I'm queer by sexual orientation: lesbian-identified pansexual to be precise, if you care for some reason. I use the term bisexual strategically and have been involved in bi activism and organizing, but I do have problems with the binary the term inscribes and how it does not describe my sexual orientation well. I identified as lesbian for a few years in my 20's (when I found out it was possible!!--was sheltered and repressed before then) and got involved in some lesbian and gay activism, then I came out again as bisexual, but now I prefer pansexual as a descriptor and still feel more affinity to primarily lesbian than primarily bi spaces (depending on the particular community). I do generally go by the term woman (I don't use the spelling variants), or grrl, specifically queer grrl (hey, I came out in the 80's). I go back and forth on the term femme and whether or not or how to use it as an identifier. I've always been very fond of the term person as well, and used it more insistently when I was a child and teen to try to ward off the arbitrariness of applying gender as I saw it. I don't use the term man or men or mankind to refer to generic people--and still prefer the term people to humans, though I use both. But when someone says "doctor," I still often see a male person in my head even after decades of feminist revisioning--OMG, I HATE that guy! Lalalalala.
And yeah, I'm used to seeing this myopic shit from many gay men forgetting and resenting that other queers exist. And they wonder why gay isn't a good enough term for all of us all of the time and why we keep adding letters to the LGBTIQ mix. When I go to the DC Pride celebration in a town where the majority population is POC, the majority of the participants are white and male, and my quasi-gay white hobbit dolls fit in there better than I do.
So, I was inclined to just write off the white gay men's objections to the use of cisgender as privileged discomfort, since it's a term coined to reveal the privilege of the unmarked category of feeling that your gender identity lines up unquestioningly with how you and other people perceive you. Autumn's forbidding of the term cisgender was not helpful, and Pam calling
kynn's use of the term "weaponizing," is overkill, as well as Bush-quasi-military-industrial-complex speak, which really can't be a good thing, and I do think they really dumped badly on kynn. I do have big reservations about the term cisgender from a different angle, about the kind of work describing a binary does and what this particular binary elides, but I didn't think I was seeing that angle being brought up in the posters' objections to the term and I do get the strategic importance of marking the unmarked category. So it looked like privileged objections to being marked to me.
I finally read
eftychia's post that browngirl linked to, and it got me thinking, as good posts do--it really gets across the strategic importance of marking the unmarked as the term cisgender does. I'm now, however, reconsidering how I wrote off the objections coming from gay men and how the term cisgender/cissexual applies here and wondering if Pam shares this consideration of the intersections of lived experience that are clashing here. Some background I'm thinking about: Euro-American/western culture is still in a state of transition in how it regards sexual orientation in relation to gender identity. It is progressing toward separating out these categories, but it is not there yet. It is still mainstream in this culture to question the masculinity of a gay man and the femininity of a lesbian--to assume a gay man will exhibit what is considered feminine characteristics and a lesbian masculine ones. When someone asks who is top and who is bottom (my fellow slashers--I is looking at u, too) it is part of this conflation of sexual orientation with gender identity and the way we regard sex acts as a determinant in how we regard someone's gender. I have reservations about whether or not separating categories of sexual orientation from gender identity is a liberatory development (progressive and liberatory are not synonymous), but this process is inescapably in progress.
Much of Latina/o cultures historically have not made this separation--if you identified as male and you took a dominant role in sex with another man your masculinity was not in question. Gay, transgendered, and feminine identities, and sexual practice are all intertwined here. There are similar models in some Asian and African cultures and some Native American groups, and most of these cultures, Euro-American included on this one, are not as concerned where people considered female fit into the equation because women, you know, aren't as important--it's who gets included in male identity that counts, so marking sexual orientation as third gender becomes important. The transition in separating out sexual orientation and gender identity is very culturally specific to only certain cultures, Euro-American being among those (with Hispanic cultures liminal inclusion in Euro). And some Native American groups where women are important, have a whole different way of looking at gender and sexual orientation as well. My knowledge here is really superficial, and there are other Asian and African cultures I know nothing of. And keep in mind there is a variety of intersections between Native American, African, and Latina/o cultures with multiple sensibilities in regards to gender and sexual orientation, with Euro-American culture influencing all of them.
With all this in mind, there are some problems with calling a gay man, regardless of color, cisgendered, because there is a strong thread in mainstream Western culture that denies him this identity. Now, the violin I pull out here to play for white gay men may be quite small, since my first thought is "Welcome to the unsafe world the rest of us live in!" but the fact is, he is being denied the privilege of being considered unquestioningly male and the top of the pyramid that other people regarded as male and white feel entitled too, and may be subject to the same violence that a transgendered person who does not pass is subject to, and that is oppression--very real lived oppression.
Also the fact that cis- has an uncomfortable aural resemblance to the term sissy does make it a really, really, really unfortunate term to apply to gay men who are policed by such terms.
With these issues in mind, a gay and bi man's objections to the term cisgender, is not the same as a straight man's objections, and does deserve consideration. And one has to keep in mind that straight men are also policed by the term sissy, so this is an issue for them as well. In the process, all people who identify as women are reminded that we are the lesser category of being that male identified people are fearing to be associated with--yay!
Although the association with sissy does not affect lesbians and bi women as a policing term, our cisgender status is also under questionno matter how we identify by gender, especially a lesbian who is regarded as butch, whether or not she considers herself/hirself transgendered or cisgendered. Straight women regarded as butch get all kinds of fun thrown their way too, as do straight men perceived as feminine regardless of their gender identity. And race figures significantly into how feminine or masculine a person is regarded by mainstream white culture. Not all people who would be considered cisgender actually have across the board cisgender privilege if they don't pass other people's conceptions of gender.
How much the term cisgender really does apply to anyone's self-identification is also a question for me. Lyrics like "You make me feel like a natural woman" would make absolutely no fucking sense at all and not have such mainstream appeal if the average person really did take their gender status completely for granted--I don't think they do. They may not have noticed since they were knee high that gender categories and what gets ascribed to gender is a total crock like I did, and felt that de Beauvoir's formulation that no one is born a woman is a given, or they may not have regarded these categories as totally real and feel their bodies do not fit the gender identities they were assigned, but I'm skeptical on how seamless anyone's gender identity may be.
eftychia's call for more consideration of terms here is a really good one because this shit is really, really complicated. Some of the liberatory potential I see in transgender as an identity category is in expanding or breaking with the gender binary of Euro-American culture, more so than in reinforcing a binary that marks "the" unmarked gender category of the moment. So I'm more inclined to go for the overlapping of the categories of transgender/genderqueer/cisgender/intersex, rather than one simple binary myself. I regard the whole gendering system as largely incoherent, anyway. And I'll get into the bogusness of separating sex from gender while using socially constructed language--the only kind we've got--to describe the biological another time.But in the current moment, cisgender does not neatly map onto any other queer identity, including that of gay white men (even the ones who think their trauma over having to add more letters to the movement they think they started is paramount over the need of others to feel included), and I think that needs to be noted. Matthew Shepard wasn't murdered only because he was gay, but because he troubled his murderers' sense of their own masculinity and status as male. This stuff isn't simple. It's not simple at all. So I think it's a good idea to tread a little more lightly on each other's oppressions here while at an intersection.
--------------------
*Yeah, I'm from New Jersey, yo--you guys wanna make something of it?**
**The US state of New Jersey, where I grew up, is famous for its insidious preponderance of traffic circles, but I'm not certain how worldwide that fame may be, hence this footnote.
My standpoint here in regards to gender identity and sexual orientation--I identify as genderqueer, and hence transgender fits me better than cisgender if a binary must be applied. I'm queer by sexual orientation: lesbian-identified pansexual to be precise, if you care for some reason. I use the term bisexual strategically and have been involved in bi activism and organizing, but I do have problems with the binary the term inscribes and how it does not describe my sexual orientation well. I identified as lesbian for a few years in my 20's (when I found out it was possible!!--was sheltered and repressed before then) and got involved in some lesbian and gay activism, then I came out again as bisexual, but now I prefer pansexual as a descriptor and still feel more affinity to primarily lesbian than primarily bi spaces (depending on the particular community). I do generally go by the term woman (I don't use the spelling variants), or grrl, specifically queer grrl (hey, I came out in the 80's). I go back and forth on the term femme and whether or not or how to use it as an identifier. I've always been very fond of the term person as well, and used it more insistently when I was a child and teen to try to ward off the arbitrariness of applying gender as I saw it. I don't use the term man or men or mankind to refer to generic people--and still prefer the term people to humans, though I use both. But when someone says "doctor," I still often see a male person in my head even after decades of feminist revisioning--OMG, I HATE that guy! Lalalalala.
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I moved to Los Angeles from Boston. After three years, I just happened to move very close to one of the only larger rotaries in all of LA county.
They have the nerve to call it a traffic circle. As soon as I heard that, I went "Okay, and what engineer moved here from New Jersey?" ;-}
(Yes, I'm sure I'll come back and say things about your very smart post in a bit, but I just got back from a bike ride, so my brain is all "duuuude, sun and surf" mode. After I've eaten and showered, it's possible I'll be able to think again.
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Duuuuuuuuude.
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But I have to say, if I had seen this kind of discussion at PHB I would respect their decision about the term "cis."
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From: (Anonymous)
Big Dipper
I respect peoples opinions on the big dipper issue but, for the life of me, I can understand why it is even being considered as a gay identity symbol? Doesn't everyone know that it (the big dipper) has been a continuous symbol for the IRA (Irish Republian Army),terrorists, as well as socialists, labor unions since the early 1900's. They call it the "Starry Plough." IRA members have been tattooing the symbol on them, literally, for the last 100 years. The political wing of the IRA - Sinn Fein - still flaunts the symbol. Doesn't that bother anyone and is this what the community wants to be associated with? Just throwing it out there for thoughts. Spread the word that less terroristic symbols would be more appropriate.
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And implicit in all of these is the potential for either being close to or distant from the social expectation of what you "should" be based on external perceptions of who you are.
I think this is how my brain handles concepts of intersectionality, with analytical geometry.
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I have an idea of what you mean by gender importance, but what you have in parentheses modifying it confuses me.
I'd also go for a more amorphous form than a continuum because constructions of the extremes of masculinity and femininity are multiple and incoherent, which is another reason why the binary doesn't work..
And also how you perceive your gender identity and expression and how others perceive you, and which of those others have varying degrees of influence on you, and how your social group and your place in it changes, are all factors that aren't always coherently covered when we use gendered terms. Wheee!
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And "intersex" is stuck on the end of a list of gender-related terms because?
Or did you actually intend two spectra: transgender/genderqueer/cisgender AND cisexual/intersex/transexual/third sex?
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I wasn't going to say this but I changed my mind....
* As someone who grew up in a time/place when "tomboys" were unacceptable and, for example, many careers/basic financial services/necessities of life were exclusively available to men, Them has sometimes been more of an Us but I still always had cisexual privilege and some cisgendered privilege and I own it.
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Re: I wasn't going to say this but I changed my mind....
I'm a little confused on who your Us and Them are here. As far as feminine/femme passing privilege, I've got that in droves. And that is a very different privilege from masculine passing privilege. It's one of the frustrations I have with the use of the term heterosexual privilege, because heterosexual privilege for men and women is very, very different--the woman's being the privilege to be fully accepted as a second class citizen, which is a privilege over someone who doesn't even have that--but it really is a very different realm of privilege from male heterosexual privilege. My time spent in bi communities gave me a lot of food for thought over the variants there. And it's among my concerns with a blanket term like cisgender, which reduces a realm of experiences of gender into one term--in the ways I have most seen the term be used. I do think it's important to mark the unmarked--maybe I just need the term cisgender problematized more. I think gender identity is problematic for more people than not in a variety of ways, and a term like cisgender helps pave that over instead of opening it out.
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Re: I wasn't going to say this but I changed my mind....
I thought your post was more general in scope than the current CisFAIL at PHB. Possibly I was wrong.
Not all trans-people are "queer". When I hear het/les/gay/bi people use "queer" as a blanket term in ways which erase trans/intersex/third sex people then it sounds to me exactly like when white people start with the "we're all just human beings" erasure of difference in defence of one group's privilege. I'm sure you don't intend to do that and I'm sure your views are more complex than is encompassed in an lj post but the model you appear to be proposing still erases more than one group of disprivileged people and their concerns.
I'm a little confused on who your Us and Them are here.
Good. ;-)
It's one of the frustrations I have with the use of the term heterosexual privilege, because heterosexual privilege for men and women is very, very different
Which is why terms such as cisgendered privilege and cissexual privilege are important because a discussion of sexuality doesn't include all the intersecting aspects (and excludes asexual people).
it's among my concerns with a blanket term like cisgender, which reduces a realm of experiences of gender into one term--in the ways I have most seen the term be used.
No, your "amorphous blob" model forces the term to become a "stand alone" term and therefore denies both its etymological origins as part of a set of terms and its normative usage by the disprivileged people who use it to refer to themselves. Your privileged position in this discussion makes your attempt to redefine Other people's self-descriptions on your terms problematic.
It's my experience that disprivileged groups tend to use such terms in subtler ways because they/we are more aware of the subtleties of various situations, which is precisely why privileged people shouldn't be allowed to define terms for disprivileged people.
I think gender identity is problematic for more people than not in a variety of ways, and a term like cisgender helps pave that over instead of opening it out.
And that sentence translates in my head as a direct equivalent to: "I'm not whiiiiiite! I'm a human beeeeeeing!" Or, of you prefer: "I'm not whiiiiiite! I'm Iiiiiiriiiiiish!"
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Re: I wasn't going to say this but I changed my mind....
Not all trans-people are "queer".
And this:
No, your "amorphous blob" model forces the term to become a "stand alone" term and therefore denies both its etymological origins as part of a set of terms and its normative usage by the disprivileged people who use it to refer to themselves. Your privileged position in this discussion makes your attempt to redefine Other people's self-descriptions on your terms problematic.
It's my experience that disprivileged groups tend to use such terms in subtler ways because they/we are more aware of the subtleties of various situations, which is precisely why privileged people shouldn't be allowed to define terms for disprivileged people.
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All our concepts of the biological are formed through social constructs. I'm not saying there isn't a "real", just that our conceptions of the real are always going to be socially mediated.
Judi Butler for the win for taking the binary between essentialism and constructivism and wrestling it to the ground!
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All our concepts of lots of things are formed through social constructs, from whether food tastes good to whether people should form lifelong partnerships. That doesn't mean they're not worth talking about.
As someone who's part of that amorphous blob but very much not transgender or transsexual, I'm uncomfortable being lumped in with people who are, both because that denies me a unique identity as genderqueer and because their space is not my space to intrude on.
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I too identify as genderqueer, as stated above. And I've seen some genderqueers identify under the transgender umbrella.
Within a transgender/cisgender binary, where would you place genderqueers, and why?
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How did the spelling of "grrl" come about? I know I've seen that before...
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It's out of the riot grrrl movement. OK, so they're still going to call grown women girls. So this is what you do: You take girl, take out the i and add a growl to make the identity of girl a formidable one. You wear fucking pink when you fucking want to; you play with fucking dolls when you fucking want to; and NO ONE BETTER FUCKING MESS WITH YOU OR YOU"LL PUNCH EM IN THE FUCKING THROAT!!! GOT IT? GOOD!!!
That's riot grrrl. :-D
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As you may know, I've already posted that I wish to be considered cis, rather than so normal I need no word.
It seems that many people learned cis- and trans-, as chemical prefixes, where they're a binary. I learned them as geographical, where they're matters of degree.
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I saw and I respect self-identifications. I get what you're saying--again the marking of the unmarked. My concerns are with other ways in which the term has normalizing potential in taking a variety of gender experiences of varying degrees of privilege and lack thereof, and grouping them into the category of the gender unproblematic.
Yes, most, if not all of the usage of the term cisgender I have seen has been as binary to transgender. Transgender is a term under debate. I would like to see cisgender be constructively debated more, as well, to better uncover the fissures in so-called normative gender identities, and who is included and who isn't. What I don't want is one more fucking uncomplicated binary--the one we have for gender already is bad enough. Where did you acquire your understanding of the terms as geographical?
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So long ago that I don't remember. It was "cis-Alpine" and "trans-Alpine."
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Having said that, I do find myself jarred at certain moments. Take this point, for example:
I totally agree with this point, and think that it's an important point to make.
But when Riki Ann Wilchins made this same point shortly after Shepard's murder, she was criticized, strongly, for trying to appropriate a gay man's death into the struggle for freedom of gender expression / identity.
I guess, if I'm honest with myself, what I feel is that when trans people have been trying to talk about the complexities of gender identity and the way that gender is read -- not only in the context of trans lives, but also in the context of other intersecting or related identities -- we've either been ignored, or patted on the head and told that our ideas are quaint.
And it's only in the context of talking about cis privilege that all this complexity suddenly needs to be discussed and recognized.
What you're saying is important and I think that it's a great contribution of this conversation. But I can't say that I'm not torn in my reaction to it.
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Anyway, I tried to google so as not to bother you, but I haven't dug up much yet--do you remember who it was who trashed Wilchins for making the connection, or what community factions were they representing, because I missed that conflict--was buried in the academy and trying to just keep my head above water, and not always succeeding.
Who are the groups in particular that you've felt have been ignoring trans folk's efforts to talk about the complexities of gender identity?--other parts of the queer community? I'm sorry for contributing to the frustration by only bringing up all these issues in this context--I do a lot more reading around than speaking up, am a slow reader and writer, and dglenn's essay got the ball rolling for me on some issues I keep musing on.
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Part 1
And I think, while it's important to acknowledge the ways that cis gay men and cis lesbian women have their genders disrespected, it's important to acknowledge that what they experience is not what trans people experience. That like my being trans occasionally mitigates my white privilege, their being gay or lesbian occasionally mitigates their cis privilege.
For an example, butch lesbians are often challenged in restrooms, and occasionally asked to leave by people who believe they're men, but I've never heard of a butch lesbian being asked to use a unisex bathroom that's farther away than the women's restroom, or being asked to use a bathroom in a different building or establishment. As in, I know one trans woman who was not allowed to use the women's restroom at her place of work, but had to clock out, travel to another restroom about 10 minutes away, use that one, return, and clock back in. A bathroom trip would cost her one-third of an hour of her pay.
And I think, when it comes down to it, when trans people are subjected to scrutiny in ways that cis gay men, lesbian women, bisexual and pansexual people, are not, and at the same time, trans people are frequently conflated with gay men and lesbian women (another friend of mine once said that once people realized she was trans, that they decided she was a really gay man, and that even when faced with a lesbian trans woman, they still see her as a really gay man), that it's important to mark the fact that cis people of any orientation are not subjected to quite the same social censure and problems as trans people.
And yes, I absolutely do not want to deny that cis gay men and cis lesbian women are also victims of hate crimes - Matthew Shepard, for example, has practically become iconic for hate crimes. It's interesting, at the same time, that when trans women of color are murdered, they get different coverage - that Angie Zapata was presented in the news as sympathetic was more the exception than the rule. Trans people who are victims of hate crimes are systematically misgendered, their birth names are revealed, their medical history is splashed across the news, and occasionally, cis LGB organizations try to claim that the hate crimes against trans people are actually against cis LGB people (see how the gay media tried to present Calpernia Addams as a gay man and a drag queen after her boyfriend was murdered, and how many times Brandon Teena has been described as a lesbian).
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And cisgender and cissexual are about marking that privilege, about highlighting it, and the assumptions that frequently come with it, and how those assumptions oppress and disenfranchise trans people, just as the ways that straight people tend to oppress and disenfranchise LGB people.
Another thing is that while some people do apply a binary - you're either transgender or cisgender - not everyone does. I have frequently tried to explain the concept in ways that goes beyond even a binary and a spectrum, and eventually gave it up in preference for cissexual, because I'm usually dealing with cissexual people who think that choosing not to transition makes them superior beings to those of us who do prefer to transition.
I didn't write these comments to paint cis people in general as bad people, or cis lesbian women, gay men, bisexual or pansexual people as bad people. But I think in a lot of ways it's easy to use oppression to elide privilege. Like men who say they don't have male privilege because they're poor, or radical feminist cis women who insist they can't be racist because they experience sexism, and while obviously you can't> pop elements of privilege and oppression off of someone's life like beads on a string, I think that privilege mitigated by other oppression is still present. A cis gay man like John Aravosis has tremendous social power over trans people, as evidenced by the article he wrote, and that Salon's editors did not even question the way he invoked transphobic and trans misogynist slurs (as well as the nasty comments about bisexuals). And you can see it play out over and over again - Norah Vincent, Julie Bindel, Chris Crain... I can't even remember his name now, but a cis gay man in the late 90s wrote an article for (IIRC) the Village Voice in which he lamented how transsexual women were really gay men and how we should be gay men and not succumb to heteronormativity. And you see this particular argument come up rather frequently - I've seen it within the past year in comments on trans-related articles on the Advocate, how trans people only transition out of a desire for heteronormativity.
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I do think this is a good post and it raises some good points. The purpose of my last two comments isn't to say "You're totally wrong," but to explain why I believe it's possible (and in fact pretty normal under kyriarchy and in terms of intersectionality) to benefit from privilege while at the same time experiencing oppression that can mitigate that privilege under some circumstances.
Mainly, I wanted to add I do think this is a good post, because I forgot to include that in the previous comments.
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I believe it's possible (and in fact pretty normal under kyriarchy and in terms of intersectionality) to benefit from privilege while at the same time experiencing oppression that can mitigate that privilege under some circumstances.
I do agree, at the same time, in a culture that still, to a large degree, conflates gender identity and sexual orientation (and why the clueless will assume a lesbian transwoman is a gay man)and has conflicting racial and racist markers added to it, a feminine presenting gay man in the US is going to have his masculinity come under question more often than a feminine presenting straight man, and add in if he is Asian, with white mainstream cultural assumptions about Asian masculinity, and he may have far less cisgender privilege than a feminine presenting transwoman, especially if she transitioned early. The reality of his oppression is not being accurately described by the way the term cisgender is being used. Passing privilege and cisgender privilege are mapping incoherently. So I'm troubled about what the term cisgender is eliding when used as a simple binary, which is most of the ways I am seeing transfolk and allies apply it (with my own gender-identity issues added in), so yay that you're using more of a continuum model--it might help some if more people did.
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I believe this is because gender presentation and sexual orientation complicate and occasionally mitigate gender-related privilege (or why, for example, feminine boys (and for that matter trans girls) are so heavily and frequently bullied in school, with passive and occasionally active consent from the staff and faculty).
So, your non-transitioning, identifies as a man feminine gay man is still cissexual and cisgender, he still has access to that privilege to a certain extent, even if homophobia gets in the way. And similar applies to butch lesbians. On some level, I kind of expect them to have a better understanding of what trans people experience, but I've lost count of how many gay men (no matter how feminine) basically complain that trans women exist because they don't want to be confused with anyone who wants trans-related surgeries, or how many butch lesbians who have said to me, "You think you have it bad? I get kicked out of bathrooms all the time!" and it's like, er, yeah... And this kind of stuff gets said because it's assumed that identifying as the gender associated with your sex assigned at birth is more valid than identifying with a different gender and wanting your body to be a different sex.
I do think one of the problems with the conversation is that it tends to focus on cisgender and transgender when the conversations themselves are about transsexual people who are on hormones and seek surgery. Another problem with the conversations is that they focus on cisgender and transgender and completely ignore genderqueer and other gender identifications which may overlap with either or both, or with neither. I know some GP people identify as trans and some do not. Some say they have access to cisgender privilege and some do not, and I think the variety of experiences tends to get ignored.
And, like you said, the ways that perceptions of feminine gay men (for example) affects their access to not just cisgender privilege but male privilege. And I think that complication and mitigation needs to be discussed as well as how cisgender, cissexual, heterosexual, and male privilege interact (and thus how transphobia, transsexualphobia, homophobia, and misogyny interact).
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I hear how you're using the idea of mitigation here. I think in the nexus of sexual orientation and gender identity, the slippage between these categories in the present moment makes the forms of oppression here more than mitigation--the categories are intertwined. You can theoretically separate them, but that is not how they are generally treated and regarded in practice in western culture.
On some level, I kind of expect them to have a better understanding of what trans people experience, but I've lost count of how many gay men (no matter how feminine) basically complain that trans women exist because they don't want to be confused with anyone who wants trans-related surgeries
Their reactions are insulting, and for the ones who do have access to institutional power, dangerous. Still our identities DO impinge on each other--as gay men could take insult with trans women who are angry at being viewed as gay men, and read homophobia in that response, and the way their identities have been discounted by people with power over them adds to the defensiveness of the response. We stand on each other's feet in the borderlands while sharing stand in's for parental figures who are looking for some way to discount our identities to shore up their senses of self, with effects from frustrating to fatal.
or how many butch lesbians who have said to me, "You think you have it bad? I get kicked out of bathrooms all the time!" and it's like, er, yeah...
I have about 3 very different ways (there are undoubtedly more I'm not imagining) I could read the frustration you're conveying with an "er, yeah" reaction to what those butch lesbians said, and I don't know which it is, but I want to get what you're saying, so would you mind explaining in which way you're frustrated with the response?
I do think one of the problems with the conversation is that it tends to focus on cisgender and transgender when the conversations themselves are about transsexual people who are on hormones and seek surgery.
I can see that. Then there are pain in the asses like me who don't make a distinction between sex and gender to add to the fun of trying to communicate on this.
Another problem with the conversations is that they focus on cisgender and transgender and completely ignore genderqueer and other gender identifications which may overlap with either or both, or with neither. I know some GP people identify as trans and some do not. Some say they have access to cisgender privilege and some do not, and I think the variety of experiences tends to get ignored.
Yes. And many genderqueer identities DO impinge on the essentialist understandings of self many trans and cis folk share, hence the discounting is often deliberate and needfully defensive. Not to make constructivist thinking synonymous with identifying as genderqueer. GP? (did you mean GQ?)
And, like you said, the ways that perceptions of feminine gay men (for example) affects their access to not just cisgender privilege but male privilege. And I think that complication and mitigation needs to be discussed as well as how cisgender, cissexual, heterosexual, and male privilege interact (and thus how transphobia, transsexualphobia, homophobia, and misogyny interact).
Absolutely. Because we're dealing with relational categories. And the ways in which concepts of race are gendered and sexualized mean it's necessary to do more thinking about how that axis works here, too.
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I meant by "er, yeah," that I've been challenged for being in women's restrooms too, and in one instance (at a school) I was banned from using the women's restroom and required to walk a block or so to the nearest public restroom or use the men's room in the school itself. When a cissexual butch lesbian tries to invoke her restroom difficulties as a reason why she has it worse than me, she's pushing a rather sensitive button. I do empathize and sympathize about bathroom policing, but the oppression olympics there is infuriating, because the anecdote is used to say that trans women have it easy and butch lesbians have it hard.
Could you clarify what you mean about not making a distinction between gender and sex?
I think the distinction is very important for trans people and intersex people both. I mean, everyone's assigned a sex at birth against their will, but in most cases it turns out to be congruent with their gender identity. For intersex people, there's a chance that it's congruent, but they're still frequently subjected to surgical assignment, which can and frequently does cause problems for them, never mind those who are assigned the wrong sex. Trans people are assigned the wrong sex at birth, and have to live with our expectations of our bodies clashing with what our bodies actually are. How do you talk about these things if you refuse to make a distinction?
Yes, I meant GQ. And yes, I think the defensiveness around non-binary identities is a function of cisgender = normal. And the added layer for trans people is that so many cis people try to shove us into non-binary categories, insisting we should be happy to be defined outside "man" or "woman" because that's how they did it in some other country or because we don't know what it's like to be raised a member of our proper genders - that's on top of the valuing of binary genders over non-binary, not to say that getting defensive about anyone's gender is okay.
I was sticking to gender-related privilege and oppression deliberately. Yes, race needs to be there too, because of course race definitely affects how anyone's gender is viewed (how black man carries a different meaning than white man for the "man" part and not just the race part, because of course, you can't separate everything out). I'm sorry about erasing race, because obviously you can't ignore it.
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No, it's not the same at all, but that element of having their identities discounted, rejected, and confused with yours by the mainstream is a struggle for them that IS still a part of their reaction.
And yeah, I once dated a lesbian who said I couldn't be bi because bi's don't exist--you're either one or the other--a discounting which really sucked at the time. But the place from which that monosexual template she was applying came from, as an oppressed minority member on the defensive, is still very different than one a straight person would apply. But I came from a lesbian identity to a bi one, and have seen attitudes in bi communities that I think a lesbian might need to be onguard for as well, so I had a certain investment in seeing that distinction--still thought she was a jerk overall though.
I do empathize and sympathize about bathroom policing, but the oppression olympics there is infuriating, because the anecdote is used to say that trans women have it easy and butch lesbians have it hard.
Yeah, it's a point at which they could have bonded with you over shared oppression where experiences intersected, and instead competed to one-up, and that stinks. *hugs if you do, or want, hugs* To tell you trans women have it easier is just stupid--why open your mouth to say something like that--except to be hateful. There's nothing to be gained in that game.
Could you clarify what you mean about not making a distinction between gender and sex?
I think the distinction is very important for trans people and intersex people both.
I do understand this, and do understand that my way of understanding the world on this is in direct opposition to the way some other people (trans, cis, and otherwise) see, and need to see the world--one of the ways in which identities impinge on each other again, because I think worldview does intersect with identity.
I no longer make a distinction between sex and gender, because the language we have to describe our concepts of the biological, as I understand them, are all socially impacted--there are no neutral terms, especially for a social concept as central as sexed bodies. So I will talk about chromosomes, body parts considered to be signifiers of the sexed body, and hormones and other chemicals, with the understanding that all the ideas we're bringing to the table on these are gendered. In other words, sex IS gender because language is social, and the language of biology is part of it. Yes, there is a "real" beyond language, but when humans set about to think about it and describe it, they bring social concepts to those objects--some objects being less socially fraught than others. Sexed bodies would be among the most fraught objects we have, as we are each subjects of one.
It's an understanding I've come to through studying feminist and gender theory, that gives language to and refines the problematic ways I noticed the idea of sex/gender being applied by others since I was a toddler. And I'm just adding this info on my experience so you don't think I just read a bunch of theory and came to an abstract conclusion, but that this understanding does accord with core identity issues of mine (at the risk again of sounding like I'm saying I'm a natural born constructivist :-P). And I knew I would take a long while trying to put this succinctly and still be understood--hope I was--which is why I'm being slow in replies here.
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I cannot prove, but I suspect that connection is more fraught for more people than is usually considered--I don't think most people have the language to explore the feelings of disjunction--some of us are more compelled to than others. Again, there's a reason "you make me feel like a natural woman" works unproblematically for many ciscentric people as a pop lyric, or that "cross-dressing" is central to theater and carnival practices, even in western culture. What's weird about this cultural moment in how the western mainstream talks about sexed bodies is that intersexuality is so not thought about. If common broadsides are any indicator, early modern English speaking folk were much more aware that intersexed people existed than most people now--there needs to be a lot more thinking on why that is and how that came about. If we did, we might think more about the distinctions we make between chromosomes with 4 squiggles and chromosomes with 3 squiggles and wonder if we're missing something through the rigid templates we're applying to how we look at them, or that if the environments impacting our bodies can change our hormonal balances, is sex/gender really a stable unvarying state throughout any of our lives. And I really went on and on here--sorry!
How do you talk about these things if you refuse to make a distinction?
I don't think anyone is born a woman, not cis, trans, or otherwise. I think people are born men to the extent that man is synonymous with our English concept of person, but not male. Which can make me a real pain in the ass to talk to for someone explaining how they were born in the wrong sexed/gendered body. The best I can do is shut the fuck up and listen when someone is sharing, and share mine only when there's appropriate space for it. I'm still trying to figure out how to respectfully accept differences in this view and also hope for respectful acceptance of mine.
And yes, I think the defensiveness around non-binary identities is a function of cisgender = normal.
Agreed. I think it's also compounded by the idea that people think of sex as something separate from gender and as binary. Many are willing to see gender, unlike sex, as nonbinary, but do consider it less authentic than they would if they saw it as essential--as if our social beings can be shed merely by being named, and as if we'd want to. "I was born this way" is a necessary defense (not that it is only that) for many trans, gay, and lesbian identities in the face of that, even if it drives fairly rabid constructivists, like me, batty.
I'm sorry about erasing race, because obviously you can't ignore it.
I'm also struggling to understand the intersections here.
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To me, talking about "you make me feel like a natural woman" is about not feeling woman enough and society sets standards for womanhood, and this affects women who don't fit the ideal (or see themselves as fitting the ideal), and how falling short affects us - binge dieting, eating disorders, self-esteem, pushing us out of healthy relationships with our bodies and telling us the many ways we fall short. I experience this every day - I'm fat, for example, and it does a number on me when it's pointed out, because it's not something that's ever used to compliment me, you know?
And then there's being trans - and being trans includes elements of the above, because when your body is one sex and you know it should be another sex, and you can see images of what you want your body to look like, and like...
When cis women's bodies are policed, cis women are told they fail to measure up as women. When trans women's bodies are policed, we're told that that we fail to measure up as women, can't ever measure up as women, and that there's something perverted, wrong, and unnatural with us for even trying. Our womanhood is described as drag, as camp, as artificial, as fake, as affected, as a mask, as a lie, as an elaborate facade. Before we transition, we have it pounded into us that just being women - not even trying to achieve the ideal "what women are supposed to be and look like", but just being women - is unnatural and wrong, and makes us sick people.
And I think that it's important to maintain that distinction - where cis men don't always fit perfectly into the notions of what manhood should be, and cis women don't always fit perfectly into the notions of what womanhood should be, that this is not the same as being trans, that there's an entire social weight attached to being transsexual that cissexual people don't experience, because they're not dealing with the transition part and how transitioning is stigmatized. They're dealing with gender expectations without the complications of transition.
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I've experienced both kinds of policing, and not always from people who read me as cis, so it's not like every time a trans woman experiences body policing, she's told she should be a man. It's much more complex than that.
And I think that cis women do get trans misogynist body policing. The iconic example being Ann Coulter, who is frequently derided for looking "manly."
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I do think that it's important to be able to acknowledge the difference between sex and gender, or rather the difference between how society sexes people, our own genders, and how society genders us.
I think of gendering as looking at someone and assigning them "man" or "woman".
I think of sexing as looking at someone and putting "F" or "M" on the birth certificate, and then doing what it takes to ensure that the documentation matches the person.
Of course no one is born a man or a woman, and I think that language (like woman-born-woman) is ridiculous, and it implies an entire lifetime's structured socialization springing into existence at the moment of birth. It also implies that we're all programmable robots that passively receive all socialization thrown our way, and that we don't interact with it, reject it, claim it, make it ours, analyze it, think about it, live with it, try to escape it.
I think that under most circumstances, speaking of sex is not really relevant.
I also think that the gender binary is used to support the social construction of sex and the social construction of sex is used to support the gender binary. I don't believe that there is an underlying true biological reality that defines what everyone's sex is or should be, and I think that saying there is interferes with and damages everyone's ability to relate properly to their bodies. I would prefer that "male" and "female" be removed entirely and that we find some other way to discuss how people are born with the equipment to sire or bear children, and not define our own or anyone else's entire lives around this against anyone's will, ever.
I hope that made sense - I think the separation of gender and sex aren't that clear-cut for me, either, but I think it's important to be able to talk about them, to talk about how they reinforce each other, and how one is exalted over the other as a policing tool.
Thank you for hugs.
And I agree about having cis LGB people having their identities rejected, but they really have a choice when they do this - do they counter society's attempts to reject their identities, or do they turn around and blame another marginalized group for that rejection? I see it as the latter - and I see them as, well, picking up the tools they identify with (cissexist tools) and using them to attack trans people, simply because at least cis straight and cis LGB people can agree that trans people ar just weird, and maybe if we went away life would be simpler for everyone.
It's like, when heterosexual people reject me as a lesbian, they tell me I just need a good man to make me into a woman. When cissexual people reject me as a woman, they tell me that I'm supposed to be a man and stop being such a deceptive faker.
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Do you mean it's important to acknowledge that people do make a distinction between sex and gender, and that society does in a very incoherent way? Or are you saying that we need to maintain seeing a distinction--that there's a usefulness in maintaining this vision? Or something else I'm not getting.
Of course no one is born a man or a woman, and I think that language (like woman-born-woman) is ridiculous
It doesn't accord with my pretty constructivist worldview which is based in how I experience sex/gender, but I don't see this kind of essentialized thinking as ridiculous, nor applied in one way only. I've heard some trans women talk about their experiences of their body as the wrong one as having brain chemistry out of accord with the rest of her sexed body--which is also an essentialist view, like a cisgender woman viewing herself as a woman-born-woman. I struggle with respecting that view, and not thinking, "if you only read Judi Butler you'd see things my way!" because why the hell does anyone else need to see it this way anyway--it works for me and I think you pretty much hold the same view, but it's OK if it doesn't work for everyone. Making the unwilling read Judi Butler and some other of the gender theorists perhaps *should* be considered a war crime. ;-P j/k
I also think that the gender binary is used to support the social construction of sex and the social construction of sex is used to support the gender binary. I don't believe that there is an underlying true biological reality that defines what everyone's sex is or should be, and I think that saying there is interferes with and damages everyone's ability to relate properly to their bodies.
That's really well-put, and I think so too. But people's experiences of their sexed/gendered selves is not really something you can argue away--experience does matter and at bottom, all we have to offer are theories because there are no control cases here, and all their assertions are, likewise, theories.
I would prefer that "male" and "female" be removed entirely and that we find some other way to discuss how people are born with the equipment to sire or bear children, and not define our own or anyone else's entire lives around this against anyone's will, ever.
Agreed. And you're probably just using shorthand here, and think the same, but the nexus of bodily traits, and traits having nothing to do with the physical, grouped under sex are only partially connected with reproductive apparatuses. The biological works improvisationally, and if pleasure centers can be used to cause social cohesion between individuals as well as getting some of them to reproduce, both uses further survival and continuance of the species, and nature isn't picky. Too many people like to reduce the bio function of sexuality to reproduction alone.
. . . I think it's important to be able to talk about them, to talk about how they reinforce each other, and how one is exalted over the other as a policing tool.
Do you mean sex as the exalted and policing tool? Because I think regarding "sex" as always already "gender" helps take away some of that policing power. (Despite that, I'm still uneasy about how much I want to stand on mountaintops yelling to get people with essentialized experiences of sex to listen.)
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The first, sort of. Because society insists on this distinction, it's important to acknowledge that it exists and deconstruct the ways it's used oppressively.
It doesn't accord with my pretty constructivist worldview which is based in how I experience sex/gender, but I don't see this kind of essentialized thinking as ridiculous, nor applied in one way only. I've heard some trans women talk about their experiences of their body as the wrong one as having brain chemistry out of accord with the rest of her sexed body--which is also an essentialist view, like a cisgender woman viewing herself as a woman-born-woman. I struggle with respecting that view, and not thinking, "if you only read Judi Butler you'd see things my way!" because why the hell does anyone else need to see it this way anyway--it works for me and I think you pretty much hold the same view, but it's OK if it doesn't work for everyone. Making the unwilling read Judi Butler and some other of the gender theorists perhaps *should* be considered a war crime. ;-P j/k
I think "woman born woman" is ridiculous because "woman" is a social construct of what a female person is supposed to be like as an adult, and no one is born with a lifetime of socialization. I also think that "woman born woman" has been deliberately constructed as a "gender identity" in an appropriative way intended to cancel out the experiences and lives of trans women, both in terms of how we grow up and are socialized, and how we live on a daily basis. I don't want to deny that women who are assigned female at birth have experiences growing up and being perceived as a girl and a woman because of that assignment, but I think that line's going to blur a lot as more and more trans girls are allowed to transition before puberty.
And yes on forcing people to read Judith Butler being cruel. :) I have read her, but I'm not sure how good my retention was.
Do you mean sex as the exalted and policing tool? Because I think regarding "sex" as always already "gender" helps take away some of that policing power. (Despite that, I'm still uneasy about how much I want to stand on mountaintops yelling to get people with essentialized experiences of sex to listen.)
Sex is an exalted and policing tool, but once it's used to assign a gender, of course there's the whole "men are like this and women are like that" thing, but the core of it is "You were assigned male or female at birth, and this defines who and what you are socially."
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Again, I do think it's more complicated than making a choice and there are multiple identity issues smashing up against each other, but in spaces where cis LGB folks have made legislative inroads, it's crucial that T people not be excluded, not least because T people have always already been part and in forefront in the political movement and were part of building the fucking house, hence owning it.
It's like, when heterosexual people reject me as a lesbian, they tell me I just need a good man to make me into a woman. When cissexual people reject me as a woman, they tell me that I'm supposed to be a man and stop being such a deceptive faker.
I see the differences here, but I also see the similarities because authenticity is often a central tool for dismissing and discriminating against queer sexual orientations as well--and I think it's grounds on which cis lgb identities and t identities, and the identities of people who transition but do not wish to be regarded as t, and i folk, can clash in our communities.
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I meant to say, I think misogyny, transphobia, and homophobia are overlapping oppressions, in that a lot of the same attitudes and prejudices that inform one inform the other two. I don't mean in the sense that any one of them is subservient to the others, but I do often find that when people say homophobic or transphobic things, that it often reveals some of what they think about women, and similarly for other combinations. So I'm not trying to reject your point, and agree with it in many ways. I just think that there is something here - the idea that a cissexual body is seen as valid and genuine and a transsexual body is seen as invalid and false (and you can see this - people say "biological male/female" to refer cissexual bodies, as if transsexual bodies are somehow not biological), and I think that while a lot of cis gay and lesbian people resent trans people for many reasons, I think the root of their resentment is at least partially embedded in this idea.
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While gay men and lesbian women may not have uncomplicated cisgender privilege, I believe there's something they do have that makes it easy for them to dismiss trans people as valid or interesting or having a right to be trans, in much the same way you'll find heterosexual trans people who can be homophobic as all hell.
Sorry, I meant to add this in before, and spaced on it.
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There are many reasons for why a member of one group may say "back off" or "keep away" to a member of another group and dispute the overlaps and multiple memberships, and see them as encroachments, and sometimes good reason to give way and give room for this. I think there's more need for "horizontal breathing room", one that we can't afford to give to the dominant culture without losing ground, but should extend to where our marginalized differences meet to allow each other to find a corner for time outs so when we come back together we can extend the benefit of the doubt to each other and leave the oppression olympics back in the corner where it belongs, and the people who do need to stay in the corners can stay there and recharge.
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It's not only enforcing the dominant systems, and there's definitely stuff that I think is appropriative and needs to be called out as such, and coattails riding that needs to stop, but I think that frequently, when trying to draw these borders, the dominant culture is invoked.
I've kind of got mixed opinions about identity politics (even though I'm up to my elbows in them) because while I think we absolutely need to be able to communicate with each other about our common experiences and use these to define not only our oppression but our community (I don't just mean trans people here), but at the same time they're used by transphobic cis feminists to exclude trans women and erase trans men, or used by transphobic cis gay men (like John Aravosis and Chris Crain) to exclude trans people entirely, and too many people act like intersections don't exist. Like, as a lesbian trans woman, I'm just trans and don't get to be lesbian or a woman.
I'm not fond of the oppression olympics, although I've caught myself at it more than once, I try not to do it. :(