xoros

Over at The Thang Blog Rebecca has posted a good summary of how recent problems faced by trans women in feminist community blogs played out, particularly in relation to her own experience on Feministing. My personal opinion on the matter is pretty close to hers but that is not what I want to write about. No, this is about a conversation that developed in the comments where Rachel_in_WY as part of her comment said,

“But it’s not that I think cis women can’t contribute to a discussion like this. In this case I don’t think I can…”

Which I took to mean cis in the all encompassing sense of the adjective. I assumed Rachel to be both cisgendered and cissexual, which changed my assumptions about her, she quite rightly pointed that this was an assumption and was kind enough to explain why.

What’s the difference you might ask, between cisgendered and cissexual? Myself I like geopunk’s descriptions as concise and to the point,

Cisgender: Describes a person whose gender identity aligns with their assigned gender. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a person has to be comfortable with their society’s determined gender roles.

Cissexed: Describes a person whose physical body (i.e. genitals, reproductive organs, secondary sex characteristics), as far as they know, aligns with their assigned sex. Someone can be cissexed without being cisgender; for example, many genderqueer people fall under this category.

Cis: When shortened to just cis, used as an umbrella term for someone who is both cisgender and cissexed.

Transgender: An umbrella descriptor for a person whose gender does not align with the one they were assigned. May include crossdressing/transvestism, gender fluid, genderqueer, and/or transsexual individuals. Sometimes shortened to trans* (with or without the asterisk) when used to mean “transgender and/or transsexual individuals”.

Transsexual/transsexed: Describes a person whose body does not align with their gender, and is either planning to, is in the process of, or has completed a process of changing it to align. This process of medical transition may include hormone therapy and/or surgery. There is no “one true way” to go about being transsexual.

Basically I assumed that in saying cis Rachel was indicating that she was identifying fully as cis. I don’t want to put further words into her mouth but I think she meant that she was using cis specifically in a cissexed context.  It’s an interesting aspect of the words that while trans*, transgender and transsexual are regularly used and differentiated from one another, particularly amongst ourselves, the equivalent word cluster around cis are still vague and cis itself is seen as far more all encompassing than trans words are. Perhaps partly as there is less recognition of the fact that just because someone defines themselves as in some way cis it does not mean that they entirely feel themselves to be so. I think another issue is that the adjective cis is still not accepted by all cis people as a valid descriptor contributes. Discussion around the term focusses on whether trans* people should be allowed to create a word to replace the othering and discriminating situation of there being no words equivalent to trans* to describe people who are not. I feel that resistance to the word cis prevents the discussion moving on to be about what cis is, what it describes and how there can be categories within the term that cis people might use to describe who they are without the assumption that they are completely cisgendered and cissexed.

This brings me back to geopunk’s FAQ page and further complexity, ways to talk about where one is if one accepts that gender is more than just male/female,

Binary identity: Describes a person whose gender identity is defined more similarly to the way that their culture defines “man” and “woman”. This includes cis people, and also a great many trans* people. Some people define “cisgender” in this way, but in order to avoid confusion I use separate definitions.

Genderqueer: Describes a person whose identity is neither entirely male nor entirely female. Can be used as a noun or adjective. Genderqueers may be cissexed or transsexed. Genderqueers may identify as “all of the above” or “none of the above”, or bigendered, or polygendered, or genderfucked, or as an androgyne, or gender fluid. “Genderqueer” as a category is not mutually exclusive from “trans*”, although some genderqueer people do not identify as trans. There are probably as many definitions of genderqueer as there are people who identify this way, so I will keep my definition (and use of the term) vague but flexible.

What I particularly like about the way geopunk is using these is that it stops binary being used as a description for cisgendered, recognising that a great many trans men and women experience their genders as being just that, at one end of a continuum, just as cisgendered people do. This is important. Without this there is no way to express that concisely which is part of a tendency for all trans people to be pushed into a group in between male/female, regardless of whether they see themselves as fitting in there. Equally importantly it allows genderqueer to stand without it being compromised by the inclusion of binary trans people, allowing it to mean what it means and not become a catchall for everyone who is not cisgendered and cissexed. This is important if we really want to recognise and support the amazing variety of lived experiences people have as any time someone is pushed into a category they feel erases them we are denying their right to individuality and self definition.

So it’s all got a bit more complex but then, people are just that. Any reduction of nature to a binary by neccesity chops off and excludes things, nature is too fuzzy and wonderfully messy to fit into neat pairs of categories. To understand it, and ourselves, we need to allow for complexity within our simplifications and to always be aware that someone else might be simplifying when they use one of these terms, whether it is a trans term or a cis term. If these are all to be equally valid and fair to everyone then that goes in all directions, cis, trans, genderqueer, any of them.

So for clarity I can say that I am a binary identified, transgendered, transsexual woman, when I need to be particularly precise about exactly where I am on this web of interlocking terms, when simplifying for either convenience or wider points, I can say I am a trans woman. Equally I am still just a woman and a human being.

What the complex descriptions do is allow us all freedom to say exactly who we are without having parts of our identities erased. What the simple descriptions do is allow us all to remember what we have in common and where we can find points of intersection and common ground. I think both are important and I’m glad I have been reminded of this.

Sometimes you come across something that explains a complex idea really well. This is one such thing, Story of Stuff. It’s partisan and US centric but it’s one of the most accessible explanations of how the consumer society model has created and perpetuates environmental damage and the economic exploitation of the third world and people in our own countries.

Of course it’s partisan, it’s rather hard to analyse why we live in societies driven by the need to consume without that becoming political. The underpinnings of any economic system are in themselves political and social. To change the system requires a change in how we think about and manage it.

Anyway, I am partisan about this. The environment and people’s rights are more important than any desire I might have to own new and fancy gadgets, or a car, or pretty much anything not crucial to a healthy life.

Well that was a moderately busy week. I read once that a lucky person is someone who remembers the things they consider lucky with more clarity and regularity than the things they consider unlucky (and vice versa). Basically you are lucky if you think you are. I like this. Partly I like it because I know probability mathematics, which tend to bugger up common sense ideas of luck and chance. It’s one of those areas of knowledge where what we think makes sense is actually rubbish and in fact way more complex than what actually happens. It’s just a bit counter to how we experience stuff – or more to the point, counter to how we remember what we experience. So give it a go. Decide you are a lucky person and make a point of remembering your luck and forgetting your bad luck. Works for me pretty well, although I have to say I generally do already consider myself lucky, which is a bit of luck if you are trying to do that.

So yes anyway a lucky week in that I confirmed I was getting paid for one project and confirmed another. What luck! Now I’m good until nearly the end of the year. I also got to spend time with both my nephew and my niece during the week, which doesn’t happen often. In fact I haven’t seen the niece for more than a month. She was super cute of course, seeing as she is not quite one year old. She’s got the hang of showing and giving, which is divertingly sweet for a surprisingly long time. Nephew was equally lovely although much less interactive. The little person is not yet a month old so he’s still very much at the hold and go “Aww, cute!” stage. Since I can do that for a whole morning though with no lessening of the ‘aww’ factor, it works for me.

With a bit of luck next week will be lucky too. I’ll be sure to look out for it. Luckily it doesn’t take me special effort.

It’s a complicated business to unravel, transition. In short it is the period of life a trans person goes through as they change from living in the gender role they were assigned at birth to living as the gender their internal sense of self is set to. It could be from male to female, from female to male and even for some from male or female to genderqueer. It is subject to many stereotypes and misunderstandings and can be a challenge for both the trans person and the people around them.

For many cis people it can be baffling. As they have never had to be aware of their own gender as a constant presence they can wonder what all the fuss is about, wonder why you can’t achieve the same without actually transitioning. They might question why one wants to be addressed with gender appropriate pronouns, not understanding that to constantly hear ones that contradict your sense of self feels like an erasure and denial of your self and your desire to be respected as a human being. They might wonder why one wants to change habits and appearance, not seeing that their own is fundamentally gendered and that you might have been simulating old forms in order to try to deny, closet or otherwise conform to society’s expectation of you based on your body. The biggest questions by far focus on the physical aspects associated with transitioning.

The idea that transition is all about the body is very much to do with the way psychiatrists try to deal with us. Finding that there is no way to force a person to change their mind about their gender identity the medical profession instead turned to the idea of “fixing” our bodies. As the possibilities of surgery and artifical hormones increased in the twentieth century this became the norm. As a result the medical conception of us is very much rooted in physicality. Along with this came ideas of what a successful transition was and the psychiatrists produced theories and descriptions that pretty much invented the stereotypes. Not being stupid many trans people played up to these and told (and still tell) the doctors what they wanted to hear in order to gain access to assistance.

These stereotypes then are what the wider public think they know about us. They are almost all about trans women, since the doctors have shown remarkably little interest in theorising about the trans men they treat. In the public eye we are all very (read overly) feminine, we all wear dresses, we all fancy men and we all want hormones and surgery and we’ll die if we don’t get them! The strongest stereotypes revolve around the physical aspects of transition. The idea that every single transsexual wants hormones, needs sex reassignment surgery, needs them to “feel complete” is very, very strong. So strong it even permeates our own conceptions of ourselves. So exposed are we to these stereotypes of us that if you don’t fit them exactly you can end up questioning yourself and wondering if you measure up, wondering if you really are what you know you are. More, within trans culture there are strong elements that will reject other trans women if they don’t live up to the physical needs stereotype. They will deny that they too are transsexuals, that they are women. Partly this is born of fear. Fear that if the medical professions finds out that some of us don’t want surgeries then no one will be allowed access to it. I can’t blame them for that fear given the way we are generally treated by medicine even if I deplore the divisiveness and the excluding one receives if you don’t fit.

So yes you guessed it, shock horror, the stereotype fails to describe us accurately. Hands up who wasn’t expecting that? For all of those things, yes there will be some trans people for whom they are true.  For every one there are trans people for whom they are not. But we are all still trans*, we are still transsexuals. Our transitions are as varied and as nuanced as we are, as humans are. How can there be a one size fits all solution for every single person? Surely that makes no sense if you stop to think about it?

So what is transition then? If it isn’t entirely about the body, or behaviour, or clothes? Perhaps if we simplify it back down to where I started, back to “the period of life a trans person goes through as they change from living in the gender role they were assigned at birth to living as the gender their internal sense of self is set to”. It’s about growing into and taking on the role one feels comfy in, learning how to express who one truly is. It’s about working out what physical aid one needs, or can achieve in order to feel comfy with one’s physicality. To me it is a process of becoming. Of growth and change, of living after spending years hiding from life. To me it is as much about that mental journey as it is anything else.

Transition is complex, I don’t feel that there can be one simple answer. For every trans person there will be a different path, a different balance and a different set of needs and options. It’s a period of life, of living, not a process or a checklist.

Two things to post today, firstly it is International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia today.

International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia Logo

Second, and this seems to be showing up only in trans* blogs and French language news sites, I’m linking you to a translation of the story on Le Monde’s website as the most authoritative I can find. France have officially announced, choosing today on purpose, that transsexuality is no longer considered classifiable as a mental illness. The government minister also said that those transsexuals requiring medical assistance with transitioning would continue to receive financial assistance under other arrangements and that France would be pressuring the World Health Organisation to revise it’s own classification.

This is awesome news!

Seeing as I live as female and most of the time most people are seeing me as the woman I am, my partner and I are usually seen as a lesbian couple. Which is all fine. We’re actually married too, in the UK. Not a Civil Partnership, but your actual marriage.

OK so now it gets silly, not quite as silly as the nonsense described in the US in this very thought provoking opinion piece in the New York Times about marriage and how trans people show up the inconsitencies in how it is defined, but still pretty nonsensical. We are in a happy, stable relationship and we are commited to each other and wish to remain so. However if I change my birth certificate we would be forced, yes that’s right, required, to get divorced. Why? So that the artificial and frankly wrong distinction between a marriage and a civil partnership can be maintained. It’s a trick solution. Conservatives can be mollified that civil partnerships are not a “real” marriage, same gender couples can at least have their commitments recognised and given rights. Everyone can feel like a winner.

Unless one of you is trans.

Then you really notice the idiocy of it. So our relationship would be the same, same people, same love, same commitment. But because my gender would alter on my birth certificate we would end up becoming a divorce statistic when we don’t even want to divorce, spending money on the court system and generally having to mess about with something that should either be made automatic or better still, not be needed at all. Marriage should just be marriage. Long term commitment based in love between two adults. No ifs, buts, discussion or definitions beyond that. Anything else is unequal and unfair to everyone.

Sometimes there is nothing to say.

Sometimes there are thoughts but I don’t know how to say them.

Sometimes there is no one to hear them, or understand them.

Sometimes I just need to be a listener for myself.

I spent all day yesterday helping to look after my one week old nephew. Spending hours holding him, creating a bubble of peace and safety around him. Just enjoying the wonder of being present with a brand new person. He smiled in his half sleep for me, twice, and made my heart melt.

Just amazing.