{"id":1060,"date":"2020-11-16T10:00:49","date_gmt":"2020-11-16T10:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2020-11-14T08:19:34","modified_gmt":"2020-11-14T08:19:34","slug":"iii-be-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/iii-be-kind\/","title":{"rendered":"III: Be kind"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think there\u2019s something rude and unkind, or can be depending on the pragmatics, in the assertion that you often hear, that \u201cTrans women are men really.\u201d It\u2019s rude and unkind in the way that it\u2019s rude and unkind to say \u201cAn adoptive parent isn\u2019t a parent really\u201d\u2014or even more obviously in the second person: \u201cYou<\/em>, adoptive \u2018parent\u2019, are not really a parent.\u201d (I blogged<\/a> about this for the APA recently.)<\/p>\n

In one way, the genetic sense, the truth of the statement about adoptive parents is of course undeniable. But in another way, the social and legal sense, the statement is false: and not just by-your-leave false or metaphorically false, but literally <\/em>false. So when someone insists on stating the genetic truth that \u201cAdoptive parents aren\u2019t parents really\u201d in a wide variety of social contexts, the question of why they are insisting on it is going to arise pretty fast. And an urge to hurt and exclude is quite likely to be the answer to that question. I think exactly parallel considerations apply with \u201cTrans women are men really.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this is probably also the place for me to push back against a view that seems quite common among trans women which I think is clearly mistaken, and which I think is another view that\u2019s only popular because it\u2019s popular. I call this the mistake-at-the-hospital view of transgender. Some trans women seem to think that they\u2019ve been oppressed because when they were born the doctors in the hospital assigned them to the male gender, and that that was a clear mistake (how could it then have been a clear <\/em>mistake?), which was clearly the cause of all their later woes. To be honest, I think that\u2019s just wacky. I don\u2019t wish to dismiss anyone\u2019s experience, but I struggle to see how this could be anyone\u2019s actual experience<\/em>, as opposed to a report of their experience that they give because they think it\u2019s the report that they\u2019re expected to give because they\u2019ve heard other trans women give it. (In a nice distinction of Bernard Williams\u2019, I can see how it could be what they think they think<\/em>; but not how it could be what they think<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Even if I speak only for myself in saying this, I\u2019m sure that when I was born there was no mistake at the hospital: they correctly identified mine as a newborn male\u2019s body. And since that was the only question that concerned them\u2014they weren\u2019t trying to see into the strange phantasmagorical landscape that I am pleased to call my mind\u2014they didn\u2019t miss anything. It later on turns out (not very much later actually, but later) that I have a profound sense that my body\u2019s shape is not the one I want or feel at home in or comfortable with: I want a female body, which is not the body I was born with. That\u2019s what it is, I think, to be a trans woman: it\u2019s body dysmorphia of a profound kind. But as I say, they didn\u2019t miss this at the hospital because they weren\u2019t looking for it. To put it roughly, they were looking for sex, not for gender; and they got the sex bit entirely right.<\/p>\n

Another thing trans women and others sometimes say: \u201cI identify <\/em>as transgender\u201d, or \u201cI identify <\/em>as a woman\u201d. I am puzzled by this form of words. It seems that a lot of people invest a lot of rhetorical and emotional energy in statements of identity like this one, but I have to confess that I don\u2019t always see how they are supposed to work. In normal discourse I say things like \u201cI identify as a Lancastrian\u201d or \u201cI identify as a European\u201d meaning that I have that identity, I am in that category, anyway<\/em>, no matter what I think of it as a category\u2014and what I\u2019m saying by talking about identifying as it, is that this identity that I have anyway is one that matters to me. So when I say \u201cI identify as transgender\u201d or \u201cI identify as a woman\u201d, perhaps I\u2019m doing something similar: just picking out one of the categorisations that already fit me, and saying that that\u2019s one that matters. Fine so far; but now people seem to want to use such remarks as announcements<\/em>, as political moves: as if making such an identification-statement was self-fulfilling\u2014as if you become <\/em>(officially, publicly, politically?) transgender by saying this; and as if such a statement were the key thing that makes <\/em>you transgender.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this last bit that puzzles me most. For as far as I can see, \u201cI identify as a woman\u201d is not a performative, like \u201cI declare this supermarket open\u201d. Unlike the supermarket declaration, saying \u201cI identify as a woman\u201d (even in the right context etc.) doesn\u2019t make it true that you are <\/em>a woman. You may get the public status of being recognised as a woman <\/em>just by saying this, but you don\u2019t get to be a woman<\/em> just by saying it. On the contrary: unless you are already (in some sense) a woman, you can\u2019t say this at all. It does seem to me that there are some confusions in the recent debate in this sort of vicinity.<\/p>\n

One last thing that people can mean by \u201cTrans women are men really\u201d: they can mean that trans women are disguised <\/em>men, men pretending <\/em>to be women. The charge of sexual predatoriness is not far away here (see below). Also close to hand is a reaction to trans women that frequently leads to violence against them. Some men find it threatening that trans women are people who present as female but have, or often have, male anatomy. Why so? Possibly because those men are insecure in their own masculinity: either they\u2019re afraid that if they don\u2019t react violently to trans women, they\u2019ll find that they want to dress up as girls themselves; or they\u2019re worried by the fact that they are sexually attracted to trans women (after all, \u201conly a poof would feel that\u201d). Or they take exception to what they see as an attempt to deceive them\u2014the thinking is that trans women want their sexual attentions, and are trying to con them into bestowing them. I don\u2019t need to say anything to bring out what Neolithic responses these all are. Still, it is worth taking a little time to try and understand these reactions, given that they regularly result in trans women\u2019s deaths.<\/p>\n

There is of course far more to say about these issues than I can say here, but I hope this is at any rate a start. Feminists and trans activists have not always understood or appreciated each other\u2019s positions as well as they might, and for that I think there is fault on both sides. It would be nice to think that we can move the debate forward together, if we are prepared to try, and to be kind to each other.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I think there\u2019s something rude and unkind, or can be depending on the pragmatics, in the assertion that you often hear, that \u201cTrans women are men really.\u201d It\u2019s rude and […]","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":1049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"\"III: Be kind\" the final instalment of Sophie-Grace's trilogy on the transgender question on Open for Debate","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[160,120,264],"custom_author":[263],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-for-debate","tag-ethics","tag-identity","tag-transgender","custom_author-chappell-sophie-grace"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8KPlM-h6","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1051,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/ii-bodily-threats\/","url_meta":{"origin":1060,"position":0},"title":"II: Bodily threats","author":"Alessandra Tanesini","date":"November 8, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"It is the bodily difference between males and females that explains most of the other differences in the roles of men and women in any given society\u2014both in Homeric society and in ours. 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