Well, precisely because transsexual experiences are now subordinated by the
hegemonic rubric of transgender, just as the voices and experiences of
primaries have also been obscured by the loud male voices of secondaries.
Doesn't usage of the term "hegemonic" imply some sort of power
structure? I sure have never seen any such thing.
As far as the voices of so-called primaries being obscured, there is
one sure cure for that: speak your truth, loudly, proudly, and for all to
hear. Don't blame those who do speak up for the failure of others
not to do so.
As I see it transgender has absolutely nothing to do with me, my experience,
my needs both personal and political, my world view.
And being a disabled person has nothing to do with me, but I still
recognize that the category exists. If you do not view yourself as
transgendered, that's fine. When people are talking about
transgender, then they aren't talking about you. You are only a
member of the subset if you think you are. In this situation, it seems
to me that you are imagining that someone else is claiming that you
are transgendered. Who is it that is doing so? All along, the claim
has been that the category is one which is self-defined. Nobody is
forcing you to sign up.
I share far, far more with natal women and with other primaries (even
though Suzan is giving me the pip right now) than I do with cross-dressing
fetishists, auto-gynephiliacs, gender border crossers, who think it fine to assert claims to womanhood (or manhood for that matter) or to an intrinsic female or male identity without living the life, walking the walk. Being woman is rather like flying a plane, the more you do it the better pilot you are, the more people are likely to trust you to fly them.
I have far more in common with my natal women friends than I have
with you. That doesn't make you a non-woman. "Commonality" is
socially defined in this case, is it not? I don't live in your world and
you don't live in mine, so the definitions of who is what that apply in
your community don't apply to mine and likewise the definitions of
who is what in my community don't apply to yours. If my community
chooses to accept me as a woman, who are you to tell them they
can't or shouldn't?
Typical of you to use radical reversal as an intellectual strategy.
There's nothing at all radical about my questions. I can't explain
why you have certain reactions. Only you can do so. I'm not
required to justify my existence to you, only to myself.
Feminists tried that for a while too but then we realized it doesn't stick, and if they ARE, as you posit, questions about me, then the questions ask things like, if a white man says he's black and takes a skin-darkening drug to make him seem black and then moves into the black community does that mean he is black or is he something else, is something much nastier going
on?
A human is a human is a human. I don't attribute motives to any
human other than myself, much less a hypothetical human.
[One the subject of race, however, I think we have to be a bit
careful. There is no clear distinction between white and black. Line
all humans up according to skin shade, and you won't find any
boundaries. I'm planning on either checking all the race boxes on
the census or none of them. I haven't decided yet. Doing so
doesn't demean any person, but is rather is a statement that race is
a social issue, not a demographic one.]
To me, Robyn, your own life condition reeks of sneaky imperialism.
There is absolutely nothing "sneaky" about my life. I'm completely
upfront about the status of my gender. That's been the case ever
since I began the transition mode. It's all been public knowledge.
Your claims to being woman and lesbian are both ineluctable and monolithic, despite the evidence that most of your life has been led as a heterosexual man, husband, father.
Your assumption is that I claim to be a woman. I have said many
times that I claim to be "Robyn." I *used* to claim I was a woman,
but that upset some people, so I stopped. I identify as a
transwoman, a transsexual woman, or a sex-change. I don't care.
I do claim to be a lesbian. My partners are lesbians and they think
I'm a lesbian. My lesbian friends think I'm a lesbian. The people of
the community in which I live think I'm a lesbian. My daughter is a
lesbian and she and her partner think I'm a lesbian. My ex-wife
divorced me because she perceived that our relationship would be
a lesbian one and she is not a lesbian. Who am I to disagree with
all these people? And who are you to say that all these people are
wrong in their usage of the term in reference to me? Why does
your opinion outweigh theirs?
By the way, I'm proud to have been a good provider for my family
and a good parent to my child. Raising a child is an experience
many transpeople don't have and regret not having. It was a
positive experience for me and not something I run from.
When pressed on the authenticity of your woman claims, you resort to arguments about essences, hidden experiences and feelings, true selves residing in false selves, and a sort of reactionary libertarianism which posits all thing as being okay as long as no one gets
hurt.
You've got the wrong person here, Vivian. I don't argue the
authenticity of my claim to be a woman. I don't need such
validation. I do however defend the right of people to self-define.
But secondaries, and transgenders do hurt me. Their thin claims to womanhood devalue womanhood in general and my own in particular (and Ruth's, Suzan's).
How? How? How?
The sentences above reek of paranoia, Vivian. In whose eyes
does this devaluation take place? The general public? The
general public couldn't give a rat's ass about how I self-define.
They've got their own problems. They certainly don't encounter me
and then go home and beat their wives (well, not unlesss they were
wife-beaters before hand, I suppose). Women aren't paid less than
men because transsexual women exist. Women aren't raped
because of the existence of transwomen. The devaluation of which
you speak is a fiction.
Is it the problem that the general public doesn't know the difference
between you and me? Is it your view then that the general public
would think better of transsexual women if I and others like me
didn't exist? Get a grip, Vivian.
It seems to me that you are arguing for some sort categorical purity
here. Well, you'll never achieve it. It is not the case that all
transsexual women are going to be like you, think like you and
behave like you.
They parody woman just as much as does the campy drag queen.
The transsexual women I know just go about living their lives as
best they can. Parody is then in the eye of the beholder, and
methinks the beholder ought to rethink her thoughts.
Woman is an incremental construction from long term felt and lived experience of sexuality, soma, material oppression, and so forth. Not, and I say it again, not a product of some nominative act speciously completed by electrolysis, a vaginoplasty, and a few years in a frock.
How long is longterm, Vivian? I've been experiencing that lived
reality for going on 9 years now, nearly 20% of my life. Where is the
dividing line? Fifteen years, 30 years? Maybe it's your *whole life.*
Er...oops! Wouldn't that mean you don't qualify either, Vivian.
Neither is the middle aged mans' claim to be lesbian terribly convincing, since lesbianism is deeply bound up in centuries of narratives and oppression in life-long lived experience. Lesbianism is not only about who one screws; it is a matrix of of dialogical understandings, politics, cultures, awarenesses. It always surprises me that natal women accept mid-life transitioners as generously as so many do; shocks me even more that lesbians do too, since what can a 50 year old hetero man actually know about being a lesbian woman? In claiming to know they both cheapen and threaten women's and lesbians' identities.
Perhaps it should be up to natal women and lesbians to decide
who belongs and who doesn't. Perhaps the opinions of someone
who changed sex and now claims to be a woman, but who would
deny the same possibility to others wouldn't carry much weight in
their discussion. It sounds too much like, "I got mine. Now let's
close the door!"
Most of the lesbians I know believe in a "big tent." They don't reject
women coming out as lesbian after living as heterosexual women
for most of their lives. They accept such women for who they are.
And they accept transsexual women for who they are as well. They
see a parallel between the two situations. Why can't you?
Robyn
"When all is said and done, all that really matters is
whether or not you are happy."
I did some deja me when I got out of bed this morning. You know, googling yourself to see what might turn up. “Robyn Serven transgender” popped the following from the Trans-Theory email list and the year 2000. Clearly I had been having a “discussion” with someone at the time. As always, it concerns who belongs and who does not.