Red is still undead

While many feminists defend the rights of transpeople and even see "transgender" as something positive in the fight against patriarchy, there have also been feminist criticisms of "transgender" or "transgenderism" (a recent one being from miss Andrea, who triggered quite hostile reactions but who at least allowed me to find a title for this post :p). While the "transgender" term is quite large and groups different things (crossdressers, gender-queer, ...), the main reproaches are concentrated on people who physically "transition" (i.e., go through hormonotherapy or surgery) and/or who define as being in the "opposite" gender than the one they were assigned to. (For me, that would more or less correspond to the "transsexual" category, but since the debate has been launched on "transgender" and I prefer this term, I'll stay with it.)

Personally, I'd tend to divide those criticisms into two trends:

1. an essentialist one, which basically says "you'll never be a woman because you'll never be pregnant".
2. a more constructivist one, which would rather say "transgender actually reinforces gender norms".

While I don't think the first is interesting, my opinion is that the second one needs to be adressed.

I think it raises interesting questions, one of them being: "are transgender people 'compatible' with social constructivism ?". I believe the answer is YES, and this is why I'd like to explain my (social constructivist) vision of "transgender construction" (i.e, how an individual can end up as transgender, not the construction of the transgender movement^[1]). Since I am not an intensive reader, I don't know if what I say here has already been said elsewhere, or proven to be wrong. I guess that, for a tranny, it is a bit of a difficult exercise since it requires to have an analysis which is sometimes in contradiction with personal feelings ; I just hope I didn't get too wrong on it.

A woman soul in a man body

There is this expression, over and over: "a woman soul in a man body". There are other sentences to describe transgenderism which I find essentialist (e.g, "an error from Nature" or "being born in the wrong body"), but this one is #1. It has been repeated so much that the mere fact of saying that you're trans' can trigger reactions such as "Oh, yeah, a woman soul in a man body. Must be hard for you."

I don't like this expression. Actually, I hate it. First, I'm a materialist, I don't believe in some obscure soul. I don't think I was a woman who has been reincarnated or something like that.

And, what with the "man body" part ? My body is mine. So, if I'm a woman, it's a woman body. Since I rather define as a tranny, it's a tranny body. But it's not a "man body". It may be a biologically male body, but not a man one, since, well, "man" and "woman" are social constructs.

Now, I have to admit that there is actually some truth in this sentence, even if I don't like the formulation. Basically, it says that the person, though she has a biologically male body and is seen and assigned as "man", deepely feels being a woman.

A constructivist hypothesis

I saw some constructivist feminists having problems with this (people feeling being of the "other" gender). Personally, while I don't remember I ever felt my "soul" was a woman's one, I think it is quite understandable.

In a nutshell, I would say that "transgender" exists because of gender.

Gender, for me, is a social construct; but I think the assignation process is not 100% reliable. I think part of the explanation is just "sometimes, things don't work"^[2].

Basically, for a reason or another, transgender people end up "feeling" that they are not "true men" or "true women"^[3]. Since there is a very high social pressure to be either man or woman, well, if you're not one, you're the other. And since men are supposed to have biologically male bodies, and women are supposed to have biologically female bodies, it ends up being easier to take hormones and have surgery.

Now, something which must be made clear before going further: what I say here is at an analysis level. When you live it, of course, you don't say to yourself "oh, I don't feel good as a man, let's say I'm a woman".

Personally, I am taking hormones, and I didn't do it because I thought "oh, it will be easier this way". What I felt is that I hated my body and it wasn't me and taking hormones to make it more "female" was making peace with myself. But that is at the "feeling" level; from a feminist analysis, I believe that the reason of these feelings lies not in a innate female brain or female soul, but in what society made me understand since I was born.

While I understand that some people find easier to say that they were "born" like that, I don't think it's less "respectable" to say that what you are and what you feel are the results of a social construction.

Now all of this doesn't mean that I think the biological body of a person doesn't play a role at all in the gender they determines themself.

What I don't think is that biological features of a body are per se "man" or "woman" features. Of course, if I live in a society where all men are expected to be physically strong, and I'm not, this can play a role in whether I can feel "man" or not. But it is not because being strong is in itself a man thing; it is because being strong is a man thing in this culture.

On the "reinforcing gender" thing

Now all of this doesn't answer the initial feminist criticism: by identifiying as the opposite gender and undergoing physical changes, do transpeople reinforce gender norms ?

Since I say that the feeling of being a "man" or a "woman" and the need to undergo physical changes are the results of social pressure, the answer could be: "yes", because, well, they just don't resist enough. And the same could be said of, well, non-trans people who define as "men" or "women" and don't resist gender norms "enough".

But I have trouble saying that the act in itself is "sexist" or "reinforcing gender norms" because it depends how it is seen. E.g., I think saying "I will be a real woman when I have surgery" does reinforce gender norms (in this case, the link "vagina=woman"), while I don't think it is the case for "I will accept my body better when I have surgery". It's the same thing for, say, high heels. I don't have a problem with a woman wearing high heels if she likes that, but I think there is one if the only reason to wear them is because she's a woman.

Now I think that, concerning transgender, the real way to fight gender norms is not to label some people or movements "subversive" or "feminists" and some others "gender reinforcing" or "reactionary"^[4], but to fight the social pressure (starting by the one coming from psychiatrist teams) which requires people to be either men or women and to have a "sex" that match their gender. Which isn't to say that transpeople shouldn't be able to have hormones or surgery, but they should not be required to have them.

And I think that, for transpeople and everyone, the real question is not whether you wear lipstick or not, whether you had your breasts augmented or not (or whether you stuff your bra or not), or even whether you define as a man/woman or not. The only really important thing is what you concretely DO against (or for, but I hope that for most readers it will be against) patriarchy, sexism and all oppressions.