ng_moonmoth

I am not going to do yet another Gender 101 post here. There are already way too many reputable and responsible organizations with excellent pages that talk about gender and define gender-related terms much better and more comprehensively than I could ever do. They're pretty easy to find. If the one you find affirms that everyone's gender identity is valid, you're in a good place. Organizations that provide assistance and support for trans people are usually a good bet, because trans people and the people who want to help them are dealing with gender all the time, and can't help but think about it.

With so many different people presenting gender information, it's completely understandable that the views that are presented come from different places, and turn out to be more supportive of their own ideas on the subject -- often to the point where the definitions appear to be completely different. I'm not linking to any of them because, to me, it's most important that everyone understand gender the way that suits them best, and I don't want to impose my opinions on that process. This is my view of how I understand gender.

My own view of gender aligns well with Julia Serano's: gender identity is an emergent property of the physical, emotional, and cultural effects on a person's life. Which is to say that there is nothing about any of those effects that categorically determines someone's gender identity, but they all contribute to that person's understanding of their gender identity. And every person is their own sole authority on their gender identity: it is what they say it is, and the actions they take that, to them, align with their gender identity, support their assertion.

Here are some conclusions that I believe are important, that follow from my current view of gender.

A gender identity is a property of a person. Although it is frequently a static property, it need not be. And someone's having a dynamic gender identity does not invalidate them or their current gender identity. Someone's gender identity is visible only to the extent they choose to project it, and to the extent that those actions are recognized as affirming their gender identity.

Going along with this, saying someone "identifies as" a gender identity introduces doubt into that being their gender identity. "Identification" is something that is done, not something that just is. I interpret it as indicating that one person, observing someone, constructs a hypothesis that "identifies" the target of their observation "as" having a particular gender identity. The observations may or may not be meaningful, or interpreted correctly, and the hypothesis may not be soundly constructed. To what extent these apply strongly influences the accuracy of the hypothesis. So, for me, someone who says "I identify as a woman" is only saying, "Based on observing these things about myself [which are probably far from comprehensive] and my understanding of how these things relate to gender [which may well be fatally biased by the people they know and the culture they inhabit], I choose to guess that my gender identity is "woman" [perhaps because my gender knowledge declares that "man" and "woman" are the only valid genders]." Part of becoming gender-aware is realizing that one must validate such a hypothesis, for others and for one's own self, instead of just using it.

Similarly, the pronoun sets someone associates with themself are a property of that person, be they ones that were assigned to them that they have decided fit, or ones that they chose for themself because the ones they used previously no longer fit them. The pronouns may be contextual (mine are), or variable (Eddie Izzard was, until recently, a canonical example here), but they are not "preferences". They are as much a property of a person as their name, and deserve the same respect. Denying the validity of someone's name and imposing a different name on them has been used as a tool for personal oppression and cultural suppression. This is why I am very uncomfortable with people who will not use the name or pronouns someone asserts are theirs.

Presentation choices and medical intervention are not essential components of establishing someone's gender identity. Some people find these actions useful in support of their gender identity, while others do not. Deciding to disclose whether someone has received hormonal or surgical treatment in support of their gender identity is private and personal information, and not anyone else's to ask.

By way of wanting to find a way to more clearly identify the source of gender assumptions, I have repurposed a couple of terms that make it easier for me to describe some aspects of gender. Continuing the tradition of appropriating Greek and Latin prefixes in defining medical terms, I will often use the prefix "episio-" (Greek term meaning "loins"; it may be familiar to those who have come across the term "episotomy") to identify conclusions drawn from observing someone's crotch, and "morpho-" (Greek term meaning "form"; also seen in the biological term "morphology") to identify conclusions drawn from observing someone's body shape. (One could also use the already established "karyo-" to identify conclusions drawn from observing someone's chromosomes.) This means I can use "morphogender" to refer to the act of applying stereotypical associations of body shape with gender to guess someone's gender identity (which can then also be called their morphogender), describe the gender identity that is culturally assumed for a particular body shape as "morphonormative", or use "episiology" to refer to the assumptions that the appearance of someone's crotch is predictive of their gender identity. The assumptions of episiology are quite a bit like a now-discredited set that claimed that the shape of one's skull was predictive of their mental inclinations. And I hope that sometime in the future episiology will be discredited then to the same extent that phrenology is now, and am pleased by the congruence in terms.

I wanted to comment further on an article and subsequent commentary in ysabetwordsmith's "Trans gressions" post. By the time I finished, I had something more than twice as large as an LJ comment accepts, so I'm posting over here and linking to it.

This post is contextually in response to the linked comment, so "you" outside quoted passages refers to ysabetwordsmith.

You said: >> Well, the article was obviously fractious. <<

To the author's credit, she's at least talking with transgender people, and presenting their viewpoints. The thing is, she wound up attempting to characterize a number of controversial topics in ways that disregard or completely deny the range of opinions regarding the topic. For example, the article states: >> To be gender-critical is to doubt the belief, which its critics call “genderism,” that gender is some sort of irreducible essence, wholly distinct from biological sex or socialization. <<, but the opinions presented in support of that definition smack more of denying the personal component of gender identity. This becomes problematic because it is a separatist view, rather than inclusive.

Here's an excellent counterpoint by a (trans genderqueer) author. Also, Julia Serano's theory of holistic gender was driven by her observation that any attempt to define gender without acknowledging the contributions of personal, social, and morphological factors does not come anywhere close to describing the variety of people's lived gender experiences.

At the end of it all, Goldberg is filtering the viewpoints through her own biases, emphasizing those that match while disparaging or dismissing those that don't. And, as you point out (>> talk about it in less snotty ways that don't involve trying to rip your rights out of someone else's <<), this does not advance the discourse.

There's also more emphasis in the article than I care for on one's score in the Oppression Olympics. One example from the article: >> Radical feminists believe women are a subordinate social class, oppressed due to their biology, and that there’s nothing innate about femininity. << This article does an excellent job explaining why the existence of transgender people threatens those whose stature is founded on sexism, either as oppressor or as oppressed, and how that damages transgender narratives.

And another article by Julia Serano does a good job of explaining why many people who might be presumed to be allies of trans women actually turn out to be less than helpful. A relevant quote: >> For years, trans women have effectively had no voice in MWMF. During that time, many cissexual women and trans masculine attendees have tried to advocate on our behalf inside the festival. While their intensions (sic) may have been sincere, the fact that they entered into a space that excludes trans women, and that they claimed to speak for us (despite not having had a trans female/feminine life experience themselves), their actions further contributed to the erasure of our voices and perspectives. << [MWMF is the late Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.]

From the Goldberg article: >> "It is empirically unreasonable to expect that someone who has been socialized male, has undergone a male puberty, is in all sense of the word anatomically male, can simply say, ‘I’m now a woman,’ and have the world recalibrate all of its autonomic algorithms about sex and gender and say, ‘Yes, you’re a woman,’ ” says Aoife Assumpta Hart, a 41-year-old trans woman with a Ph.D. in gender and psychoanalysis who blogs at Gender Apostates. "Reality doesn’t work that way.” <<

Hart is correct. It doesn't work that way. But it doesn't work the way the article suggests it does, either. I didn't save the link for this one, so I'm paraphrasing, but a trans woman describing her pre-transition life deftly undermines a key component of Hart's hypothesis: >> I didn't experience it as a man. I experienced it as a woman who was presumed to be a man, and was treated like a man. <<

Related to this was something I came across this past weekend. The point that struck me most, and is most relevant to the topic, is:

>> Trans women:
1. are not cis women...and that's okay.
2. are women, and that's a fact. <<

So much of the confrontation, exclusion, and pain trans people face can be attributed to disregard of either, or both, of those points. And this leads to something I don't see nearly enough of: acknowledgement that it's only for a very few that transition can provide an escape from being targeted in any of these, or more harmful, ways. The most likely outcome is that one can change what one is being targeted for to something that may be easier to handle -- and that may only be possible if one elects to measure oneself against constraints that can be a tighter fit than the constraints transition was supposed to allow escape from.

What you said about different transition paths -- >> the thing is, everyone has a body but not everyone identifies with it to the same degree. A person with a very concrete, literalist view of gender can have a very different trans experience that someone with a constructionist, fluid view -- and that means they may benefit from different therapies. << -- applies well here.

Also, it's not just identification with one's body. Someone for whom community is more important to their well-being than it is to me (I'm perfectly happy if my relationship with a community is more like being recognized as "one of us"; the increased admiration and attention being regarded as an exemplary member often brings does very little for me, and can be stressful) will probably seek a more convincing physical transition than will suffice for me.

You mentioned that >> ... one of the risks is going through transition and being disappointed that it's not enough.

This is the only time I've seen someone else writing about it. <<

*checks my growing collection of links relevant to my own transition*

Interestingly, I didn't find much that said transition wasn't enough. Disappointment showed up in a few things (here's an example), but more that the outcome wasn't ideal, with recognition, and often satisfaction, that it was much better than the pre-transition state -- which, far too often, was "transition or death". In other words, "daiyenu", and the recognition that one's transition is what one makes of it, are valuable mindsets.

As for ourselves, where you said: >> I'm not interested in a physical transition because it wouldn't make me feel any better <<

My own view of gender amounts to "somebody who's supposed to know looks at your crotch and forecasts your interests, behavior and goals on that basis, leading to an attempt to culturally indoctrinate you in that direction." Which puts it on roughly as sound a theoretical basis as phrenology. And is a significant reason why any physical transition I decide to pursue will be something that helps me assert the individual nature of my gender identity.

Later, you mentioned: >> [Other people's] opinions don't change who I am any more than does this pale-human-girl-shaped meatsuit. <<

Sounds like we share a very strong sense of personal identity. My own problem is much less with the body I inhabit than it is with the way I am perceived because of the body. Cultural change can improve this, even in the absence of any physical alteration. But an appropriate physical change may aid in the process. The big catch is that requiring someone to actually *think* about something a stereotype allows one to avoid thinking about is something lots of folks would rather not do, in varying degrees. I can't help that, any more than you can help how people think of you and your desires.

you: >> If you're going to avoid pitfalls like "I thought this would fix me but it didn't" then you need either a great deal of private soul-searching or some good therapy, or a combination of both. <<

I've been doing both. I'm pretty clear on my transition options and what I can expect from them. Outside of environments where gender awareness is the norm, the lack of recognition of nonbinary genders means that (to borrow a thought from lb_lee over on DW) I (and you) will almost always be misgendered. I'm working on building up enough life experience to be able to make an informed decision about what I might want to consider in order to lessen my odds of being hurtfully misgendered.

Not everyone is lucky enough to have the resources (time and money) to do this. Your thoughts, and the comments on LJ and DW, can be a big help for those who do not.

Mel G. Cabral (itsamellama) is running their Free Icon Day 05 today.  I'm looking forward to see what they come up with for my online image.  If you want one too, stop by and visit them on LJ or Dreamwidth.