Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  During the sessions of the Council of Constance, which he did not attend, Clamanges sent a letter to that body urging unity of thought and action. He expressed doubt whether general councils were always led by the Holy Spirit. The Church, which he defined as infallible, is only there where the Holy Spirit is, and where the Church is, can be only known to God Himself. In 1425 he returned to Paris and lectured on rhetoric and theology. Clamanges’ reputation rests chiefly upon his sharp criticism of the corrupt morals of the clergy. His residence in Avignon gave him a good opportunity for observation. His tract on the prelates who were practising simony—De praesulibus simoniacis — is a commentary on the words, "But ye have made it a den of thieves," Matt. 21:13. A second tract on the downfall of the Church—De ruina ecclesiae — is one of the most noted writings of the age. Here are set forth the simony and private vices practised at Avignon where all things holy were prostituted for gold and luxury. Here is described the corruption of the clergy from the pope down to the lowest class of priests. The author found ideal conditions in the first century, when the minds of the clergy were wholly set on heavenly things. With possessions and power came avarice and ambition, pride and luxury. The popes themselves were guilty of pride in exalting their authority above that of the empire and by asserting for themselves the right of appointing all prelates, yea of filling all the benefices of Christendom. The evils arising from annates and expectances surpass the power of statement. The cardinals followed the popes in their greed and pride, single cardinals having as many as 500 livings. In order to perpetuate their "tyranny," pope and curia had entered into league with princes, which Clamanges pronounces an abominable fornication. Many of the bishops drew large incomes from their sees which they administered through others, never visiting them themselves. Canons and vicars followed the same course and divided their time between idleness and sensual pleasure. The mendicant monks corresponded to the Pharisees of the synagogue. Scarcely one cleric out of a thousand did what his profession demanded. They were steeped in ignorance and given to brawling, drinking, playing with dice and fornication. Priests bought the privilege of keeping concubines. As for the nuns, Clamanges said, he dared not speak of them. Nunneries were not the sanctuaries of God, but shameful brothels of Venus, resorts of unchaste and wanton youth for the sating of their passions, and for a girl to put on the veil was virtually to submit herself to prostitution.410 The Church was drunken with the lust of power, glory and pleasures. Judgment was sure to come, and men should bow humbly before God who alone could rectify the evils and put an end to the schism. Descriptions such as these must be used with discrimination, and it would be wrong to deduce from them that the entire clerical body was corrupt. The diseases, however, must have been deep-seated to call forth such a lament from a man of Clamanges’ position.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Of course, body feelings are not the only facet of my being that has contributed to my identity as a woman. As I alluded to earlier, the changes in my social gender—how other people relate to and interact with me—were at least as dramatic as (if not more so than) the physical changes to my body. While being treated as a woman felt foreign to me at first, over time it simply became my everyday life. My identity as a woman grew out of positive experiences, such as feeling comfortable with my own female body. Yet it also arose out of negative ones, such as the regularity with which other people placed unsolicited attention upon my body, whether it was the catcalls and sexual innuendos strangers would sometimes hurl at me or the occasional comments people started to make insinuating that I could stand to lose a little weight (even though I weighed the same as I did before my transition, and nobody saw my weight as a problem back then). My identity as a woman grew out of my frustration over being called a “bitch” any time I stood up for myself, or having others make remarks about my hormone levels any time I became legitimately upset or angry about something. My identity as a woman grew out of my experiences at parties and other social occasions when I would come across a group of men talking and laughing, and witness them suddenly fall silent when I approached. My identity evolved out of a million tiny social exchanges where others made it very clear to me that my status in the world—my class, if you will—was that of a woman and not a man.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  And now, as an out transsexual woman, I find that those who wish to ridicule or dismiss me do not simply take me to task for the fact that I fail to conform to gender norms—instead, more often than not, they mock my femininity. From the perspective of an occasional gender bender or someone on the female-to-male spectrum, it might seem like binary gender norms are at the core of all anti-trans discrimination. But most of the anti-trans sentiment that I have had to deal with as a transsexual woman is probably better described as misogyny. The fact that transsexual women are often singled out to bear the brunt of our culture’s fascination with and demonization of trans people is a subject that has been ripe for feminist critique for about half a century now. Unfortunately, many feminists have been extraordinarily apathetic or antagonistic to the experiences and perspectives of transsexual women. In fact, the few non-trans feminists who have written about us in the past have usually based their theses upon the assumption that we are really “men” (not women), and that our physical transitions to female and our expressions of femininity represent an appropriation of female culture, symbolism, and bodies. Besides being disrespectful of the fact that we identify, live, and are treated by the world as women, such flawed approaches have overlooked an important opportunity to examine far more relevant issues: the ways in which traditional sexism shapes popular assumptions about transsexual women and why so many people in our society feel threatened by the existence of “men who choose to become women.” The intent of this book is to debunk many of the myths and misconceptions that people have about transsexual women, as well as gender in general. By turning the tables on the rest of the world and examining why so many different facets of our society have set out to dehumanize trans women, I hope to show that we are ridiculed and dismissed not merely because we “transgress binary gender norms,” as many transgender activists and gender theorists have proposed, but rather because we “choose” to be women rather than men. The fact that we identify and live as women, despite being born male and having inherited male privilege, challenges those in our society who wish to glorify maleness and masculinity, as well as those who frame the struggles faced by other women and queers solely in terms of male and heterosexual privilege. Examining the society-wide disdain for trans women also brings to light an important yet often overlooked aspect of traditional sexism: that it targets people not only for their femaleness, but also for their expressions of femininity. Today, while it is generally considered to be offensive or prejudiced to openly discriminate against someone for being female, discriminating against someone’s femininity is still considered fair game.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  But true equality won’t come until boys learn to embrace girl stuff as well.So here’s the deal: If you want your boyfriend to treat you with respect, then tell him that you won’t sleep with him until he starts putting barrettes in his hair. And I’m not talking about secret bedroom kinky shit. Make him wear them to work! The next time he buys a pair of shoes, make sure they’re Mary Janes (and don’t forget the white lacy anklets to go with them). Because as soon as he realizes the pure bliss of wearing a frilly, pink, poofy party dress, maybe he’ll finally relax a bit and loosen up that uptight male swagger. And maybe once he lets his guard down, he’ll look around and realize that the world doesn’t revolve around him.You may think this is funny, but it’s no joke. “Girl stuff” is dangerous, so let’s use it to our advantage. We truly can change the world! Because if construction workers were man enough to wear skirts and heels, they wouldn’t whistle at women who walk by. And if misogynistic rockers and rappers were man enough to cry while watching tearjerkers, they wouldn’t need to masturbate all over the mic. And if presidents and generals were man enough to wear lip gloss and mascara, they wouldn’t have to prove their penis size by going to war all the time. Because male pride is not really about pride. It’s about fear—the fear of being seen as feminine. And that’s why “girl stuff” is so dangerous. And as long as most men remain deathly afraid of it, they’ll continue to take it out on the rest of us.19Putting the Feminine Back into FeminismI REMEMBER BACK IN COLLEGE—when I was admittedly rather naive with regard to gender politics—someone asked a friend of mine whether she considered herself a feminist. I was surprised to hear her answer “No.” After all, she certainly seemed like a feminist to me. She was independent, intelligent, career-minded, pro-women’s reproductive rights. She regularly stood up for herself and was keenly aware of the disparity between how certain professors treated her and how they treated her male counterparts. When she was asked why she didn’t identify as a feminist, her reply was, “I like being a girl.” She went on to explain that she enjoyed, and even felt empowered by, being feminine.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  9 It’s sad to see women so desperate to prevent trans women from attending Michigan that they will actually try to make the ridiculous case that this “womyn’s” festival was never actually meant to be an event for women, but rather for those who were born and raised as girls. I am sure that a lot of the same people who support Michigan’s trans-woman-exclusion policy, or who sit on the fence on this issue, would have a very different opinion if it were their own inclusion that was being debated. Can you imagine how angry these very same women would be if the largest annual women-only event in the world was run by straight women who decided to exclude queer women from attending? Can you imagine how insulted they would feel if they were told that they were not allowed to enter women-only space because they were not “real” women, or that their attraction to women might threaten the safety of other women? Can you imagine how condescending they would find it if straight women talked to them about being queer-positive one minute, then turned around and purchased a $400 ticket to a “queer-free” women’s event the next? As much as I am bothered by the long history of trans women being expelled from the lesbian community during the ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s, I am willing to chalk that up to the fact that the transgender movement hadn’t fully come into its own yet, and there were few people who were able to articulate a clear message for transgender rights and inclusion at the time. But now, in 2007, there is no legitimate excuse for trans-woman-exclusion in lesbian and women-only spaces. Most LGB groups have long since added Ts to the ends of their acronyms. And while there was a time when trans-inclusion debates only took place on the outskirts of the queer community, they now take place in workplaces and courthouses all across the United States. In the last twenty years, nine states (Minnesota, Rhode Island, New Mexico, California, Maine, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, and New Jersey) and scores of cities and counties across the country have extended their nondiscrimination laws to explicitly include transgender people. 10 It’s downright embarrassing that so many folks within the queer women’s community, who generally pride themselves on their progressive politics, have managed to fall behind Peoria, Illinois, and El Paso, Texas, in recognizing and respecting trans people’s gender identities. But trans-woman-exclusion in lesbian and women-only spaces is not merely a trans rights issue—if it were, I would consider it to be important, but I probably would not have devoted so much of my time and energy to it.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  3 Behind every accusation of deception lies an unchallenged assumption—in this case, that no male in his right mind could ever be attracted to someone who was feminine, yet physically male. This premise underlies Jay Leno’s infamous question to Hugh Grant: “What were you thinking?” 4 It’s why Grant and fellow celebrity Eddie Murphy are still able to star in films for Disney while the tranny prostitutes they sought out are reduced to cinematic novelties: tasteless jokes in teen comedies, bad Lou Reed anecdotes in art films produced by Andy Warhol wannabes, or as examples of urban decay in police dramas set on sordid and seedy city streets. Transgender women are portrayed as deceivers so that rabid heterosexuals can turn a blind eye to the transsexual porn ads that litter the back of men’s magazines like Hustler and Penthouse, so that mainstream moviegoers can watch The Crying Game and act surprised to find out that the woman who performs in the drag bar happens to have a penis. “Deception” is the scarlet letter that trannies are made to wear so that everybody else can claim innocence. This is why the police, lawyers, and press who worked on the Gwen Araujo case ignored the multiple sources who insisted that Gwen’s killers knew she was transgender to begin with. 5 It’s why nobody ever questioned how next-to-impossible it would be for two of Gwen’s killers to have had anal sex with her without ever coming across her genitals. Nobody was willing to even consider the possibility that Gwen’s murderers knowingly had sex with her. Why challenge our culture’s myopic view of male sexuality when it’s so easy to blame it all on one deceiving tranny? And why question the psychotic paranoia with which many men defend their masculinity when it’s so convenient to trash one young trans person’s gender identity? The truth is that the myth of transsexual deception is merely a ruse, a smoke screen designed to hide societal complicity in this tragedy. Most people want to believe that Gwen’s murder was an isolated incident, an egregious act committed by a handful of young men who were provoked into doing the unthinkable. That way they need not confront the fact that half of the hung jury was more willing to identify with male homophobic hysteria than with an innocent transgender teenager.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Instead of exploiting our experiences to further their own careers, they should insist that their universities make a point of hiring transsexual and intersex faculty, and that their publishers put out books by gender-variant writers. And they should finally acknowledge the fact that they have no legitimate claim to use transsexual and intersex identities, struggles, and histories for their own purposes. I am sure that some readers will object to this call for artists and academics to stop appropriating intersex and transsexual identities and experiences. But at this point in time, when almost no intersex and transsexual voices reach the public, and the few who do are those that non-intersex, cissexual individuals deem worthy, those who do attempt to speak as our proxies, who claim to understand our bodies, our issues, or our identities, necessarily push us further into the margins. Perhaps in the future, when most people are familiar with the work of intersex and transsexual artists and academics, and when the body of work that we have produced is so large that no one non-intersex or cissexual person can drown out our voices, other artists and intellectuals will be able to discuss our existence and our experiences in a respectful, nonexploitive way. But until that time comes, non-intersex, cissexual artists and academics should put their pens down, open up their minds, and simply listen to what we have to say about our own lives. PART 2 Trans Women, Femininity, and Feminism 10 Experiential Gender THERE IS PERHAPS NO BETTER PLACE to begin a discussion about being a trans woman than with the quote that has become practically synonymous with that experience in the public’s mind: that we feel like “women trapped inside men’s bodies.” This saying has become so popular and widespread that it’s safe to say these days that it’s far more often parodied by cissexuals than used by transsexuals to describe their own experiences. In fact, the regularity with which cissexuals use this saying to mock trans women has always struck me as rather odd, since it was so clearly coined not to encapsulate all of the intricacies and nuances of the trans female experience, but rather as a way of dumbing down our experiences into a sound bite that cissexuals might be better able to comprehend. Unfortunately, the popularity of the “woman trapped inside a man’s body” cliché has become a lightning rod for cissexuals who are disturbed by transsexuality. Some cissexual women, for instance, have accused trans women of being arrogant or presumptuous in claiming that we “feel like women” when, prior to our transitions, we had only ever experienced living in the world as men. Often such criticism is followed with catty remarks such as “How just like a man to say such a thing”—the implication being that our attempts to claim the identity of “woman” are merely (and rather ironically) a by- product of male entitlement.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Anderson explained that she used transsexuality primarily as a device to challenge the couple’s relationship. In fact, she draws a comparison between the way she employs transsexuality and the way other writers have used extra-marital affairs in the past. While Anderson seems to believe that stories that center on extra-marital affairs have become passé (both because the premise has been overused by writers and because many people continue to love the person who has cheated on them), she views transsexuality as “ultimate betrayal” that can occur within a marriage. 4 So, in other words, one of the characters, Roy, is ungendered in order to throw a monkey wrench into the couple’s marriage. And transsexuality is no longer a marginalized identity or a grueling issue that real human beings struggle with; it is merely a literary device—a “metaphor” for the “ultimate catastrophe” that can strike a relationship. You would think that Anderson—as a woman and a lesbian—would be aware of the troubling way sexual minorities are portrayed (and their voices silenced) by the media, and that she would, at the very least, make a modest attempt to ensure that her character was respectful of the transsexual experience. Unfortunately, this is not the case. When the interviewer asked her if she drew on any sources when researching the movie, Anderson unabashedly answered that she relied solely on her “imagination,” that she made it up all herself. 5 Unencumbered by any need to have her character reflect reality, Anderson was free to turn Roy into a transsexual caricature. She explained in the interview that she purposely set out to make sure that the audience would not take Roy seriously as a woman. 6 Perhaps this is why Anderson makes no attempt to have any of the other characters come to relate to Roy as female or use female pronouns when addressing her. Roy herself doesn’t seem to protest this fact or assert her female identity at any point; in fact, she is inordinately meek and docile for someone who is in the process of coming out as transsexual. In a pre-movie interview, Tom Wilkinson, who played Roy in the made-for-cable movie, said, “I wanted to retain the kind of innocence about the whole thing that that guy had. He doesn’t know quite what he’s getting into.” (Emphasis mine.) 7 Thus, like his director, Wilkinson shows no respect for his transsexual character’s gender identity. As a result, Roy comes off as excruciatingly mousy and confused, presumably because it never occurred to either Wilkinson or Anderson that a man who wanted to be female could be any other way.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Some feminists (particularly unilateral feminists) will no doubt have a negative knee-jerk reaction to my suggestion that we extend our understanding of misogyny to encompass effemimania—our societal obsession with critiquing and belittling feminine traits in males. However, as I have argued in past chapters, effemimania affects everybody, including women. Effemimania encourages those who are socialized male to mystify femininity and to dehumanize those who are considered feminine, and thus forms the foundation of virtually all male expressions of misogyny. Effemimania also ensures that any male’s manhood or masculinity can be brought into question at any moment for even the slightest perceived expression of, or association with, femininity. I would argue that today, the biggest bottleneck in the movement toward gender equity is not so much women’s lack of access to what has been traditionally considered the “masculine realm,” but rather men’s insistence on defining themselves in opposition to women (i.e., their unwillingness to venture into the “feminine realm”). Until now, the typical feminist response to men who fear being associated with the “feminine realm” can be paraphrased as “Get over it!” Such an attitude is ignorant, as it fails to take into account the fact that male femininity is perceived very differently from female femininity. If femininity in women is already seen as “artificial” and “contrived,” then oppositional sexism ensures that femininity in men appears exponentially “artificial” and “contrived.” While a handful of feminists have recognized this fact—that male feminine expression tends to evoke levels of contempt and disgust that far exceed that which is normally reserved for female masculinity or femininity—most have unfortunately chosen to ignore or dismiss misogyny when it targets those who are male-bodied. 21 By doing so, these feminists have become enablers for one of the most prevalent and malignant forms of traditional sexism. The greatest barrier preventing us from fully challenging sexism is the pervasive antifeminine sentiment that runs wild in both the straight and queer communities, targeting people of all genders and sexualities. The only realistic way to address this issue is to work toward empowering femininity itself. We must rightly recognize that feminine expression is strong, daring, and brave—that it is powerful—and not in an enchanting, enticing, or supernatural sort of way, but in a tangible, practical way that facilitates openness, creativity, and honest expression. We must move beyond seeing femininity as helpless and dependent, or merely as masculinity’s sidekick, and instead acknowledge that feminine expression exists of its own accord and brings its own rewards to those who naturally gravitate toward it. By embracing femininity, feminism will finally be able to reach out to the vast majority of feminine women who have felt alienated by the movement in the past. The movement would also be able to reach those who are not female (whether male and/or transgender) who regularly face effemimania or trans-misogyny, but who have not been able to seek refuge or have a voice in the feminist movements of the past.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  A friend told me that he once saw SRS on the video Faces of Death, sandwiched between real-life shark attacks and murder attempts. Some people go so far as to call SRS a form of self-mutilation, conveniently ignoring the fact that more common procedures, such as nose jobs and liposuction, similarly involve the removal of a small amount of nonessential tissue. Most people are surprised when I tell them that the surgeons don’t really cut the penis off. They just turn it inside out and move the nerve endings around to make a functional and realistic-looking clitoris and vagina. At that point, I am invariably asked if I want SRS so that I can have sex with a man. And you should see the blank stares that I get when I reply, “No, but I’m really looking forward to having my wife fuck me with a strap-on dildo.” See, we live in a phallus-obsessed culture, where we’re all brought up to believe that everything having to do with gender and sexuality somehow revolves around the penis. That’s why so many clueless straight guys come on to dykes with pickup lines like, “Once you’ve had the real thing, baby, you won’t ever go back.” Some men actually buy into that phallocentric crap! And it’s also why most people can’t even talk about transsexual women or SRS without centering the discussion on the penis. But my desire to have SRS has virtually nothing to do with my penis. This is about me wanting to have a clitoris and vagina. But we don’t even have the language to describe this desire. It’s the ultimate Freudian slip: We naturally assume that all young girls suffer from penis envy, but we can’t imagine that any boy could possibly have its polar opposite. It’s all in the words we use. When someone is bold or brave, we say they have “balls,” while words like “pussy” and “cunt” are only ever spoken as insults. And while everyone seems to understand how the penis works, we treat female genitalia like they’re a mysterious black box. Most young women aren’t even taught the names of all their own body parts; some peo ple are unaware that the clitoris even exists; and as for the vagina, well, aren’t we all taught to see that as simply the hole where the penis is supposed to go? So it’s no wonder that most people assume that I must be mentally ill, because in this culture, wanting to be a woman is something most people find literally unimaginable. And when I do have SRS, my surgically deconstructed genitals will no doubt be seen by some to be an abomination or a blasphemy.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  But not just any women and children; only those of the dominant/majority group, who are imagined to be “pure” and “untainted.” This explains why fears of “transgender sexual predators” in women’s restrooms are so pervasive despite numerous studies showing that trans people and trans-inclusion policies pose no such threat, and why accusations of trans people “grooming” and “sexualizing” children resonate with many people despite the fact that child sexual abuse is overwhelmingly perpetrated by cis-hetero men who are family members or close acquaintances of the child in question. 37 Many people have pointed out the unmistakable parallels between today’s anti-trans “groomer” claims and those of Anita Bryant’s 1970s “Save Our Children” campaign, in which she smeared homosexuals as “child molesters” who are “recruiting children.” But eerily similar “sexual threats to children” language has been used by white segregationists against Black people and by antisemitic Christians against Jewish people, and more general “sexual predator” accusations have been weaponized against many other minority groups. 38 During the late nineteenth-century, caliper-wielding Northern European scientists promoted the theory of “degeneration,” which posited that members of their “race” were at risk of “de-evolving” if they had sexual dalliances with people of color, people with disabilities, or gender and sexual minorities—essentially, any group who was stigmatized in their eyes. While this theory has long been debunked, some on the far right continue to promote it, vilifying minority groups as “degenerates” that supposedly pose an imminent threat to their imagined “purity.” “Degeneration,” “social contagion,” and accusing entire minority groups of “sexual predation” are all different manifestations of the stigma-contamination mindset: They may differ in the specifics, but they are all driven by the same unconscious fear of stigmatized outgroups “corrupting” the supposedly “untainted” ingroup. And they all suggest a similar solution: If the stigmatized outgroup truly is “contagious,” then perhaps they should be quarantined (isolated, censored, prevented from participating in society). And if they truly represent a “sexual threat,” then perhaps they should be criminalized (which is the unspoken goal of this recent wave of anti-trans legislation). Understanding and Ending Moral Panics Much of my post– Whipping Girl writing has been centered on better understanding how prejudice works in a general sense. While every form of marginalization is unique in its history, its stereotypes, the way it is institutionalized, and so on, they often share strik ing parallels with one another. This suggests that similar unconscious patterns of thinking may underlie them. Elsewhere, I have argued that less blatant forms of prejudice are often the result of the unmarked/marked mindset, which leads us to view marginalized groups as some combination of “conspicuous,” “questionable,” “suspect,” “artificial,” “exotic,” “manipulative,” and/or “asking for” any unwanted attention that they receive (with those who are multiply marginalized being interpreted as “doubly questionable” or “doubly artificial” and so on).

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Those gatekeepers who believe that they alone should have the authority to determine who should and should not be allowed to transition ignore the obvious fact that gender dissonance has always been a “self-diagnosed” condition: There are no visible signs or tests for it; only the trans person can feel and describe it. Once we make the arduous decision to transition—letting go of other people’s perceptions of us in favor of being true to ourselves—there is really nothing anyone can do to stop us. For these reasons, medical and mental health professionals should turn their attention away from regulating sex reassignment and toward facilitating the safe access to the means of transitioning. Thankfully, some have already begun working toward this goal, designing programs that provide trans people with affordable access to information, hormones, and the appropriate medical tests to ensure a safe transition. 81 Others in the field of psychiatry have similarly advocated that mental health professionals move away from the gatekeeper model and toward one focused on helping the transsexual manage the emotional stress and obstacles they are faced with when transitioning. 82 While all of these changes represent a promising start, true equality for transsexuals and transgender people will remain elusive as long as gender variance remains pathologized by the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the DSM. Human beings show a large range of gender and sexual diversity, so there is no legitimate reason for any form of cross-gender behavior or identity to be categorized as a mental disorder. That said, I also take issue with those who argue for completely demedicalizing transsexuality, or who advocate removing GID from the DSM without first ensuring that there are provisions in place to allow people who choose to transition affordable access to transsexual-related medical procedures. Some have suggested creating a medical diagnosis for transsexuality to replace the current psychiatric diagnosis of GID; this makes sense, being that most transsexuals feel that our problem lies not with our minds, but with our bodies. 83 Once these medical provisions are in place, the importance of psychiatrically depathologizing transgenderism cannot be underestimated. After all, it is the popular misconception that gender variance constitutes a mental illness—that transsexual and transgender people are the ones who have the problem—that enables cissexual and cisgender prejudice against us. Notes Preface 1 As of August 2015, Whipping Girl has been cited or discussed in numerous mainstream publications, including Alternet, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, The Chicago Reader, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Marie Claire, Ms. Magazine, NBC News, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, New Republic, New Statesman, NPR, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, The Telegraph, Time, Variety, Vice, Vogue, and Washington Post . 2 Trans people’s involvement in both the gay liberation and queer movements is detailed in Susan Stryker, Transgender History (Berkeley: Seal Press, 2008), 59–89, 121–153. For demographics regarding trans people and sexual orientation, see Jaime M. Grant, Lisa A.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  For example, in her 1991 essay “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay: The War on Effeminate Boys,” Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick discusses how Richard C. Friedman, a psychoanalyst and the author of Male Homosexuality: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective, speaks rather admirably about gay men who exhibit masculine traits, while correlating “adult gay male effeminacy with ‘global character psychopathology’ and what he calls ‘the lower part of the psychostructural spectrum.’” 38 And while all forms of transsexuality are still formally pathologized, it has been quite common for gatekeepers to claim that trans men are more psychologically “stable” than trans women. 39 Often, such comments are made without any further explanation, leading one to suspect that these characterizations stem from the gatekeepers’ unspoken assumption that masculinity and the desire to be male are, in and of themselves, more rational and healthy tendencies than femininity and the desire to be female. Another issue that seems to fuel effemimania is our cultural tendency to sexualize femininity and femaleness in all its forms. While countless feminist writers and theorists have analyzed the ways in which the sexualization of femaleness and femininity permeates virtually every aspect of our culture and has a negative impact on most women’s lives, they have typically ignored the way this tendency creates an environment in which “male femininity” is almost always considered in purely sexual terms. For example, most popular images and impressions of trans women revolve around sexuality: from “she- male” and “chicks with dicks” pornography to media portrayals of us as sexual deceivers, prostitutes, and sex workers. And of course, there are the recurring themes of trans women who transition in order either to gain the sexual attention of men or to fulfill some kind of bizarre sex fantasy (both of which appear regularly in the media, and also in Bailey and Blanchard’s model of MTF transgenderism). In this context, it’s easy to understand why Bailey and Blanchard were able to get away with proposing a homosexual/autogynephilic model for MTF spectrum trans people without ever being challenged by their professional peers to apply their theories to FTM spectrum trans people.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  (Emphasis hers.)24 Of course, Hausman chose to use the “Foucauldian” approach of examining “official discourses” (primarily gatekeeper research and transsexual autobiographies), which allowed her to superficially critique transsexuality from a distance, without the inconvenience of having to address the harsh realities and obstacles that actual transsexuals face.Not all academics who study gender hold gender-variant people in such low regard. However, the very goal of queer theory—denaturalizing and deconstructing the binary sex/gender system—inevitably tempts many scholars to appropriate the bodies and experiences of those people who are most marginalized by that very system. This tendency is thoroughly examined in Viviane Namaste’s book Invisible Lives (cited in chapter 7), which chronicles the erasure of transsexual and transgender people by public institutions, including academia. Namaste critiques the writings of several prominent queer theorists and shows how their work reduces trans people to “rhetorical tropes and discursive levers.”25 In particular, she argues that trans voices are made invisible by these academics’ tendency to focus narrowly on cultural texts (which are almost always of cissexual origin), and the fact that they often conflate and confuse drag, crossdressing, and transsexuality, thereby minimizing the very different perspectives and experiences that distinguish these transgender people from one another. Namaste argues that such queer theorists “have defined the terms of the debate on transgendered people within American cultural studies of the 1990s: terms wherein transvestites and transsexuals function as rhetorical figures within cultural texts; terms wherein the voices, struggles, and joys of real transgendered people in the everyday social world are noticeably absent.”26A similar argument is made by Jay Prosser in his book Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality .27 In particular, Prosser focuses on how many queer theorists appropriate transsexuals’ gender difference to denaturalize binary gender, yet simultaneously dismiss transsexuals’ personal accounts (of strongly identifying as the other sex) and physical experiences (inhabiting their own physically sexed bodies). His critique touches on a certain level of unacknowledged intellectual dishonesty regarding academic ungendering. Cissexual academics eagerly cite aspects of gender-variant lives that support their claims that gender is primarily constructed, while ignoring those aspects that undermine their cases. For example, many academics have focused on the transsexual transition process to argue that gender does not arise “naturally,” but that it is learned, practiced, and performed.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  This is not what I imagined my daughter’s first time home from college would look like. I want you to understand all the ways in which we suffer because of you. Actions have consequences, Michael, and unfortunately we are all impaired by your actions even on what should be happy occasions. Did you ever once stop to think about how your affair would affect the rest of us?” “I’m sorry, Laura,” he writes back. “I know how excited you’ve been to have Daisy home and now she’s taking her anger out on you because you’re a safe person. It’s not fair and it’s my fault. I wish I could help. You’re a great mom and are single-handedly getting our kids through this terrible time. They’re so lucky that you’re their mom.” Tears spring to my eyes. Finally, a real apology. I have waited months for this, wondering how our trajectory might have been different had he shown regret and compassion from the beginning instead of anger and resentment. “That doesn’t ease the blow of Daisy’s anger, but it means something to me that you’ve acknowledged how hard this has been on me,” I write. “As much as you’re dealing with now, just know that I will forever have to live with the devastating knowledge that I traumatized the people I should have protected. You didn’t deserve this Laura,” he writes. I put the phone down and weep. It’s been so long since Michael has been recognizable to me, and here is a shred of him that matches up with the Michael I had fallen in love with, the Michael who had been gracious and loving and kind. I have been so incensed at him for upending my life, smoke pouring out of my ears when I think of him, overwhelmed by fury and loss, that I have not allowed myself to admit that I miss him desperately. He had been my partner for 27 years and then he was gone, overnight. In this brief exchange of texts, I see him again, and the grief that it elicits feels unbearable. I miss him, I long for his friendship and his calming words, his optimism and support, but I understand too that our marriage is over, truly and irreversibly over. I don’t want to be with him going forward, I want to go back in time and hold tight to all that was good between us for my entire adult life thus far. It’s like seeing a ghost who has come to reassure me that I hadn’t misunderstood who he had been all those years of our life together, that the essence of him is still in there. I move through the next days in a new state of grief, trying to piece Daisy together before she leaves again, feeling a heavy sadness envelop me.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Once again, this sort of thinking stems directly from the predator/prey power dynamic, where a woman can never truly be seen as a sexual aggressor, only a sexual object. Thus, women who do take sexual initiative are not considered to be preying on men per se, but rather opening themselves up to or inviting male sexual aggression. Of course, what constitutes “inviting” male sexualization is typically defined by male presumptions. For example, women who are raped by men are often mischaracterized as instigating their own sexual violation by virtue of the clothing they wore, their past sexual histories, or their willingness to meet privately with a man. In fact, any action carried out by a woman that can be misconstrued as enabling others to view her as a sexual object is presumed to invite male sexual advances. In this context, I would argue that trans women are hypersexualized in our culture because we are viewed as enabling our own sexual objectification (by virtue of the fact that we physically transition from male to female) in much the same way that a woman who wears a low-cut dress is presumed to facilitate her own objectification. The idea that trans women deliberately transform ourselves into women to invite male sexualization and sexual advances is perhaps the most popular assumption made about trans women. According to this myth, trans women do not “prey” on men so much as we “lure” them, by turning ourselves into sexual objects that no red-blooded man can resist. Framing the matter this way not only relieves men of any responsibility for their own sexual actions, but also prevents them from being cast in the role of sexual object or prey—an inherently subordinate position. Further, this tactic insinuates that trans women’s physical transitions are centered on the desires of men, in much the same way that people presume that women who wear highly feminine or revealing outfits do so not for themselves, but in order to attract male attention. This point is crucial: If trans women were seen as changing our sex primarily because we wanted to be female (as is generally the case), then MTF transitioning would become both a self-empowering act and one that potentially empowers femaleness itself. However, the assumption that we change our sex in order to attract men essentially sexualizes our motives for transitioning, a move that disempowers trans women and femaleness while reinforcing the idea that heterosexual male desire is central. This sexualization of trans women’s motives not only belittles our own female identities, but also implies that women as a whole have no value beyond their ability to be sexualized by men.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  In what is now considered classic research, sociologists Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna showed that in our culture, when people (both women and men) gender others, we tend to weigh male visual cues as far more significant than female ones, and almost invariably consider the penis as being the single most important gender cue of all (i.e., its presence trumps all other gender cues; the presence of a vagina does not elicit a similar effect).4 In their words, “There seem to be no cues that are definitely female, while there are many that are definitely male. To be male is to ‘have’ something and to be female is to ‘not have’ it.”5 Kessler and McKenna view this privileging of male cues as resulting from male-centrism (similar to how people often favor using the pronoun “he” when speaking generically). Taking this into account, it becomes rather obvious that when cissexual women deny trans women the right to participate in women-only spaces because of their own tendency to privilege any “mannish” or “masculine” traits we may have over our many female attributes, they are fostering and promoting male-centrism.Of course, trans-woman-exclusion cannot be justified solely on the basis that some of us look or act “mannish” or “masculine”—otherwise, butch women would have to be excluded as well. Indeed, in recent years, as feminism itself has shifted away from gender essentialist theories and toward more social constructionist ones, the basis for trans-woman-exclusion is more frequently our male socialization rather than our male biology. This approach also provides convenient intellectual cover for those who wish to include FTM spectrum folks (who were socialized female) in women’s spaces. But once again, such an approach runs counter to the precepts of feminism. After all, feminists regularly insist that women are capable of doing anything men can despite having been raised as girls and encouraged to take a subordinate position to men. Thus, women can (and often do) transcend their female socialization.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Thus, media stereotypes of trans female sex workers not only promote the misconception that trans women transition so they can be sexualized, but they also deny the cissexual prejudice that drives many actual trans women into sex work in the first place. While there has been extensive feminist analysis examining the ways in which women are sexualized in the media, such work has typically ignored media depictions of trans women. In fact, some feminists even seem to accept at face value media stereotypes of trans women as hyperfeminine and wishing to be sexualized—a rather illogical position given their own critiques of how images of women and other sexual minorities are typically distorted and mischaracterized by a predominantly straight-male-centric media. However, it’s a mistake for cissexual women to view depictions of trans women as having little to do with themselves, as they are so obviously meant to dismiss both transsexuality and femaleness. After all, in a world where women are regularly reduced to objects of male desire, it’s no accident that trans women—the only people in our society who actively choose to become women and who actively fight for their right to be recognized as female—are almost universally depicted in a purely sexualized manner. Unfortunately, the narrow context of the predator/prey power dynamic has shaped not only media and pop culture depictions of trans women, but psychiatric depictions as well. The long-standing assumption that only men can be sexual aggressors (arising from phallocentric models of libido formation that have been forwarded by many influential psychoanalysts) has led psychiatrists to define a long list of “paraphilias” and “perversions” that regularly “afflict” men, but which are described as “rare” or “nonexistent” in women. In reality, many of these practices do occur in women and have been described by researchers in other fields, but have been overlooked or hand-waved away in psychiatry because they are presumed to require a “male agent” (i.e., a legitimate sexual aggressor). 5 Similarly, in psychiatric discourses regarding transsexuality—in which trans women are labeled and conceptualized as “male transsexuals” and trans men as “female transsexuals”—the tendency has been to play down FTM spectrum gender and sexual diversity, while focusing heavily on MTF spectrum transgenderism, due in part to the latter group’s presumed “male agency.” 6 However, it is not simply that MTF spectrum trans people are studied more because they are (or used to be) male. Because psychiatrists who buy into the predator/prey dichotomy tend to view expressions of femininity as serving the sole purpose of attracting and appeasing male sexual desire, and view the desire to be female as synonymous with the desire to be sexually objectified, they have consistently tried to frame MTF transgenderism as being driven primarily or exclusively by sexual impulses. This psychiatric sexualization of MTF transgenderism is most evident in the historic tendency to divvy up all MTF spectrum trans people into two classes: transvestites and transsexuals.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Further, those of us who have not had surgery are constantly being reduced to our body parts, whether by the creators of tranny porn who overemphasize and exaggerate our penises (thus distorting trans women into “she-males” and “chicks with dicks”) or by other people who have been so brainwashed by phallocentricism that they believe that the mere presence of a penis can trump the femaleness of our identities, our personalities, and the rest of our bodies. Because anti-trans discrimination is steeped in traditional sexism, it is not simply enough for trans activists to challenge binary gender norms (i.e., oppositional sexism)—we must also challenge the idea that femininity is inferior to masculinity and that femaleness is inferior to maleness. In other words, by necessity, trans activism must be at its core a feminist movement. Some might consider this contention controversial. Over the years, many self-described feminists have gone out of their way to dismiss trans people and in particular trans women, often resorting to many of the same tactics (hyperfeminization, hypersexualization, and objectification of our bodies) that the mainstream media regularly uses against us. 4 These pseudofeminists proclaim, “Women can do anything men can,” then ridicule trans women for any perceived masculine tendency we may have. They argue that women should be strong and unafraid of speaking our minds, then tell trans women that we act like men when we voice our opinions. They claim that it is misogynistic when men create standards and expectations for women to meet, then they dismiss us for not meeting their standard of “woman.” These pseudofeminists consistently preach feminism with one hand while practicing traditional sexism with the other. It is time for us to take back the word “feminism” from these pseudofeminists. After all, as a concept, feminism is much like the ideas of “democracy” or “Christianity.” Each has a major tenet at its core, yet there are a seemingly infinite number of ways in which those beliefs are practiced. And just as some forms of democracy and Christianity are corrupt and hypocritical while others are more just and righteous, we trans women must join allies of all genders and sexualities to forge a new type of feminism, one that understands that the only way for us to achieve true gender equity is to abolish both oppositional sexism and traditional sexism. It is no longer enough for feminism to fight solely for the rights of those born female. That strategy has furthered the prospects of many women over the years, but now it bumps up against a glass ceiling that is partly of its own making. Though the movement worked hard to encourage women to enter previously male-dominated areas of life, many feminists have been ambivalent at best, and resistant at worst, to the idea of men expressing or exhibiting feminine traits and moving into certain traditionally female realms.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Sometimes people have a tendency to dismiss or delegitimize trans women’s and trans men’s gender identities and lived experiences by relegating us to our own unique categories that are separate from “woman” or “man.” This strategy is often adopted by non-trans folks who wish to discuss trans people without ever bringing into question their own assumptions and beliefs about maleness and femaleness. An obvious example of this phenomenon is the prevalence of the terms “she-males,” “he-shes,” and “chicks with dicks” in reference to trans women. Sometimes attempts to third-sex or third-gender trans people are more subtle or subconscious than that, such as when people merge the phrase “trans woman” to make one word, “transwoman,” or use the adjectives MTF and FTM as nouns (for example, “Julia Serano is an MTF.”). I do not identify as a “male-to-female”—I identify as a woman. These attempts to relegate trans people to “third sex” categories not only disregard the profoundly felt gender identity of the transsexual in question, but also ignore the very real experiences that trans person has had being treated as a member of the sex that they have transitioned to. When discussing transsexuals’ lives, it is important to find words that accurately describe their gendered experiences in both the past and present. Many trans people say they understood themselves to be female or male for most of their lives despite the fact that it wasn’t the sex they were assigned at birth. Therefore, when a trans person transitions, their subconscious sex or gender identity essentially stays the same—rather, it is their physical sex that changes (hence the term trans sex ual). With regards to the trans person’s original sex, I will often use the somewhat clunky phrase the sex (or gender) they were assigned at birth to emphasize the nonconsensual nature of how we are raised, socialized, and treated by society on the basis of our physical sex. For convenience, I may also refer to it as their assigned gender/sex or (to a lesser extent) their birth sex. I may refer to the sex that the trans person has transitioned to as their preferred sex, their identified sex (to emphasize the fact that it agrees with their gender identity), or their lived sex (to emphasize the fact that they now live and experience the world as a member of that sex). It is common for people to assume that being or becoming a transsexual involves some kind of “sex change operation.” However, this is not necessarily the case. While some transsexuals undergo numerous medical procedures as part of their physical transitions, others either cannot afford or choose not to undergo such procedures. Indeed, attempts to limit the word “transsexual” to only those who physically transition is not only classist (because of the affordability issue), but objectifying, as it reduces all trans people to the medical procedures that have been carried out on their bodies.