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

  The truth is that gender deconstructs itself rather easily without having to resort to the exploitation of those who that very system most marginalizes. And because transsexual and intersex people have virtually no voice in academic and political discourses on gender, our perspectives are easily overshadowed, even subsumed, by those who have the academic credentials to position themselves as “authorities” on the subject.When academics appropriate transsexual and intersex experiences for their essays and theories, and when they clip out specific aspects of our lives and paste them together out of context to make their own creations, they are simply contributing to our erasure. If cissexual academics truly believe that transsexual and intersex people can add new perspectives to existing dialogues about gender, then they should stop reinterpreting our experiences and instead support transsexual and intersex intellectual endeavors and works of art. 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 2Trans Women, Femininity, and Feminism10Experiential GenderTHERE 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.”

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

  But what I find most dumbfounding about lesbian-feminist arguments that trans women might somehow threaten cissexual women’s safety is how eerily similar they are to the arguments some heterosexual women have made in the past in their attempts to exclude lesbians from women’s spaces and organizations.8This is why it’s so disappointing for me to see members of my own dyke community practically bending over backwards, embracing hypocrisy, in a last-ditch effort to prevent trans women from entering lesbian and women-only spaces. Women who are appalled by the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding homosexuality seem to find no fault with Michigan for enforcing a similar policy regarding gender. Women who have struggled against patriarchal ideals of what makes a “real” woman think nothing of turning around and using the word “real” against trans women. Women who would be outraged if an all-male panel were to discuss women’s or lesbian issues in Newsweek or Time magazine see nothing wrong with the fact that, in the last few years, several of the largest lesbian and feminist magazines have run articles and roundtable discussions on the issue of Michigan and trans-woman-inclusion without inviting any trans women to participate.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 “queerfree” 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.

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

  Specifically, some individuals detransition for ideological reasons—usually upon immersion in GC/TERFism or religious fundamentalism—and subsequently champion anti-trans policies and positions. In most cases, ideologically motivated detransitioners had proper assessments and received gender-affirming procedures at the appropriate timepoints (i.e., in accordance with WPATH’s Standards of Care and often in adulthood), but will claim retroactively that they should not have been allowed to transition. Because this narrative resonates so much with cisgender audiences, these stories get told over and over again, despite the aforementioned shortcomings and the fact that there are only a handful of the same people telling them. 30 Another hallmark of “just asking questions” coverage of detransition is a tendency to focus on individuals who were assigned female at birth. Similarly, proponents of “ROGD/social contagion” often claim that the supposed condition disproportionately impacts “young girls,” especially those with autism or mental health issues, although the statistics and rationales they cite in support of such claims are deeply flawed. 31 This emphasis on “girls” and “mental illness” appears to purposely play into traditionally sexist and ableist presumptions that these groups are inherently fragile, susceptible to persuasion, and incapable of making informed decisions about their own bodies and lives. After all, the “cisgender people turned transgender” trope is most effective when its imagined “victims” are constructed as “innocent” and “vulnerable.” Perhaps the most illustrative example of this tactic can be found in Abigail Shrier’s 2020 book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters . 32 The book is focused squarely on protecting “our girls” from “ROGD/social contagion,” relying heavily on the aforementioned traditionally sexist and ableist sentiments. Trans female/feminine people are largely absent from the book, with the exception of one chapter (featuring interviews with Ray Blanchard and J. Michael Bailey) that depicts us as sexually obsessed “autogynephiles.” Given that chapter, in concert with the book’s provocative subtitle, readers may be left with the impression that it’s trans female/feminine people who are responsible for this “transgender craze seducing our daughters” (emphasis mine; other anti-trans activists have argued this more explicitly). 33 While Shrier’s book never mentions “grooming,” its subtext conveys deep connections between “social contagion,” the “cisgender people turned transgender” trope, and imagined sexual predation. “Sexual Predator” Stereotypes and the Stigma-Contamination Mindset Throughout this book, I examined the numerous ways in which trans female/feminine people are hypersexualized in our culture: We are depicted as sexually predatory, or deceptive, or perverted, or promiscuous, or desperate, or exotic, or as “fetish objects.” I’ve argued that this is due to the widespread assumption that femaleness and femininity are inherently sexual in nature, which leads outsiders to presume that our gender transgressions and transitions must be sexually motivated. While this certainly explains many of the sexualized stereotypes we face, I don’t believe that it’s the whole picture. For instance, other marginalized groups (e.g., people of color, people with disabilities, other sexual minorities) are sometimes sexualized in similar or analogous ways.

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

  It’s time we replace the existing gatekeeper model with one that’s centered on the needs of trans people themselves. This begins with the public acknowledgment that all people have the right to self-identify (even if that identity falls outside of the male/female binary), and that one’s self-identified gender is necessarily more legitimate than the one that is rather naively assigned to them by others. Further, the process of socially and legally changing one’s sex should be entirely uncoupled from medicine and psychiatry: No specific medical procedure should be required for one to have one’s identified sex recognized, nor should any medical or psychiatric professional have the authority to prevent someone from living in their identified sex. Those trans people who feel that they need to hormonally or physically transition in order to ease their gender dissonance should be allowed that option if they wish (in the same way that cissexuals ultimately choose for themselves whether or not to undergo hormone replacement therapy, genital or breast reconstruction, fertility and sexuality-related procedures, etc.). The idea that trans people should decide for themselves whether or not to physically transition—what some have disdainfully referred to as “sex change on demand”—has been opposed by the gatekeeper establishment from the beginning. The most common argument is that the system as it stands acts as a safeguard to prevent people who are not transsexual (e.g., cissexuals who are merely embarrassed or confused about their atypical sexuality or who exhibit “delusional” or “antisocial” behavior) from undergoing potentially irreversible medical procedures. 80 Once again, such practices reveal the cissexist biases of the gatekeepers: Trans people are denied immediate treatment of their gender dissonance in order to protect the well-being of a rather small minority of cissexuals. One can only imagine how furious and frustrated most cissexuals would feel if they had to undergo psychotherapy for three to six months (so that a psychiatrist could rule out the possibility that they were transsexual) before obtaining permission to undergo hormone replacement therapy or gender-related surgeries they required. The gatekeepers’ fear of “sex change on demand” rings particularly hollow in a world where most trans people cannot even afford to take the medically and psychiatrically sanctioned route to transition. Psychotherapy is prohibitively expensive for those who do not have adequate insurance; many trans people rely on underground markets and overseas pharmacies to obtain affordable hormones without a prescription. Many undergo sex reassignment surgeries in countries like Thailand, where it is much less expensive and where there are fewer restrictions than in the United States. Clearly, gatekeeper micromanagement of transitioning has only served to force a significant percentage of trans people (who either cannot afford to follow the HBIGDA standards of care or fail to convince their therapists that they are “true” transsexuals) out of the system.

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

  I am not trying to make the case here that MTF spectrum folks are “more oppressed” than cissexual women, as playing the more-oppressed-than-thou card serves no purpose other than narcissism. But I do hope to encourage cissexual women to take a moment to put themselves in our shoes, to consider how patronizing and condescending dismissive quips about “male privilege” would sound to you if you had been forced against your will into boyhood. As someone who spent my childhood desperately wishing that I could be a girl rather than boy, and who as an adult considers it a privilege to finally have the opportunity to live in the world as a woman rather than a man, I find those attempts to undermine trans women’s femaleness by decrying “male privilege” hollow and crass. Having said all that, I will be the first to admit that many MTF spectrum folks seem to be rather oblivious to the impact that traditional sexism has on their lives—both with respect to the male privileges they gain because of it as well as the special social stigma they receive for their feminine transgender expression and/or for choosing to transition to female. Personally, it was only after I began living full-time as a woman, experiencing firsthand all of the inferior and negative assumptions that others projected onto me because of my femaleness, that I began to make a connection between traditional sexism and the discrimination that I faced because of the specific direction of my transition and transgender expression. Only then did I realize how inadequate the transgender movement’s mantra—that we are discriminated against for “transgressing binary gender norms”—is for those of us on the MTF spectrum who primarily grapple with effemimania and trans-misogyny. MTF spectrum folks need feminism in order to make sense out of our lives and to work toward ending our continuing marginalization. Unfortunately, many cissexual feminists seem to fear that MTF spectrum inclusion within feminism might dilute, distract, or undercut a movement that has historically centered itself on the struggles and issues of cissexual women. Typically, such fears arise from the assumption that we cannot work together because we supposedly have different goals, or that we are unable to relate to one another’s experiences. I believe that is a red herring. After all, many lesbian women, who typically do not have to deal with the issue of unwanted pregnancy, work hard for and are committed to protecting the availability of birth control and a woman’s right to choose. Similarly, a woman doesn’t necessarily have to be a survivor of sexual or physical assault herself to do crucial work in a domestic violence shelter or a rape crisis center.

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

  Everyone chose to tiptoe around the subject because they were too afraid to put themselves in Gwen Araujo’s shoes, if only for a moment, to ask what the world looked like from her view: To imagine how frustrated you might be if you were unable to explore your own sexuality without having other people turn your body into a lightning rod for their own insecurities. To imagine how un just it would feel to be dismissed as a fraud despite being the only nineteen-year-old in your known universe with the guts to truly be yourself. To imagine how frail masculinity would seem to you if you had seen a pack of young men in their twenties exude pure fear over one feminine transgender teen. To imagine how flat-out foolish those boys must have seemed as they confronted you with the question, “Are you a woman or a man?” And to picture the blank stares on their faces when you replied, “Isn’t it obvious?” To imagine how hollow accusations of deception would sound to you if you understood that the real question that needed to be asked was “Who’s deceiving whom?” As I said, this piece is not about hate crimes, violence, ignorance, or prejudice. It’s about self-deception. It’s about the assumptions that people like me live with on a daily basis. Because like Gwen, I was born male. I am a transgender woman. And if we were to meet and if I didn’t immediately share that information with you, would that be an act of deception? Could you accuse me of telling a lie if you were to see what you wanted to see with your own eyes and I decided to simply keep quiet? And if I were to presume things about you that were not true, could I accuse you of misleading me too? Or would such careless accusations of deception merely be expressions of callous pride, a stubborn refusal to acknowledge our own mistaken assumptions? The untold story behind Gwen’s much-publicized death is that she is only the tip of the iceberg. Gwen’s murder took place in the San Francisco Bay Area, where there are thousands of people who identify as transgender. Keep that in mind every time you walk down the street or flirt with a stranger. A certain percentage of the people you meet either appear to be a sex different from the one they were assigned at birth or identify as a gender different from the one you assume they are. And if this makes you feel uneasy, it is only because you are choosing not to live in reality.

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

  While sociological models of transsexuality and transgenderism have not had as direct an impact on the lives of trans people as sexological models have, both models foster the false impression that cissexual “experts” (whether academic or clinical) are capable of understanding transsexuality better than transsexuals themselves—an idea that is as problematic as suggesting that male “experts” can understand womanhood better than women, or that heterosexual “experts” can understand homosexuality better than gays and lesbians. Further, while sociological and gender studies accounts of transsexuality have not garnered the public attention that their sexological counterparts have, they have profoundly shaped the manner in which trans people are discussed and considered in academia and in feminism. In this section, I will debunk many of the most common academic misconceptions regarding transsexual ity. While some of the arguments I critique may seem unfamiliar, even esoteric, to readers outside the fields of sociology and gender studies, it is vital to address these points here, as they are encountered repeatedly in queer and feminist politics. One of the most prevalent academic misconceptions regarding transsexuality is that the gatekeepers actively promote the use of sex reassignment and prey on gender-variant people, enticing them with the promise of assimilating them into “normal” women and men. One of the more influential research articles espousing this view was written by sociologists Dwight B. Billings and Thomas Urban in 1982, in which they claimed that “transsexualism is a socially constructed reality which only exists in and through medical practice.” (Emphasis theirs.) 50 In Billings’s and Urban’s eyes, “transsexual therapy… pushes patients toward an alluring world of artificial vaginas and penises rather than toward self-understanding and sexual politics.” 51 Janice G. Raymond has a similar view. In her 1979 book The Transsexual Empire (discussed previously in chapter 2 ), she described sex reassignment as a “male interventionist technology” in which “[t]ranssexuals surrender themselves to… therapists and technicians.” 52 She goes on to suggest that trans people would be better off if they were counseled using the same “consciousness-raising” methods that she experienced in the feminist movement. 53 So, in other words, both sets of authors believe that transsexuality would not exist if trans people simply became more educated and involved in feminism and sexual politics. So how do Raymond, Billings, and Urban explain why trans people are so easily “duped” into transitioning when transsexuality itself is considered taboo by society at large? Their rationale is that transsexuality has become socially acceptable, a rather outrageous claim considering they were writing during the late 1970s and early 1980s, respectively. 54 Of course, the idea that transsexuals are highly susceptible to suggestion and easily yield to medical authority would surely come as a surprise to many gatekeepers, who regularly complained about how transsexuals were “stubborn,” highly resistant to psychotherapy, and usually came to appointments having already made up their minds.

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

  The gatekeepers also kept the number of transitioned transsexuals low by requiring them to conform to oppositional sexist ideals regarding gender. This was primarily achieved by making “passing” a prerequisite for transitioning.13 Such criteria ensured that cissexual prejudices about the preferred sizes and shapes of female and male bodies would be the ultimate arbiters of whether a trans person would be allowed to transition or not. Not only did the trans person have to physically “pass” as their identified sex, they needed to exhibit the “appropriate” sexual orientation (heterosexual) and gender expression (masculinity for trans men; femininity for trans women) for that sex as well. Many critics have pointed to these restrictions—particularly the fact that trans people who professed an attraction to members of their identified sex were regularly denied recommendations for transitioning—as evidence of “heterosexism” or “homophobia” among the gatekeepers. Unfortunately, such accusations are overly simplistic and somewhat misplaced. If anything, the gatekeepers were first and foremost cissexist rather than heterosexist. After all, the requirement that trans people had to be heterosexual in their identified sex was enforced long after “homosexuality” had been removed from the DSM.14 Furthermore, the gatekeepers were not only restricting exceptional sexual orientation in transsexuals, but exceptional gender expression as well. So while the gatekeepers generally acknowledged that cissexuals varied significantly in their sexual orientations and gender expressions, they chose to hold transsexuals to a completely different (and more rigid) set of standards. By focusing so intensely on the transsexual’s ability to “pass” and conform to oppositional sexist notions of gender, the gatekeepers reduced the issue of relieving trans people’s gender dissonance to a secondary, if not marginal, concern. For example, prominent and frequently cited research articles that attempted to assess the efficacy of sex reassignment often relied on factors designed to measure the transsexual’s ability to “pass,” without considering whether or not transitioning improved the emotional well-being of the trans person.15 The tendency to dismiss the profound pain associated with gender dissonance can also be found in the countless condescending remarks that appear in research articles referring to transsexuals as being “impatient” and characterizing their desire for sex reassignment as “obsessive/compulsive.”16 This insensitivity toward trans people’s pain indicates that the gatekeepers were far more concerned with protecting the cissexual world from the existence of transsexuality than they were with treating trans people’s gender dissonance. Perhaps nothing demonstrates this better than the gatekeepers’ willingness to deny trans people treatment (despite knowing how common it was for this group to become depressed and suicidal when unable to transition) solely based on the superficial criteria of trans people’s appearances.

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

  Because my cunt will be the ultimate question mark, asking: How powerful can the penis really be if a sane and smart person like me decides she can do without it? And if the world supposedly revolves around the penis, then my SRS will knock it off its axis. And phallic symbols everywhere will come crashing down like nothing more than a house of cards. After all, a cigar is always just a cigar. And I am simply me. And I am fed up with other people projecting their penis obsessions onto my body. As far as I’m concerned, if they can’t fathom why I might want to trade in my penis for a clitoris and vagina, then they’re the ones who have the gender disorder. 13 Self-Deception In 2002, teenager Gwen Araujo was brutally murdered by four men who bludgeoned her to death because she was born male, because she was a transgender woman. But this is not another piece about the horrors of hate crimes or another desperate rant about violence, ignorance, or prejudice. No, this piece is about the myth of deception. A year and a half after her death, three of Gwen’s murderers stood on trial together. The evidence demonstrated that they had plotted her murder a week in advance. And normally, premeditation ensures a first-degree murder sentence, but not in this case. The trial ended with a hung jury, a victory for the defense lawyers, who insisted that the murder was merely manslaughter because the defendants were somehow victims of Gwen’s “sexual deceit.” Two of the killers had been intimate with her, and their lawyers argued that when they later discovered that she had male genitals, they were driven to commit a “crime of passion.” 1 Deception. It’s the noose that the narcissistic drape around the necks of transgender women. Lesbian-feminist Janice Raymond used the word “deception” over and over again in The Transsexual Empire as a way to dismiss transsexual women’s femaleness, so that she could call them men and accuse them of transitioning in order to “penetrate… women’s space” and “rape women’s bodies.” 2 And scientists who study animal mating behavior often use the word “deception” to explain why the males of many species engage in courtship rituals with feminine males—creatures the researchers dismiss as “female mimics” to deny any possibility that the masculine males willingly choose to partner with feminine males. 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.

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

  Eugenides and Anderson capitalized on the taboo nature of intersexuality and transsexuality without acknowledging the fact that the stigma associated with these conditions forces real people to the margins of society. These writers took two of the most maligned and misunderstood sexual minorities in existence, hollowed them out, and poured in their own non-intersex, cissexual biases, inclinations, and impressions. In a world where transsexual and intersex works of art never get the chance to be seen on HBO, or are not considered mainstream enough to be nominated for Emmys and Pulitzers, the facade presented in Normal and Middlesex profoundly shapes and solidifies a naive audience’s opinions about transsexuals and intersex people. By replacing gender-variant voices with their own, both Eugenides and Anderson ensure that real transsexual or intersex voices are not heard. Toying with Gender-Ambiguous Characters Another form of ungendering in media involves sexually amorphous characters. Perhaps the most famous example of this is Julia Sweeney’s character “Pat,” who gained popularity on the TV show Saturday Night Live. Skits involving Pat essentially consisted of one recurring gag: Other characters, disturbed by Pat’s indeterminate gender, would ask her/him questions designed to reveal whether he/she was a woman or a man. Pat always replied in a gender-ambiguous fashion that thwarted their efforts. While most of the jokes were made at the expense of the other characters, who expressed ridiculous amounts of concern and frustration over their inability to gauge Pat’s sex, the mainstream appeal of the skits was most likely due to the fact that the drooling, whiny, creepy Pat was pretty much a joke him/herself. Another similar use of an ungendered character can be found in Diane DiMassa’s comic strip Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. With its dyke protagonist who confronts expressions of sexism and homophobia with a lethal combination of violence and humor, Hothead became a popular vehicle in the ’90s for expressing the frustration and anger many queer women felt. At one point in the series, Hothead meets her eventual love interest, Daphne. When they are first dating, Daphne mentions, “I’m just low on friends! Mine took off ’cause they couldn’t handle it.” After Hothead asks why, Daphne explains, “I’m in the middle of a large-scale transition. Look at me.… Do you see?” 12 The fact that this “large-scale transition” is a physical one, and that Daphne follows with, “I’m telling you now so you can do what you gotta do. If you’re gonna fly away I’d rather just get it over with,” DiMassa is clearly leading the audience to believe that Daphne is transsexual. This is further evident in a later episode when Hothead imagines asking, “So Daphne, what’s the story? You gotta dick or pussy or what?”

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

  On an intellectual level, I knew that I would sometimes be dismissed or harassed once I started living as female, but I underestimated just how frustrating and hurtful each one of those instances would be. Words cannot express how condescending and infuriating it feels to have men speak down to me, talk over me, and sometimes even practically put on baby-talk voices when addressing me. Or how intimidating it feels to have strangers make lewd comments about having their way with me as I’m walking alone at night down dark city streets. And while I had numerous run-ins and arguments with strange men back when I was male-bodied, I’d never before experienced the enraged venom in their voices and fury in their faces that I sometimes do now—an extreme wrath that some men seem to reserve specifically for women who they believe threaten their fragile male egos. It became more and more difficult for me to see the point in identifying outside of the male/female binary when I was so regularly being targeted for discrimination and harassment because I was a woman, when I so frequently had to stand up for myself as a woman in order to make sure that other people did not get away with it.After a couple of years living in the world as female, I eventually came to embrace the identity of “woman.” Thinking of myself as a woman simply began to make sense; it resonated with my lived experiences. Before my transition, I was hesitant about calling myself a woman, mostly because I had no desire to live up to the societal expectations and ideals that others often project onto that identity. I used to fear that embracing that identity would be tantamount to cramming myself into some predetermined box, restricting my possibilities and potential. But I now realize that no matter how I act or what I do or say, I remain a woman—both in the eyes of the world and, more importantly, in the way that I experience myself. While I used to view the word “woman” as limiting, I now find it both empowering and limitless.Together, all of the changes I’ve experienced since my transition—in my body feelings, in my interactions with other people, and in my growing life history as a woman—have led to me becoming a somewhat different person than I was before. Granted, my personality, habits, opinions, sense of humor, etc., are mostly still the same, but my life itself has taken on a different shape. While I can think back to before my transition and imagine how I looked and acted, I find that my memories of how it felt to be in my body—to be physically male—are becoming increasingly vague with time.

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

  Like most transsexuals, I have scores of anecdotes that highlight this tendency: During the question and answer session at a literary event, after reading a piece about the murder of trans woman Gwen Araujo, I was asked by an audience member if I had any electrolysis done on my face; after I did a workshop for college students on binary gender norms and the way we project our ideals about gender onto other people, a young woman asked me several questions about whether or not I’d had a “sex change operation”; after creating switchhitter.net, my coming-out-as-trans website, I received an angry email from a stranger complaining that I did not put any before-and-after pictures up on the site, as if the 3,700-word question and answer section and the 4,500-word mini-autobiography describing my experiences being trans wasn’t sufficient for that person to fully grasp my transsexuality—he needed to see the changes firsthand. Of course, it’s not just strangers who ask to see before-and-after shots of me. When friends, colleagues, or acquaintances find out that I am trans, it is not uncommon for them to ask if I have any “before” pictures they can see, as if I just so happen to keep a boy photo of myself handy, you know, just in case. I usually respond by telling them that before I transitioned I looked exactly like I do now, except that I was a boy. They never seem particularly satisfied with that answer. The thing that strikes me the most about the desire to see before-and-after pictures, or to hear all of the gory details about sex reassignment procedures, is how bold people often are about it. After all, these people have to know that I felt uncomfortable as male, that it was a difficult and often miserable part of my life. So why on earth would they ask to see pictures of me from that time period? From my perspective, it is as thoughtless as if I had told someone that I was suffering from depression a few years ago and for them to have responded, “Oh, do you have any pictures of yourself from back then?” And really, is there anything more disrespectful and inappropriate than asking someone (in public, no less!) whether they have had any medical procedures performed on their genitals? So what drives these otherwise well-meaning people to want to know about the physical aspects of my transition so badly that they are willing to disregard common courtesy and discretion? Well, I wasn’t quite sure myself until about two years ago, during the height of the reality TV plastic surgery craze, when shows like Extreme Makeover, The Swan, and I Want a Famous Face filled the airwaves.

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

  While trans people on the female-to-male (FTM) spectrum face discrimination for breaking gender norms (i.e., oppositional sexism), their expressions of maleness or masculinity themselves are not targeted for ridicule—to do so would require one to question masculinity itself. When a trans person is ridiculed or dismissed not merely for failing to live up to gender norms, but for their expressions of femaleness or femininity, they become the victims of a specific form of discrimination: trans-misogyny . When the majority of jokes made at the expense of trans people center on “men wearing dresses” or “men who want their penises cut off,” that is not transphobia—it is trans-misogyny. When the majority of violence and sexual assaults committed against trans people is directed at trans women, that is not transphobia—it is trans-misogyny. 1 When it’s okay for women to wear “men’s” clothing, but when men who wear “women’s” clothing can be diagnosed with the psychological disorder transvestic fetishism, that is not transphobia—it is trans-misogyny. 2 When women’s or lesbian organizations and events open their doors to trans men but not trans women, that is not transphobia—it is trans-misogyny. 3 In a male-centered gender hierarchy, where it is assumed that men are better than women and that masculinity is superior to femininity, there is no greater perceived threat than the existence of trans women, who despite being born male and inheriting male privilege “choose” to be female instead. By embracing our own femaleness and femininity, we, in a sense, cast a shadow of doubt over the supposed supremacy of maleness and masculinity. In order to lessen the threat we pose to the male-centered gender hierarchy, our culture (primarily via the media) uses every tactic in its arsenal of traditional sexism to dismiss us: 1 The media hyperfeminizes us by accompanying stories about trans women with pictures of us putting on makeup, dresses, and high-heeled shoes in an attempt to highlight the supposed “frivolous” nature of our femaleness, or by portraying trans women as having derogatory feminine-associated character traits such as being weak, confused, passive, or mousy. 2 The media hypersexualizes us by creating the impression that most trans women are sex workers or sexual deceivers, and by asserting that we transition for primarily sexual reasons (e.g., to prey on innocent straight men or to fulfill some kind of bizarre sex fantasy). Such depictions not only belittle trans women’s motives for transitioning, but implicitly suggest that women as a whole have no worth beyond their ability to be sexualized. 3 The media objectifies our bodies by sensationalizing sex reassignment surgery and openly discussing our “man-made vaginas” without any of the discretion that normally accompanies discussions about genitals.

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

  In fact, it seems incomprehensible that so many women could so actively gravitate toward femininity unless there was something about it that resonated with them on a profound level. This becomes even more obvious when considering feminine folks who exhibit no desire whatsoever to fit into straight society, such as femme dykes (who proudly express their femininity despite being historically marginalized within the lesbian movement because of it) and “nelly queens” (who remain fiercely feminine despite the gay male obsession with praising butchness and deriding “effeminacy”). 18 The idea that “femininity is artificial” is also blatantly misogynistic. While a handful of theorists in the field of gender studies have more recently begun to focus on how masculinity is constructed, the lion’s share of feminist attention, deconstruction, and denigration has been directed squarely at femininity. There is an obvious reason for this. Just as woman is man’s “other,” so too is femininity masculinity’s “other.” Under such circumstances, negative connotations like “artificial,” “contrived,” and “frivolous” become built into our understanding of femininity—indeed, this is precisely what allows masculinity to always come off as “natural,” “practical,” and “uncomplicated.” Those feminists who single out women’s dress shoes, clothing, and hairstyles to artificialize necessarily leave unchallenged the notion that their masculine counterparts are “natural” and “practical.” This is the same male- centered approach that allows the appearances and behaviors of men who wish to charm or impress others to seem “authentic” while the reciprocal traits expressed by women are dismissed as “feminine wiles.” Femininity is portrayed as a trick or ruse so that masculinity invariably seems sincere by comparison. For this reason, there are few intellectual tasks easier than artificializing feminine gender expression, because male-centricism purposefully sets up femininity as masculinity’s “straw man” or its scapegoat. As feminists, it’s time for us to acknowledge that this scapegoating of femininity has become the Achilles’ heel of the feminist movement. While past feminists have gone to great lengths to empower femaleness and to tear away all of the negative connotations that have plagued women’s bodies and biology, they have allowed the negative connotations associated with femininity to persist relatively unabated. Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that, while most reasonable people see women and men as equals, few (if any) dare to claim that femininity is masculinity’s equal. Indeed, much of what has historically been called misogyny—a hatred of women—has clearly gone underground, disguising itself as the less reprehensible derision of femininity. This new version of misogyny, which focuses more on maligning femininity than femaleness, can be found everywhere.

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

  If the real-life test was deemed successful by both the transsexual and the therapist, the trans person would be eligible for hormone replacement therapy (in those cases where hormones were not prescribed before or concurrent with the real-life test) and sex reassignment surgery (which usually required a recommendation from a second mental health professional). While the gatekeepers consistently argued that these methods were designed to protect the transsexual, the way they were executed (especially prior to the mid-1990s) reveals an underlying agenda. Whether unconscious or deliberate, the gatekeepers clearly sought to (1) minimize the number of transsexuals who transitioned, (2) ensure that most people who did transition would not be “gender-ambiguous” in any way, and (3) make certain that those transsexuals who fully transitioned would remain silent about their trans status. These goals were clearly disadvantageous to transsexuals, as they limited trans people’s ability to obtain relief from gender dissonance and served to isolate trans people from one another, thus rendering them invisible. Rather, these goals were primarily designed to protect the cissexual public from their own gender anxiety by ensuring that most cissexuals would never come face-to-face with someone they knew to be transsexual. The gatekeepers’ attempts to suppress the number of trans people allowed to transition occurred at virtually every step of the sex reassignment process. For example, the gender identity clinics that were established to treat (and carry out research on) trans people often accepted only a small percentage of those who applied to their programs (for example, the program at Johns Hopkins University only approved twenty-four of the first two thousand requests they received for sex reassignment surgery). 11 And simply being accepted into one of these programs was not a guarantee that one would be allowed to transition. First, the trans person had to undergo extensive, sometimes indefinite, periods of psychotherapy designed to evaluate whether or not they met the psychiatrist’s criteria for “true” transsexuals, rather than the arguably more important task of preparing the trans person for the emotional and physical changes associated with transitioning. Those who received recommendations were required to continue in therapy through the entire transitioning process (i.e., until after surgery). This requirement of several years of psychotherapy—in addition to the expenses of hormones, surgery, and other procedures that were generally not covered by health insurance—created a huge financial burden that severely limited the number of people who would have the economic means to transition in the first place. Those who were allowed to begin the real-life test often faced additional obstacles, as some gender identity clinics (and early versions of The HBIGDA Standards of Care) required trans people to begin their tests prior to starting hormone replacement therapy.

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

  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. And while we credit previous feminist movements for helping to create a society where most sensible people would agree with the statement “women and men are equals,” we lament the fact that we remain light-years away from being able to say that most people believe that femininity is masculinity’s equal.

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

  For the purposes of this manifesto, trans woman is defined as any person who was assigned a male sex at birth, but who identifies as and/or lives as a woman. No qualifications should be placed on the term “trans woman” based on a person’s ability to “pass” as female, her hormone levels, or the state of her genitals—after all, it is downright sexist to reduce any woman (trans or otherwise) down to her mere body parts or to require her to live up to certain societally dictated ideals regarding appearance. Perhaps no sexual minority is more maligned or misunderstood than trans women. As a group, we have been systematically pathologized by the medical and psychological establishment, sensationalized and ridiculed by the media, marginalized by mainstream lesbian and gay organizations, dismissed by certain segments of the feminist community, and, in too many instances, been made the victims of violence at the hands of men who feel that we somehow threaten their masculinity and heterosexuality. Rather than being given the opportunity to speak for ourselves on the very issues that affect our own lives, trans women are instead treated more like research subjects: Others place us under their microscopes, dissect our lives, and assign motivations and desires to us that validate their own theories and agendas regarding gender and sexuality. Trans women are so ridiculed and despised because we are uniquely positioned at the intersection of multiple binary gender-based forms of prejudice: transphobia, cissexism, and misogyny. Transphobia is an irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against people whose gendered identities, appearances, or behaviors deviate from societal norms. In much the same way that homophobic people are often driven by their own repressed homosexual tendencies, transphobia is first and foremost an expression of one’s own insecurity about having to live up to cultural gender ideals. The fact that transphobia is so rampant in our society reflects the reality that we place an extraordinary amount of pressure on individuals to conform to all of the expectations, restrictions, assumptions, and privileges associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. While all transgender people experience transphobia, transsexuals additionally experience a related (albeit distinct) form of prejudice: cissexism, which is the belief that transsexuals’ identified genders are inferior to, or less authentic than, those of cissexuals (i.e., people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned). The most common expression of cissexism occurs when people attempt to deny the transsexual the basic privileges that are associated with the trans person’s self-identified gender. Common examples include purposeful misuse of pronouns or insisting that the trans person use a different public restroom.

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

  In chapter 2 , “Skirt Chasers,” I discussed the ways in which trans women are often required to prove their femaleness through superficial means—particularly by wearing dresses, heels, makeup, etc.—and then are dismissed as being “fake” women or “female impersonators” because of the perceived artifice involved. The same criticism can be applied to the gatekeepers who complained or com mented on trans women’s “exaggeration” of their femininity without ever considering that their own criteria virtually required trans women to maintain a hyperfeminine appearance in order to gain access to the means of transitioning. In 1969, Money (and coauthors) discussed the results of tests they had administered to transsexuals to measure their feminine and masculine tendencies. 47 The authors praised trans men for giving answers that were “masculine,” but not any more “masculine” than those of the average cissexual man. At no time did the authors consider the possibility that the trans men’s unexaggerated masculine responses were made possible by the fact that most gatekeepers, being male themselves, understood that there was more than one way to be a man. In contrast, trans women were derided for having scores that were higher on the feminine range than that of the average woman. Yet trans women were required to act more feminine than the average woman in order to be taken seriously as transsexuals. Evidence to support the idea that trans women’s hyperfeminine test scores were merely an attempt to appease the traditionally sexist biases of the gatekeepers can be found in Anne Bolin’s 1988 work In Search of Eve. When Bolin—who is not a gatekeeper and whose interactions with trans women occurred entirely outside of a clinical setting—administered a similar test, she found that trans women’s scores were a lot more varied and closer to the norm of cissexual women. She commented, “The importance of fulfilling caretaker expectations… may be the single most important factor responsible for the prevalent medical-mental health conceptions of transsexualism.” 48 This, of course, is the major problem with most medical, psychiatric, and sexological research into transgenderism. While generally presented under the guise of objective science, the body of research compiled by the gatekeepers has been so undermined by their own biases that their results are nothing more than a research artifact.

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

  “No, I don’t wish that. Well, maybe just a little I wish that. I’m going to find a place to turn around and we’ll continue our search or else we’ll nap in the car.” Up ahead I saw lights, and my heart swelled. When I got closer, I saw that it was a small hotel and through the lobby windows I could see a man standing at the front desk. I felt like I had just discovered life on Mars. If this hotel is fully booked , I thought, then I give up, the universe can take us and spit us back out into the night and I will tell my kids that I’m sorry, but I’ve got nothing left . Luckily for us, they had a room as warm and clean as the one I had promised to Georgia, and so we were given a reprieve for yet another day. CHAPTER 15Breaking PointMichael and I had limited our contact to once a week in couples’ therapy as our therapist had worried about our ability to communicate with each other without her mediation. I felt certain that therapy was doing us more harm than good. In our therapist’s presence, we lashed out at each other viciously and she couldn’t rein us in. I was feeling beaten down and shouldering what felt like excessive blame. She had started our therapy by declaring that we would not play the roles of victim and villain. “You just gave him an out,” I cried. “I am the victim and he is the villain. Someone has to accept responsibility and it’s not going to be me.” “I’m not condoning his affair, Laura,” she said. “But we won’t get far if we can’t dig deeper than that.” She was determined to get to the underlying causes of the affair, what had been broken in our marriage to give the affair room to grow, but I felt that until he first acknowledged how damaging the affair was, we were dead in the water. I expected him to be contrite, but he was furious at me. He expected me to want to understand why the affair had happened, but I couldn’t face that there was a whole underworld happening beneath the surface of our life of which I had been blissfully unaware. Every week in therapy, he would rattle off all the ways we had been going off course for years and I would sit stupefied, wondering what rock I had been living under, and feeling more and more of my reality slipping away. So now my future wasn’t going to be what I had expected, but even my past was being savagely edited and rewritten? That meant all I had was my present, which was filled with bitterness, anger and hate – I was reaching my breaking point.

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

  Physical sex can be further divided into multiple, separable characteristics: chromosomal sex (XX and XY), gonadal sex (ovaries and testes), genital sex (clitoris, vagina, and penis), hormonal sex (estrogens and androgens), and a host of secondary sex characteristics (such as breast growth in women, beard growth in men, etc.). While we like to think of females and males as constituting discrete, mutually exclusive classes, about two in one hundred people are born intersex. 5 So there is a vast amount of naturally occurring sexual and gender variation in the world. The question becomes: How do we make sense of it all? That’s where social constructs come in. While variation in our sex characteristics and gender inclinations may occur naturally, the way we interpret those traits, and the identities and meanings we associate with them, can vary significantly from culture to culture. In our society, what it means to be a woman or a man—the symbols, customs, expectations, restrictions, and privileges associated with those classes—are very different today than they were fifty years ago. This holds true for both typical and exceptional gender inclinations. For example, in this time and place I am able to identify as a woman, a dyke, a transsexual, and a transgender person—to me, each of these identities represents a slightly different (but somewhat overlapping) aspect of my gender and sexuality. However, had I been born a half century earlier—before most of these labels were commonly used or even existed—it would be impossible for me to identify the way that I do now. Perhaps my female subconscious sex would have led me to try “passing” and living as a woman, as trans people often did before medical means of transitioning became widely available. Or perhaps I would have taken part in the homosexual underground of the time, which was an amalgamation of people who would probably be considered lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender today. Or maybe, unaware of the existence of any other gender-variant people, I might have remained closeted for lack of any obvious alternative. Further, had I been born in some other country, I might have developed a very different transgender identity. Examples of MTF spectrum transgender people in other cultures include Indian hijras, Brazilian transvestis, Thai katoeys, and Native American “berdaches,” or “two-spirit” people. 6 These transgender identities differ not only in name but in their customs, practices, and social roles. Part of the reason these groups differ relates to the fact that their cultures place more emphasis on certain gender inclinations over others. In some cultures, a person’s gender expression plays a larger role in determining gender than we experience in the United States. Other cultures seem to place more emphasis on whether the person in question engages in sexual relationships with women or men. In our culture, we divide people into two groups—females and males—almost exclusively based on their physical sex.