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)

  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. It can be seen in our political discourse, where advocates for the environment, gun control, and welfare are undermined via “guilt by association” with feminine imagery as seen in phrases such as “tree huggers,” “soft on crime,” and pro-“dependency,” and where male politicians who exhibit anything other than a two-dimensional facade of hypermasculinity are invariably dismissed by political cartoonists who depict them donning dresses. 19 This new misogyny still very much undermines women, and it accomplishes this in several ways. First, the majority of feminine people are women, so by default they make up the largest class of those who are targeted by antifeminine sentiment. Second, our concept of femininity doesn’t merely affect how we “do” our own gender expression—it is also an expectation or assumption that we project onto other people’s bodies and behaviors. Therefore, while an individual woman may purposefully eschew femininity in her appearance and actions, she cannot escape the fact that other people will project feminine assumptions and expectations upon her simply because they associate femininity with femaleness. In her book Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women , Virginia Valian makes a strong case that what has come to be known as the “glass ceiling”—the fact that women, regardless of their skills and merits, tend not to advance as far in their careers as similarly qualified men—is best explained by the fact that all people project feminine assumptions and expectations onto women and masculine ones onto men. 20 This, of course, favors men, since masculinity is by default seen as “strong,” “natural,” and “aggressive” while femininity is seen as “weak,” “contrived,” and “passive.” Therefore, until feminists work to empower femininity and pry it away from the insipid, inferior meanings that plague it—weakness, helplessness, fragility, passivity, frivolity, and artificiality—those meanings will continue to haunt every person who is female and/or feminine. Feminists’ past privileging of femaleness over femininity has also enabled misogynistic acts that target men who have feminine traits to remain unnoticed and unarticulated. For example, when a gay man ridicules another gay man for being too “flamboyant” or “effeminate,” he may be accused of harboring “internalized homophobia”—a nonsensical turn of phrase to describe someone who is openly gay and has no problems with masculine gay men. Isn’t this form of antifeminine discrimination better described as misogyny? Similarly, straight women who regularly pair up with macho guys who treat them poorly, yet won’t consider dating a “nice guy,” might be described as harboring “internalized misogyny.” Again, isn’t this better described as a form of externalized misogyny directed at men who display qualities that are considered feminine?

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

  This idea—that much of what is commonly called transphobia is merely traditional sexism in disguise—moved to the forefront of my mind as I began to be invited to do spoken word performances at various queer women’s events around the San Francisco Bay Area. While I was welcomed very warmly by most of the women who attended these events, I would sometimes come across certain women who would act dismissively toward me, who seemed bothered by me being there, who acted as if they were granting me a special favor by tolerating my presence, who would make offhand and inappropriate comments about my trans status as if to remind me that I was not a real woman like they were. This sense of ownership and entitlement about being a woman or being lesbian seemed hypocritical to me. After all, as soon as we would walk out the door, all of us would face similar discrimination for being women and for being dykes. But what was most frustrating about the way that many of these women dismissed me was the fact that they seemed to have no problems at all with female-bodied folks expressing masculinity and with trans people on the FTM spectrum attending their events. In other words, they didn’t have much of a problem with transgender people per se, just so long as they were male- or masculine-identified rather than female- or feminine-identified. This privileging of trans men over trans women is not merely a bias held by certain individuals, but rather one that is often institutionalized within queer women’s culture and organizations. These days, it is not uncommon to see the word “trans” used to welcome trans men (but not trans women) on everything from lesbian events to sex surveys and play parties. And even at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, women are no longer defined based on their legal sex, appearance, or self-identification, but on whether or not they were born and raised a girl. And while some performers who identify as transgender and answer to male pronouns are invited to take the festival stage each year, someone like myself—who identifies 100 percent as female—isn’t even allowed to stand in the audience. 3 As with most forms of prejudice, trans-woman-specific discrimination within the queer women’s community seems to proliferate even more in the absence of trans women than in our presence; this is no surprise, as bigots are typically too cowardly to dare have their views openly discussed or debated with the very people they despise. While anti-trans-woman sentiments are generally expressed outside of my view, I still hear about them all the time from my trans male and queer female friends, who often tell me about self-identified dykes in their community who openly discuss lusting after trannybois and trans men one minute, then in the next, deride trans women for being “creepy” and “effeminate.”

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

  Greer grants these women cissexual privilege when she suggests that they (along with her) are equally entitled to be consulted about whether transsexual women should belong to their sex or not. It is particularly telling that Greer uses the word “asked” in this context. After all, nobody in our society ever asks for permission to belong to one gender or another; rather, we just are who we are and other people make assumptions about our gender accordingly. Thus, when Greer uses the words “asked” and “obliged,” she is not talking about whether trans women should be allowed to be female, but whether or not our femaleness should be respected and legitimized to the same extent as cissexual women’s femaleness. By applying different standards of legitimacy to people’s identified and lived genders based on whether they are cissexual or transsexual, Greer is producing and exercising cissexual privilege. The Myth of Cissexual Birth Privilege Since cissexuals are generally unaware that their gender entitlement arises from the acts of gendering and cissexual assumption, they often find themselves having to justify their belief that their gender is more legitimate or “real” than that of a transsexual. The most common myth used to justify this cissexual privilege is the idea that cissexuals inherit the right to call themselves female or male by virtue of being born into that particular sex. In other words, cissexuals view their gender entitlement as a birthright. This is often a deceitful act, as many (if not most) cissexuals in our society tend to look disparagingly upon societies and cultures that still rely on class or caste systems—where one’s occupation, social status, economic disposition, political power, etc., is predetermined based on an accident of birth. So while most Western cissexuals frown upon birth privilege as a means to determine these other forms of social class, they hypocritically embrace it when it comes to gender. Once a cissexual assumes that their gender entitlement is a birth privilege, then it becomes easy for them to dismiss the legitimacy of transsexuals’ identified and lived sex. After all, in their eyes, transsexuals are actively trying to claim for themselves a gender that they are not entitled to (having not been born into it). However, as a transsexual, I find several obvious flaws with this “birth privilege” argument. First of all, the sex we are assigned at birth plays almost no role whatsoever in day-to-day human interactions. None of us need to carry our birth certificate around with us to prove what sex we were born into. And since I have been living as a woman, I have never had a single person ask me whether I was born a girl.

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

  Similarly, whenever old friends meet up with me for the first time since my transition, they almost invariably comment on how strange it is that I seem like the exact same person to them, except that now I am female. It’s as if our compulsion to place women and men into different categories of our brain, to see them as “opposite” sexes, is so intense that we have trouble imagining that it is possible for a person to change their sex without somehow becoming an entirely different person. These days, whenever people ask me lots of questions about my previous male life and the medical procedures that helped facilitate my transition to female, I realize that they are making a desperate and concerted effort to preserve their own assumptions and stereotypes about gender, rather than opening their minds up to the possibility that women and men do not represent mutually exclusive categories. When they request to see my “before” photos or ask me what my former name was, it is because they are trying to visualize me as male in order to anchor my existence in my assigned sex. And when they focus on my physical transition, it is so they can imagine my femaleness as a product of medical science rather than something that is authentic, that comes from inside me. I know that many in the trans community believe that these TV shows and documentaries following transsexuals through the transition process serve a purpose, offering us a bit of visibility and the rare chance to be depicted on TV as something other than a joke. But in actuality, they accomplish little more than reducing us to our physical transitions and our anatomically “altered” bodies. In other words, these programs objectify us. And while it has become somewhat customary for trans people to allow the media to use our “before” pictures whenever we appear on TV, this only enables the cissexual public to continue privileging our assigned sex over our subconscious sex and gender identity. If we truly want to be taken seriously in our identified sex, then we must not only refuse to indulge cissexual people’s compulsion to pigeonhole us in our assigned sex, but call them out on the way that they continuously objectify our bodies while refusing to take our minds, our persons, and our identities seriously. 5 Blind Spots: On Subconscious Sex and Gender Entitlement One of the most frustrating aspects about being a transsexual is that I’m frequently asked to explain to other people why I decided to transition. Why did I feel it was necessary to physically change my body?

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

  13 While the fact that Daphne has a feminine name, longish hair, breasts, and identifies as a dyke suggests that she is a trans woman, DiMassa never clearly spells it out, opting instead to tease the audience by relegating Daphne to a permanently ungendered state. In 2004, Daphne’s ungendered status slammed up against the political reality of actual trans people when a musical based on Hothead Paisan was to be performed at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Because many people were led to believe that Daphne was transgender—and more specifically, a trans woman—DiMassa received pressure to denounce the festival’s trans-woman-exclusion policy. In response, DiMassa published an open letter on her website in July 2004 stating that she supported the trans-woman-exclusion policy. In an interview with Bitch magazine around the same time, she said, “Daphne has become sort of a transgender hero character. But I never used that word. I never said which way she was going. I never said if she was MTF or FTM.” 14 It seems that DiMassa wants to have it both ways here. She wants to toy with the idea of transsexuality without taking responsibility for the fact that real trans people have identities that are regularly dismissed by other people. DiMassa feels entitled to use her gender-variant characters as mere plot devices to provoke other characters and audiences in much the same way that heterosexist TV sitcom writers create walk-on lesbian characters who exist only to challenge the male protagonist’s masculinity. Perhaps the most surreal part of the entire incident was DiMassa’s defensive reaction to the anger of the trans female community, at one point quipping, “It’s just fucking typical that a man-born woman can’t get the concept of not being allowed somewhere.” 15 Apparently, DiMassa believes that the anger lesbian women feel about being marginalized by the straight, male-dominated mainstream is legitimate, but that the similar anger trans women feel about being dismissed, stereotyped, and exploited by the lesbian community merely represents selfishness on our parts. I am sure that writers like DiMassa, Eugenides, and Anderson would defend their works by claiming they have artistic license to create characters and stories as they please. To be honest, I would have no problem if their stories contained characters that magically transitioned from one sex to the other. But instead, they chose to base their gender transformations in reality—a reality where transsexual and intersex people are marginalized, where our voices are seldom heard.

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

  It is as if these writers feel some kind of sense of ownership about experiences that intersex and transsexual folks—and they alone—struggle with. Transitioning from one sex to another is not simply an interesting anecdote; it is a grueling, tumultuous experience that turns a person’s life upside down, that often causes people to lose their family, friends, and jobs. And the discovery that a family member is intersex is not simply some clever plot twist. It is most often a traumatic situation, resulting in the person being endlessly poked and prodded by doctors, an experience that shrouds individuals and their families in shame and secrecy. For writers who have never had to deal with being transsexual or intersex to lay claim to those experiences, to use them for their own purposes, and to profit from them, is nothing short of exploitation. Fables of the Deconstruction Arguably, nowhere have people felt more entitled to possess and exploit intersex and transsexual experiences and identities than in academia. The ungendering of gender-variant people has been an ongoing practice among sociologists, poststructuralist theorists, and feminists who wish to demonstrate that our notions of gender are socially constructed. One of the earliest examples of this approach is sociologist Harold Garfinkel’s 1967 book Studies in Ethnomethodology, which attempted to elucidate how members of society “produce stable, accountable practical activities, i.e. , social structures of everyday activities.” 16 While Garfinkel could have examined how the average person makes sense of their own gendered experiences, he instead focused on someone who didn’t have the privilege of taking their own gender for granted. That person was Agnes, a trans woman who (unbeknownst to Garfinkel) had taken female hormones for a number of years and posed as intersex in the hope of obtaining sex reassignment surgery (during the 1950s in the U.S., such surgeries were regularly carried out on intersex individuals, but not transsexuals). 17 Garfinkel devoted seventy pages to describing Agnes’s attempts to reconcile her female identity and feminine behavior with the fact that she had male genitals. The account is extraordinarily objectifying, and not only with regard to Garfinkel’s descriptions of Agnes’s body (such as, “Her measurements were 38-25-38” and “she was dressed in a tight sweater which marked off her thin shoulders, ample breasts, and narrow waist”).

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

  The popular spin given to this preferential treatment of trans men over trans women states that trans men have been raised female and therefore should have a place in women’s and lesbian communities, whereas trans women have experienced male privilege and remain physically male on some level, and therefore should be excluded. However, this argument makes little sense when examined more closely. After all, how can someone who identifies as female and currently lives as a woman have less in common with women than a male-identified person who has male physical attributes and currently benefits from male privilege? The premise that trans women should be singled out because we “used to be men” is highly suspect. Rather, I believe that this preference for trans men over trans women simply reflects the society-wide inclination to view masculinity as being strong and natural, and femininity as being weak and artificial. In other words, it is a product of traditional sexism. My appreciation for the ways in which traditional sexism shapes popular assumptions about trans women started to really take shape during 2003 and 2004, as I became involved in Camp Trans, an organization that works to end the exclusion of trans women from women-only spaces, most notably the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. In my work on this issue, I learned firsthand how the occasional anti-trans-woman sentiment I would come across in the relatively trans-friendly Bay Area was just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the women who travel from all over the country to attend Michigan think nothing of wearing their suspicion or hatred of trans women on their sleeves, and they will often make extraordinarily ignorant and insensitive comments about trans women in their attempts to justify our exclusion. I am sure these women believe that they are protecting the values of lesbian and women’s space by opposing our inclusion at all costs, but in reality the specific points they make generally undermine feminist goals and beliefs rather than support them. After all, at its core, feminism is based on the conviction that women are far more than the sex of the bodies that we are born into, and our identities and abilities are capable of transcending the restrictive nature of the gender socialization we endure during our childhoods. I have yet to meet the person who can explain to me how refusing trans women the right to participate in women’s spaces and events is consistent with this most central tenet of feminism.

• 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.