Contempt

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)

  One such anthropologist is Serena Nanda, who has studied Indian hijras and authored several books, including Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations. This 2000 book is an overview of gender variation across the world, and highlights examples of social categories and gender roles that challenge our Western tendency to define gender exclusively based on one’s physical sex. For the most part, Nanda remains respectful and refrains from placing value judgments on the cultures and gender-variant people she describes—that is, until she gets to the chapter titled “Transsexualism.” Here, she seems to go into diatribe mode, describing transsexuals as a medical “invention” who are shaped by Western doctors’ and psychologists’ stereotyped view of gender. 61 Nanda goes on to make the broader point that transsexuals, “far from being an example of gender diversity, both reflected and reinforced the dominant Euro-American sex/gender ideology in which one had to choose to be either a man or a (stereotypical) woman.” 62 For Nanda to make this sort of blanket generalization when there are countless examples of transsexuals who were involved in the early days of the gay rights and the lesbian-feminist movements, or who are at the forefront of today’s transgender and genderqueer movements, suggests that either she is completely ignorant of the existence of any transsexuals who do not fit her stereotype, or she purposefully ignores or discounts them in order to create the false impression that all transsexuals are stamped from the same medical establishment cookie cutter. Nanda’s motives for painting such a rigid and distorted picture of transsexuals becomes obvious in the following chapter, “Transgenderism.” Despite the fact that virtually all organizations and communities that call themselves “transgender” generally include transsexuals, Nanda has somehow taken it upon herself to redefine “transgender” in opposition to “transsexual.” She describes transgenderism as being based on the principle of androgyny, explaining that (unlike transsexuals) transgender people do not limit themselves to a single gender. 63 It seems rather obvious why she is so determined to deny the overlap between these two groups. A running theme throughout the book is that transgender people who are defined as being separate from female and male necessarily challenge our Western assumptions that the male/female binary gender system is “natural.” Transsexuals complicate this issue by virtue of the fact that we are gender-variant yet typically identify within the binary.

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

  To me, the most surreal part of this whole transgressingversus-reinforcing-gender-norms dialogue in the queer/trans community (and in many gender studies classrooms and books) is the unacknowledged hypocrisy of it all. It is sadly ironic that people who claim to be gender-fucking in the name of “shattering the gender binary,” and who criticize people whose identities fail to adequately challenge our societal notions of femaleness and maleness, cannot see that they have just created a new gender binary, one in which subversive genders are “good” and conservative genders are “bad.” In a sense, this new gender binary isn’t even all that new. It is merely the original oppositional sexist binary flipped upside down. So now, gender-nonconforming folks are on top and gender-normative people are on the bottom—how revolutionary! Now, I understand the temptation for a marginalized group to turn the hierarchy that has oppressed them upside down, as it can feel very empowering to finally be atop the pecking order, but it’s absurd to claim that such approaches in any way undermine that binary. If anything, they only serve to reinforce it further. Subversivism’s binary flip is very reminiscent of another binary flip that was forwarded by cultural feminists in the mid-1970s. While subversivism reverses oppositional sexism, cultural feminism sought to reverse traditional sexism by claiming that women were naturally creative and cooperative and therefore superior to men, who were seen as inherently destructive and oppressive. While it is always difficult to draw comparisons between different social/political movements for fear of oversimplifying them, there are other striking parallels between subversivism and cultural feminism that are worth bearing out. As historian Alice Echols describes in her book Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975, cultural feminism evolved from its more outwardly focused predecessor, radical feminism.4 While radical feminism—which asserted that neither sex was inherently superior to the other—actively engaged the mainstream public (and men in particular) to challenge and change their sexist ways, cultural feminism was a more insular movement, focusing on creating women-run organizations and women-only spaces rather than organizing public demonstrations. And unlike radical feminism, which attempted to accommodate a variety of different female perspectives (in fact, issues over “difference” in class and sexuality consumed much of the movement’s energy), cultural feminists forwarded the idea of “sameness” and “oneness”—that all women were part of a universal sisterhood, united by their female biology.

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

  However, many other deconstructive feminists have interpreted Butler’s writings to mean that one’s gender is merely a “performance.” According to this latter view, if gender itself is merely a “performance,” then one can challenge sexism by simply “performing” one’s gender in ways that call the binary gender system into question; the most often cited example of this is a drag queen whose “performance” supposedly reveals the way in which femaleness and femininity are merely a “performance.”15While unilateral feminists typically view femininity in exclusively negative terms, deconstructive feminists believe that femininity is context-dependent: It can be “good” (when it is used to subvert the binary gender system) or “bad” (when used to naturalize that system).16 In other words, deconstructive feminism only empowers and embraces queer expressions of femininity, while straight expressions of femininity are typically portrayed as reinforcing a sexist binary gender system. Thus, both deconstructive and unilateral feminism share the belief that (1) femininity is not a natural form of expression, but rather one that is socially imposed; (2) most women are “duped” into believing that their femininity arises intrinsically rather than due to extrinsic forces such as socialization or social constructs; (3) people who are “in the know” recognize that gender expression is artificial and easily malleable, and thus they can purposefully adopt a more radical, antisexist gender expression (e.g., androgyny, drag, etc.); and (4) because feminine women choose not to adopt these supposedly radical, antisexist gender expressions, they may be seen as enabling sexism and thus collaborating in their own oppression.The Ramifications of Artificializing FemininitySo why has the artificializing of femininity become a preoccupation for many feminists over the last several decades? I believe that it has to do with the fact that many of the women who have most strongly gravitated toward feminism are those who have found traditional feminine gender roles constraining or unnatural. In many cases, this is due to their own inclinations toward exceptional forms of gender expression. Because their personal experiences with femininity felt uncomfortable and contrived in comparison with their experiences with androgyny, masculinity, or other gender expressions (which they found more liberating and empowering), they mistakenly projected their own experience and perspective onto all other women. While not necessarily done maliciously, this extrapolation was nevertheless an act of gender entitlement, one that denied that any diversity in gender expression might exist among women arising out of their very different class, cultural, or biological backgrounds and predispositions. By arrogantly assuming that no woman could be legitimately drawn toward feminine expression, these feminists permanently relegated femininity to the status of “false consciousness.”The feminist assumption that “femininity is artificial” is narcissistic, as it invariably casts nonfeminine women as having “superior knowledge” while dismissing feminine women as either “dupes” (who are too ignorant to recognize they have been conned) or “fakes” (who purposely engage in “unnatural” behaviors in order to uphold sexist societal norms).

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

  Burke describes Green’s line of reasoning as involving “a devaluation of all that is traditionally feminine when it appears strongly in a boy. Girls are not chosen [as playmates] by boys because they like them; they are chosen because they can be dominated, or are not a threat. Activities are chosen not because they are enjoyed, but because boys fail at masculine activities, because if the boys could succeed at masculine activities, why would they bother with feminine activities?” 37 Some might be inclined to view effemimania as simply a manifestation of homophobia or transphobia, but this would be inaccurate. Effemimania specifically targets femininity rather than homosexuality or transsexuality as a whole. For example, in her 1991 essay “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay: The War on Effeminate Boys,” Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick discusses how Richard C. Friedman, a psychoanalyst and the author of Male Homosexuality: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective, speaks rather admirably about gay men who exhibit masculine traits, while correlating “adult gay male effeminacy with ‘global character psychopathology’ and what he calls ‘the lower part of the psychostructural spectrum.’” 38 And while all forms of transsexuality are still formally pathologized, it has been quite common for gatekeepers to claim that trans men are more psychologically “stable” than trans women. 39 Often, such comments are made without any further explanation, leading one to suspect that these characterizations stem from the gatekeepers’ unspoken assumption that masculinity and the desire to be male are, in and of themselves, more rational and healthy tendencies than femininity and the desire to be female. Another issue that seems to fuel effemimania is our cultural tendency to sexualize femininity and femaleness in all its forms. While countless feminist writers and theorists have analyzed the ways in which the sexualization of femaleness and femininity permeates virtually every aspect of our culture and has a negative impact on most women’s lives, they have typically ignored the way this tendency creates an environment in which “male femininity” is almost always considered in purely sexual terms. For example, most popular images and impressions of trans women revolve around sexuality: from “she-male” and “chicks with dicks” pornography to media portrayals of us as sexual deceivers, prostitutes, and sex workers. And of course, there are the recurring themes of trans women who transition in order either to gain the sexual attention of men or to fulfill some kind of bizarre sex fantasy (both of which appear regularly in the media, and also in Bailey and Blanchard’s model of MTF transgenderism).

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

  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”—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? Some feminists (particularly unilateral feminists) will no doubt have a negative knee-jerk reaction to my suggestion that we extend our understanding of misogyny to encompass effemimania—our societal obsession with critiquing and belittling feminine traits in males. However, as I have argued in past chapters, effemimania affects everybody, including women.

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

  Perhaps sensing that feminine gay men and MTF spectrum trans people brought unilateral feminists’ antifemininity theses into question, many unilateral feminists developed vehemently disdainful attitudes toward these groups. Interestingly (and not coincidentally), the unilateral feminists who have been most outspoken in deriding feminine gay men and trans women also tend to have the most openly hostile attitudes toward femininity in general. For example, Mary Daly, who referred to feminine women as “painted birds” and portrayed feminist women such as herself as being “attacked by the mutants of her own kind, the man-made women,” was similarly resentful of transsexual women (whom she called “Frankenstein’s Monsters”) and drag queens (whom she compared to whites playing “blackface”). 11 Germaine Greer, who has referred to conventionally feminine women as “feminine parasites,” has written multiple trans-misogynistic screeds, one of which assails trans woman Jan Morris for her “obsession with femininity.” 12 And Sheila Jeffreys, who believes that femininity “is the behavior required of the subordinate class of women in order to show their deference to the ruling class of men,” has argued that MTF transsexuality and gay male femininity arise exclusively from sexual masochism. 13 Thus, the anti-gay-male, anti-trans-woman sentiment that persists today among many unilateral feminists has its roots in their traditionally sexist views of femininity. Many of the unilateral feminist positions that I’ve discussed so far have been challenged with the rise of deconstructive feminism in the 1980s and 1990s. Deconstructive feminists, while varied in their backgrounds and approaches, share the belief that the category “woman” is socially constructed and therefore doesn’t exist independent of the societal norms and discourses that bring it into being. Therefore, instead of working to end sexism by highlighting the ways that women are “oppressed” by men (as unilateral feminists had), deconstructive feminists set out to deconstruct our very notions of “woman” and “man,” exposing the assumptions and expectations that enable sexism. They describe “man” and “woman” as being situated within a binary gender system that permeates every nook and cranny of our society, infusing itself into our language, traditions, behaviors, and the very way we think about ourselves and others. This binary gender system assumes that men are masculine and aggressive and attracted to women, who are feminine and passive. If one fails to adhere to these assumptions in any way—for instance, if you are an aggressive woman or a feminine man—then you automatically become unintelligible within this system and are therefore marginalized. Deconstructive feminism differs from unilateral feminism in a number of important ways. First, unlike unilateral feminism, which focuses almost exclusively on traditional sexism, deconstructive feminism focuses primarily on oppositional sexism. In a sense, deconstructive feminism subsumes traditional sexism into oppositional sexism, as it typically depicts the “othering” of “woman” as an inevitable by-product of that identity being binary- paired to “man.” Because this relationship privileges oppositional sexism over traditional sexism, deconstructive feminists have been influential in both feminist and queer theory.

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

  As trans-related language has shifted away from the word “sex” and toward “gender,” the term “sex reassignment” (a more formal way to refer to medical and/or legal transition) has given way to the phrase “gender affirmation.” And while some people still identify as “genderqueer,” that term has largely been supplanted by the label “nonbinary.” Occasionally, I refer to people as being male- or female-bodied, or as female- or male-identified. Sometimes this occurs when discussing phenomenological aspects of my own transition: My body used to be physically male, but nowadays it’s physically female, which both is a very different embodied experience and leads people to interpret and treat me differently than before. Other times, I use these phrases to account for the fact that trans people’s gender identities and physical bodies do not always align. Unfortunately, anti-trans activists have since appropriated this language in their attempts to undermine trans people—for instance, they might refer to me as merely a “female-identified male-bodied person” in their attempts to erase my lived experiences as a woman. In response to this, some trans people now eschew or condemn this language. While this is an understandable reaction, it does make it difficult to discuss many nuances of the trans experience, especially with regard to non- and pre-transition trans folks. Finally, while I use the adjectives/acronyms “MTF” and “FTM” to refer to transgender trajectories or spectrums here, these terms have since fallen out of favor, likely because they make it seem as though we are perpetually “in between” those two states. My preferred descriptors for these trajectories/spectrums nowadays are trans female/feminine and trans male/masculine, respectively—this language emphasizes who we are in the here and now, without needlessly referencing the sex that we were nonconsensually assigned at birth. Unfortunately, the language that is most often used to describe transgender trajectories today is “AMAB” and “AFAB.” While there are certainly times when discussing “assigned sex/gender at birth” is useful (I occasionally do so throughout this book), referring to trans people en masse as “AMAB transsexuals” or “AFAB transgender people” goes against everything that trans communities have worked for.

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

  After all, one occasionally sees behind-the-scenes programs about Hollywood makeup artists and costume designers who can drastically change an actor’s appearance, yet they are never given the sensationalistic spin that these other types of transformations receive. There are also plenty of programs that feature nonsurgical makeovers (for example, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and What Not to Wear ), but they tend to have a more laid-back and informative feel, seducing the audience with their you-can-do-this-yourself attitude, in contrast to plastic surgery and sex reassignment shows, which have a far more cold and voyeuristic feel to them. And while a woman who changes her hair color and style, or a man who shaves off his beard, undergoes a significant transformation, one that often leaves them looking like a completely different person, the audience is not encouraged to gawk over their before-and-after pictures in the same way they do with the subjects of plastic surgery and sex reassignment programs. I would argue that the major reason that plastic surgeries, gastric bypasses, and sex reassignments are all given similar sensationalistic treatments is because the subjects cross what is normally considered an impenetrable class boundary: from unattractive to beautiful, from fat to thin, and in the case of transsexuals, from male to female, or from female to male. Of course, attractiveness as a class issue permeates much of what we see on TV—it determines who gets to be the protagonist or love interest and who ends up being the nerdy next-door neighbor or comic relief. And while TV advertisements may encourage us to buy various beauty products that are supposed to make us look incrementally more attractive, or dieting and exercising programs that are supposed to help us lose that extra ten, twenty, even forty pounds, it is commonly accepted that we each have certain physical limits that we are unable to overcome, limits that generally determine our social status regarding attractiveness. In fact, the large amount of effort that many of us put into attaining the relatively small improvements in our appearance that are achievable by exercising, dieting, and purchasing beauty products is a testament to how much we are judged (and how we judge others) based on conventional standards of beauty and size. So when somebody does cross those supposedly impassable boundaries, essentially changing their social class from not-so-attractive to stunning, or from “morbidly obese” to thin, it can change our thinking about beauty and attraction.

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

  Friedan discusses femininity in relation to what she calls the “housewife trap”—the expectation that middle-class women should become full-time homemakers, a role she believed stifled women’s emotional and intellectual growth. To make her case that femininity is a trap (rather than something many women naturally gravitate toward), Friedan spends much of the book discussing the ways in which companies, advertisers, the media, psychiatry, and others actively manipulate women into buying into feminine trappings. The Feminine Mystique was a rather narrowly focused book, in that it only dealt with issues that affected middle-class American women, and with those aspects of femininity that are associated with the “housewife trap.” But it helped reinforce a notion that would appear repeatedly throughout unilateral feminism—that femininity (or at least certain aspects of it) is an artificial, man-made ploy designed to hold women back from reaching their full potential. Looking back at unilateral feminist writings, one finds that sexism is often described as arising from a patriarchal system that kept women oppressed via two interrelated tactics: (1) placing belittling meanings and assumptions onto women’s bodies, and (2) coercing women into femininity, a program that was seen as inherently stifling and which fostered (or was the product of) women’s subservience and subjugation to men. Thus, unilateral feminists viewed the oppositional sexism faced by women as part of traditional sexism. Because masculinity was viewed primarily as a position of privilege, oppositional sexism against male-bodied people remained obscured. Indeed, the very idea that a man might find masculine expectations restrictive seemed as nonsensical to many unilateral feminists as a rich person complaining about being oppressed by their own wealth. The unilateral feminist notion that women were coerced into femininity was further facilitated by the growing use of the sex/ gender distinction, which differentiated between one’s sex (which arose from biology) and gender (which arose from one’s environment, socialization, and psychology). 4 This gave unilateral feminists the theoretical means to challenge the traditionally sexist messages projected onto women’s biology and bodies while ignoring or disavowing the negative messages associated with femininity. In fact, it’s clear that many influential unilateral feminists believed that qualities such as helplessness, deference, and passivity were essentially “built into” feminine expressions and practices. 5 In other words, these feminists not only failed to challenge sexist interpretations of femininity, but often accepted those interpretations at face value.

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

  One of the most common targets of such critiques are transsexuals, and particularly those who are heterosexual and gender-normative post-transition. Indeed, because such transsexuals (in the eyes of others) transition from a seemingly “transgressive” queer identity to a “conservative” straight one, subversivists may even claim that they have transitioned in order to purposefully “assimilate” themselves into straight culture. While these days, such accusations are often couched in the rhetoric of current queer theory, they rely on many of the same mistaken assumptions that plagued the work of cissexist feminists like Janice Raymond and sociologists like Thomas Kando decades ago.2The practice of subversivism also negatively impacts trans people on the MTF spectrum. After all, in our culture, the meanings of “bold,” “rebellious,” and “dangerous”—adjectives that often come to mind when considering subversiveness—are practically built into our understanding of masculinity. In contrast, femininity conjures up antonyms like “timid,” “conventional,” and “safe,” which seem entirely incompatible with subversion. Therefore, despite the fact that the mainstream public tends to be more concerned and disturbed by MTF spectrum trans people than their FTM spectrum counterparts, subversivism creates the impression that trans masculinities are inherently “subversive” and “transgressive,” while their trans feminine counterparts are “lame” and “conservative” in comparison. Subversivism’s privileging of trans masculinities over trans femininities helps to explain why cissexual queer women and FTM spectrum folks tend to dominate the queer/trans community: Their exceptional gender expressions and identities are routinely empowered and encouraged in such settings. In contrast, there is generally a dearth of MTF spectrum folks who regularly inhabit queer/trans spaces.3To me, the most surreal part of this whole transgressingversus-reinforcing-gender-norms dialogue in the queer/trans community (and in many gender studies classrooms and books) is the unacknowledged hypocrisy of it all. It is sadly ironic that people who claim to be gender-fucking in the name of “shattering the gender binary,” and who criticize people whose identities fail to adequately challenge our societal notions of femaleness and maleness, cannot see that they have just created a new gender binary, one in which subversive genders are “good” and conservative genders are “bad.” In a sense, this new gender binary isn’t even all that new. It is merely the original oppositional sexist binary flipped upside down. So now, gender-nonconforming folks are on top and gender-normative people are on the bottom—how revolutionary!

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

  Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage) in 2015, social-conservative politicians began proposing “bathroom bills” that would make it illegal for trans people to use public restrooms that do not match their “biological sex.” While those efforts were unsuccessful at the time, they set the stage for subsequent anti-trans legislation and political attacks. A second faction is anti-trans feminists. In earlier chapters, I discussed the writings of Janice Raymond, Mary Daly, Sheila Jeffreys, and others, who took a unilateral approach to feminism, one that opposed trans people, butch/femme relationships, femininity, pornography, BDSM, and sex work, on the basis that all these things supposedly “reinforced the patriarchy.” During the late 2000s, feminists who held such views came to be known as trans-exclusionary radical feminists (or “TERFs”); sometime during the mid-2010s, many of them began calling themselves “gender critical” (sometimes abbreviated “GC”). As I argued in the last chapter, GC/TERFs are probably best understood as cultural feminists, who oppose traditional sexism while remaining heavily invested in oppositional sexism (and particularly the notion that women are inherently “good” and “pure,” and men inherently “oppressive” and “dangerous”). Despite its cultural feminist origins, use of the term “gender critical” has since exploded, particularly in the United Kingdom, where it now mostly serves as a euphemism for “anti-trans.” GC/TERFs’ adherence to oppositional sexism is where they find common ground with social conservatives, as both groups relentlessly make appeals to “biological sex” and its imagined mutual exclusivity and immutability. In addition to providing funding for certain anti-trans feminist organizations and causes, conservative groups have adopted GC/TERF talking points regarding how trans acceptance supposedly results in “female erasure” and “threats to girls and women.” 15 While social conservatives and GC/TERFs play highly visible roles in anti-trans activism, a third faction has largely operated behind the scenes, yet has arguably done more to facilitate this moral panic than any other group: the anti-trans parent movement. 16 This movement began to garner momentum in 2015–2016 with the founding of three parent-run websites: 4thWaveNow, Transgender Trend, and Youth Trans Critical Professionals. These sites offer a counternarrative that appeals to reluctant and skeptical parents of trans children, one that emphasizes the “doctors rushing kids into hormones and surgery”–type concerns that I addressed above, but which also insinuates other, more sinister plots.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  And so Jesus goes to his death, with the royal claim above his head: “JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS” (19:19). Pilate knew it was provocative, but went ahead. From his point of view, it was a slap in the face for the Judaean rulers as well as additional mocking of the utterly unkinglike Jesus. But from John’s point of view this means that Pilate, like Caiaphas eight chapters before (11:49–53), is saying far more than he knows. Jesus is enthroned as king of the Jews, and from now on he is also king of the world. The cross in John, which we already know to be the fullest unveiling of God’s, and Jesus’s, love (13:1), is also the moment when God takes his power and reigns over Caesar. From now on, the ruler of this world is judged. This great scene, to which we shall return in more detail, summarizes the dimension we begin to hear in the music when we have turned the fourth speaker up to its proper volume, so that all four are balanced. But what then did Jesus mean in that strange but world-famous little saying about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s? Render unto Caesar? All three synoptic gospels record Jesus’s short exchange on the subject of paying tribute to Caesar. Here is Mark’s version (Matt. 22:15–22 and Luke 20:20–36 have more explanatory detail): They sent some Pharisees to Jesus, and some Herodians, to try to trick him into saying the wrong thing. “Teacher,” they said, “we know you are a man of integrity; you don’t regard anybody as special. You don’t bother about the outward show people put up; you teach God’s way truly. “Well then: is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not? Should we pay it, or shouldn’t we?” He knew the game they were playing. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he said. “Bring me a tribute-coin; let me look at it.” They brought one to him. “This image,” he asked, “whose is it? And whose is this superscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. “Well then,” said Jesus, “give Caesar back what belongs to Caesar—and give God back what belongs to God!” They were astonished at him. (12:13–17)

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

  In fact, it’s clear that many influential unilateral feminists believed that qualities such as helplessness, deference, and passivity were essentially “built into” feminine expressions and practices. 5 In other words, these feminists not only failed to challenge sexist interpretations of femininity, but often accepted those interpretations at face value. While unilateral feminists almost universally agreed that some or all aspects of femininity enabled sexism, they differed in the proposed solutions for countering it. For example, liberal feminists (such as Friedan) worked within the existing system to try to gain equal access to previously male-dominated areas (particularly professional and leadership positions), often promoting a “women can do anything men can do” philosophy. Implicit in this strategy is the assumption that certain masculine-associated qualities and interests were natural and desirable for women to strive for, whereas the reciprocal feminine qualities were not. Radical feminists argued that women’s oppression would only end by entirely rejecting both masculine and feminine gender roles—which were seen as being inexorably tied to men’s “oppressor” and women’s “oppressed” statuses—and instead adopting a more “natural” androgynous disposition. Cultural feminists took a more essentialist position, arguing that men and women were inherently different, and had distinctive innate traits; for example, men were inherently destructive and oppressive, while women were creative and nurturing. While cultural feminists certainly embraced some feminine traits—even characterizing them as superior to their masculine counterparts’ traits—they were careful to portray such traits as arising from a woman’s “natural” womanliness rather than from “artifactual, man-made femininity.” 6 The notion that sexism can only be overcome if women work to become more masculine, more androgynous, or more “naturally womanly” all artificialize femininity by assuming that one’s gender expression is easily malleable, and can be reshaped according to one’s politics. Such one-size-fits-all approaches falsely presume that femininity is monolithic, ignoring how significant differences in class, culture, and biological predisposition give rise to a vast diversity of feminine expressions and perspectives. 7 Because many unilateral feminists refused to accept this diversity in female gender expression, they often developed rather belittling views of women who were unabashedly feminine, characterizing them as having their minds colonized, being “ego repressed,” and not being a “whole person.” 8 Some unilateral feminists called femininity a “slave status,” equating it with masochism, comparing it with Stockholm syndrome, and believing that it existed only to “communicate a woman’s acceptance of her subordinate status.”

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

  I would describe much of this research as stemming from effemimania—an obsession with “male femininity.” One of the characteristic traits of effemimanic research is that it tends to conflate feminine gender expression, male homosexuality, and MTF transsexuality with one another, often treating them as though they were different symptoms of the same “disease.” This is evident in the theories psychiatrists and sexologists have offered to explain the etiology of these phenomena. The most common of these theories is that the combination of a dominant or smothering mother and a passive or distant father leads young boys to identify with their mothers and emulate their mothers’ behaviors. 31 (This theory, which was fiercely forwarded by effemimanic psychiatrist Robert Stoller, has been regularly applied to both male homosexuality and MTF transsexuality.) Variations on this theory remained popular in the psychiatric community for many decades, despite psychiatrists’ inability to explain all, or even most, instances of “male femininity.” Another common theory is that a male child’s developing brain may be inappropriately influenced by the mother’s female hormones in utero. Others have suggested that both male homosexuality and MTF transsexuality may arise from X chromosome-specific mutations or genomic imprinting events that a mother passes on to her son (who is susceptible due to the fact that he has a single X chromosome). 32 Of course, the one thing that these theories all have in common—besides the fact that they all blame the mother for her son’s feminine inclinations—is that they cannot be applied to (nor do they even attempt to account for) the existence of exceptional gender inclinations in those born and raised female. Effemimania in sexology has led to the creation of additional labels and subcategories for MTF spectrum trans people that are rarely, if ever, applied to FTM spectrum individuals. The most common of these is the distinction between transvestites and transsexuals. According to gatekeeper lore, transvestites are male-identified, are attracted to women, and show no interest in transitioning, while MTF transsexuals are female-identified, attracted to men, and wish to fully transition. Some gatekeepers continue to rely on such stereotypes despite the overwhelming evidence that such cut-and-dried categories do not exist: Some male transvestites are bisexual or gay, and many who seem heterosexual often fantasize about having sex with men; many MTF transsexuals are bisexual or lesbian; some MTF trans people choose to live full-time as women without undergoing sex reassignment; and a significant percentage of transvestites eventually come to identify as transsexual and seek out sex reassignment.

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

  18 He spends page after page relishing the details of how she managed to “pass” as a woman, highlighting her anxiety around the discrepancy between her anatomy and gender identity, and pointing out what he believed were inconsistencies in her personal history and her claims that she always felt like a girl. The entitled way he picks apart Agnes’s life, graphically chronicling her fears, secrets, embarrassments, and insecurities, shows no regard for her as a person or for the immense difficulty she must have faced in simply trying to survive and make sense of her life as a gender-variant person living in the 1950s. Another early example of ungendering can be found in the previously mentioned Herculine Barbin. Foucault makes it clear in his introduction to the book that his interest in publishing this nineteenth-century account of an intersex person stemmed solely from the fact that it challenges the modern Western notion that all people have a “true sex.” (At one point, he even boasts that “the narrative baffles every possible attempt to make an identification.” 19 ) It is clear that Foucault had little interest in the desperation and disorientation Herculine felt as she/he grappled with the masculine changes in her/his body and sexuality, as well as other people’s reactions to those changes (which apparently led to Herculine’s suicide). In reference to Herculine’s personal tragedy, Foucault states that he “would be tempted to call the story banal” if it were not for the fact that it provided an example of how society actively imposes a “true sex” onto people. 20 Foucault further dehumanizes Herculine by publishing her/his memoir alongside a dossier that includes medical and legal records, including graphic details of Herculine’s body and intersex condition, as well as a sensationalistic fictional account from that time period based on Herculine’s story. 21 The needless inclusion of this extra material only adds to the reader’s sense that Herculine is nothing more than a specimen for us to freely examine. The fact that both Foucault and Garfinkel claimed to be making larger points about gender and society (Foucault: that society imposes a “true sex” on all of its members; Garfinkel: that we all actively manage and produce our gendered sense of self) makes their subject choice seem rather dubious. Wouldn’t their cases have been stronger if they’d focused instead on subjects who were not gender-variant—who were not such obvious exceptions to the rule? I would argue that Herculine and Agnes were chosen as subjects not because their conditions offered any unique insight into social gender, but because their gender-variant status facilitated their depiction as specimens.

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

  By dismissing us as a medical invention that “upholds the status quo of the binary sex/gender system,” Nanda seems to be establishing a gender binary of her own, one in which “third gender,” androgynous, and visibly queer people who blur distinc tions between female and male are considered radical and natural, while those who identify as or appear to be clearly female or male are considered conservative and contrived. 64 This radical/conservative gender binary is also forwarded by Will Roscoe, an anthropologist who has focused much of his research on reconstructing the lives of what he refers to as “berdaches” (a Western umbrella term for Native American gender-variant people) from the historical record. As a strict social constructionist, Roscoe refuses to believe that these gender-variant identities represent merely “a compromise between nature and culture or a niche to accommodate ‘natural’ variation.” 65 He also denounces the view held by many anthropologists that some of these individuals “crossed” genders (from male to female or female to male) because they could then (in his eyes) be “interpreted as upholding a heterosexist gender system.” 66 Because Roscoe is determined to demonstrate that Native American gender-variant people represent “third genders,” he plays up the ways in which these groups showed signs of being separate from and/or a mix of female and male, while playing down evidence that some may have actually seen themselves as, or wanted to be, the other gender. While this is not difficult to do for certain groups (as these roles varied significantly between Native American nations), Roscoe sticks to his “third gender” hypothesis even when analyzing the historical record of the Mohave alyha (MTF spectrum) and hwame (FTM spectrum) identities (reviewed in his 1994 essay “How to Become a Berdache”). Despite the fact that the alyha “insisted on being referred to by female names and with female gender references,” used “the Mohave word for clitoris to refer to their penises,” received female facial tattoos, and took part in rituals where they simulated pregnancy, Roscoe still argues that they should be considered “third gender” because they were given a unique name (i.e., alyha) to distinguish them from other women. 67 Other evidence that Roscoe uses to undermine the Mohave alyha’s apparent self-identified gender is that they were not always fully accepted in that gender by other Mohaves: He references accounts of individual Mohaves commenting that alyha were less womanly than other women and cites rare occasions when some Mohaves used pronouns that referenced these individuals’ birth (rather than identified) sex.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  She seemed more the type to burn your house down. Seated next to Chickenhorse was Sara, who, apparently, was not only sensitive to men but also to light, cleaning products, mold, pollen, gluten, dairy, and sugar. She had fibromyalgia, chronic migraines, and, as a result of her hypoglycemia, was given special permission to eat during group. She said that made the room more of a “safe space” for her. Throughout the ninety minutes she consumed two bananas, a nectarine, one dried fig, a large box of raisins, and an entire two-liter jug of water. Her emphasis on hydration annoyed me. From what I gathered, Sara had been in love with a man named Stan—a researcher at the hospital where she worked—for over twelve years. Unfortunately, while Stan was happy to have sex with her, he couldn’t commit to a relationship. Then Sara woke up at fifty-one—childless, husbandless—and decided that enough was enough. She entered group and began a “detox” from Stan. Was Jamie a Stan? Worse yet, was I a Sara? Unlike Chickenhorse’s ex, Stan wasn’t married to anyone else, but somehow he was still “unavailable.” This was a word I heard repeated by all of the women during the session, echoing throughout in chorus. The plight of the available woman and the unavailable man! But somehow, each of these women convinced themselves that they too were emotionally unavailable. As encouraged by Dr. Jude, they’d come to the realization that their choice of unavailable men actually reflected an unavailability within themselves. Well, they all looked pretty damn available to me. In her attempts to detox from Stan, Sara was taking a ninety-day break from contact with him. She was now on day forty-three and claimed to be doing pretty well. In fact, she said, she barely pined for him at all. “I’m doing me,” she said. “And tonight, I’m going salsa dancing.” Salsa dancing—now, that was the kiss of death, the evidence that Sara wasn’t doing quite as well as she claimed. Who salsa danced? Salsa dancing was the last stop on the suicide express. Whether or not she wanted to admit it to herself, Sara was clearly destined for a crash. But maybe the worst part about Sara was her feet. She wore a pair of ugly white “athletic sandals” that she removed as soon as she sat down. Her feet were small, yet crusty, with one yellowing toenail. Throughout the session, she gave herself different iterations of foot massage: caressing, stroking, rubbing. She also picked at her calluses and between her toes. What a luxury to think that your feet deserved to be rubbed, in front of other people, so languidly! How amazing to be so utterly unselfconscious that one didn’t worry what other people thought. I wondered if her feet were even sore or if she simply enjoyed stroking something. Maybe she was trying to gross us out on purpose? I vowed to never touch her hand or receive anything from her.

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

  The idea that masculinity is strong, tough, and natural while femininity is weak, vulnerable, and artificial continues to proliferate even among people who believe that women and men are equals. And in a world where femininity is so regularly dismissed, perhaps no form of gendered expression is considered more artificial and more suspect than male and transgender expressions of femininity. I have called this book Whipping Girl to highlight the ways in which people who are feminine, whether they be female, male, and/or transgender, are almost universally demeaned compared with their masculine counterparts. This scapegoating of those who express femininity can be seen not only in the male-centered mainstream, but in the queer community, where “effeminate” gay men have been accused of holding back the gay rights movement, and where femme dykes have been accused of being the Uncle Toms of the lesbian movement. Even many feminists buy into traditionally sexist notions about femininity—that it is artificial, contrived, and frivolous; that it is a ruse that only serves the purpose of attracting and appeasing the desires of men. What I hope to show in this book is that the real ruse being played is not by those of us who happen to be feminine, but rather by those who place inferior meanings onto femininity. The idea that femininity is subordinate to masculinity dismisses women as a whole and shapes virtually all popular myths and stereotypes about trans women. In this book, I break with past attempts in feminism and queer theory to dismiss femininity by characterizing it as “artificial” or “performance.” Instead, I argue that certain aspects of femininity (as well as masculinity) are natural and can both precede socialization and supersede biological sex. For these reasons, I believe that it is negligent for feminists to focus only on those who are female-bodied, or for transgender activists to only talk about binary gender norms. No form of gender equity can ever truly be achieved until we first work to empower femininity itself. Perhaps the most difficult issue that I have had to contend with in writing this book is the varied backgrounds of the audiences I am hoping to reach.

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

  9 Women who engaged in feminine beauty practices were perhaps the biggest target of such criticism, as they were accused of donning “symbols of oppression,” being manipulated by “thought control,” alienating themselves from their own bodies, and taking part in “self-imposed passivity.” 10 Of course, one of the biggest caveats in the unilateral feminist argument that femininity is artificial and only exists to oppress women is the fact that some people who are assigned and socialized male also express femininity. Perhaps sensing that feminine gay men and MTF spectrum trans people brought unilateral feminists’ antifemininity theses into question, many unilateral feminists developed vehemently disdainful attitudes toward these groups. Interestingly (and not coincidentally), the unilateral feminists who have been most outspoken in deriding feminine gay men and trans women also tend to have the most openly hostile attitudes toward femininity in general. For example, Mary Daly, who referred to feminine women as “painted birds” and portrayed feminist women such as herself as being “attacked by the mutants of her own kind, the man-made women,” was similarly resentful of transsexual women (whom she called “Frankenstein’s Monsters”) and drag queens (whom she compared to whites playing “blackface”). 11 Germaine Greer, who has referred to conventionally feminine women as “feminine parasites,” has written multiple trans-misogynistic screeds, one of which assails trans woman Jan Morris for her “obsession with femininity.” 12 And Sheila Jeffreys, who believes that femininity “is the behavior required of the subordinate class of women in order to show their deference to the ruling class of men,” has argued that MTF transsexuality and gay male femininity arise exclusively from sexual masochism. 13 Thus, the anti-gay-male, anti-trans-woman sentiment that persists today among many unilateral feminists has its roots in their traditionally sexist views of femininity. Many of the unilateral feminist positions that I’ve discussed so far have been challenged with the rise of deconstructive feminism in the 1980s and 1990s. Deconstructive feminists, while varied in their backgrounds and approaches, share the belief that the category “woman” is socially constructed and therefore doesn’t exist independent of the societal norms and discourses that bring it into being. Therefore, instead of working to end sexism by highlighting the ways that women are “oppressed” by men (as unilateral feminists had), deconstructive feminists set out to deconstruct our very notions of “woman” and “man,” exposing the assumptions and expectations that enable sexism. They describe “man” and “woman” as being situated within a binary gender system that permeates every nook and cranny of our society, infusing itself into our language, traditions, behaviors, and the very way we think about ourselves and others.

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

  From such a perspective, one would be inclined to see sex reassignment as a modern option for trans people, similar to how recent advances in medicine now enable cissexual women and men to undergo similar procedures, such as hormone replacement therapy, breast or penis enhancement or reconstruction, and infertility treatments. Instead, by removing transsexuality from this trans-historical and cross-cultural context, Hausman misleads her readers into believing that trans people suddenly appeared out of nowhere, almost overnight—a fabrication that practically strong-arms her readership into seeing transsexuality as a culturally specific and socially derived phenomenon. The intellectual inconsistencies in Hausman’s thesis become even more blatant when she makes it clear that she accepts that same-sex desire has always existed (and therefore precedes social construction). This allows her to claim that transsexuality is not analogous to homosexuality because of its “special conceptual and material relation to medical discourse and practice.” (Emphasis hers.) 60 This is a rather convenient argument for Hausman to make considering that she has already dismissed the existence of those transsexuals who do not physically transition. Indeed, Hausman seems oblivious to the fact that, were she able to wave away the existence of same-sex attraction throughout history (as she does with transsexuality), she could easily make the analogous claim that homosexuality is just as much a product of modern medicine as transsexuality. After all, both words, “homosexuality” and “transsexuality,” were coined within the last 150 years, gained prominence as concepts with the rise of sexology in the twentieth century, and emerged as identities and political movements both because of and in response to their psychological pathologization. And if one were hell-bent on portraying homosexuality as entirely constructed, one could easily reach the same shortsighted conclusion that Hausman has reached. The argument would go: The rise in the number of people openly calling themselves homosexuals over the past half century is not due to political and cultural changes that have allowed them to finally “come out of the closet,” but rather that the medical invention of homosexuality itself generated a “demand” for people to become homosexual. Hausman’s book demonstrates the misinformation academics can generate when they narrowly define transsexuality based on psychiatric or medical parameters, or attempt to isolate transsexuals who do physically transition from the broader population of trans people who identify and live as members of the other sex without medical intervention. These very same mistakes are regularly made by anthropologists who focus on what are sometimes called “third,” “multiple,” or “alternate” genders—categories designed to describe people who are viewed by their cultures as being not quite male and not quite female. Because these groups appear to exist outside the gender binary, and blur distinctions between what Westerners would call transsexuality, homosexuality, and transgenderism, they are subjects of interest among academics who believe that gender is primarily socially constructed.