The idea of innate gender is the foundation of patriarchy
The comments on that post by Glosswitch are gold.
Like this one by Glosswitch:
You’re not listening. I’m saying I don’t identify with my assigned gender but this is not the same as identifying with another gender. Why is that so hard to understand? I’d have thought it was pretty fucking obvious. I have been forced into a gender I don’t identify with. So have most women who get dismissed as cis. It doesn’t mean we’re not women. If you’re fine with the cis definition – if you identify with the construct of inferiority bestowed on you at birth – then guess what? You’re really privileged, despite what you might feel about how you look. So as a privileged person, be quiet and listen to how others experience this.
as GW suggests in her comments the issue is exactly this idea of ‘identifying with our gender’. We don’t. And to frame the issue in this is way is experienced as an erasure by non-trans women, who are then told that they can’t talk about this erasure because they are privileged by virtue of not being trans. No-one is denying that trans women’s struggle with their gender is very difficult for them. What we are asking for is a way of articulating this which doesn’t involve a terminology and a definition of that terminology, which relies on positing a mirror image of non-trans women’s experience as ‘not difficult’ – and moreover, doesn’t require us to accept a reified or essentialised concept of gender which we oppose.
And moreover, we are always being told that trans women have a right to define their relationship to gender themselves. That is true. But by invoking and defining cis in a certain way – they are also defining *our* relationship to gender. And we do not accept that non-trans women do not have right to draw boundaries about how they determine themselves.
It may be the case that we will have to arrive at an understanding of how we relate to gender which is different for each type of woman. I think that’s okay. It’s not necessary or just, and it’s very damaging for gender non-conforming non-trans women, to be forced to accept an account which is foisted on them to meet the needs of one set of women at the expense of others.
The level of body hatred that Glosswitch describes here is actually remarkably common. If you have managed to avoid it, then congratulations! But many, many women don’t. They aren’t especially feeble-minded or psychologically deviant. To suggest they are is to pathologise women’s minds, just as we pathologise their bodies, telling them the problem is always with them. “Hey, all you millions of women with low self-esteem and poor body-image! All you millions of women with eating disorders! There’s nothing wrong with our cultural norms about women’s appearance – you are just particularly psychologically disturbed!” It’s just another way of silencing women, by making them feel shame and humiliation at their normal, natural response to a set of oppressive social norms, and making them feel isolated and alone, so they don’t try to change it.
The idea that we’ve never needed the idea of innate gender before is possibly one of the most mind-blowingly ahistorical suggestions I have ever heard. The idea of innate gender has been and still is the foundation of patriarchy. It is the operative idea of the oppression of women. To think that’s it’s radical and edgy is to rewrite history into an account which corresponds most closely to an MRA paranoid fantasy about feminist gynocracy, as if feminism represents some kind of hegemony, and is the thing which is most responsible for the struggles of trans women. And this indeed, is exactly how TAs not infrequently behave (in for example the repeated – absurd – suggestion that gender critical feminism is in some way responsible for the men’s patriarchal violence against trans women).
Innate gender is deeply deeply conservative. We need to be able to at least talk about the fact that people are demanding we accept it.
That. That is why we are arguing. It’s not because transphobia or erasure or exclusion. It’s because this idea that gender is innate is deeply conservative. It’s because this forgetting that gender is a hierarchy is deeply conservative.
One more from Glosswitch. It’s quite wrenching, so prepare for that.
I honestly think if we took how cis women hate their bodies – and are told to hate their bodies, every single day – as seriously we we took gender dysphoria, we’d want to tear the whole world to pieces. Just because it’s seen as “normal” doesn’t make it any less deadly. I think there is a belief that the low-level “you don’t have the right body for a woman, you don’t look right, you need to change” message cis women hear all the time is a form of misogyny lite that doesn’t do harm on any deep, meaningful level, even if women are getting themselves sliced and diced and starving themselves to death. I don’t think you can tell from how a woman presents herself how much shit she has gone through to appear that way, or why, or the cultural pressures that surround her as an individual, or the abuse she’s suffered as a woman. You can only judge by what we can all see, which are the external pressures themselves, and I think we downplay them hugely because hey, it’s just cis women, those vain, frivolous, fluffy creatures, right?
I think the conclusion I am coming to is quite simple: no one has the right to impose a gender identity on another person. If an AFAB woman does not feel she has an innate gender identity – if she believes gender to be a construct – then it is wholly against this principle to demand she identify as cis, in the same way it would be wholly against this principle to tell a trans woman or man that they couldn’t identify as transgendered. If gender was not a cause of so much pain – and if our society was not utterly obsessed with a divisive gender binary – perhaps we’d be shrugging our shoulders and all agreeing this was fine. But right now AFAB non-cis women are being asked to compensate trans women for the pain they suffer by giving up their own right to self-definition and acting as a foil to authenticate trans identities. This is not fair and it doesn’t address transphobia in any way.
Neither trans nor cis. Thank you for your time.
Thank you. I particularly relate to this, as I have spent my whole life in a struggle between my brain and my body. My brain wants to do and think lots of things, but my body is female, and that has required me to fight for the right to use my brain as I wished (at least in terms of public activities like school and work). I spent many years as anorexic, a 5’10” body with a 100 pound weight because I wanted some form of control, and had been told for years that my body wasn’t OK. I didn’t want to be a supermodel; I didn’t want to be a trophy wife. All I wanted was the right to define myself, and that seemed to be the only space left me.
After a decade of therapy, I finally managed to come to grips with the disjoint between my view of the world and the one that had been force fed me my entire life, but I still have times when the old habits of mind rear up and I find myself deferring to a male who has much less knowledge of a topic than I do because he is male, or I find myself hating my body (i am now somewhat overweight).
At one point in my 20s, I came to realize that I was merely a trophy wife to my husband (now my ex-). He wanted a pretty wife, a wife with make up and heels, a wife who presented well to his friends so they could see what a stud he was. He also wanted a smart wife, because somehow having a wife who was smart validated that he himself was smart. So even in my intellectual pursuits, I couldn’t get away from being a trophy wife, so he could point me out to his male friends as the “smartest” wife in the room both in appearance and intellect.
In short, I existed for the sole purpose of defining men. At least in their minds. And since that was the way I had been raised, that a woman was defined by her relationship to a man, it took me a long time to work my way out of the pain caused by my existence in a body that was never good enough, and that identified me immediately as “woman” which meant “less than man”.
I am not a cis-woman. I am a woman who was born a woman, does not fit the gender expectations. I have nearly died of the “privilege” of being born in the body I “identify” with. Yes, died. Why? Because anorexia can be fatal. I was fortunate. Thanks to aggressive help by a dedicated therapist, I managed to win the war between my brain and my body, but the messages I got from those around me, friends and family, contributed for years to the disjoint. The more helpful people tried to be, the more harmful their messages became.
Oh, and the worst? I ended up in an eating disorder group therapy setting, but it was focused on overeating, because there was no anorexia support group in my area at the time. The women in the group told me week after week how much they wished they had my problem. The vast majority of the women in that group had bodies that were probably just fine for their height and age, but they were so sure they were obese they were willing to embrace anorexia to change those healthy bodies to something unhealthy.
Wow, Iknklast, that really hit home. I also had years of anorexia, and despite the fact that it almost killed me as well, it is still the only time in my life i felt that i had any real control over me, over my life. It began right after i was refused into a college program (in 1978) that was almost exclusively male at the time, and was refused because i was female. I wanted into that program so badly and was devastated.
Also, you wrote:
“… but I still have times when the old habits of mind rear up and I find myself deferring to a male who has much less knowledge of a topic than I do because he is male, or I find myself hating my body (i am now somewhat overweight).”
I am anxious about being around men for that reason. I am small in stature and have always had difficulty in just being heard and taken seriously. I’ve fought sexism at work every day since i entered the workplace at 16, and have watched men without my level of knowledge and skill become mentored and pushed past me. Once while i was being interrupted, in a conversation with a man, in middle of the same damned sentence i had tried to utter 3 times in a row, i slammed my hand down on the table… hard… and yelled, “goddamn it, will you just let me finish my goddamned sentence??!” He finally did. Having my words spoken over is my typical experience with men, and I’d had enough; it was a topic that was important to me, and personal. I felt proud of myself for once that i had managed to stand up for myself. But a woman came up to me soon after and said, “You shouldn’t have done that, you know. Now he feels badly.” Ah, women. Due to our imposed gender and socialization, the feelz of menz are more important than being recognized and listened to. And yep… I actually apologized to him. And then any sense of pride i had…. dissolved away. I even avoid being in men now. Just too much anxiety.
Even in groups that are almost all women, my suggestions would be sidelined and my advice unheard until a man repeated it a while later. At which point, all my ideas were attributed to him. Because apparently words only make sense when said in a male voice.
Samantha, my mother actually taught me that. She told me never to present an idea to a man, but to find a way to get him to have the idea as his own. In her case, she didn’t see it as improper that a man would do that; she believed it was totally appropriate because women are supposed to defer to men. For many years my mother had good ideas that my dad claimed as his own, and she truly believed that was the way it was supposed to be.
Well, luckily for me, I was working with my husband– he was the one who would re-present my ideas when people pooh-poohed them, and after everyone declared his suggestions to be excellent and well-informed, he’d tell them, “Don’t credit me. I just repeated what my wife said.” It pissed him off to see me constantly struggle to be taken seriously.
Samantha, it sounds like we have similar husbands. My second husband does not take credit for my ideas. When he repeats something I said, and everyone goes wow over it, he says “I didn’t come up with it, that was Dr. B” My ex? Not so much. He had to be right all the time. Trophy wife needed a brain to validate his smarts, but in the end, the only way to validate his smarts was for me to bow to his superior wisdom.
One thing I didn’t need when I escaped my home was to end up with someone who reinforced all the negative messages. I’m glad I’m out of there (both there’s – my family home and my first husband).
And I’m glad you’re out of those situations and that you found someone worthwhile. Better to be alone than with someone who sees you as an accessory only, but better still to have a true partner. <3
“I’m saying I don’t identify with my assigned gender […] So have most women who get dismissed as cis. It doesn’t mean we’re not women.”
OK, either that’s blatant self-contradiction, or I’m horribly lost again. I thought “woman” meant “someone who identifies as a woman”. Surely then, if you don’t identify as a woman, then *by definition* you’re not a woman.
Or…?
So, back at square one … ?
Yes are no
Thanks for the link. Those comments really helped making sense of the divide.
Karellen,
I dunno about lost, but notice that ““woman” means “someone who identifies as a woman”” is not the same as ““woman” only means “someone who identifies as a woman””, and it is the latter interpretation which bemuses you.
Um, just in case, I think I should clarify my previous.
More formally, the explicit claim is that it is sufficient, not that it’s necessary; the implicit claim (in-group) I can’t be sure about.
(But point taken, Karellen)
I find these identity debates quite appalling.
The reference point for Glosswitch is a definition of “cis” as “a term used for people who are not trans and more likely to identify with the gender that correlates with the sex they were assigned at birth”.
I definitely prefer to stop at defining “cis” as “not trans”, period. All the rest – that is, what cis people are “more likely to identify with”, becomes then an empirical question, not a part of the definition.
I would also prefer to treat “identify with” as a non-binary descriptor, as something that comes in degrees – as one of those things which, in fact, rarely admit the “yes or no” answer. Consider a set of properties – say, M (male) – which could comprise e.g. physical strength, being good at math, readiness to wear some sorts of clothes, readiness to use men’s toilets – things like that. How large is the part of M you are comfortable with? This seems a sensible question and it still leaves a lot of room for discussion of how different are trans people from non-trans (cis) people in this respect. Indeed, one of the advantages of such an approach is that it cuts short all the attempts of blocking the discussion with shouting “oh, no, I *do not* identify with M, how dare you!”. It’s just that from the very start we do not treat it as a ‘yes or no’ question.
This is deeply puzzling. I read it over and over again and I do not understand anything. Anyone wise enough to explain?
“No one has the right to impose a gender identity on another person” – yes, this is something that I can (sort of) understand and support. But the rest? Is “cis” a gender identity? If not, how can “demanding that she identifies as cis” be against this principle? And what does it even mean “to identify as cis”? Does anyone have a clue?
If we rest satisfied with “cis = non-trans”, then the whole quote looks like a hopeless mess. Instead of “cis”, consider “non-English”. Well, I’m not English. But do I identify as non-English? (Answer: hmm, normally no, except for those special situations when I’m totally surrounded by these inscrutable aliens from outer space calling themselves “English”.) Is “non-English” my national identity? (Answer: no, definitely not.) Can I reject both “English” and “non-English” and declare proudly that I’m beyond all of this? (Answer: in a way, yes, but I can understand it only as rejecting the whole nationality talk altogether).
How does it play out with “cis”? Intuitively, I would say: I’m not trans. This means (by definition) that I’m cis. However, I do not identify as cis – I hardly even know what this could mean (apart from ‘feeling different in the company of trans people’ – maybe. Or maybe not; I have no idea.) Moreover, on this understanding “cis” is not a gender and for this reason requiring from me that I “identify as cis” (whatever it could mean) is not an imposition of any gender identity.
On the other hand, if “cis” means not just “non-trans”, but also “more likely to identify with the gender that correlates with the sex they were assigned at birth”, then calling someone “cis” is a group probability statement (“you are cis” means “you belong to a group where identification with the assigned gender is more probable than in the case of trans people”). Even on this reading, the quote *still* doesn’t make any sense to me: “cis” is still not a gender and calling you “cis” doesn’t impose any gender on you (it’s just the probability statement). What is it all about? Anyone cares to explain?
(Yes, I do have some guesses. The problem is simply that some of my guesses are overly cynical, while others sound overly optimistic. I’m not particularly happy with either of them.)
If you’re going to define “cis” as not-trans, you’re going to have to define trans. Your definition of trans is going to use the word “gender” – which also must be defined. It’s a rabbit hole that always arrives at brainsex – which is innately conservative and has always been used to subjugate women. Why not simply accept that sex does not determine personality and personality does not determine sex? Adult human females are women. Women can have an endless permutation of personalities. Adult human males are men. Men can have an endless permutation of personalities. (Of course, there is a reason people don’t accept this: Male supremacy is founded on the idea of innate masculinity. Female subjugation is based on the idea of innate femininity. If you refuse to believe that sex and personality are connected by anything other than sexist socialization, you threaten male privilege at its core. Can’t have that! Men will respond violently, and it will be *all your fault* for failing to appease them.)
Ariel @ 12 – I find it puzzling that you find it so puzzling. You don’t understand what is meant by “identify with”? After all the conversation and links here? Puzzling.
MHB, see this discussion, especially various comments about practical (or “working”) definitions, e.g. #41 and #44.
Ophelia, in fact I’m afraid that after all these conversations and links, I”m even more ready than before to repeat – after VR Urquhart from the link given above – ““Identify as” is a meaningless phrase – let’s just all agree on that.” This concerns especially “identifying as cis” (which strikes me as a particularly colossal nonsense), but not only.
At the moment I have nothing more to add to my previous comment.
Well yes, I too think “identify as” is meaningless, but that’s compatible with finding that quoted passage entirely clear.
Ariel:
I am wondering if “identifying as cis” is a strange concept because it is assumed in our societies, the same way as “identifying as straight” would be a strange concept. I don’t “identify” as cis simply because I’ve never had to consciously think about it—I have never felt a societal demand that I interrogate or confront my gender identity to the degree that I identified with a name. However, I have felt that societal demand to confront my sexual orientation to the point where being gay is consciously part of my identity.
“Well yes, I too think “identify as” is meaningless,”
Then how would you suggest that people who *are* trans define their gender?
By saying they are trans?
Actually that clarifies (for me at least) that there is another meaning of “identify as” that’s not the one I’ve had in mind. It’s the emotionless, factual kind, as in the box you tick when filling out paper work. In that sense sure, I identify as cis, i.e. not trans.
But “identify as” also means embrace, consider a crucial part of one’s sense of self, etc. It’s in that sense that I don’t “identify as” cis.
Among the interesting and enlightening comments, there is one argument that I see over and over again, of which the following quotation is an example:
This strikes me as nearly identical to the arguments that seek to dismiss male privilege or white privilege, and the response is the same: Being privileged in some ways definitely does not mean one is privileged in all ways, nor does it imply that any form of privilege is exactly the same as another, or that one needs to apologize for one’s privilege.
I have felt that pressure every day, at least when I was younger. I was expected to identify my gender identity as female, therefore, skirts, dresses, high heels, and make up. To do otherwise was to confront or interrogate my gender identity (as forced on me by someone else). I’m not sure that’s what you meant by that, but I have felt extremely expected to confront my :”gender identity”. Are you being too mannish? Horrors! And, since mannish mean most things I was interested in, including (especially including) science, math, and statistics, the only answer I could possibly give was “yes”. But stop it! You’re a “girl”. But…I don’t see girl that way! Too bad.
My mother believed to be “mannish” (by her over broad definition) was to be lesbian. And to be lesbian was to be a freak. And to be a freak was to be someone who is required to change. So yes, I would say I was confronting my gender identity all the time, in spite of the fact that I never identified as anything other than a woman.
iknklast:
Just to clarify, when I talked about not being forced to confront my gender identity, I was thinking of “gender identity” as a concept that is separate from (although related to and informed by) gender. One could reasonably argue that the concepts are too closely related to try and separate them, but FWIW, I had “trans-ness” in mind rather than “female- or male-ness.”
Karellen #19:
This wasn’t directed to me, but I think the most honest answer is “we do not know”. See here (no matter what you think of other comments there, I would say that this is a good one.)
Alright, and what do we do when something is largely unknown? Oh, but that’s so simple: we postulate our ‘God of the gaps’. This magnificent god is known under many names and “identity” is just one of them.
The problem begins as soon as you start taking your god too seriously.