It's either exceedingly meta or exceedingly self-absorbed to respond to my 
own post, but I want to clarify that I am not trying to make a normative 
judgment.  I merely wanted to state some of the premises that I have in 
engaging the issue of the compatibility of feminisms and trans movements, 
and to solicit reactions to them. 

At some later point, we may profit from engaging in a discussion of the 
importance of diagnostic categories for gender and sex variations.  For 
instance, some facets of the intersex movement have advocated for renaming 
intersex conditions "disorders of sex development".  Some literature on 
intersex ("DSD") and on homosexuality describes these as "natural human 
variations" of anatomy and behavior.  And yet intersex conditions have clear 
diagnostic categories in the ICD (the internationally accepted coding for 
diseases) even though homosexuality no longer does in either the ICD or the 
DSM. 

Does the existence of a diagnostic category necessarily pathologize?  A 
disease classification does.  But does any medicalization necessarily 
pathologize? 

 

Alison Reiheld writes: 

> Folks: 
> 
> I am, myself, a bit conflicted about the relationship between feminisms and
> the trans movement.  
> 
> This dates back to my early expansion of non-academic feminist awareness,
> sparked by discussions of the Michigan Women's Festival which was trying to
> juggle the idea that the festival was supposed to be a place where women
> felt safe with whether to admit pre-op MTF, post-op FTM, or other variants
> of human sexual and gender identity. Women who had, for instance, been
> victims of rape or sexual assault by men were experiencing threat (but not
> being performatively threatened) from the presence of persons with penises.
> Others testified to feeling uncomfortable at best in the presence of person
> who had been born and reared male because they exhibited typically masculine
> behaviors and that this was off-putting at best and threatening at worst.
> This debate was eventually "settled" by explicitly stating that the festival
> would be for "women-born", if I recall correctly.  This was controversial
> even in feminist circles because it's an essentialist version of what it is
> to be women (that you are born).  It has resulted in the placement of
> protest camps outside the festival every year staffed by trans persons and
> persons allied with the trans movement.  So this was my first exposure to
> the possible conflicts between feminisms and the trans movement.   
> 
> Carl Elliott's most intriguing book, Better Than Well: American Medicine
> Meets the American Dream, also identifies a possible problem for the trans
> movement like the one described by Renee, though he does not contrast it
> with feminisms.  Elliott's framework in the book is the contrast between the
> language of authenticity (that medical technology can help us to be our true
> selves) and the tyranny of the majority (that some or many of our desires
> and choices are shaped by the mainstream, even and perhaps especially our
> desire to and means of rejecting the mainstream).  In analyzing sex change
> operations, Elliott persuasively recounts the story of a person who wishes
> to undergo a sex change operation (MTF).  He presents it as a tale of
> authenticity, persuasively, so persuasively that when I teach this section
> of the book even most of my conservative students feel compassion for the
> trans person's existential angst.   
> 
> Elliott then goes on to say that even the trans person whom he discusses was
> reluctant to adopt the authenticity argument because it seemed essentialist
> but eventually did so for rhetorical purposes because only then would the
> medical establishment perform the procedure and there was some truth in the
> authenticity argument.  Ultimately, though, Elliott's analysis is that when
> trans folks who choose surgery (or, presumably, full bivalent gender
> performance) do so, they are both reacting against the limitations of
> society's bivalent gender model and simultaneously reifying it: "I do not
> feel like A; society allows A or B; therefore I will choose B." (that is my
> paraphrase rather than a direct quote from Elliott) 
> 
> What do the rest of you think about these two cases (Michigan Women's
> Festival and Elliott's analysis)?  I haven't made up my mind, but because of
> them I already understand Renee's position even though I do not know whether
> I fully concur.  I am convinced that the relationship between feminisms and
> the trans movement is fraught, and that goals and means for particular
> feminisms can indeed conflict with goals and means for trans folks at a very
> basic level and not merely on a pragmatic one. 
> 
> Best,
>   Alison  
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Feminist ethics and social theory [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of Renee
> Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 1:44 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: alert regarding DSMV and reparative therapy" to "cure" LGBT 
> 
> Ann and Loren, et al; 
> 
> I wanted to address what you have shared and I wanted to respond rather 
> specifically why I feel the trans movement as it understands and constructs 
> itself is antithetical to feminism. Ann, I may have made blanket statements 
> but I haven't seen any exceptions to what I said and therefore I am pretty 
> comfortable what I said. 
> 
> First of all, I don't think feminism is all that diverse. I think there are 
> people who call themselves feminists who diverge from it and this divergence 
> 
> is one on of the major reasons why feminism has come to so politically 
> ineffectual. In my own experience, I became a radical because I came to see 
> major problems in liberal feminism. 
> 
> But I wanted to focus on why feminists should take issue with trans ideology 
> 
> and what the problems are. One of the most serious anti-feminisms in trans 
> ideology is the treatment of gender as a noun, as if gender is a natural 
> entity and gender is something someone has. I'd submit that gender is a verb 
> 
> because it's a social and perceptual process. People simply behave. 
> Observers gender(verb) the behavior and in doing so behaviors that are 
> gendered are compared to prescriptions and norms. These behaviors are held 
> in place by the insistence that gender is real and occurs in a nativistic 
> fashion. Out of these constructions women are seen as being inferior to men 
> because of supposed pre-social determinants of gender (as a noun). 
> 
> "I have never heard one remark that could be considered anti-feminist. I 
> have had numerous heart-felt conversations with trans-women who, while 
> celebrating the physical changes of transition are finding just how 
> precipitous a plunge they have taken in terms of social privilege. 
> Transmen, like myself, have our own experiences of crossing the great gender 
> 
> divide." 
> 
> What gender divide? Feminism sees two gendered (verb) classes of people. 
> What divide are you referring to? What kind of Being are you proposing that 
> this divide has? 
> 
> "Of course, whether one physically transitions or transgresses gender in 
> other ways, one can barely help but consider the very difficult questions of 
> 
> what gender means in our society, the strengths and weaknesses of 
> essentialist views, and how the psychological establishment holds a dominant 
> 
> position in our quest to be ourselves and to be understood by others as 
> such." 
> 
> From a feminist perspective, gender is a system of privations imposed upon 
> women (verb statement). It is not mysterious and its meaning is pretty 
> clear. It manifests itself in terms of women making seventy cents to the 
> male dollar, and eighty three percent of congress being men. It manifests 
> itself in terms of the deep hatreds unleashed on Hillary Clinton during this 
> 
> election. Gender mean no women CEOs in the fortune fifty and two percent of 
> the fortune 500 have women CEOs. That's the "great gender divide" as 
> feminists understand it. Feminist analysis doesn't mystify gender - the 
> trans movement does. What strengths in essentialists views? To borrow one of 
> 
> the most succinct quotes, "Essentialism and feminism cannot occupy the same 
> space." 
> 
> "I would hope that this would be an opportunity to have these groups work
> together as opposed to having some groups (those who identify as B, L or
> G) distance themselves from the concerns of transpersons for fear of some
> kind of political contamination." 
> 
> I think defining oneself around a social construct and making that construct 
> 
> the most salient thing about you actually shows a deep paradigmatic 
> misunderstanding of gender as feminist analysis understands it.  For me 
> personally, I don't want to work with people who propagate these 
> understandings and who have internalized trans-culture. I'm not worried 
> about contamination, I worry about what trans ideology does to UNDO feminism 
> 
> and to situate women. We've see the phrase "gender variant". Such a term 
> implies gender norms which is exactly what feminists want to eradicate. 
> 
> What I see is that trans-ideology is a set of distortions and unsupported 
> declarations. It also is an extremely coercive movement. If I do not accept 
> husbands and father as women, then I am transphobic. I don't accept husbands 
> 
> and fathers as women because women aren't husbands or fathers. The 
> trans-movement presents a demand, that I pretend that I do see them as 
> women. Along with that is a demand that my experience be trumped by someone 
> else's voluntary life choices. I am supposed to relate to these people as if 
> 
> I accept them in a wholly undiscerning manner, as if they are all the same 
> and as if they have the same degree of credibility. I do not think they do. 
> I think some have quite a bit of credibility and other have very little. 
> That's the politically homogenizing function of the trans umbrella.  If I 
> voice that, the consequences are dire and punitive. To be honest, after 
> looking at this, I've concluded that transphobia is a set of valid feelings 
> and people are punished for having those feelings. But saying that takes 
> enormous courage. Why should I fear saying, "this is what my experience
> is."? 
> I am supposed to accept people with penises as women and pretend that they 
> do not have penises. If I do not play the game, again the social 
> consequences are dire. It's next to impossible for feminists to publish 
> critiques of the trans movement. In these manners, feminist women are being 
> silenced. It feels like the 1950's and the McCarthy era. 
> 
> Trans-ideology seems very twisted to me because of the placement of the 
> "alter of gender" (noun as used by the movement). It doesn't have to be. 
> People don't have to be constructed as natural objects who are pre-socially 
> determined by "brain sex". Radical feminism has done a huge amount of work 
> to unravel constructions around gender. Trans-world is busy re-tangling 
> them. It isn't about contamination, it's very much about a reification of 
> deeply rooted constructions providing patriarchy with its most bedrock 
> justifications for the systematic oppression of women and treatment of 
> gender as a noun and as if gender is some/thing that someone contains or 
> conversely is contained in. It's also about a culture that has inherited 
> from transvestites and crossdressers. 
> 
> Often people who are opposed to the trans movement speak for individuals 
> constructing strawmen and then arguing against the strawmen. I hope I don't 
> do that because I feel that there is enough wrong with the ideology that I 
> don't have to. 
> 
> Ann, you mentioned transfeminism. What I have seen has either been pro-sex 
> feminism which supports pornography and the prostitution of women or has a 
> centrality in trans-issues. When feminism is seen as human rights movement 
> perhaps it fits but when feminism is seen appropriately as a political 
> movement addressing the material concerns of women, trans feminism just 
> doesn't have much in common with feminism and I would assert is actually 
> frequently at odds with it. I have seen a little of Julia Serano's writing 
> which is essentialistic and again begins with a declaration, "I am a woman". 
> 
> There is never a statement of what constitutes this individual with male 
> anatomy as a woman. Is she saying, "I am this kind of object"? Then there is 
> 
> the use of 'trans misogyny". Looking at the roots of misogyny, I understand 
> it to apply to people with vaginas. However Serano is treated, I wouldn't 
> think the word is applicable and that looks like yet another linguistic 
> distortion and begging of the question. I have never seen transfeminism 
> address choice or equal pay for women. On the other hand I have often seen 
> many of the arguments employed by the men's rights movement against women in 
> 
> the form of "women do it too." 
> 
> I think there are places where these people could make contributions. There 
> has to be a linkages between identity (not "identify as" but identity), 
> epistemology and gendered standpoints.  But in order to look at these 
> phenomenon, one would have to read and understand feminism in significant 
> depth. I've never really seen that occur in a trans-identified person. One 
> would have to see that ALL of our identities are constructed and that most 
> people's identities are validated by patriarchy. The trans movement is not 
> looking at such issues or asking such questions. 
> 
> It is for these reason that I'd say that the trans movement is not a friend 
> to women. 
> 
> renee 
>