Some women maintain that I am not a female or a woman and never can be, because:
- I was not socialized as a girl under patriarchy
- I do not share in the fear and expectations that girls are subjected to growing up
- I was programmed with something called ‘male privilege’ and entitlement
- I do not bleed and can not get pregnant
They are I feel, quite right. There is no denying that gulf and lack of shared danger and lived experience. I agonized over all four of those points, before, during, and yes occasionally still after, transition.
The fourth item is related to the female reproductive system, and as such is a hugely biological issue. If it were possible for me to take that on, if that was an option for surgery, I would take it.
I have pregnancy dreams. I have had them all my life. I’ve asked a lot of other transwomen of different ages and at different stages of transition if they ever had pregnancy dreams or if they would want to carry a child if they could, and I found to my own surprise, that most did not.
The first doctor I had when I started transition was a woman. She was sweet on and very supportive to transwomen, much to my great relief. I remember one day, when I was getting the paperwork from her that I needed to get my name changed, bringing up the subject of pregnancy. It’s a deeply personal subject to me and one I don’t normally talk to just any random person about (excepting other women, when and if there is an opportune space for it).
I remember saying something to her like, “Can I ask you a question?” She said, “Sure, what’s up?” and my throat closed up and all of the sudden I was crying in her office just trying to frame and speak the words. I asked her something like “How can I ever possibly think of myself of a woman if I can never have babies? Birthing a child is the quintessential right of passage and female affirmation in a woman’s life.”
My doctor immediately came over and held me and then said to me, “Look at me.” As I looked at her she told me, “I can not have children.” Which brought me up for a moment. I had had no idea. I said “I am so sorry.” Then she asked, “Do you think of me as less of a woman?” “No. Of course not,” I answered. Then she said that, “There is more to being a woman than having children.”
Then she went on to tell me a about variety of different medical conditions and reasons why some women can’t have children. And she told me also that all women who can not have children, struggle with that same question at different points in their lives, and so I had that in common with born-females as well. Her sharing and thoughts about it really. helped me accept myself better.
On a related note, I’ve had this talk about having a period and being able to be (along with the worry of being able to be) pregnant, with a lot of other women besides my doctor, and it is something that many women have told me that they would love to do without or at least, have more control over. More than one woman has told me that she was jealous that I couldn’t get knocked up, and the fact that I didn’t have to deal with having a period.
When I tell them that I would gladly exchange my plumbing for theirs if it was possible, several have said to me, “Don’t be so sure,” and, “You don’t know what you are asking for.”All I can say wistfully in return is, “You’re right.”
Regarding the first on the list, number one. The issue of child and teenage female socialization looms at least as hugely to me as the ability to be pregnant, if not more, considering. It is an unreproducible experience. Furthermore, the fact that I was socialized male means that I take for granted many things or am not sensitized to certain things, that women socialized as women from birth are.
That male socialization includes a great deal of assumed privilege, which is part of item three. In my opinion, a certain amount of this entitlement and privilege can be deprogrammed when a person wants to be, and is subsequently sensitized to it, and is willing to make a conscious decision to give it up. This is something I am always working on. Every bit of that we can root out of ourselves makes social assimilation a little easier.
Regarding issue number two, It is true that I do not share in the fear and expectations growing up socialized as female. Here is an easy example of that, that I found within myself. It regards a prickly and delicate issue among women and that is, weight.
I think it is fair to say that most women probably think about their weight far more than I ever have in my life. It’s something I don’t normally think too much about. I’ve always been fairly happy with where my weight is for most of my life. It’s a lot more variable now, than it was when my body ran on testosterone. But when I gain weight, I don’t trip out about it. “Oh, I don’t fit into a size twelve anymore.” I notice it, but I don’t feel compelled to worry about it. Not worrying about it, is part of male-entitlement.
The reason is due to uneven gender expectations. Women are expected and encouraged to be very aware of their weight as part of their appearance and desirability. Growing up male, you don’t internalize that kind of programming, or if so, not even a fraction as much. Women are compelled and pressured from different directions to maintain their weight or gain or lose weight to live up to other people’s expectations. That is just one easy example of the difference of socialization between boys and girls growing up. One of many that slowly add up during the days, months and years a person is cultivating their self-hood, which end up being part the differences in what we are calling men and women’s ‘lived experience’.
When we start living and socializing as women, we take on the burden of some of those fears and expectations. I too, worry about sexual assault. I also, think about what my clothing says to men about my sexual availability. I have been sexually assaulted a handful of times since I transitioned. I get unasked for attention from guys who are totally and completely clueless that my body language is shouting “please go away, I am uninterested in you.” It’s either they are not picking up on it, or they are choosing to ignore it!
I deal with similar mixed feelings towards bras as other women do. On the one hand, bras are fraking uncomfortable to wear for long. On the other hand, my breasts have grown to the point where running or even speed walking without some kind of breast control, (bra, sports bra, layered athletic tees,) is profoundly painful. Not to mention awkward as all hell. They bounce and flop all over the place and totally mess around with your upper body balance when you have to stride quickly. Please, don’t even get me started on the ‘male-gaze’ and how much more of it you tend to get if you are walking around bra-less and jiggling.
So what do I do? I tend not to wear bras at home. I do usually wear them when I go out or work out. I am always looking for ways to improve that situation with different kinds of fabrics and layers. I’ve gotten to the point where frankly, I am all set with my breasts growing any more than they have, because it would only exacerbate all those other things.
Unlike a lot of people in the trans ‘community’, I don’t believe that we can ever truly be Real Women™ . It is a pleasant fiction that we tell ourselves, our therapists and assorted gatekeepers, and to each other, to get hormones and surgery letters and yougogirl validation. But the reality of those four points I presented at the beginning of this post, exposes those notions to be only so much fantasy.
Plastic Girl 
Ha! I went to my general doctor who said “So you’re pregnant.” and I said “I don’t think so.” What he meant was that my partner was pregnant and he was saying “so..you guys are pregnant.” I forget for that moment that I can’t be pregnant. Almost all of my friends adopted babies, if someone asks me where babies come from I’d probably say “Asia.” 🙂
The whole thing about female socialization is only true of late in life transitioners. Even then, how long? The answer is really never.
“Woman” is cultural to Radical Feminists. You can move to Australia and live there for 40 years but you’re never really Australian to some Australians. Radical Feminists are very protective of their identity. In some ways making up traditions and rites of passage and shared experiences that may not exist or seem important to other women. There might be a whole bunch of Australians who say “You’re Australian enough for me” or don’t clock you as not Australian..but their will always be the ones who ask you where you were born.
Radical Feminists say we’re men because we’re assertive, which is often a criticism of Radical Feminist. Radical Feminists talk about mansplaining, but then go out of their way to write long articles to tell you how stupid you are Radical Feminists talk about how it’s impossible for men to understand male privilege, despite trans women knowing it all too well because we consciously give a lot of it up. Radical Feminists blame the trans women for her own pain.
I think Radical Feminists are great and understand myself a lot more after reading what they’ve written. They’ve liberated me in many ways. I won’t defend myself to them though, they have no clue what we’ve gone/go through and are apparently in no place to listen.
Radical feminists from what I understand spend a lot of time working on ways to empower themselves and encourage among other things, being cool with being butch or not fulfilling gender stereotypes, accepting and loving the body that you have as part of reclaiming one’s priorities from patriarchal expectations, ie “No I won’t be pressured to get a breast aug just because my friend Betty got one and is gushing at all the new attention she gets from the menz” Or “No I won’t get a nosejob or gastric bypass” or cop to surgery as the easy out for whatever the body issue may be.
Then we come along with our privileged Plastic Girl bodies and our cutesy ways and blatantly obvious gender binary mimicry, having apparently completely failed at passing the “Loving the skin you’re in” and “Gender Theory 101” class final exams and these women (I believe) think to themselves something like, “What the hell is that?”
Then when we say, “Oh hello, we consider ourselves feminists,” I think it is that many rad fems rightly can’t take the contradiction of (some of us) appropriating “The trappings of fembotism” only to claim feminist activism in the same breath.
It crosses a certain line of credibility or feminist theory and they say “LOLGTFO.”
I think I was lucky in that I came through the anti-trans radical feminists through Jade Hunter’s blog. She’s doesn’t have a quite the edge and has a more logical writing style. What I appreciated right away was the empowerment through confidence and self esteem. I empathize with this in that, despite male privilege, I have a long hard road to self confidence. I think she has the right message for women..for all humans really.
I then spread out and it wasn’t as good.
I think there is a lot of truth to your perception of the triumph of being happy with who you are clashing with body modification freaks. However, they’re missing so much of the point. I guess the point is what some would call CISPrivilege, while the Radical Feminists deny it as vehemently as a man might deny male privilege. There is a hypocrisy there.
I hate the term Gender Identity Disorder and Transgender. I use the term Transsexual because what I am almost always talking about is sex identity. To me sexual identity is as locked in as sexual orientation. There is an aspect of it that is socialized, but it’s also innate.
When a Radical Feminist talks about being comfortable with body and gender they’re doing it from a rock solid foundation of sexual identity. Their norms aren’t the same norms as our norms. It’s the same as if a Radical Feminist has a lesbian sexual orientation. Why aren’t they comfortable with being straight? Why can’t they just accept being straight..it’s so natural, why would they modify their straightness? It’s a ridiculous question to me but could be asked from someone with different social norms coming from a rock solid foundation of straight sexual identity.
If a natal woman is comfortable with herself and doesn’t wax her upper lip and wants to wear a short hairstyle and begins to appear as a man to general society. She doesn’t question her female identity. If a waiter in a restaurant calls her “sir’ and “him” or she goes to a woman’s space and is turned away at the door. Does she accept this? That her appearance is socially “manly” so she should grab male privilege and abandon her identity as a woman? Unless she is trans, she wouldn’t think of it. I think she’d assert herself as a woman and correct the waiter, maybe she’d wear clothes or do something to signal “female” to the world.
This isn’t a dilemma they face because usually they have other markers that say “woman” socially. These markers were caused by hormones in a few stages. In utero we are basically the same in outward appearance. A burst of androgens turn the vagina into a penis or not. If you are an XY male with androgen insensitivity you keep your vagina and are raised as a girl. You don’t question it. There is also something going on there that locks in sexual orientation. Then at puberty we get a second blast. Androgens create a more male bodied person and estrogens create a more female bodied person. If I have a daughter and I cruelly slip her testosterone pills through puberty and she appears as male to the world. Even if she becomes comfortable with her appearance, she’s probably not going to identify as a male.
That’s all I feel like I’m dealing with here. I have always identified as female and was pumped with androgens. I tried but can not accept my socially male identity. So I have to start un-doing the markers of maleness. For me, I think hormones are and will be enough. For others, they get all kinds of body image disorders and get caught up on a runaway train. Same as some natal women. Only in natal women Radical Feminists blame and taunt the patriarchy, in trans women Radical Feminist taunt the victims.
I don’t expect Radical Feminist to understand our POV any more than I expect Radical Feminists expect men to understand their POV. We have such different foundations. I think we can take a lot from the Radical Feminist perspective, but they have to understand that to even get to that point of listening to them…we have to feel like we “pass” as women. Not just to ourselves (we always did that) but to waiters. They might not see it as important because with them…it was gifted not earned..not fought for. That’s
CISpriviledgeand I can’t appreciate their prejudice or their taking the most radical, old, sexist elements and using it to paint the whole.I read on one of the blogs about the frustration of a Radical Feminist in talking to her Mom. A Mom who is probably about the same age with the same patriarchal stereotypes that the TS-Si people have. I wonder if they’re going to go on a huge anti-Mom spree. Half the TS-Si people seem like they’re trying to be their Moms.
Trans are not in the same social/political development stage as women or homosexuals. The idea of any rights is still very new and in infant stages of development. The (non-homosexual) trans people that have any voice now are the older ones, who went through a male puberty, tried to man up, hit a wall, and are trying (often in vain) to undo their male lives. In colleges we see a younger group. They had a male bodied adolescence but have 15-20 years head start on transition of the first group and will go through college and have most of their adult rites of passage as women. Usually tall women. On Youtube we see a third group. These are questioning teens who are having male puberty halted until 18 or are lucky enough to have liberal doctors who are giving them a female puberty. They have a girl’s adolescence and a woman’s adult life. They are indistinguishable socially from natal women.
Radical Feminists have access to all of these groups but blind themselves to all but the oldest parts of trans existence. The ones who have to “undo.” Homosexuals in the 50s were the same way…married lives, children, out in their 30s and 40s. Family lives shattered. Feminists were the same way, married, domesticated, got political in their 40s. Family lives shattered. There are some shared experiences here, but we’re just on the later…pre-liberation…timeline. The Radical Feminists have oppressive viewpoints but they’ll come around in time.
A word of radical feminist advice:
There is no such thing as “cis” privilege.
I don’t know whether this could be termed sexist or obsolete, but I love reading your blog because there is a real, empassioned flow of female energy in your writing. The experience you described about pregnancy dreams really affected me, I feel extremely ignorant for having not even considered it before.
I’m a man but not a born male, and for a long time I’ve struggled with how to assimilate myself, how to find my place without becoming a stereotype. The idea of being ‘granted’ male privileges has never sat easy with me either, when I think about how many transwomen learn an understanding of female oppression and willingly take on its problems. As a transman I get given ridiculous advice for passing socially; being commanding and domineering, taking up more physical and emotional ‘space’ in the company of women, everything about asserting yourself as an alpha male and taking on every privilege you can. Which is pretty disgusting to me. Having read your blog, I have realised I must learn to become a gentleman. I think this is the best way of putting it anyway… I hope you appreciate what I’m trying to say.
You’re a joy to read. Eloquent, challenging, and beautifully considered.
Hello Sean!
I think this is the struggle of all us Plastic People. That you can admit it so plainly shows self-honesty and long reflection on your part.
I do appreciate it. Very much so. I found nothing you said to be either sexist or obsolete. (Far from it.) It’s nice to hear from gentlemen Plastic Boys and I hope you and your brothers will consider commenting in the future, if you feel so inclined.
One of these days I may post about what I like about men. I enjoy seeing masculinity and men-at-work. I like male stoicism and stability. I like male-strength and male bodies. I never felt like I was male in all my life. But having been through the testo experience and plenty of male-socialization, I find myself very sympathetic towards men on certain items.
Thank you for visiting.
Hmm. Point no. 4 is… Huh.
It’s news to me that so few transsexuals share this experience.
I went through the whole ‘pregnancy’ thing, and the questioning induced by being a ‘woman’ who can’t get pregnant. (And the same counter-arguments being given that there are plenty of women that for one reason or another cannot get pregnant, and that it isn’t a defining factor as such.)
From my own personal experience of life, (which is all I have to work with, after all. I cannot live or often even guess at anyone else’s), I question several of these as being fundamental assertions though. Primarily because my childhood experiences seem to be full of mixed messages. Full of holes, not consistent with typical patterns as they are usually described.
So, in a way, agreeing with point 1 through 3 feels as much like a hollow statement as disagreeing with them does. Somehow, either way I’m just going along with what someone is expecting me to say.
I find it hard to believe my lived experience is so far out of the norm that this could actually be true though. On the other hand, since people are so insistent on ascribing gender to others, maybe I shouldn’t be so hasty in concluding the fault lies in some kind of arrogant ‘uniqueness’.
How, after all, do you negotiate around externally assigned gender roles when people get so confused they come up to you and ask you point blank what you are?
Somehow, I feel like I’m looking at a puzzle with several important pieces missing. Everyone around me seems confident they know what those missing pieces are, yet every time I take their ideas on board, the picture that results doesn’t look right at all.
You know, I really do not know the answer to this. In the animal kingdom (at large) it’s about smells, dots, stripes and matching an M connector to an F socket to get reproduction done. So, it doesn’t matter if you look a little…off the norm, except you may receive more or less attention due to your difference.
Humans behavior (I am generalizing) is about matching gender performance to (presumed) sex roles, so if some one’s sex seems uncertain, their gender performance and presentation then becomes scrutinized intensely for clues for which gender is what, in order to act out prescribed gender roles. I think?
Thanks for commenting!
That scrutiny is sometimes a very uncomfortable thing. Especially when you don’t know if it’s paranoia, or if someone really is closely looking at everything you say and do.
It’s sometimes been said that a person’s gender (or rather more likely, given biological factors, their sex is what you’re really trying to work out.) is the first thing you try and work out about them, and that this is so deeply ingrained that if you make a determination, and get it wrong, you’ll have a hard time letting go of your incorrect assumption.
But, to take an example of being scrutinized that’s fairly recent,
There was a man on the bus several weeks ago who suddenly turned around and asked me what the time was.
I wasn’t the only person on the bus, nor the nearest.
I answered the question, on the presumption that it was an innocent question, then he turned around quite suddenly afterwards.
Now, there’s no proof that this was about anything other than what he was asking me, yet something about his overall behaviour quite literally screamed at me: “He’s trying to determine what you are, and digging for extra information.”
I could be wrong, but there are certain times when I get a definite sense off people that this is what they are doing.
And using some kind of pretence, or innocent-sounding request, that just about everyone has been socially conditioned to respond to as cover to do so.
Or, maybe I’m just paranoid. You never know.
I came across this post when I was looking for stereotypes about “real women,” and while I am not a stranger to the LGBT fight for equal rights, it’s very rare that I come across the transsexual/transgender point of view.
In addition to being completely enlightened on the subject of the transition to “female,” I’ve also included this as a point in my writing about gender on my positive body-image blog. There’s only so much I can write, because I’m quite young, and what you call a natal female [a completely new term to me, I’ve only ever seen “cisgender” before!], and the trans experience is completely foreign to me. I can try to understand it, but I will obviously never be able to see it through the same eyes.
I absolutely love this, though. I’m just as guilty for taking my ability to have children for granted. I wish I could give that ability to you. People who are privileged in any way do, very commonly, take their gifts for granted.
I don’t know where I was going with any of this, but I do wish you all the very best of luck. Transitioning can’t be easy, and the female world is a pretty strange place.
❤
Thank you very much for your thoughtful words, and for sharing! I very much appreciate that you have taken the time to try to understand the trans experience. The male world can be pretty strange too.
I am endlessly fascinated with female socialization issues, body-image stuff especially, because maabs are not socialized (even remotely) the same way with regards to standards of acceptable or desired male-ness. I know this is a weakspot in my assimilation with other women and I really try to be sensitive to and tread carefully about body-image stuff, because of that. I glanced at your blog, and it looks very interesting and I will definitely give it a more careful read when I get a chance (hopefully soon!)
This touched me, for I would accept it if I could.
Take care 🙂
D’: Ahhhh I cried when I read this.
This is honesty.
Indeed
ty