Liberating words

[dreamer_easy]

"A feminism that makes room for transgender people still fights to dismantle the structures that prop up gender as a system of oppression, but it does so without passing moral judgment on people who feel the need to change their birth-assigned gender. To reevaulate the relationship between transgender and feminist politics, it is essential to acknowledge that how each of us experiences and understands our gender identity... really is a very idiosyncratic personal matter. It is something prior to, or underlying, our political actions in the world and not in itself a reflection of our political beliefs. Nontransgender people, after all, think of themselves as having a gender, or being a gender, and nobody asks them to defend the political correctness of their 'choice' ... Being transgendered is like being gay - some people are just "that way", though most people aren't. We can be curious about why some people are gay or transgendered, and we can propose all kinds of theories... but ultimately we simply need to accept that some minor fraction of the population (perhaps including ourselves) simply is 'that way'."
- Susan Stryker, Transgender History

Comments

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

My impression is that feminists haven't excluded transgender women because they're seen as marginal and weird, but because they're "not real women". I think there may be some honest fears and reservations about how women who were raised as men, and may still be physically male, will behave if allowed into "women's spaces". But for the most part, the arguments seem to be all about ideology and theory. While I haven't looked very deeply into the debate, this strikes me as cutting off one's own nose to spite one's face: feminists interrogate gender, and what challenges gender more than transgenderism?

It's interesting looking back on Blue Box now - when I started writing it, my idea was that a ftm man was appropriating masculine power, which I found an exciting concept. By the time I'd finished writing it, I'd learned more - that transgenderism is not a political statement or a personal choice. Chick might have some additional power as a man, but is also in a very dangerous and disempowered position, subject to outing, blackmail, violence, etc. Anyway, I changed that odd little fable of the Princess and the Bull to reflect my changed understanding.