January 11, 2007

Trans-Uncertain

by PG

Because of the society we have, people whose physical sex doesn't match with the set of gendered characteristics need to be able to make them match, but a trait based on social constructs isn't really "inborn." (However, a preference for having sex with a person with a vagina instead of a penis can be inborn, and of course the vaginas and penises are inborn, so sexual orientation qualifies as an inborn characteristic.) I think we are inching toward a gender-neutral society in which a person with a penis who wants to act and be treated in a way we'd now identify as "feminine" can do so without getting the penis cut off, and my bias is in favor of that rather than the status quo.

Also, we aren't tolerant of things just because they are "born that way and can't help themselves." I'm not going to tolerate pedophilia just because it's an inborn characteristic -- as it may be, considering that there are people with pedophiliac desires who squelch them because they realize intellectually that they're wrong, so it's unlikely that such people would "choose" to have those desires. We tolerate that which does not harm others, and I see nothing harmful in a same-sex or sex-neutral sexual orientation, nor in someone's preferring a gender that our society currently considers not to "match" that person's genitalia. Therefore there is no reason to squelch those desires.

Based on this remark, I suspect my feelings do run along similar lines as those of the transphobic feminists Winter critiques, albeit without their Tom Coburn-esque bathroom terrors or demands for female-only spaces. Such spaces made broad sense when women needed communal areas in which to draw strength from other women for dealing with the patriarchy, but in all honesty I didn't have a single moment this week when I thought that I would feel better with no men in the room. There are some times when this is different, but at this point, women-only spaces often just give the middle-class heterosexual white men whom Winter neatly lampoons another thing to whine about: "Why do they get that and we can't keep our golf club?").

That is, I don't find transsexual people at all threatening in themselves, but I am a little troubled by the necessity of literally reifying the sex-gender connection by altering one's genitalia, taking hormones, etc. This enaction of the oppressive social rule that XY = masculinity and XX = femininity on the body seems like something that shouldn't have to happen, even though it's obviously something people can do if they want. My position on this seems to be similar to the feminists who think abortion is OK in our current society, but will be unnecessary in a utopia where pregnant women all have excellent prenatal healthcare and postnatal childcare and monetary support. In other words, they treat abortion as a necessary evil that will not exist in an ideal future, and thus not really a constitutional right, as its legality is contingent on an uncaring society.

In my ideal future, we all can go to the same bathroom, wear what we want, behave as we want (as long as we don't behave in a way that would get us smacked regardless of gender; being a masculine-acting person with a vagina does not mean you may spit on the sidewalk or grab strangers' backsides) with no limits based on chromosomes or sex characteristics. If two people with penises want to shack up, great! get married, pay the tax penalties, raise kids and gradually stop having sex.

Policy-wise, just as the abortion-uninclined feminists would allow abortion to be banned in their utopia, my kind of trans-phobia -- a fear not of transsexuals, but of perpetuating what I believe to be a false link between sex and gender (sort of like my cheerleader-phobia, except that I'm actually afraid of cheerleaders) -- implies that in the ideal future, transsexual surgery and other medical assistance will be treated as cosmetic and not covered by standard insurance. Of course, this is the reality for many trans Americans, but while we're talking about The Way Things Ought To Be in the future, I may as well assume TWTOTB in the present. As long as someone still possessing outward signs of masculinity but described to be "passing" as female, or vice versa, is subject to insult, discrimination, assault and murder, bringing sex and gender into conformance with each other is a legal necessity. Yet it is not a right, because it is conditioned on an intolerant society.

Winter makes a particular outstanding point in passing:

You know, perhaps transgender people offer an even more radical proposition, not only in proposing that gender can be cut loose from the biological body, but that gender can be something other than a source of oppression. Should we only be viewing gender as something to be destroyed, or should we be listening to transsexual people and considering the possibility that it's time to radically rethink our feminist ideas about gender in the light of what they have to tell us.

I think gender can be tremendously fun, and I know people who like playing with it. I have lowered everyone's expectations of me sufficiently that I can go along in a fairly neuter or even what some might consider masculine fashion for a while, and then shock my friends with an outburst of femininity -- sometimes to the point of high heels. But changing the biological body to comport with that of the traditional man or woman goes beyond fun (and if it's merely fun, it certainly should be treated as cosmetic). You can mix-and-match gender characteristics, but I doubt that most sex-transition professionals would happily countenance the bearded lady who changes her genitalia and adds breasts but refuses hormones. Saying that she sees herself that way seems more like BIID than GID.

On the other hand, there are bodily integrity concerns that result in what some might mutilation that I do take seriously even in a utopian society. For example, in the fabulous feminist future in which women receive great support of all kinds during and after pregnancy, I still wouldn't ban abortion because I see carrying a fetus and delivering a baby to be so tied to bodily integrity that to force an unwilling person to do it seems to me a kind of temporary slavery, particularly when coupled with laws that penalize a woman as a murderer if she consumes substances that lead to stillbirth. Those who say that abortion is an immoral interruption of the natural process would see the abortionist as even more in violation of the Hippocratic Oath than physicians who perform sex changes or limb removals, because the latter affect only the consenting patient while the former affects a non-consenting party. And pregnancy is, as the abortion opponents like to remark, only a temporary "inconvenience," while being stuck with breasts or other body parts one doesn't want is a lifelong one.

I'm not sure why I regard the ability to stop being pregnant as a no-matter-what right (I specify "stop being pregnant" because if we can transfer embryos or fetuses to willing adoptive uteruses, I would have no problem with making the killing of fetuses illegal; it is the impingement on the body, not on intellectual and emotional concerns about the existence of offspring, that I take most seriously), while sex-change insurance coverage is conditioned on intolerance, and mutilation gets no respect from me at all. It may have to do precisely with the existence of that other affected entity: the wannabe transsexual in a gender-neutral society at least can do almost everything that she would like to do even while she retains male hormones and genitalia; no social change can alter the fact that the unwillingly pregnant woman is slowed and weighted both literally and with responsibility, her body expanding out until the day she either will go through a great deal of pain for vaginal delivery, or go under the knife and anesthesia of the C-section. Perhaps this distinction is inspired by a bizarre, quasi-Burkean kind of conservatism that is willing to intervene to prevent further change, but not to make changes.

January 11, 2007 02:15 AM | TrackBack