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havenofcybele · 8 days

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The Gender Identity Model

So many discussions around trans people revolve around ‘identity’, whether it’s cis allies or transphobes speaking. I’ve seen a significant number of transphobes assert, sometimes to me personally, that they don’t believe in ‘gender identity’, as if ‘gender identity’ is the fundamental aspect of being trans, and that the whole thing just falls apart like a house of cards if you reject the notion of an immutable, internal ‘gender identity’ from birth.

This is odd, because among the trans women I regularly talk to at least, there is little discussion surrounding a notion of internal identity, at least in the sense these people mean it. The most intimate discussions are of shared experiences, internal and external, shared feelings, shared desires, wants, yearnings. The notion of identity mainly appears when discussing external factors, how others perceive us, treat us, recognise us, etc. This is what identity really is, it’s a social tool, a means of achieving social recognition from others; it is not a magic essence that floats beyond one’s social context within one’s consciousness, immutable and present from birth. Identity relies on the existence of others–identity is used to gain social recognition of something other than the identity.

Here is an excerpt from a poem from a 14th century Rabbi, Kalonymus ben Kalonymus:

Oh, but had the artisan who made me created me instead – a worthy woman.

Today I would be wise and insightful.

We would weave, my friends and I

and in the moonlight spin our yarn

and tell our stories to one another

from dusk till midnight

we’d tell of the events of our day, silly things

matters of no consequence.

But also I would grow very wise from the spinning

and I would say, “How lucky am I” to know how to make linen,

how to comb [wool], and weave lace;

[to design] cup-like buds, open flowers, cherubim, palm trees,

and all sorts of other fine things,

colorful embroideries and furrow-like stitches.

Is she expressing an internal immutable identity here? I’d argue no. This isn’t to say that Kalonymus ben Kalonymus wouldn’t have desired to be recognised as a woman (that desire is obvious from the poem), but rather that this desire for recognition is coming from something deeper, which is displayed in her poem with heartwrenching emotion: yearning. Kalonymus ben Kalonymus is yearning to be a woman, to be a woman physically (she makes reference to menstruation in another part of the poem), to be a woman socially, to dress like a woman, to socialise as a woman, to make love as a woman. External identity is the social recognition of an internal longing, not an internal identity. The poem ends like so:

What shall I say?

why cry or be bitter?

If my father in heaven has decreed upon me

and has maimed me with an immutable deformity

then I do not wish to remove it.

the sorrow of the impossible is a human pain that nothing will cure

and for which no comfort can be found.

So, I will bear and suffer until I die and wither in the ground.

Since I have learned from our tradition

that we bless both, the good and the bitter

I will bless in a voice hushed and weak:

blessed are you YHVH who has not made me a woman.

Kalonymus ben Kalonymus is not lamenting because she has an internal female identity, she is lamenting due to her lacking the markers of womanhood, the physical, biological markers and the social markers in dress, gendered division of labour, socialising, marriage, etc. This isn’t to say no trans woman has ever conceptualised herself as a ‘woman on the inside’–this used to be a very common narrative. But, I’d argue, it is just that, a narrative, a particular means of understanding the feeling of gender dysphoria, the yearning to be a particular gender that brings such agony to the heart, as such a strong, all-consuming feeling demands an explanation from the self in order to cope with it. Kalonymus ben Kalonymus frames her experience through her religion, while others may frame it through other means. This isn’t to downplay the significance of such narratives, I don’t wish to condescendingly presume that Kalonymus ben Kalonymus’ religion was fundamentally unimportant to her experiences. My point is that any particular narrative framing isn’t necessarily getting to the heart of the matter as trans people can express what is so obviously a similar feeling through such different means, and so tearing down particular framings, such as the ‘born in the wrong body’ notion or 'immutable gender identity at birth' notion, doesn’t even begin to tear down the notion of transness in general.

It is clear to me that desire, yearning, longing, is the fundamental aspect as to what makes someone trans. A yearning to change one’s body and in most cases one’s social role to something else. This yearning shouldn’t demand any kind of explanation from others, at least no more than any other kind of yearning should. If someone finds their calling as a writer and another as a painter, am I expected to meet their desires with suspicion, to interrogate where their yearning comes from? No, of course not. The beautiful thing about humanity is how diverse in our desires we are, and criticial interrogation of desire is ultimately a deadend anyway, for one cannot unbind oneself from the environment one was created in.

So, it’s curious that dysphoria, which in my opinion, is the medical term for this yearning (and note that medicalisation is a narrative of understanding this yearning, not the yearning in of itself), has become more and more peripheral in discourse around transgender people, with this shift in focus towards ‘identity’, despite dysphoria being the core of the trans experience. I personally think this is a product of academia–humanities academia is absolutely obsessed with notions of identity, and so much academic work is done through the lens of identity. The internal experience of dysphoria is not particularly relevant to academics, for two reasons. One is that internal experience in general is not of particular interest to academics, probably due to the difficulty of studying it, and two because the internal experience of dysphoria does not serve any kind of progressive goal. The notion of a transgender gender identity can be and is used to problematise notions of gender in general–in other words, a transgender framework which emphasises identity is useful for feminist and gender abolitionist academics. Transgender people are just a useful tool to these people, nothing more, and our internal experiences are worthless, because, if anything, they would serve to reinforce the importance of gender in society and reverse the decades-long attempt by feminist academics to trivialise it.

Why would this lead to a notion of internal gender identity? Well, because so many progressive activists regurgitate what they read in academia, even when it’s wrong, even when it’s in an inappropriate context. They engage with academic analyses of gender and trans people (or engage with people who have engaged with them) and regurgitate them to other progressives and those sympathetic to them. This causes a problem, because many progressive activists want to legitimise trans people, but the framework they’re using serves to do anything but, and so with the focus on identity, they fashion the notion of an immutable, internal gender identity. Many transgender people, who naturally gravitate towards spaces that are at least slightly more accepting of them than anywhere else, will then internalise these ideas and regurgitate them themselves.

At the risk of sounding condescending, I don’t think many of these people give what they’re saying much thought. When they do, I think they inevitably end up trivialising transness, by either staying nominally pro-trans while framing it as something fundamentally absurd, implying that trans people are victims of a gendered system and that we would be ‘cured’ if gender didn’t exist, or by becoming TERFs, who in trivialising trans experiences see trans people as enemies of their dystopian gender abolitionist vision for the world. Most won’t remain fervently pro-trans when thinking further about the subject, because they won’t think to leave the confines of the internal gender identity model, because there is little to no intellectual interest in dysphoria–in yearning–as a lived experience of trans people.

However, this isn’t to say identity–external identity, in which one receives recognition of one’s internal experiences and desires from others–is unimportant. We are social beings, who crave recognition from those around us. I am certainly not arguing that trans men are not men and trans women are not women, and you’ll note that I referred to Kalonymus ben Kalonymus as ‘she’ even as I said I don’t think she had some internal gender identity. Rather, as I said earlier, identity is a tool of social recognition. This heartwrenching yearning, which leaves the deepest imprint on the mind and colours every single experience one has from birth, which when repressed hollows out the soul to its very core, which drives people to upturn their entire lives and radically alter their bodies (bringing their sex closer to the sex they long to be) is self-evidently socially significant and worthy of recognition, and any just society would do all it can to help ease such yearning, especially as it comes at such a trivial cost.

(I apologise for this post not being very well-formed, I wrote it mainly to get some thoughts out that have been bouncing around in my head for a while. I might return to this subject and write a better structure essay about it in the future.)

#trans #transgender #transgender rights #trans theory

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havenofcybele · 8 days

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The difference between a TERF and a 'trans-inclusive' feminist is that the former thinks trans people are ideologically inconvenient and so should be discarded, while the latter thinks trans people are ideologically convenient and so should be used. Uniting them both is a complete disinterest in the actual humanity of trans people.

#trans #transgender #transgender rights #trans theory #transfeminism

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havenofcybele · 1 month

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Anti-Gender Abolition

Gender, as many people like to point out, is distinct from biological sex, and, as many people like to point out, is socially constructed. Gender roles are a part of gender, but gender is broader in that it encompasses all social aspects we apply to biological sex. In other words, while gender roles specifically dictate social structure (such as division of labour, etc) gender also encompasses things like gendered stereotypes and gender expression. I think we can summarise gender as ‘the social significance we place on biological sex’, and while gender is a separate thing from biological sex, it arises from sexual difference–certain stereotypes, symbols, behaviours, ways of life, forms of labour, rights, and obligations are applied broadly to at least two groups of people, the division between those two groups being rooted in the bimodal sexual division that is present in humanity.

Notably, gender is present in every single culture on earth that exists and has ever existed. This should not be taken to mean that I think all cultures that exist and have existed possess fundamentally the same social structure (such as patriarchy), forms of gendered division of labour, forms of gendered expression, etc, for even just a cursory glance at the anthropological and historical record will show that cultures can have very different notions of what is masculine and feminine, even within the same culture across time. One common example people like to cite for this arbitrariness is 17th and 18th century European men’s fashion, with its silk stockings, bows, and high-heeled shoes. However, while the means of expressing the distinction is seemingly arbitrary, the making of a distinction is not–literally all cultures, all cultures, divide human beings into at least two gender categories, regardless of how this division is expressed or understood.

It’s very important to emphasise that the arbitrary nature of how gender is expressed does not mean that gender is somehow a superfluous division that human beings can simply discard. To draw a comparison, in language the link between sound and meaning is fundamentally arbitrary (in most cases). The set of sounds used to form the English word ‘house’ has absolutely no inherent meaning, and to someone who doesn’t speak English it will just sound like a completely random string of sounds, or possibly possess another, completely different meaning in their own native language. We can say, in a sense, that vocabulary is just a set of completely arbitrary symbols that we assign meaning to purely due to how we were raised, much like our attachment to gender.

But, it is this connection between arbitrary symbol and meaning that allows us to communicate, and we communicate instinctively, with language being a part of all human communities. This arbitrary set of symbols not only allows basic communication, but also the ability to move people to some of the most profound emotional experiences in the form of literature and poetry. It seems very clear to me that this kind of symbolic thought, in which we can link some kind of meaning to something that isn’t necessarily the thing in of itself is a very fundamental aspect to human psychology. We don’t even need to confine ourselves to language to see it, visual arts are replete with highly abstracted forms that we can still easily recognise as representing specific things in the world despite them having barely any real resemblance at all. Another fundamental aspect of human psychology is that we divide the world into categories in order to make sense of it–this too can be seen in language, in which semantic space is divided only by words contrasting with each other (what a word doesn’t mean is just as important as what it does mean in other words).

It really shouldn’t come as a surprise then that gender appears in literally all cultures, regardless of scale, regardless of social complexity, regardless of technology, regardless of how patriarchal or egalitarian they are, and regardless of how they choose to express gender. Gender is merely symbolic thought applied to the division of biological sex, with biological sex differences being such an obvious, self-evident, and socially significant difference between people. Pointing out that gender is arbitrary has absolutely no bearing on whether or not we could do away with gender, it simply indicates that how we choose to express this very fundamental distinction is open to possibilities.

This, finally, brings me to gender abolition. As it should be clear from the previous paragraphs, abolishing gender is literally an incoherent idea. It would be akin to abolishing animal symbolism, abstract art, or arbitrary symbolism in vocabulary. It is a very fundamental part of our psychology to divide the world up into categories and then apply social meaning to said categories, and sex is no different–gender abolitionism isn’t fighting any particular system or any particular cultural more, it’s fighting human psychology itself.

This is why gender abolitionism is so attractive to transphobes. Most transphobes have an essentialist, unscientific, strictly binary concept of biological sex that is defined at birth (or before) and is completely immutable. Why wouldn’t they be attracted to an ideology which ultimately would not result in the abolition of gender, but rather the wedding of gender entirely to biological sex, which in their unscientific view is strictly binary and completely immutable? The categories ‘man’ and ‘woman’ would not vanish, they’d simply lose all elasticity, and people would be confined to their sex castes with absolutely no possibility of either moving between them or carving out something else. This is why TERFs have always gravitated towards this noxious ideology. It’s a Trojan horse, designed to eliminate trans people.

I concede that there are a small number of gender abolitionists with a more accurate view of biological sex who are willing to acknowledge that it is, to one extent or another, mutable. But as already outlined, gender abolition is an incoherent position because gender is an inevitable consequence of human psychology, and so gender abolition is a fundamentally futile ideology in that its goals are impossible to obtain.

One might object that just because gender is inevitable doesn’t mean it’s good. There are inevitable facets of human nature (violence, etc) that we can acknowledge are bad, so perhaps gender falls into this category, an inevitable consequence of human psychology, that despite its constant presence, is still ultimately bad for humanity?

Personally, I don’t think so. The usual objection I see is that gendered expectations, stereotypes, etc are fundamentally arbitrary and so therefore bad, but the truth is, is that most people are completely fine with expectations based on completely arbitrary criteria. Most people would agree that we have more obligations to our local community than to people globally, but this is based on the entirely arbitrary feature of where you were born or where you are currently living. Likewise, most people believe in the existence of families (to one extent or another), which entail obligations based on something as arbitrary as shared DNA. With different cultures comes different expectations and obligations within said cultures in regards to how people interact with each other (in one culture you might say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ more than another, others you might bow when greeting people, etc), which again, would be based on something as arbitrary as what culture you happened to be born in or have assimilated to. We even acknowledge that stereotypes aren’t inherently bad–benign national stereotypes that don’t intersect with some kind of harsh discrimination are generally considered acceptable even within very progressive circles. I certainly don’t feel aggrieved when people make certain harmless assumptions about me because I just so happen to be British.

So why would gender roles, expectations, and stereotypes be inherently bad? Could they not be like benign national stereotypes or the countless kinds of harmless social obligations that we find within the colourful swathe of human culture? The main issue I see with gender as it is today is not the fact that it exists, but rather the fact that it has been rendered rigid and exploitative. We can acknowledge that social expectations based on arbitrary criteria don’t have to be exploitative, so why do gendered social expectations have to be? We can also acknowledge that social expectations don’t have to be rigid or unchangeable–for example, one can found a family outside of their biological one or be assimilated to another culture, allowing a change in one’s arbitrary social obligations–so why must gendered social expectations be beholden to the rigidity most people are so used to?

This notion that gender itself is inherently oppressive strikes me as both myopic and uncreative. In my opinion, one of the greatest sicknesses of modern society is the inability to conceive of radical new social relations, whether in the economic or social sphere, and so our only choice becomes the mildest of mild reform or to tear things town, even when that is an utterly incoherent goal. This does not have to be the case. Even just a glance at the historical and anthropological record shows that human beings are capable not only of a vast array of different social structures, but are also capable of consciously reflecting on said social structures and changing them. There’s no reason to think gender must be bound up with rigid essentialism or exploitation. It could be something beautiful and worthy of celebration if we strove for it.

#trans theory #gender abolition #transgender #transgender rights #gender abolitionism #trans #transfeminism #trans issues #trans discourse #trans discussion

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havenofcybele · 1 month

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It's amazing to think that there was a Galli cult in Roman Britain (as evidenced by ritual castration clamps being found in the Thames). Imagine that today, a bunch of trans women getting together to start doing castrations with fancy gold clamps in honour of the Great Mother Cybele? The transphobe outrage would be insane!

#trans #trans woman #transgender rights #trans history #trans uk

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havenofcybele · 2 months

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Some thoughts on feminism from a trans perspective

What has feminism done for trans people? This is, surprisingly, a question that isn’t often asked. But the answer is quite revealing: nothing, unless one wants to include negatives, in which case, a lot of bad things.

There’s an expectation for trans women that you’re supposed to be a feminist. So much as questioning feminism, or even expressing indifference to it, is frequently met by vitriol and hostility, typically expressed through misgendering, whether covert or overt. I’ve even had trans women say I deserve transphobia for not being a feminist. ‘Vitriol and hostility’ are really understatements of how tense other trans women can get when you don’t have the right opinion on this subject. The only possible outlet for criticism of feminism is criticism of TERFs, and transfeminists are extremely eager to point out that the TERFs are supposedly a minority, and hell, they’re probably not even real feminists anyway!

But again, my mind just returns to that question. What has feminism done for trans people? If you actually pose that to a transfeminist, they begin to stumble. They’ll stop talking to you, or they’ll deflect, or they’ll ignore the question and focus on something else you’ve said, or they’ll claim that somehow feminism laid the foundations for trans rights and that we don’t owe trans rights to the trans men and trans women who fought for them, or even to the researchers and surgeons who developed lifesaving transition-related care, but instead to activists who were fighting for unrelated concerns and who, by and large, were and are hostile to us.

What they’ll never do is actually name something substantive. I’m not saying individual feminists have never done anything substantive for trans people, but I can’t think of a single thing, and seemingly even transfeminists can’t either, otherwise they’d tell me. I can think of a large number of bad things feminists have and continue to do in regards to trans rights. Janice Raymond contributing to the removal of trans healthcare coverage under the Ronald Reagan administration of the United States, resulting almost certainly in the deaths of trans people, for example. Or the fact that gender recognition reform in the UK has been utterly derailed by feminists, or the fact that feminists have effectively destroyed youth transition resources in the UK. Or how about the time Sheila Jeffreys called trans people parasites to the Houses of Parliament? Feminists have been calling for the elimination of trans people since at least the second wave, constructing glossy looking pieces of academic tripe from The Transsexual Empire in 1979 to the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights in 2019. In my own homecountry, the people spearheading the anti-trans movement aren’t a bunch of far-right Handmaid’s Tale larpers, dreaming of a Gilead knock-off they hope to institute one day–they’re feminists.

Of course, I’m ready to hear the cry of ‘those are TERFs!’ or ‘those aren’t real feminists!’, well, where precisely are the real feminists? Again, what have feminists done that is good for trans people? Can you blame me for being antifeminist, when all the feminists I see having any influence on my life and the lives of my people, both now and in the past, are ones who want to eliminate us? At the very best, most feminists are utterly indifferent to trans issues, in which case, why should I support a movement indifferent to my suffering? At worst, most of them harbour transphobic viewpoints–not, perhaps, as toxic as your average TERF’s, but transphobic nonetheless, and such a conclusion is the one I lean to, considering how prevalent transphobic attitudes are in all areas of society, and my own anecdotal experiences.

What is interesting though, is that even if the correct choice is to support feminism despite its sordid history, the response to antifeminist or even just feminist-sceptical trans women is still insane. You think a movement which has been tarnished so badly by transphobia would be a little bit more understanding to those trans women who are reticent to interact with it, but instead all they receive is shaming, misgendering, and outright hostility. There aren’t even attempts to create dialogue around this issue, unless you first kiss the feminist ring and swear undying allegiance, in which case any dialogue you do attempt to make will be neutered from the start, set out entirely according to the terms of cis feminists.

A retort might be that feminism means equal opportunity for women, or ending oppressive structures against women, or gender equality, or whatever else, and so the only reason you could be opposed to it is due to being a misogynist who hates women. This is a specious argument. Movements are defined by their members’ actions, goals, and political stances–not by a pithy, idealised definition which floats in a vacuum. Unless you transfeminists think that the only reason one might be opposed to MRAs is simply because one thinks men should have no rights?

In sum, I see no reason to support a movement that hates me and wants me gone, nor do I see any reason for my sisters to support it either. Antifeminism is the only path to true liberation for trans people, and I dream of the day most trans women shed this unhelpful ideology.

#trans #trans woman #transfeminism #feminism #trans rights #transgender #transgender rights #anti feminism #trans theory

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