Not a lot I can add to that, save to thank Brianna Wu for the image.
Gender
Bath, Fairies and Feminism
Today I was up early and off to Bath to catch some of the participants in Emma Newman’s Split Worlds Ball before they were too busy. It is an absolutely amazing event that Emma and her friends are staging. How they are going to manage a LARP with over 80 participants is a mystery to me.
Still, I know a few of the participants, so I will hopefully get reports back of how it went. Always assuming they survive the evening. You never can tell where the fae are concerned. I should have some audio, and a few pictures, but you know what fairies are like with electronic stuff.
Over lunch I headed off to Victoria Park for the joint BGEN/WEP intersectionality picnic. Quite a few more WEP members turned up this time, and BGEN was out in force as usual. Everyone seemed to get on very well, and the older ladies from the WEP appeared very keen to learn from us. Weirdly I found myself explaining what things like “no homo” and “friend zone” mean. I guess I’m not as out of touch as I think.
There was a great deal of excitement about how well Sophie Walker did in the London mayoral elections. Obviously no one expected her to win, but getting 2% of the vote is a substantial achievement for a party that is barely a year old. Next up, get more votes than UKIP.
That done, several of us trooped back into town to visit Mr. B’s and to do Free Comic Book Day. And then Olly and I trotted back to the Guildhall to catch some of the fairies. Olly, as well as being a genius radio comedy writer, is also a champion cosplayer. We had a great conversation about the difference between comic conventions and Worldcon and I got to show some of my old masquerade pictures.
I am now back home and not really fit enough for much except dinner and TV. If I had a bath I would be in it. Not complaining though, it is lovely to have warm weather at last. I think it might be safe to turn the heating off.
I Am Cait #2.8
I have finally seen the finale of season 2 of I Am Cait. Clearly it was intended to bookend the season. Back in episode 1 the season started off with the other girls getting angry with Caitlyn over her support of the Republicans, and of Ted Cruz in particular. Episode 8 is the end point of Caitlyn’s journey from right-wing drone to leftist activist. Well, sort of.
More of that later, but first the more interesting part of the show which featured Ella and her relationship with her father. When Ella was introduced to the show it was as the trans daughter of an old friend of Caitlyn’s. In episode 8 we got to meet this guy, who was very supportive of the girls. Afterwards Ella was a bit upset and basically doing the, “you have no idea how much hell he put me though” thing. Eventually Ella and dad get to have a chat, and it all turns out in the end, which was good TV but did feel a but scripted. I hope it wasn’t.
The point of all this is to show how hard things can be for young trans kids, and indeed for any trans person who has a family. With most problems in life, you tend to feel that the one group of people you can turn to for support is your family. For trans people it tends to be the exactly opposite — family are the people who find it hardest to accept you.
Part of that, of course, is that they have known you longer and better than anyone else, and therefore find it harder to come to terms with what they see as a “new” you. But part of it is also that families are very much afraid of the social opprobrium that will descend upon them because of what you have done. It is the same sort of dynamic that leads to honor killings.
We have to hope that in time society will become sufficiently accepting of trans folks that families will no longer feel shame, and be afraid of losing status, because a relative comes out as trans. It appears to have mostly happened (in Western countries) with lesbians and gay men. We are still a long way from it with trans. Ella was lucky, in that her dad was able to get over the shame he felt at having to tell his mates that his child was transitioning. Caitlyn probably helped a lot with that, simply by being very publicly trans and famous. Other trans people aren’t so lucky. Sometimes if you love your family you have to let them go and give them time to get used to you and want to come back.
Meanwhile, back with the politics. As anyone who is following the news knows, Caitlyn hasn’t exactly turned her back on Republicanism. She is still, after all, a very rich person with a lot to lose under a more left-wing government. What she is slowly coming to realize, however, is that a lot of her friends have far more to lose under the likes of Cruz, and that she too could fall victim to that. Losing half a million dollars in taxes when you are worth billions is one thing; losing your ability to participate in public life because you are banned from using toilets and openly discriminated against by many businesses is quite another.
The main thrust of this episode was a trip to Houston to confront the right-wing pastors who led the campaign to repeal HERO, the city’s equal rights ordinance. This was a fairly general piece of legislation promoting equality in a wide range of areas. It was brought down by a campaign that pretended the law was specifically about allowing trans pedophiles into women’s toilets.
I note in passing that I now feel so much less guilty about all those years of yelling abuse at Lance Berkman from the stands at Emperor Norton Field. The guy really is an unpleasant piece of work.
As television the episode didn’t work that well because the crew was refused permission to film at either of the churches they tried to attend. We have only the cast’s reports of what happened. They do, however, ring true. Apparently, while the pastors and older members of the congregations mostly shunned them, the young kids all wanted to take selfies with Caitlyn. Even Kate Bornstein was very positive about the change that Caitlyn is helping make happen.
What the show didn’t show is the controversy that surrounded its making. The trans community in Houston, and specifically black trans people, had been very much involved in getting HERO passed in the first place, and in the fight to keep it. No attempt was made to involve them in the show. Instead the crew brought in Mara Kiesling, a high profile, Washington-based, white trans activist.
I’ve met Mara and liked her. She does a very good job. But the apparent shunning of the local black activists in favor of a Washington-based white one did not go unnoticed. Whether this was the result of cluelessness, or a feeling that the local activists had failed, or that the show didn’t want to upset Texas too much my showcasing people who were black as well as trans, isn’t clear. It also doesn’t matter, because the damage got done either way.
There has been some talk on Twitter about there being a season 3, and I know some people have been agitating for the show to look at trans communities outside of the USA. That would be good. But I think it has work to do inside the USA first. Right now it is very much a show about good-looking, gender-normative, mostly-white trans women. There was the debacle last season over Angelica Ross, and the one this season over Houston. We’ve seen nothing of Laverne Cox or Janet Mock, who are far more articulate advocates for the trans cause than Caitlyn, and we have seen very little of trans guys or non-binary people. Before the show starts to look at the wider world, it needs to look at the whole of the US trans community.
The WEP and Me
Yesterday I headed into Bath. Part of that was to do some shopping. I had a copy of the new Johanna Sinisalo book, The Core of the Sun, to pick up from Mr. B’s. I’m very much looking forward to that one. I also discovered the Saturday market that they have in the old Green Park Station building (Green Park was the northern terminus of the Somerset & Dorset Railway, or the Slow & Dirty, as it was known in these here parts). There I found Somerset Charcuterie, who do some very nice salamis. I picked up packets of the Garlic & Black Pepper, and the Red Wine & Blue Cheese flavors, both of which are very nice.
The main point of the day, however, was to attend a meeting of the Women’s Equality Party. There has been some concern that the WEP might end up a White Feminist party. I was encouraged by the interview I did with Jess from the Bristol branch on Ujima a few weeks ago. However, the Facebook page of the Bath branch has seen a lot of TERF presence. There was some concern that these people might actually be members of the Bath group, as opposed to trolls. So I went along to a party meeting to see what these people were like.
I am pleased to report that I was made very welcome. I’m pretty sure that most WEP members are reasonable people who do want equality. I note also that Sophie Walker, the party leader, has stood up to TERFs in online discussions. And the leaflets they had at the meeting clearly said that the party welcomes member of all genders. No doubt the mob at the New Statesman will be doing whatever they can to change this, but for now the WEP appears to be shaping up quite well.
The LRB Does Trans
The London Review of Books normally only features in this blog when I am reporting on the VIDA count — it has a lamentable record. However, that doesn’t mean that they don’t publish women at all. The forthcoming issue will contain an article by a woman, and it is about trans people. What’s more, you can read it online here.
Jacqueline Rose’s essay is very long, and somewhat rambling. It is broadly supportive, and contains a lot of interesting stuff. I certainly learned a few things from it. I don’t expect many of you will have the stamina to read it, but I know some of you have. As with any long piece, it goes off the rails a little in places, and I wanted to note those here.
First up, I don’t think it was “sentimental” of the writers of The Danish Girl to change Lili Elbe’s story so that she died from the results of her gender surgery, rather than from a later attempt to give her a womb. I submit that it was a deliberate lie to make it seem like gender surgery is much more dangerous than it actually is, and to give the impression that being a trans woman is a crime publishable by death.
Second, it is not generally true that hijra, “renounce sexual desire by undergoing sacrificial emasculation”. Some may do. India is a huge country, and hijra are found in other parts of south Asia as well, so I’m actually not comfortable with any blanket statements. However, I do know that some hijra have partners (whom they presumably have sex with), that some do sex work (which they may or may not enjoy), and some are involved in ritual sex work as part of their religious function.
Thirdly, when Rose pisses all over the Trans Day of Remembrance, she is clearly unaware of the work done by Transgender Europe’s Murder Monitoring Project which most definitely does keep information about the victims aside from their names.
My main concern about the article, however, is that it is a think piece, and as such it spends a lot of time trying to understand and explain trans people. When someone from outside of the trans community tries to do this, it often results in pontification about what trans people are “really”, and in pitting parts of the trans community against each other to try to find who is doing trans honestly and authentically, and who is a liar and a fake. This never works, because trans people are not all the same.
If you think about a gender spectrum, for example, someone who has a very strong identification with one gender, which just happens not to be the one assigned to them at birth, is a very different person from someone who is genderfluid, or agnostic about gender. It makes no sense to say that one of them must be “doing trans wrong”. Look, some men like to spend their weekends running around mountains, or white-water kayaking, while others prefer to spend it sat on a couch drinking beer and watching football. Is one of those groups somehow doing masculinity “wrong”? Or are they just different?
(I’d make the same argument about female gender stereotypes, but pretty much whatever women do you can find a ton of articles in women’s magazines pearl-clutching about how this is inappropriate female behavior and everyone should stop doing it or GUILT!!!)
So it doesn’t matter if Kate Bornstein and Jenny Boylan have different views as to what it means to be trans. That’s natural and healthy, not a sign that one is honest and the other lying to herself and others. If the trans thing has a value to feminism and gender studies, it is because we explode boxes in all sorts of interesting ways. Please don’t try to find new boxes to put us in.
The Science of Sex Chromosomes
One of the most common attacks on trans people that I see can be summed up as, “But, CHROMOSOMES!!!”. We know, after all, that our chromosomes are in every cell of our bodies. We are, allegedly, indelibly either male or female. That, we are told, cannot be changed. People advancing this view always claim to be arguing scientifically. They know very little about science. Part of my job, in doing trans awareness training, is to disabuse them of their foolishness. When I discovered Sex Itself by Sarah S Richardson I knew I had to read it. I am very glad that I did.
Sex Itself is essentially a history of the science of sex chromosomes. It is a fairly short history, starting in the early 20th Century, but is none the less fascinating if you have enough of a science background to not be put off by the language, which gets very technical at times. It is an object lesson in how cultural attitudes inform scientific research. Even the term, “sex chromosomes” is controversial. I use it here primarily because I want people with a poor understanding of the issues to read this post, and I know how search engines work.
Let’s start with a simple statement (emphasis mine):
Biologists have never been under the illusion that genes and chromosomes are all there is to the biology of sex. […] Today, academic sexologists typically distinguish between chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, hormonal sex, genital sex and sexual identity. Some would add sexual preference, gender identity, morphological sex, fertility and even brain sex to this list.
So yes, it has never been the case that science thought that sex was determined solely by chromosomes. Sorry, TERFs*.
Real science is complicated, messy. We still don’t really understand all of the biological pathways that result in the various facets of sex. What we can say is that X = female, Y = male is nonsense.
To start with, not all animals use the XX/XY system of chromosomes. Birds, for example, have a very different, and much more complicated system. And yet birds occur in male, female and intersex forms. There are species in which the form with XY chromosomes would normally be regarded as female (i.e. produces eggs rather than sperm). There is even a mammal species, the mole vole, that doesn’t have Y chromosomes. They have XX and XO variants, but the XOs still have recognizably male behavior and play a male role in reproduction.
Even in humans, “correct” configuration of the sex chromosomes is neither necessary nor sufficient to produce a body of a particular sex. There is at least one well documented case of a person with XY chromosomes getting pregnant and giving birth (to a daughter with XY chromosomes). And differentiation of ovaries and testes in the embryo is dependent on two genes on other chromosomes as well as the XX/XY pair.
Despite all of this obvious science, the book chronicles endless attempts by scientists to find a magic switch that is “sex itself”, the ultimate determinant of human nature; and to prove once and for all that men are from Mars and women from Venus. One of the most ridiculous examples of this is the 2005 Nature paper by Carrell & Willard which claimed that there is as much, if not more, difference between the genome of a human male and a human female, than there is between that of a human and a chimpanzee. It doesn’t take much critical thinking to find the flaws in that, but Richardson, good scientist that she is, goes in detail into the different methods used to calculate “difference” in the human-male/human-female case, and in the human/chimpanzee case, to show that the comparison is invalid. And she makes the philosophical point that a genome is a property of a species, not of a sub-form of a species that is incapable of independent reproduction.
Another example is the ongoing debate between David Page and Jennifer Graves over the status of the Y chromosome. Page maintains that the Y is a noble beast and source of all that is great and good in humans; while Graves maintains that it is a wimpy runt with no great purpose nor any evolutionary future. I exaggerate a little for effect, but both scientists openly use sex war rhetoric in their debates so they really can’t complain. The controversy has found its way into the media, and into popular culture. Richardson cites Gwyneth Jones’s Life and Brian Vaughan & Pia Guerra’s Y: The Last Man as examples.
My own preconceptions were not immune from Richardson’s intellectual scalpel. The easiest way to explain the results of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (the intersex condition that gives rise to things like the aforementioned XY pregnancy) is that human bodies are default female, and need a variety of processes, triggered by the Y chromosome, to make a male. I now know that this isn’t strictly true. An embryo will not develop as fully female without other active processes.
This issue shows how complex the cultural issues surrounding gender science are. I used to think that I was being proudly feminist in stating that being female was the default state of mankind, and that being male was some sort of weird mutation. I now find that I am a dupe of the Patriarchy for believing that being female is a passive state waiting to be conquered and controlled by the masterful Y chromosome. I am suitably chastised.
Another area where I have had to modify my own understanding is the relationship between Klinefelter syndrome and gender identity. Klinefelter is a condition where the body has XXY chromosomes. When I was young, this was thought to be potentially diagnostic of trans women. I remember being distraught when my chromosome test came back as XY, because an XXY result would have fast-tracked me through the medical system. However, from what Richardson says it seems that trans women are not over-represented in the population of people who exhibit Klinefelter, and consequently the condition is neither diagnostic of, nor a potential explanation of, our gender identity.
This brings me to the most spectacular example of sex science nonsense in the book, and a possible explanation for the beliefs of the TERFs. Klinefelter is by no means the only condition in which a body’s chromosome mix is neither XX nor XY. One of many others is the so-called “super-male”, XYY. Back in 1965 Patricia Jacobs, a brilliant geneticist who discovered the biological cause of Klinefelter when she was just 21, published a study in Nature showing that inmates with XYY were over-represented in a high security psychiatric institution.
Sadly Jacobs wasn’t near as good at social science as she was at analyzing genes. There are all sorts of flaws with the study, including the later discover that XXY conditions were similarly over-represented. But before you could say “radical feminism”, the idea that a Y chromosome was an indicator of criminal violence, and two Ys doubly so, was all over popular culture. There was even a series of books, and later a TV series, called The XYY Man.
The idea that XYY was an indicator of a violently criminal nature has long since been debunked, but the idea that a Y chromosome is the seat of violence is still very much current among radical feminists and is often cited as “proof” of why trans women should not be allowed into female spaces. Personally I think that if there is any culprit then it would be testosterone, and the Nazi attempts to produce a super-soldier serum (based on research stolen from Magnus Hirschfeld’s sex clinic) would seem to back me up. Doubtless the TERFs would claim that it only takes one drop of testosterone in utero to turn a human into a violent psychopath, so trans women still can’t be trusted.
And yes, I did use the phrase “one drop” deliberately there. Many of the flawed scientific studies that Richardson describes in the book reek of eugenics, and a book I now want to read is Stephen Jay Gould’s Mismeasure of Man, which chronicles scientific attempts to prove white supremacy.
Science, as I noted above, is complicated, and the interaction of science with society doubly so. I totally understand the need to examine how medical conditions differ between males and females (and indeed between people of different ethnic groups). As someone whose body is now physically intersex (thanks to medical intervention) I have a vested interest in such things. But the obsession that humans have with categorizing things in binaries, and with using popular misunderstandings of science as a crutch for bigotry, makes all such work very dangerous. I am very grateful to Sarah Richardson for shining a bright light on the murky issue of chromosomal sex. Hopefully I can do her work justice in future training courses.
* Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists
I Am Cait #2.7
The season finale of season 2 of I Am Cait aired in the USA yesterday. Here in the UK we have just got episode 7, so that’s what I’ll be talking about today.
The first topic of the show was Caitlyn having a heart-to-heart with Kris about their marriage and their future. That sort of thing I tend to think should be private between them and not commented on, but the exchange did further highlight how long Caitlyn has been struggling with her gender issues, and just how unhappy and non-functional people in that situation can become.
Next up was the question of genital surgery. Caitlyn hasn’t had it. She’s not sure that she wants it. That will doubtless come as a shock to some people. Jenny Boylan provided contrast by explaining how important surgery was to her, and how keen she was to get it. That was me all over. I could not wait to get it done, and like Jenny I have had no regrets since. She’s lesbian and I’m not, so there’s difference there. Caitlyn very clearly needed to transition for the sake of her mental health, but genital surgery is not a major issue for her. All of which goes to show just how diverse trans people are.
Jenny brought in Marci Bowers who is a surgeon specializing in gender surgery, and a trans woman herself, so obviously an ideal person to do such work. She noted that only around 20% of US trans people have had genital surgery, and that cost is a major issue there.
The other major storyline was Candis’s desire for a family. Having had zero luck in dating, she’s thinking of adopting. That won’t be easy because she’s single and trans. Adoption is legal, but getting to do it is a whole different ball game. Candis talked frankly about how so much transphobia happens politely, behind the scenes. People are all very nice to you, but somehow what you want is just not possible.
Of course, as Kris pointed out, having a family is by no means necessarily a cakewalk for cis women. All sorts of problems can arise, from infertility to pregnancy complications to husband problems and so on. So maybe things will work out for Candis.
This is the point at which I should note that I’m getting quite fond of Kris Jenner. Not fond enough to watch all of the Kardashian shows, but her public persona on this show is pretty impressive.
When I was at Kingston University last week one of the questions from the audience was about Caitlyn. The students didn’t seem too impressed with her. I asked if anyone had watched the shows, and none of them had. This is sad. Caitlyn’s media profile is pretty bad, and she’s made some horrendous mistakes. However, what she and the rest of the cast are doing on the show is valuable. Much of that is, of course, down to Jenny, Kate, Chandi and so on, but the show would not have happened without Caitlyn, and I rather suspect that her money is keeping it going. If you want to learn more about trans people — trans women in particular — then the show is very useful.
I think we have the season finale next week. This appears to be the show where they get back to talking about religion and politics. Then we’ll see how much Caitlyn has learned.
By the way, is it wrong of me to think that LA Clippers is a reality TV show about hairdressers in Hollywood?
That Was Trans*Code
I spent most of yesterday at Trans*Code, a meet-up for trans people and allies in the IT industry. It is primarily a hack day, so various interesting projects got started. Here’s a run-down of what we did.
Clothing Exchange – the idea here was to allow trans people who are getting rid of the clothes because of a gender change to donate those clothes to other trans people who might need new clothes but can’t afford them. Doing it online might be useful for people in small towns, though personally I hate all forms of mail order clothes buying.
Funding appeal site – this project sought to provide a venue whereby people could donate money to help trans people with their transition expenses. That could mean anything from paying for an electrolysis course to financing a private medical consultation. Donors would get perks from corporate sponsors. Clearly this needs a proper charity to run it and select beneficiaries, but it could work.
Voice training site – there was a lot of interest in this project, which aimed to provide an online self-help system for trans people seeking to change how they speak. Long term I think people would benefit from professional voice coaching, but that’s not something I’ve ever been able to splash money on and it can be expensive if you don’t live in a big city where such help can be found. Ideally the site would work with one or more professional trainers, but they’d have to be able to charge for what they do because it is their livelihood.
Music synching – this had nothing to do with being trans. Someone just wanted to be able to synch music over several PCs connected via the Internet. I can see it being a cool thing if you are playing an online RPG. Obviously everyone would need a (legal) local copy of the music.
Gender recognition game – Douglas Adams once produced a computer game about trying to persuade a bank to change the name on your account. It was basically a long joke about bureaucracy. This game was all about trying to get a Gender Recognition Certificate, which is way harder than changing your bank account.
Trans*Code directory – somewhere on GitHub where all of this stuff can get stored.
And finally the stuff I was up to. My friend Shaan from the Twilight People project wants to create an app based around the personal histories he has created. We spent a good part of the day brainstorming what that app would look like, and what we needed to do to make it happen. We didn’t actually write much code, partly because I don’t have all of the necessary skills, and partly because some development tools I was expecting to have didn’t turn up on time. More will happen in due course.
Huge thanks are due to Naomi Cedar for organizing the whole thing. Since the inaugural meeting last year she has moved back to Chicago, and she flew in especially for yesterday’s event. Huge thanks also to Emily and everyone from Go Cardless who sponsored the event, in particular by providing a venue. There were several other corporate sponsors as well.
One of these days, BGEN people please note, we must do one of these things in the Bath/Bristol area.
Students Are Awesome
These days if you read about British students in the mainstream press it is almost always in the context that they are a bunch of Fascist prudes hell-bent on preventing anyone saying anything about anything. That, of course, is because they have taken a dim view of the transphobic ranting of the likes of Greer and Bindel. I, am pleased to say, have not been “no platformed” by any students. Indeed, I was invited to speak at Kingston University last week.
The panel was about gender, and my co-panelists were Sabah Choudrey and Soof Andry. Yep, that’s two Muslims and me. And very splendid it was too. We had a very constructive discussion, and were well looked after (and fed) by the LGBT+ Society. Thanks are due to Jamie, Adam and the rest of the crew for doing such a great job.
Thanks are also due to Noorulann Shahid who arranged the whole gig but was unable to attend due to having to be at NUS Connference making history. First up, Conference elected Malia Bouattia, a Muslim woman, as President. Naturally all of the mainstream media are yelling “OUTRAGE!!!”, and while I recognize that Jewish students may have legitimate concerns I have little doubt where all of the journalistic outrage comes from.
In addition, Conference voted to create a full-time paid post of a Trans Officer. Back when I attended Conference just stating that you were trans would probably have got you thrown out, so this is a huge step forward. My congratulations to Noorulann, Jamie Cross and all of the other activists who have fought so hard for this.
I Am Cait #2.6
The latest episode of I Am Cait to screen in the UK was all about (ex-)wives. Kris Jenner put in an appearance, and awkward conversations were had.
Mostly what I want to say about this is that such issues are very personal matters between the two individuals involved, and no one should make judgements on the basis of how they would feel in such circumstances.
Having said that, Jen Richards was talking on Twitter last night about how we hear lots these days about women who say by their partners through transition, but next to nothing about men who do the same. That’s obviously partly because the media isn’t obsessed with trans men the way it is with trans women. But I suspect there’s also a lot of social expectation (and sometimes necessity) for women to stay in a marriage no matter what. And of course there is less social opprobrium attached to appearing to become lesbian than to appearing to become gay.
If you listen to the likes of Germaine Greer or Fay Weldon it is clear that they think transitioning is just another thing that very masculine men to to betray their wives. It is like having an affair, except with yourself. And if you look at the posters for The Danish Girl it is pretty obvious that it is going to be a film about a loving wife who is betrayed by her partner.
That, of course, is just another stereotype that is rarely accurate. I doubt that there are many trans women who are that callous, but equally no one is free of the charge of selfishness. Of course if you have got to the point of a choice between transition and suicide then you get called selfish no matter which course you choose.
Hopefully, in a generation or two’s time, trans people will be sufficiently socially accepted that we can all come out early on in life and all of this denial and betrayal will be a thing of the past.
On the bright side, the episode was filmed in New Orleans, a city that I love. It reminded me of a fabulous long weekend that Kevin and I spent there a few years ago, and some of the best meals of my life.
I can haz beignets nao?
Juliet on the Mutability of History
Juliet McKenna has a great post up today about how the “facts” of history change depending on who is interpreting them. She talks in particular about how the existence of same-sex relationships in ancient Greece have been interpreted differently down the years. You can find the post here.
This is a subject very close to my heart, because the way in which trans history is interpreted is also very much culturally subjective. Anything written more than 60 years ago was almost certainly written by someone who didn’t know that trans people existed at all, let alone might have existed in the past. Even today, many historians have still bought into the idea that trans people are a creation of medical science, and that no one was trans before Magnus Hirschfeld and his friends invented the concept.
In contrast, some people who do trans history are all too willing to interpret any evidence of cross-dressing as an example of a trans identity. Some of this is cis people who can’t distinguish between a Halloween costume, a drag queen and a trans woman. And some of it is trans people eagerly looking for anyone and anything that might be like them. If you want to convince professional historians of your case, you have to maintain a fairly skeptical stance.
Much of what I was doing in me paper for this year’s LGBT History Month was looking at the evidence for trans identities in ancient times and deciding how solid it was. Thankfully these days there are cis historians who have heard of people like hijra and two spirits and are willing the make the same arguments that I wanted to make.
By the way, if you are wanting to read that paper, the reason it hasn’t gone online yet is that I have had an offer of publication. I do have a short version just looking at Sumer in peer review for the Notches blog, so that may appear some time soon. Otherwise watch this space.
Diversity Trust Spring Newsletter
I have spent the past couple of days doing trans awareness training in Bristol and Plymouth. It’s a very rewarding experience for me, and I’m particularly struck with how many of the people in the classes say they volunteered for them because they know someone who is transitioning and they want to understand the issues better.
However, The Diversity Trust doesn’t only deal with trans issues. We do LGB, obviously, and our spring newsletter, just published, focuses on our disability work with bios of the various trainers we use. If you need that sort of service, or are just interested in what we do, you can find the newsletter here (PDF).
I Am Cait #2.5
Last night the UK got episode 5 of the second season of I Am Cait. This one focused on the Trans Day of Remembrance and took place in St. Louis because the city was creating a memorial garden to commemorate murdered trans people.
The episode provided an opportunity to let Caitlyn see what sort of lives most trans people have, and in particular trans women of color. It featured Chandi bravely confessing her criminal past, and introduced Caitlyn to the idea of “survival crime” — crimes you commit because you are homeless and have no source of income. Slowly but surely, Caitlyn’s education proceeds.
It is an episode that I’m sure would prove valuable to Fay Wheldon who is launching a new novel based on her amazing new theory that trans women are “really” alpha males who have it all and are jealous of femininity. I wonder how many lobster & Bolly lunches it took her to come up with that ingenious concept.
Of course Caitlyn is Wheldon’s idea of the typical trans woman. For all of the work that the show does to try to dispel that myth, it isn’t watched by many cis people so it won’t disabuse the likes of Wheldon of her strange ideas.
On of the things that Wheldon told The Guardian is that she finds it significant that Caitlyn is still, “still speaking with a man’s voice”. Clearly she has no idea how difficult it is to get your voice sounding feminine after having gone through male puberty. You can’t just chose to sound all girly and have it happen by magic. Nevertheless, this does raise an issue that has puzzled me.
Back when I transitioned, the important things you had to work on were voice and body language. If you got those right, we were told, people could pick up the subliminal cues and you could get away with being tall, heavily-built and square-jawed. Now I totally accept that trans women shouldn’t have to do all of this stuff if they don’t want to, but back then it was very much an issue of personal safety, and for many of us it still is.
Anyway, another element of last night’s show was the introduction of Scott, the recovering alcoholic ex-boyfriend of Kourtney Kardashian and the father of three of Caitlyn’s grandchildren. Mostly this showed Caitlyn at her most patriarchal, but Scott, perhaps because he’s family, also picked up on things that hadn’t changed. Given the amount of money that Caitlyn has obviously spent on her body and looks, it seems odd to me that she apparently hasn’t done anything about voice or body language. It is her choice, obviously, but I’d like to know why.
The show also featured the ongoing saga of Candis’s unsuccessful love life, with yet another guy unprepared to date a beautiful woman simply because she’s trans. It also briefly introduced us to Van, a friend of Zachary’s who lives in St. Louis. Van is now happily married to a cis guy, but she explained that she has been through transition twice. The first time that she tried she found it impossible to get work and had to go back to living as a man for a while. And this is the point where Caitlyn confessed to having started transition back in the 1980s but backed out. She didn’t say why, and that I am not going to ask, but that is totally going in my trans awareness class. Transition is difficult and scary, and no one should be thought less of, or thought wrong, for changing their mind, regardless of whether they try again later.
I Am Cait #2.4
Episode 4 of the new season of the Caitlyn Jenner show aired in the UK over the weekend. As a few people have expressed an interest in my thoughts on these shows I’ll continue to have them.
This episode saw the girls in Iowa. There was a brief visit to a very small town where they met up with the local trans activist. Yes, there was only one; a very brave lady who took a decision to stay in that small town after transition to be visible and a role-model for local kids. That evening the girls did some sort of event at a local casino, and met up with some local trans youths. The kid they interviewed for the show was overjoyed. Which just goes to show that even reality TV can do some good now and then.
Moving on the Des Moines, the girls caught up with the Democrat campaign circus. Hillary and Bill managed to say all the right things, which melted even Caitlyn’s icy Republican heart. At one point Caitlyn noted that she has to pay $430,000 a year towards Obamacare and isn’t eligible for the benefits. I can see her point — no one likes paying taxes — but at the same time I was thinking about what I could do with that money.
I note in passing that according to the TotalJobs survey released last week around 55% of UK trans people earn less than $27,500 a year (£20,000), and the median salary for the UK is in the region of $39,000 a year (£27,500).
The main reason the girls were in Des Moines was to visit Gracelands University, where Caitlyn went to college and started on her athletics career. Gracelands is part-funded by the Mormons, and has a lot of devoutly religious students. The girls were somewhat nervous of the planned Q&A session with the students, but they seemed to handle it very well. Chandi’s sincere Christian belief, and Kate’s tale of losing her daughter to Scientology, won the audience over.
An unexpected complication arose because one of the girls knew some students at Gracelands. Ella is new on the show this year. She’s the daughter of a friend of Caitlyn’s, and barely out of high school. Like many women who transition young, she is seriously good-looking. It so happened that a good friend of hers from high school, and a boy she had had a crush on there, were both students at Gracelands. She tried to set up a meeting. The friend turned up, the crush did not.
That did not surprise me in the slightest. It is a rare cis guy who is prepared to spend any time in the company of a trans woman if that company might be construed as implying any sexual interest. Currently the trial is taking place in New York of James Dixon, who is accused of beating 21-year-old Islan Nettles to death in 2013. Dixon has confessed to the crime, but is only being charged with manslaughter and is apparently pleading not guilty. In his taped confession he told police:
that he had succumbed to “a blind fury†after his friends started teasing him for flirting with a transgender woman.
I expect him to get off, because there will be cis men on the jury who would feel exactly the same.
Update: It appears that Dixon’s lawyers got cold feet and persuaded him to change his plea to guilty of manslaughter. I understand he’ll be sentenced to 12 years, and if the US prison system is anything like ours he’ll serve no more than 6. The fact that he has been convicted of manslaughter rather than murder does, of course, make it clear that the lives of trans women are valued less then those of anyone else.
SNP Commits to Non-Binary Recognition
This is not an April Fool. The Scottish National Party has promised new gender recognition laws in Scotland, which will include recognition for a third gender, if they are returned to power in the forthcoming elections in May.
This is, of course, Scottish law that we are talking about. They won’t be able to issue new UK passports, though if Scotland were to leave the Union at some future date an X on passports is certainly a possibility. However, the SNP is also the third largest party in Westminster with 54 of the 640 seats. I believe that the Liberal Democrats, who have 8 seats, are also in favor of non-binary recognition, which would mean almost 10% of Parliament supporting the cause. Clearly some of the Conservative and Labour MPs who sat on the Transgender Equality Inquiry support it too. Having the Scottish government officially recognize non-binary genders would be send a very powerful signal to Westminster.
The press in Scotland seems a bit confused. The Scotsman hails this as a “gay rights package”. Most people seems to be quoting the fabulous James Morton of Scottish Trans. Of course they are also quoting the Wee Frees. The Moderator, Rev David Robertson, has apparently accused the SNP of “working on the unproven and somewhat bizarre notion that children get to choose their own gender and sexuality.” What, you mean instead of having such things imposed upon them by adults? How bizarre!
The English press appears to have largely missed the boat (the story broke late last night). The Telegraph is on the ball and leads with the possibility that the new Scottish law will allow trans people to change their birth certificates (and therefore their legal gender) without medical approval. I’m not certain whether the Scottish Parliament can do that, but if they can it would be a major shot across Westminster’s bows because it would apply to anyone born in Scotland, regardless of where they live. (The USA has a similar issue in that all states, even North Carolina, have to accept birth certificates changed by other states.)
Anyway, I look forward to the anguished article in the New Statesman explaining how this is “child abuse” and expressing full support for the Wee Frees.
If you are a UK citizen and would like to remind Westminster of the important of non-binary gender recognition, the current petition can be found here.
Healthwatch Devon Tackles Trans Equality
Last month I was down in Exeter doing some training for Healthwatch Devon. It was a great session, and the people there seems to know a lot about the subject. That’s because they had been spending a lot of time looking into trans equality issues in the NHS. The results of that work have now been published. You can read their report here.
I’m very encouraged by this. It is one thing for the government to make noises about the NHS failing trans people. It is quite another for the NHS’s own customer engagement service to come to the same conclusion, and start trying to do something about it. Hopefully this will be the start of a continuing effort to improve access to healthcare for trans people all over the country.
Update:
Here is the official Healthwatch Devon statement on the report.
And here is some BBC coverage of the launch of the report.
The BBC Joins In
Here’s the awesome Kate Adair doing her thing for BBC’s The Social. As far as I know, this is the first time that the BBC has marked TDOV, and they’ve got a trans person to make and front the film for them. Progress!
Celebrate trans people worldwide on Trans Day of Visibility. @uhh_kate #TDOV #MoreThanVisibilityhttps://t.co/KcPF49ndy0
— BBC The Social (@bbcthesocial) March 31, 2016
What Is Gender? – The Movie
There’s a whole load more interesting stuff being published today for the Trans Day of Visibility. I’m trying not to bore you with everything, but there are some things I want to highlight. First up is a short film made by my awesome friend Henry and a group of young people from in and around Bristol. Here it is:
And yes, that was government-funded.
Visibility is Not Enough
Today is the Trans Day of Visibility, an international celebration started in 2009 by US activist, Rachel Crandall. It is also, obviously, a Talk About Being Trans day.
Now visibility is a good thing. For starters there are still many trans people out there living in fear. Being trans is not a comfortable life. It is no longer a death sentence, which frankly my family believed it was when I came out to them 20+ years ago, but it is by no means easy. So knowing that many people can and do lead successful and happy lives while openly trans can be very important to people still struggling with their identity.
Also today is an opportunity to showcase large numbers of trans people. Normally the only trans people who are widely visible are the ones approved of by the mainstream media. That means people who are young, white, able-bodied, good-looking, binary-identified and heteronormative. Today is a day for all sorts of trans people to be visible: those who are old, who are people of color, who are above average size, who are disabled, who have no hope of “passing” or have chosen not to, who are non-binary and genderqueer. They are part of our community too, and they deserve rights just as much as those who are lucky and hard-working enough to conform to the ideals that the mainstream media endorses.
But visibility it not enough. To demonstrate why, I want to talk a bit about a concept I use sometimes in LGBT awareness training. It is a thing called the Riddle Scale after it’s inventor, Dorothy Riddle. Back in the 1970s, Dr. Riddle was working for the American Psychological Association looking at attitudes towards gay and lesbian people. She needed a means of measuring how homophobic people were, and she came up with a scale of attitudes, each typified by a word. The system works just as well for attitudes to trans people (and indeed any other minority). The definitions of those words used in online sources tend to vary, but those in the Wikipedia entry are fair good. Here they are, in descending order of homophobia:
- Repulsion: Homosexuality is seen as a crime against nature. Gays/lesbians are considered sick, crazy, immoral, sinful, wicked, etc. Anything is justified to change them: incarceration, hospitalization, behavior therapy, electroconvulsive therapy, etc.
- Pity: Represents heterosexual chauvinism. Heterosexuality is considered more mature and certainly to be preferred. It is believed that any possibility of becoming straight should be reinforced, and those who seem to be born that way should be pitied as less fortunate (“the poor dears”).
- Tolerance: Homosexuality is viewed as a phase of adolescent development that many people go through and most people grow out of. Thus, lesbians/gays are less mature than straights and should be treated with the protectiveness and indulgence one uses with children who are still maturing. It is believed that lesbians/gays should not be given positions of authority because they are still working through their adolescent behavior.
- Acceptance: Still implies that there is something to accept; the existing climate of discrimination is ignored. Characterized by such statements as “You’re not lesbian to me, you’re a person!” or “What you do in bed is your own business.” or “That’s fine with me as long as you don’t flaunt it!”
- Support: People at this level may be uncomfortable themselves, but they are aware of the homophobic climate and the irrational unfairness, and work to safeguard the rights of lesbians and gays.
- Admiration: It is acknowledged that being lesbian/gay in our society takes strength. People at this level are willing to truly examine their homophobic attitudes, values, and behaviors.
- Appreciation: The diversity of people is considered valuable and lesbians/gays are seen as a valid part of that diversity. People on this level are willing to combat homophobia in themselves and others.
- Nurturance: Assumes that gay/lesbian people are indispensable in our society. People on this level view lesbians/gays with genuine affection and delight, and are willing to be their allies and advocates
The first thing to note about the Scale is that “tolerance” and “acceptance” — two words that cis straight people most often use to signal their support of LGBT people — are actually in the lower half of the Scale. As Stuart Milk is fond of saying, living in Florida means that he has to tolerate mosquitoes; but that doesn’t mean that he likes them. He doesn’t want straight people tolerating him in the same way that he tolerates mosquitoes.
The other thing I want you to consider is where visibility fits in the Scale.
Well we are not in a classroom here, so I’ll tell you. It is right at the start. Because you can’t even be repulsed by someone if you can’t see them. Mere visibility is so transphobic it doesn’t even make it onto the scale.
So why do we have a Trans Day of Visibility? Because for many years it was the best we could hope for.
Think about that.
All That Other Stuff
Because I need to get it out of my system, I’m going to do a post about all of the other things that were wrong with the talk I walked out of at the trans history conference. Think of this as a follow-up to this post.
So what else was wrong? History, for a start. Modern gender medicine did not begin with Lili Elbe, or even Dorchen Richter who preceded her. Trans men have been having surgery a lot longer. They didn’t get phalloplasty until the late 1940s when Sir Harold Gillies and Ralph Millard invented the techniques they used on Michael Dillon. But trans men could and did have hysterectomies and mastectomies. CN Lester tells me that such operations were performed on a man in Germany in 1912, and there’s a suggestion of a similar operation in the 1890s. I wouldn’t necessarily expect people to know that, but anyone with an interest in trans history should know about Alan Hart.
Hart lived in Portland Oregon and underwent surgery in 1917 and 1918. He’s pretty famous in trans history circles, through I see that his Wikipedia entry now contains reference to earlier operations in Germany. I can, however, think of a reason why the presenter of this talk might want to ignore Hart. You see, Hart was a doctor himself. He wasn’t persuaded into surgery by sexologists, he prevailed upon his medical friends to do the job for him. There’s no way that Hart can be painted as an innocent victim of the medical establishment, because he prescribed his own treatment. If the point you are trying to make is that medical transition is something forced on trans people by doctors then you’ll want to bury any knowledge of Hart.
The talk very much painted Lili as a victim of doctors. It did get right that she died as a result of an operation intended to allow her to have children but she was not, as far as I know, badgered into it. She’d got herself a boyfriend and wanted to marry him and have kids. She was 49 at the time, which seems rather ambitious, but the operation wasn’t doomed because allowing trans women to get pregnant is a daft thing to do, it was doomed because no one at the time knew much about organ transplants and the problems of tissue rejection. Had the surgeons known, there’s no way they would have tried it.
In any case, the idea of trans women wanting children is not ridiculous and unnecessary. It is certainly true that you don’t need to get pregnant to make you a “real” woman, but that doesn’t mean some of us might not want to do it. If womb transplants had been on offer when I was in my teens I’d have been very keen on the possibility.
Then there is science. Most people agree that the pink brain / blue brain thing is nonsensical. Certainly it is true that, as was claimed, if you put a man’s brain and a woman’s brain side by side on a table, a trained neurologist won’t be able to tell the difference by looking at them. But then if you put two lumps of coal, one made of Carbon-12 and one of Carbon-14, on a table together a chemist won’t be able to tell the difference by looking at them either.
The vast majority of gendered brain nonsense arises from people comparing the averages of two heavily overlapping distributions, which is bad science. That doesn’t mean that subtle differences cannot exist, nor that those differences might, in certain specialist functions, make a world of difference.
It is also true that there is no proof that differences in the way that embryos develop result in a trans identity. There is, however, good evidence that the embryo goes through a variety of different growth spurts, and the time during which the brain develops is quite separate from the time during which the gendered differentiation of the body happens, so there is a possibility.
There’s also a possibility of a genetic factor, in that a large number of trans women (including myself) have a preponderance of maternal aunts (that is, a maternal grandmother who had difficulty conceiving male babies). Such apparent coincidences are often clues to a genetic explanation.
In any case, if you poo-poo the whole idea of differences in embryo development then you are effectively erasing intersex people, because they very clearly develop differently from other humans when in the womb.
I’ll certainly agree that there is no evidence of a scientific cause of trans identities. I’d also speculate the any cause that we find will be complex, and quite possibly very different depending on whether the person in question is trans-masculine, trans-feminine or non-binary. Until such time as we know more, the right thing to do is to accept people as they are, not to insist that there absolutely is or is not a scientific explanation.
On to religion now. There are people of faith who believe that God (or Satan), deliberately or accidentally had some hand in making them trans. If that works for them, all well and good. Right now it is no better than any other explanation we have. I’m not going to descend to Dawkins-esque mockery of straw man theological positions to try to discredit them. Theologians have, after all, spent an awful lot of time pondering the meaning of evil and why it exists in the world. It is rather ironic that for an illustration the presenter chose William Blake’s “The Ancient of Days”, which is not actually of God, but of Urizen, a figure who was part of Blake’s Gnostic-tinged theological explanation for the fact that God doesn’t make everything right for us.
And finally stargazy pie is not made from fish guts. I’ll admit that the heads and tails are put on the crust in part to freak out the emmets, but they are for decoration. Even if you cook whole fish into the pie, you fillet them first. It is, of course, rather delicious (and probably very good for you, being traditionally made from those oily fish that nutritionists keep badgering us to eat).
I’m perfectly happy for people to come up with whatever explanation for being trans works for them. It is a very difficult life in many ways. What I won’t tolerate is people who feel the need to delegitimize and mock everyone else’s coping strategy in order to prove that theirs is valid. And at an academic conference I won’t tolerate someone using bad history, bad science and bad theology to make such a point.