On Being Transgender

TransGriot Note: Guest post from trans community builder Denise Norris  

The Origin of Transgender

In the early 1990s, 'transgender' was repurposed by a various groups of transsexuals in the US to basically include anyone whose gender expression was non-conforming with society's expectations. There were several reasons for this and one of them was because people with atypical gender identities do not always identify as transsexual.

As we searched for our collective identity, we asked ourselves: "Who are we to judge another's gender identity solely on the basis of how they choose to express it? How can we know what is in the heart of another without knowing the person behind the presentation? Would we not achieve the height of hypocrisy to comment the same sins upon others to which we so strenuously object when others deny our gender identity and our desire to express it?

To us, the answer was obvious and expanded our associations to include crossdressers, drag, butch and every other non-conforming gender expression under the rainbow.

We understood that to be transgender is to have a non-conforming gender expression regardless of one's gender identity. Transgender therefore is a meta-group consisting of many distinct groups, each sharing common causes but each also having unique challenges. Together we are stronger then we are when we are alone.

At that moment in time, we took up the reins of our own fate into our own hands by crystallizing the dissatisfaction with our lives into a global movement that has been fighting for right to safely express our gender identities without fear of harassment, discrimination or violence.

As to the choice of the word 'Transgender' to represent the meme of equality for all gender expressions, I have to admit that honestly it was not my first choice as I felt that residual definitions from its use by Virginia Price would haunt the new re-purposed use. If you read the Charter of the Transexual Menace from 1993 (http://tinyurl.com/Menace-Charter) you can see that the concept of equality for all gender expression is represented, but it substitutes term 'Gender people' or 'Gender community' for the use of the word 'transgender'. But bowing to public will and the necessity to get the meme adopted, I accepted the use of transgender as the label for the meme.

In 1994, the Advocate published an article that examined our struggle for acceptance within the Lesbian and Gay community and in society at large (http://tinyurl.com/83v2nyc).  It is worth reading by anyone with an interest in the thoughts of some of the major players in the creation of transgender.

Why do people identify as Transgender and not some specific label?

The real problem is that the labels we have all SUCK.  They have been recycled too many times and no one can agree on the meanings anymore.  However, recycled as it may be, transgender represents a comfortable space where there is little need to tightly confine oneself with labels like Crossdresser or Transsexual.

An atypical gender identity (aka GID) is an invisible condition.  There is no test for it.  Doctors can’t prove someone has it.  It is simply a persistent claim made by the individual for a reasonable amount of time.  But NO ONE external to the individual can absolutely know for sure that the individual has an atypical gender identity.  At this point in time, it is impossible to prove anyone’s gender identity.   Since we can’t prove it, we can’t protect it legally.

However, we can observe gender expression.  It is a palatable component of a person’s presentation. We only start seeing discrimination when gender expression conflicts with society’s expectations.
 

In fact, all of the labels we use for ourselves are derivative from gender expression, not from gender identity. This is true even though gender expression may be the result of an atypical gender identity.

There are three basic forms of gender expression.  Consistent Gender Expression vs. Inconsistent.  Conforming Gender Expression vs. Non-Conforming.  Congruent Gender Expression vs. Incongruent.  Put them in a blender and you can have an Inconsistent Non-Conforming Congruent Gender Expression.  Quite a mouthful.

This all gets very messy and no one actually agrees on any of the meanings behind the labels.   Here are two examples that I have no doubt will cause some to disagree loudly.  This is more or less how the labels are defined in 2011.  I readily admit that 30 years ago, under the clinic model for treating transsexualism, the terms had different meanings.  As I said, recycled too many times.

Transsexual

Transsexual describes someone who professes an atypical gender identity and seeks a consistent gender expression that is congruent with their gender identity.  However, not everyone with an atypical gender identity seeks to have a consistent congruent gender expression and therefore, they are not considered transsexual.   If they do decide to have a consistent congruent gender expression, then they are suddenly  become transsexual. Transsexual is a label of convenience based on the having or desiring a consistent gender expression.

Crossdresser

Crossdresser describes someone who presents an inconsistent gender expression that incongruent with their socially perceived gender identity.  Crossdressers can have atypical gender identity and may present an inconsistent gender expression that is congruent with their gender identity and incongruent with society’s perceptions of their gender identity.  The opposite pattern occurs when the individual has a typical gender identity.  Crossdresser is a label of convenience applied to people who have an inconsistent gender expression.

Transgender allows everyone to unite under one meta-group with having to worry about the ridiculous debate over who is real or who belongs in what group.  This is why many people simply identify as transgender when asked.

How Transsexuals Became Transgender

I think that everyone agrees that transsexuals have atypical gender identities.  This condition, whatever the cause, has been called by various names: Transsexualism in the 1960s gave way to Gender Identity Dysphoria in the 1970 and now it is Gender Identity Disorder (DSM IV).  Each time they changed the name, the method of treatment has changed.  Until the late 1970s, the object of the reassignment clinic model was to only select candidates who would be able to present a gender expression acceptable to the clinic in order to assure that the patient would be able to pass as cis-gender woman and assume a cis-gender life after receiving Sex Reassignment Surgery.  For many people suffering transsexualism, this approach left them outside the clinic and without help.  Many of the individuals even lied to therapists and doctors so that they would be selected for reassignment which contributed to the failure rate of post-reassignment patient.   It was the high suicide-rate that finally caused the clinics to close.

In the meantime, the people left outside the clinics began to explore other paths to reassignment where patriarchal standards of acceptable gender expression were no longer used to judge the viability of reassignment candidates.  Lesbian transsexuals began to emerge in the 1980s who had completely bypassed the clinics finding doctors like Stanley Biber or Arnold Melman would perform SRS based solely on the word of psychologists who made the determination if the patient had Gender Identity Disorder.

With the near complete collapse of the clinic model, it was now up to the patient and the therapist to determine if the patient would be able to assimilate into society using a Real Life Test.  If the patient could find a path for themselves during the RLT, they would be recommended as surgery candidates.  It was this shift away from the clinics and the patriarchal model of proper gender expression that opened the door for transsexuals to consider alternatives to a life in pursuit of passing as cis-gender in order to avoid discrimination.

As the early 90s rolled in, more and more people with GID were in RLT and moving on to Gender Reassignment Surgery without the need to pass as cis-gender.  In fact, they began to seriously question the need to pass at all.  Many individuals opted to be ‘out’ and dispense with passing altogether.  Others began to simply blend and if asked would admit to being transsexual.  It was at this point, the need for people who fought for trans-privileges rather than passed to obtain cis-privileges became apparent.  Rather than avoid discrimination by passing and pretending to be cis-gender, the out transsexuals stood up to discrimination and fought back.  It was about this time that Brandon Teena was raped and murdered for being transsexual.  This outraged the activist transsexuals and accelerated the consolidation various groups under a single meme of broad inclusivity.  That meme became the Transgender meta-group.

The 20-year period between the 1970s and the 1990s represents a movement away from assuming identities as cis-gender individuals in order to assimilate into society.  By the 1990s, transsexuals began to actively fight discrimination and participate in society on our own terms.  We went from seeking cis- privileges to creating trans-privileges.  The 20-years from 1990s to 2010s saw an explosion in trans-privileges nationally and globally.  The next 20-years will see us achieving full equality without having to pass as cis-gender ever again.

Transsexual separatists seek to stand apart

Like any progressive movement, there are always reactionary elements who yearn for the good old days with a nostalgia that is not exactly representative of actual history.    There is a small population of transsexuals that considers themselves ‘true’ transsexuals (a term they have chosen for themselves) who reject the notion that the real fight against discrimination is about gender expression and that since they have had surgery (and I know a few who lie about that status) or intend to have it, they should no longer face discrimination due to their gender expression.  Perfect stealth!  They consider themselves Transsexual Separatists, True Transsexuals or Harry Benjamin Transsexuals (forgetting that Dr. Benjamin himself said that within transsexualism (GID), there was a gradual scale of gender expression from crossdressing to surgical conformity).

There is a strong desire to pass as cis-gender in order to enjoy cis-gender privileges and more importantly avoid discrimination in many people with atypical gender identities, especially baby boomers and Gen X. I don't blame anyone for trying to avoid discrimination, but passing prevents actively fighting discrimination because the passing individual has to sacrifice the safety of passing to confront and fight discrimination.   If too many people choose to pass, then there is no one to fight for equality.

But for some reason, the Transsexual Separatists fear and loath that people collectively are fighting for the right to have a non-conforming gender expression and continually make attacks against those who align themselves in a common cause. In my opinion, they do this because they feel their fragile truce with society and their conviction that surgery makes them the same as cis-gender are threatened by the efforts to bring equality to all people regardless of gender expression. 

In my experience, it has always been best to allow them to go their own way without interference. I wish these reactionaries nothing but the best of luck in their quest for cis-gender privileges.  Hopefully they will find what they are seeking and leave the rest of us alone.  And if they find the reality is not as sweet as the memories, we will always welcome them into our movement.

You Don't Like The Effects WWBT's, Don't Produce The Cause

One of the reasons I love Parliament-Funkadelic's music so much is because there was a lot of truth in many of the songs they wrote and produced back during the 70's and 80's that touched on social issues. 

One of those truths was echoed in a Funkadelic song entitled 'If You Don't Like The Effects, Don't Produce The Cause'

Lately the WWBT's have been crying white women's tears all over the Net because their 'widdle' pearl clutching feelings have been hurt because I and others have been relentless in not only exposing their racist and exclusionary agenda, making fun of them, and at times pimp slapping them back with the same ferocity of rhetoric they have hurled at others.

They have had their Two Minute Hate on for me and those people who confront them ever since.

Doubleplusgood then.

If y'all don't like the effects of being called the Transsexual Taliban, Transsexual Borg, WWBT's, the Tea Trans Klan and my personal favorite ubermenschen, then you and your transsexual separatists need to stop producing the cause.   I and the rest of the community aren't calling y'all out and whacking y'all with these sobriquets for nothing as much as y'all would like to pimp that lie.  We are reacting to your continued nekulturny actions and jacked up sellout behavior.

You are the ones that for years have using radical feminist language against other transpeople, advocating they get cut out of civil rights coverage, demonizing your opponents, trying to redefine the transsexual definition so it benefits you only and now you're crying white women's tears because you can't take what you've been dishing out for years?

What, you girls were that hooked on your whiteness and white privilege to believe that you could and would be able to continue doing that indefinitely without getting the inevitable pushback from the people you aim your crap at and who are beyond sick and tired of it?

I don't think so.  Moni don't play that, and neither do the folks you've been aiming your lies and your electronic brownshirt tactics at.   Buy a vowel, get a clue, and stop hatin'

And I repeat.  If you don't like the effects WWBT's, don't produce the cause.

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Separatist Morality

Those of you who peruse this blog know I have zero love for civil rights oppressors.  That includes the WWBT's, who spend every waking hour of their day viciously hatin' on anyone who dare calls them out on the fact that they are in that same white sheet wearing boat.

Interesting post that popped up at Cristan's Ehipassiko blog  that is also available over at Transadvocate.

All I have to say on this is that the more you flap your gums people, the more you prove everything we've been saying about y'all for the last several years.

Keep On Hatin' WWBT's

I see the WWBT's are still hatin.

I just spent a lovely two days at a conference in which the participants were laughing at y'all.  They noted the outright hatred you WWBT's have for lil old award winning chocolate me with the blog that 'nobody' reads.

Autumn Sandeen at Pam's House Blend just wrote a post that engages in piling on A.G.Casebeer.  Because of my now twelve year and continuing friendship with him, the WWBT's are trying and failing miserably to use it as a vehicle to attack me.

Okay, the man apologized for the comment and I posted it on this blog.  We all know what's going on here.  You're trying to deflect attention away from the unjust UN paper two white first world lesbians wrote that attempts to deny trans people around the world human rights coverage.   You don't want people paying closer attention to the fact that when it comes to 'equality', the rainbow community has people in it that don't practice what they preach at others.

They don't want people digging deeper into the fact that radical lesbian separatists have acted for over 30 years and continue to act as agents for the Forces of Intolerance when it comes to opposing trans human rights and are crying white woman's tears because they're being called on it.

And for once, it ain't just people of color calling their behinds on it..

In your zeal to paint me as a 'racist', you continue to deliberately ignore the fact I've been just as hard on my own people as a sector of you presume I've been on y'all.    The repeated 'racist' straw man is getting so old that my friends have turned it into a joke when they greet me.

But let me attempt to school you delusional WWBT's one more time.

Racism=prejudice plus systemic power.  That's something y'all should have learned and retained from Sociology 101 but obviously didn't .

No person of color has the power on an individual or group level to keep any white person from doing whatever they wish.  But as Brennan and Hungerford just proved with their unjust paper, by dint of their white skin and privilege, the opposite is certainly true.

And don't even try in the comment section to claim President Obama has that power.   If he did, he wouldn't have had to spend time doing a press conference in May over his fracking birth certificate because a group of white people led by an immigrant no less named Orly Taitz has falsely claimed for two years he wasn't a citizen.

Your WWBT calls  for 'stripping me on any positions in the trans community' smack of the same arrogance and white privilege the group of Republican white women who were pissed off at Oprah were drunk on and exercised in 2008.  They got huffy because she wouldn't violate her stated 'no political interviews during the election' policy and conduct one with Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential election campaign  

They swore they would boycott and take down Oprah.   And how did that work out for them?  Those same ones loudly selling woof tickets then were probably begging for tickets to get into United Center for her last sold out shows.

And oh yeah, didn't you ubermenschen claim you weren't part of the trans community? 

You WWBT's are not going to hold me to a shifting standard that you don't apply and don't intend to apply to yourselves.  I'm not going to stop calling out you WWBT's about your hypocrisy, your racism and your selling out your transbrothers and transsisters of all ethnicities for your own selfishness and comfort.   I'm not going to stop pointing out that elements of this community like wearing white sheets under their dresses, or that the leadership ranks of it are as monoethnic as a Republican party meeting.

I'm also going to continue speaking my truth and looking at issues in this community through an Afrocentric viewpoint.   If you don't like that, you can go to Hades and catch the 666 bus to get there.

The more you attack me, the more you continue to prove everything I've said about you WWBT's and the worse you look to non-white transpeople and our allies.

And still I rise.     

I smell the grease from the Hater Tots you're cooking and the aroma of the Vanilla Ice flavored Hateraid you're consuming from 55 gallon drums.   So is everyone else who is peeping your game right now.


Go back to those radical lesbian separatist feminists you pal around with that are still uttering hateful disco era rhetoric about transpeople and have worked for decades to deny transpeople the very human rights coverage that they enjoy.

That's not acceptable and there's no justification for that either.

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