Discussion about this post

User's avatar
mari's avatar

Part of the trouble with talking about gender is that it encompasses a number of social / cultural / biological elements, which are often elided with one another for rhetorical purposes.

Let's take trans women in sports, for instance. The common refrain that trans women have an unfair advantage over cis women takes a grouping of trans women primarily defined by social identity and then places them in a context where we're talking about biology, whereas we can get a more accurate way of thinking about things by grouping trans women based on biology. What I mean here is, for instance, that it should be altogether uncontroversial that a trans girl whose body never experienced male puberty is well within the bounds for an athletic competition, whereas a trans woman who is not medically transitioning could fairly be said to have certain advantages. Then, it's simply a matter of thinking though and isolating the relevant features of a person for a certain category and being clear about the hows and whys.

In the case of sports, one standard i've seen is that trans women need to maintain a hormone profile within a normalized cis woman range for at least 2 years, with regular testing, and that trans men can compete in the mens category, regardless of hormone profiles. This is radically different than what people will say about how you can simply identify your way in to a given category, as hormones do actually change one's biology. Whether this is the correct standard or not is something that can be studied and debated without dehumanizing or attacking trans people.

It is worth saying that I, myself, am trans. I know that there are differences between myself and cis women- I call myself a trans woman, not a cis woman. My experience is colored by things like navigating medical and social institutions in ways that cis women do not have to. But neither can I accurately be called a man- my phenotype no longer looks quite male, my body has and continues to change, and my social role is one that is distinct from the men in my life, and is much closer to womanhood.

Things like harrassment and catcalling have begun to be a part of my everyday reality, and i doubt i'd have particularly good outcomes if imprisoned in a mens' prison. This is not to say that people can't tell I'm trans, but what that means in practical terms is that i'm treated closer to a woman than as a man, but not entirely as a woman.

What I want ultimately, is not a denial of reality, but an acknowledgement of the full and total reality of the gendered categories which I inhabit. To say that I am a man misses key and central parts of what my life is like, whether biologically, socially, or politically. It misses the radical ways that hormones have altered the texture, shape, sensations, and emotional quality of my life, the way that my friendships have shifted over time and both family and strangers alike treat me. It misses the clear and present dangers to myself and my community and the ways that those things shape my sense of personhood and solidarity with other struggles for fair treatment and bodily autonomy.

All this to repeat again- gender is a loosely defined aggregation of a large number of distinct and loosely correlated qualities, and i do not think that it is beyond reason to say that one may already have major overlaps with qualities other than those linked with one's birth gender, and that others can be meaningfully shifted. I will never have a uterus, but if i look and sound like a woman, am treated like a woman, and occupy a number of the social roles and realities of a woman, what is to be gained by pushing me into spaces and roles that are the domain of men?

Expand full comment
MichaeL Roe's avatar

With trans people, we can at least consider the possibility that it might be quite literally true that they are somehow, in some respect, more like the opposite sex to their assigned gender at borth; also, that it might be less literal and more metaphorical. With furries, we can be rather more sure that it just has to be a metaphor, and can't be literal.

With trans people, we might cxonsider:

a) male-female gender differences just aren't that large, compared to within group vsriance. Our intuition on the lines of "well, obviously, there will be statistical outliers" suggests that random variation might people some people nearer to the opposire gender on some measurement axes.

b) Significant minority of trans people also have genetic intersex conditions. Roughly about a few percent, I think. Way higher than the general population, but not a majority of trans people. When you're in the territory of "this person has some cells with XX and some with XY karotype", we casn be totally unsurprised if their prefered gender turns out to something other than their doctors guess at birth

c) autism. We dont know what causes it, looks kind of bioloigcal. Called "extreme male brain" why Simon Baron Cohen. We can feel ourselves totally unsurpised if something described as "extreme male brain" turns out to be strongly correlated with FtM trans people. Maybe whwtever autism is has something to do with the biology of sexual diffwerentiation.

Or, trans peoplem or some trans people, are speaking more metaphorically, But it might, maybe, sometimes, but literal.

Furries, on the other hand .... got to be some kind of metaphor, maybe for a difference or an alienatio that us not literally being a non-human animal.

Expand full comment
4 more comments...

No posts