They have never made that leap

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~ghostv/leap.html

That my inchoate yearnings, born from wind and sunshine, music and imagination - that my conundrum might simply be a matter of penis or vagina, testicle or womb, seems to me still a contradiction in terms, for it concerned not my apparatus but my self.
- Jan Morris, "Conundrum".

Me on holidays in 1992, making pasta for some friends



A transsexual in Chicago I correspond periodically with who is just preparing to transition and is having a hard time has been in hospital recently after trying to commit suicide, and I've been in a fair amount of contact by 'phone with her ex-wife, trying to help her family understand what the hell is going on (I don't usually deal with people who know my past but these are exceptional circumstances). The ex-wife, Denise, understands the transsexual thing and is broadly supportive of the transition, but doesn't believe that when my friend says she feels like a woman that she knows what she's talking about. In other words Denise can't make the leap to believing that deep inside Lisa is really a woman, no matter how much she knows about transsexualism and how much she wants life to work out for Lisa. I can understand why Denise may have doubts, 'cause heaven knows Lisa has done some pretty masculine things in her life and still exhibits a lot of masculine interests, so it's hard for her to see the woman in there, and harder as a result for Lisa to express herself.

This 'leap', if you like, is the most critical aspect to thinking about transsexualism. Critics of transsexualism, such as Janice Raymond and Germaine Greer, have mounted pretty strong arguments against it as a male invasion of women's issues (although I think Raymond is a bit off the planet), but they have done so because they have never made that leap to thinking that the transsexual is female, that is, they see transsexuals as innately male, trying to become female, and they reject the possibility of this ever truly occurring.

Some transsexuals, on the other hand, start with the position that they are innately female and that they are adjusting everything else to fit that.

I'd have to say I think the truth is somewhere in between, that there isn't such a polarised spectrum of gender but rather a broad band which encompasses variations, and that transsexuals begin as neither utterly male or female but possibly with the upbringing and physiology of one sex and the underlying wiring of the other (for more and more I am coming to believe that this is something that begins prenatally).

I grant that many people in the transgendered 'community' (if such a thing can be said to exist) seem to me to have an overly fetishistic view of femaleness, and therefore offer a good basis for the argument that they are male-constructed women. The acceptance of this kind of person as broadly representative of all transsexuals is probably due to the accent placed on the 'drag-queen' stereotype by the media. There is a good reason why this focus by the media occurs: most 'successful' (read: 'passable') transsexuals no more want a high profile than they want to be known as men in drag - they want to be seen as women rather than as transsexuals. Thus the majority of transsexuals visible through the media are less than 'passable'.

I think it was Robert Stoller that divided transsexuals into three groups, of which he considered the anonymous 'housewife' type the most 'successful' (let's hear it for patriarchal medicine! Eesh!).

I do not consider myself especially fetishistic of things feminine, nor do I think I have ever been so.

In her book "Transsexual Empire: the making of the she-male" Janice Raymond described transsexuals as essentially the pawns of patriarchal medicine in an attempt to usurp women's space and power. Some of what is in the book is extremely valid, but in its view of transsexuals as pawns it dehumanizes transsexuals and offers them no voice as people (which of course makes it harder to argue with the author's premise).

My chief argument with Janice Raymond's thesis is this: how can she possibly explain my life, in which I have endured so much and put up with so much shit, as part of a plot by others to subvert the cause of feminism?. If she assumes that I would put myself to such lengths, through so much soul searching and anguish, if she imagines that I could hurt so many people, for the sake of someone else's political cause then she is a good deal more paranoid than a rational author ought be. Her tactic reminds me very much of one I saw a lot when I was involved in student politics at university. Adherence to a cause is easier to sustain when it is under attack from without - except that first one has to find an adversary (or invent one), and then align those you wish to destroy with that. (The logic runs something like: such and such does not project the right image, therefore they are a threat, and there must be some sort of conscious organization behind that threat). It's looking for an enemy to justify your struggle.

At that dinner a few months after I transitioned when Jenny upbraided me and demanded to know just what it was that I thought was 'male' or 'female' about anyone and how I thought I could possibly be as female as the other women at the table, I found it difficult to take. I did have enough presence of mind to explain to her that I never thought I'd be "as female" as the other women (like it was a competition or something!) but I thought I'd be more comfortable socially in a woman's role. It was the best I could do then, it's probably still the best I can do now.