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On a Serious Note: A Long Post
I got into a discussion on my Neocities feed earlier today and the other person involved noted that Neocities comment feeds are like, the worst place to have a discussion, which is fair, and besides, I have my own website where I can write whatever I want.
I am not frequently personal on this website; it's more about my personal projects and web development resources than anything else. First and foremost, though, trans people are welcome here.
I'm a cis lesbian, but I've had the privilege to be friends with a number of trans people—men, women, nonbinary, and along a broader spectrum of experience. The arguments I see characterizing transness as a problem generally fall into the following categories:
- Why can't you just be a gender-nonconforming person of the sex you were born as?
- Isn't transness just based on stereotypes about men and women?
- Could it just be a fetish for dressing up in a way that feels transgressive?
Honestly, to all of this, I'd say—first of all, I start to wonder if people holding these opinions have a lot of experience with trans people, or gender-nonconforming people in general, and particularly if they have that experience offline. It's really easy to lose sight of actual people when dealing in online theoreticals, and honestly, people are so much more chill and normal offline. If you've been to a Pride event, you've probably been around all kinds of people with weird genders minding their own business and you didn't even notice.
(It's possible my experience is a little different since I'm in my thirties and most of the people I know are, well, also in their thirties, incredibly tired, and are just trying to live their lives on this bitch of an earth. They look up to artists and writers and revolutionaries, although mostly they want to have jobs and food to eat and to make sure that everyone has the freedom to present themselves to the world free of restrictive gender roles. All of them are kind people; many of them have been subject to a lot of mistreatment their whole lives that have made them careful and considerate in how they treat others, often to a fault.)
I think about gender a lot like that one scene in Mona Lisa Smile—the main character art professor gives all her students at Wellesley a paint-by-numbers kit to work on to make a point about how they're choosing lives of conformity by being there for a "Mrs" degree. (That is, the old slang for attending college only until you find a husband.) But at the end of the year, as she's been dismissed from her position, they all show her their work—and they're all wildly different pieces of art in different styles while still adhering to the paint-by-numbers lines.
So if I may stretch this metaphor, gender is a bit like picking your canvas material, but you can do whatever you like with your materials and style. The person I was discussing with contends, in somewhat less polite words, that a bunth trans woman is "just a man," but I think that misses something essential, since I think they'd also agree that how one dresses doesn't dictate your gender. Does dressing that way make a butch cis lesbian a man? I think most people would agree that it certainly doesn't, so why would that be true of a trans lesbian?
Ultimately, all the trans people I know think a lot about the role of gender in society and how to make those roles more equitable. They're all keenly aware of how restrictive gender rules do no one any favors, and furthermore, keenly aware of how much danger they put themselves in by placing themselves outside the acceptable boxes given by society—and that danger is largely violence at the hands of cis men. As a lesbian and a person of color, I personally find kinship in this because both my sexuality and my ethnicity place me outside of the "expected" experience of white heterosexual womanhood. I know not everyone shares my particular opinion, here, but I think there's a lot of wonderful solidarity to be found. Lesbians are used to being considered "predatory" toward straight women and to be thought of as "lesser" or "failed" women without even transing our genders; I think the parallels are obvious.
In the current political climate—around the world, and especially in my home country of the United States—to resist the imposition of that expected norm is, in my opinion, essential. The political right wants to dictate the experience of gender to a real paint-by-numbers experience, where there is only one acceptable way to live, and everyone else either needs to conform or is consigned to disposability. I don't want to concede an inch to any philosophy that determines my destiny based on what body I was or wasn't born with.
The fact of the matter is that the rate of regret on gender-affirming surgery is less than the rate of regret on things like necessary amputations and hip replacements. That's a low number. It's been agreed on for decades what the medical and humane standard of care should be—and just because it's under attack now doesn't mean the science has changed. These treatments are safe and well-established and consistent with improved standard of living. Gender can involve a lot of things, and it need not be fully (or at all!) medical! But I have a strong personal belief in bodily autonomy—the right to choose your haircut, to get tattoos, to get an abortion whether necessary or not, and to, yes, make modifications to your body toward how you want to present yourself to the world.
This is my last word on the matter (probably). As it is said in the Pirkei Avot, "If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am for my own self [only], what am I? And if not now, when?" I cannot be only for myself; none of us can. We must all be for each other. So call your local politicians and go out and volunteer in your community, okay?
ETA: Follow-up responding to an anon's questions, noted here for archival reasons.
