As communities rise from the margins, they undergo a process of introspection, microscopic self-examination and self-definition. It’s a process of healing, throwing off the ill-fitting definitions that had been imposed previously by a majority that didn’t experience and most often didn’t understand what it was building a box around. It’s a process of finding pride in oneself and one’s identity. It’s an important and necessary step in emerging and finding one’s strength and will. It is this process that the trans community (or communities?) is evolving through.
But history shows that when left to happen without agreed-upon parameters, this newfound freedom to self-define has a tendency to exclude and marginalize others that share some fundamental common purposes.
As the gay community became able to articulate their issues as ones of sexual orientation, it facilitated the ejection of trans issues (gender identity and expression), which they tended to feel were irrelevant or even embarrassing - decades later, it has become clearer that LGB people are inevitably as much stereotyped by gender expectations in society as orientation issues, even if those expectations are sometimes a fallacy.
As lesbians who did not fall under the “butch/femme” motif felt comfortable enough to come out and define themselves, they ejected those who they felt perpetuated “bad stereotypes” of who they were. Years later, it has come to be acknowledgement that this had only served to injure an integral part of that community - a part that was often integral to the early years of lesbian emergence.
As feminism came into its own and defined itself, it ejected sex workers, transwomen, housewives and more who didn’t fit the emerging definitions of the modern woman. Today, it’s increasingly understood that each have valuable insights into the ongoing dialogue of womanhood, even if they aren’t always completely representative of the whole.
Self-definition is important up to, but not including, the point where it seeks to define others by comparison. Emergent communities have often made this mistake and caused years of bitterness and resentment as a result. And in most cases, they have been seriously wrong in crossing that line.
The problem arises when a community or a part within a community sees an opportunity to rise above its marginalization and concludes that it is prudent to distance itself from its potential allies to do so.
Historically, racial groups in North America demonstrated this visibly. German, Irish, Italian, Polish, Scottish and other European heritages weren’t always considered “white” by the standards of early immigrants, but as society evolved and appeared prepared to accept these nationalities at the price of mostly assimilating into English-derived culture, many happily embraced it at the expense of other marginalized cultures and races. Among African-Americans too, “skin privilege” allowed whiter-looking people or those of mixed heritage to rise from the lowest levels of discrimination to partial authority, with the compromise being the reinforcement of marginalization of black people. Today, white-looking Natives, Hispanics, Jews and mixed heritage people still often enjoy “passing privilege” and have the option to say nothing when confronted with prejudices about people of similar background - which some do, sometimes even participating (offhand, I am reminded of a local white supremacist who is said to be of Métis background).
In other words, as each – gay, lesbian, feminist, ethnic European, or white-appearing – found the opportunity to say to mainstream society that “we’re just like you; we’re non-threatening” through new self-definition, they (and by this I mean general majorities, not necessarily overwhelmingly) tended to give in to the human tendency to take the path of least resistance, and left behind or even injured brothers, sisters, allies or kin.
Today, the trans community (or for phraseology that some are more comfortable with, the collision of transsexual and transgender populations) provides an intricate microcosm in which one can see the evolution of minorities, the struggle against oppressions, the quests to assimilate. The emergent divisions are exacerbated by diversity, views on stealth, the embrace or rejection of sex-negative mores, existing and evolving medical frameworks from outside trans spheres, and the inciting of resentment from the elapsed time between the genesis of trans activism in the late 1960s and the development of real, substantive progress in the late 1990s (later in Canada).
Part of the battleground has been over the word “transgender” itself, over its appropriateness as an umbrella term or whether there should even BE an umbrella term at all. The word was invented to describe exclusively crossdressers who were attracted to women, and reviled transsexuals or androphiles (people attracted to men), so it came into this world with some baggage in the first place. Others fear that by using an umbrella term, the unique needs of sub-communities such as transsexuals are erased – although my experience (perhaps unique to the region I live in?) has tended to be that transsexual issues and identities have been at the forefront of trans activism and sometimes threatened to erase other trans identities.
[Either way, I’ll be clear: I don’t give a damn what the word is, as long as there’s somewhere we can all meet for coffee once in awhile and talk about things that are of mutual importance to us.]
One development has been the emergence of genderqueer thought, which is often an embrace of either dual-gendered, non-gendered or third-sex identity. Genderqueer warrior conceptualization has invited an influx of people – mostly younger and progressive-minded, occasionally trend-seeking – who don’t feel that they really fit into the socially-constructed boxes of “male” or “female.” Gender deconstruction derives significantly from a relatively recent evolution of feminist thought.
Another has been the development of Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS), Woman Born Transsexual (WBT), Classic Transsexual and other forms of transsexual-only philosophy. I’m not the best person to describe the nuances that separate them. These tend to embrace a belief in duality of gender, the current medicalized structure of transsexual treatment and the emergent and increasing scientific discoveries demonstrating a strong likelihood of a biological origin of transsexuality. And if this were the sole framework of HBS / WBT / Classic thought, I’d tend to be quite impressed – but unfortunately, many of the people driving this branch of self-definition have made it a central point to deride and vilify other trans identities.
With transsexual-only philosophy deriving from a physiological focus and genderqueer thought from dissection of social constructs, two of the three factors of human behaviour (biology, socialization and choice), they have a tendency to be fundamentally in opposition to each other by dismissing the other’s fundamental principles.
As I already mentioned, self-definition is important up to, but not including, the point where it seeks to define others by comparison, and each has been seeking to elevate at the other’s expense to some degree. HBS / WBT / Classic thinkers have had a habit of ejecting moderates who are willing to embrace a “transgender” umbrella, with genderqueer people happy to take in the refugees, but both have a capacity for betrayal in those times that they insist on discounting the other. HBS / WBT / Classic writing has had a particular habit of taking genderqueer thought and painting it onto other trans segments – crossdressers, non-operative transsexuals – sometimes exploiting the same shock value that transphobes have taken advantage of for centuries.
I don’t believe that either are wrong at their foundations, but each risks repeating the mistakes of the past when they seek to define others and deny the validity of lives and experiences which may be different, but no less real.
Although I may seem to pick on HBS / WBT / Classic thought more, I certainly know that the problem is not one-sided. In fact, stripped of any practice of criticizing others’ experiences or identities, it’s probably where I’d find myself most at home. During the GRS delisting controversy earlier this year, I was confronted by one genderqueer person who insisted that surgery is a “cop-out,” that blurring all gender lines was the key to human harmony and that surgery could never make one whole.
Taking a hardline view from any direction is equally capable of alienating real lives and real experiences.
In a recent interview, Rocky Horror Show creator Richard O’ Brien laid bare some of his own trans experience:
“All my life, I’ve been fighting, torn in two and battling – never belonging, actually. Never being male. Or female. Wondering if I was born transgender? Did it happen in the womb? That might have made it easier. I don’t know. Or was it psychological? I’d been going to therapy, treating what I was as though it was some kind of illness – getting more and more depressed, wondering, ‘could I be cured?’ I went mad, really. My marriage was going down the tubes and I just lost it. Lost it. Lost it...”
This seemed to me to drive home the reality of what is often the most denigrated part of the trans community, crossdressers (although I don’t know if this is how O’Brien identifies). In the past, I’ve offered advice and support in many online trans communities and various local groups, transsexual, crossdresser, mixed and more.
Something that is to me universal amongst all is a struggle with confusion from being outside societal expectations, a struggle that is inevitably only resolved by following one’s heart to self-realization. Although the realizations may vary, the “realness” of identity is just as genuine.
In order to find commonality and learn the valid lessons that each of our realities can illuminate, we must learn to respect other identities, and not fall back on philosophical means to invalidate each other.
As we define ourselves, we need to take care to base those definitions on responsible, mutually-respectful foundations, and avoid mistaking the various parts of the elephant we’ve blindly discovered for the whole. It is my wish that our loose coalition of trans (or whatever name we want to gather under) identities can learn from the past and show the future how self-definition should be done.
Mercedes Allen is a writer who blogs at http://dentedbluemercedes.wordpress.com/, has been featured on bilerico.com, PageOneQ and others, and has also developed the website at AlbertaTrans.org as a resource for transgender information and support.
