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Transgender rights and feminism in the US are both considered part of the cultural left's causes, but it occurred to me that one might perceive an inherent tension between the two:

  • The basis of feminism seems, to me, that all differences between men and women other than anatomical differences are purely social constructs. Women don't have inherently different intellects and emotional dispositions than men, and whatever differences they do have are acquired characteristics inculcated by a patriarchal society. Moreover a lot of traditionally feminine behavior, such as dressing a certain way, an acceptance of objectification, etc...are linked to the oppression of women.
  • Trans folk on the other hand are stereotyped as "feeling like a trapped [man/woman] in a [woman/man]'s body", "knowing since early childhood that they were really women", etc...as if gender and sex are separate notions. It's almost as if they're embracing a form of mind-body dualism, with there being a specific gendered mind that then has to be correctly synced up with a gendered body.

How can one reconcile feminist ideals with transgender notions of what really makes a person male or female? And does being trans indeed imply a form of mind-body dualism if claims of belonging to one gender but being trapped in the wrong body are valid?

commando
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Alexander S King
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    I'm busy at the moment but your question is founded in a complete misunderstanding and pernicious misrepresentation of what it means to be transgender. Transfolk do not often speak that way, it's a stereotype. Most transfolk do not have the experience from childhood that you describe - they realize later on. There is more to being a woman than anatomy, at least neurologically (just one example). And many/most transfolk don't embrace gender roles; that's a complete misconception. – commando Dec 01 '16 at 17:43
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    ...there's in fact a double-standard for transfolk: if you don't embrace the gender roles, how can you really be trans? But if you do, aren't you just keeping the institutional inequalities in place? Feminism understands that this is what transfolk have to face, and seeks to overcome the ignorance your question exemplifies. – commando Dec 01 '16 at 17:44
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    This is all not even to mention that your question erases the existence of non-binary transfolk, who constitute a sizeable (in my experience, at least a quarter) proportion of the trans population. Sorry, I guess I wasn't that busy - just too busy to dig up references right now. – commando Dec 01 '16 at 17:46
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    "The basis of feminism is that all differences between men and women other than anatomical differences are purely social constructs" -- I think that is one branch or interpretation of feminism, a somewhat extremist or academic position. – Ask About Monica Dec 01 '16 at 18:03
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    @commando a) I know I'm ignorant, that's why I ask. b) "Transfolk do not often speak that way," -- my information is anecdotal, collected from news articles and social media posts, but every single one of them spoke of being trapped in a body of the wrong gender, and many spoke of knowing since childhood. If you can point me to better sources, I'd bet grateful. c) The question isn't "how can you be trans if you don't embrace gender roles?", it's "how can you be trans if there is no such a thing as gender role?" – Alexander S King Dec 01 '16 at 18:06
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    @commando also saying that there inherent neurological differences is one step away from saying that women don't have the right neural structure to be soldiers or mathematicians or what not. – Alexander S King Dec 01 '16 at 18:13
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    @AlexanderSKing a) and yet you've stated your incorrect generalizations as offensive facts; b) I haven't stumbled upon studies of this and I'd be surprised if they were conducted, but as a participant in the queer community with almost a dozen trans friends and an order of magnitude more interactions, I daresay I'm speaking from an epistemically superior position... – commando Dec 01 '16 at 18:15
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    ...c) gender and gender roles are not the same thing. There are neurological accounts of gender (e.g. 1, see wiki) which do not commit to gender roles. They commit only to the reality of the gender dysphoria/euphoria transfolk face, and the necessity of treating that appropriately. The treatment is not to put someone in the "right" role. It's to provide them with whatever they need to relieve dysphoria (usually hormone therapy) – commando Dec 01 '16 at 18:16
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    You latest comment is completely off the mark. It's not a normative claim. It's the claim that being transgender is a robust medical condition with robust requirements for treatment, and that being transgender is entirely separate from a social notion of gender roles or any such anti-feminist claim. I don't see how that edges even close to prescribing inabilities to women. – commando Dec 01 '16 at 18:17
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    here are a few sources – commando Dec 01 '16 at 18:37
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    Thanks for the sources. I've dug up an opposing point of view and surprisingly, the SEP mentions the question as well "One major set of philosophical themes concerns competing conceptions of the self and its relation to the sexed body and to gender [...] Is the self prior to the institution of gender identity? Is sex the “hardware” on which the program of gender is run, or is sex itself thoroughly cultural?" – Alexander S King Dec 01 '16 at 18:57
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    I never said that men and women have necessarily different brains. I never said that the trans experience is the cis experience. The article is founded in a misunderstanding I haven't the time to explain before my impending class, but in brief: all I said was the transgender experience is medically validated. There is such a thing as a subtly, slightly different trans brain. And that's enough to validate the experience. The author of that article is naively taking this to be some sort of equivocation. And mention of a question is not the same as its being a good one. – commando Dec 01 '16 at 19:01
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    Even accepting the contested claims I do not see how verbal reports projected back to early childhood contradict social construction of gender (be it true or false). At most they would show that society occasionally "inculcates" psychological inclinations at odds with biological gender already in early childhood. And this is taking them at face value, which is itself highly dubious because complex notions acquired later in life ("feeling like a woman") are imputed to the tender age where they can hardly be expected to be operational. – Conifold Dec 01 '16 at 20:12
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    Isn't this a question for politics or psychology? That you request of the respect for obtaining knowledge (read: philosophy) the reconciliation of two ways of looking at things you will neither obtain knowledge nor discover anything more than further weltanschauung. If a way of looking at things were adequate to obtain knowledge, then you could drink from a mirage while confusing it for oasis. You can not. – MmmHmm Dec 01 '16 at 20:20
  • The trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) have made exactly that point. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Trans-exclusionary_radical_feminism – user4894 Dec 01 '16 at 21:21
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    @Alexander S King, that's a great question, and mentioned in SEP too because it IS relevant, and I'm surprised by hostility shown by Commando, instead of admitting that this IS a problem that people in the two movements are facing and that as a result of interaction between these movements different themes are being pursued to clarify each movement's position and see to what extent a middle ground can be reached. The only issue I have is the word "inherently" in OP's question and I want to say feminism has many branches/waves and that view is not inherent to them all. – Jlente Dec 01 '16 at 21:52
  • From my admittedly small experience, I don't think it is fair to say that the claims about early experiences of transexuality are inexistent or even rare. In fact, I have more than once asked, "but isn't it true that there is such thing as late onset transexuality", and seem to have got my interlocutors confused, as if the notion was alien to them. On the other hand I don't think that we need to take verbal reports of anyone about their own psychologic histories in order to be respectful of their personalities. – Luís Henrique Dec 03 '16 at 23:24
  • @gonzo you will note that the phrase was King's. I simply left it untouched. The classical, obsolete position is synonymity of gender and sex. The intermediate, progressing notion is that they are different. The progressed realization is that sex is an unnecessary construction since its ostensible biological foundations are inconsistent (see intersexuality, androgen insensitivity, genetic mosaicism, etc.), and that gender is all we can really rely on. Which brings to the foreground the difficult notion of defining gender. We should avoid more comments on this chain. – commando Dec 04 '16 at 00:22
  • @gonzo if I were to correct the question's biases completely it would call for a total rewrite from scratch. I preserved the implicit binary among other things to maintain some semblance of the original, out-dated tone. – commando Dec 04 '16 at 00:43
  • I thought this essay might interest you: https://quillette.com/2019/01/02/strange-bedfellows-the-peculiar-alliance-between-centrist-liberals-and-radical-feminists/ – gonzo Jan 03 '19 at 21:16
  • Here's an essay that addresses the concerns of your original post in the context of what has transpired in the epistemic neighborhood over the past half decade: https://quillette.com/2021/09/12/judith-butler-enough-already/ – gonzo Sep 13 '21 at 23:50

3 Answers3

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It seems to me that this question is based upon two false assumptions.

1.) Feminism today seeks not to erase the differences between men and women, but to change the perception of everything feminine as being inherently lesser than everything masculine. It is from this aim to normalize and appreciate "femininity" that the lines between strictly gendered values may appear to blur, such as the realization that crying does not indicate weakness leading to an acceptance of men crying instead of being forced by social obligation to hide their feelings. Modern feminism acknowledges that there may be differences between men and women, but that those differences do not interfere with our abilities to be useful, functional, and rational. In the past, the main struggle was to prove that women were even capable of becoming "soldiers and mathematicians and whatnot," as you mentioned, and as a result were forced to present themselves in a more masculine way; in order to be taken seriously, a woman in a predominantly male field had to present herself as "one of the guys" to be accepted. Now, the women in those positions are seeking the freedom to reclaim their femininity (however they define it) because things like wearing makeup and watching soap operas don't affect a person's ability to think logically and work diligently. The idea here is to paint the traditional view of femininity in a more positive light in order to share it with men (as wearing makeup and watching soap operas have no power to reflect on the validity of a man's gender and do not inherently weaken a person) and break the requirement of women to completely conform to this traditional feminine role.

2.) The "popular transgender narrative," as it is referred to within the queer and trans community, was created to simplify the trans experience into something easily digested by cisgender people. The idea that somebody can be "a woman trapped in a man's body" is outlandish and ridiculous, but I am guilty of providing a similar simplification as explanation of my decision to transition to those that I already know will never understand my feelings. The actual trans experience consists of a combination of social and physical dysphoria that may arise at any time in one's life, and is usually not understood until much later in life. We are forced to claim that we knew from birth in order to dodge invalidating accusations that something "turned" us transgender, even if we didn't begin questioning our gender until our teens, thirties, or late sixties. Social dysphoria can be defined most simply as the discomfort experienced from being forced into the roles associated with the gender that one is assigned at birth (which feminism seeks to dismantle), whether one is given the opportunity to explore the feeling of living within the role of another gender or not. Physical dysphoria, similarly simplified, is the discomfort or disgust felt in regards to one's body in terms of not only secondary sex characteristics, but often things such as height, body type, and facial features. Whether this discomfort is a result of subconscious associations with social values regarding the binary gendered body (as those who support the complete abolition of gender will claim) remains to be seen, and the concrete, physical discomfort will not be soothed by this kind of realization anyways. The adaptation of traditional gender roles after transition is often another attempt to dodge invalidation, and many transfolk do experience a more mixed identification with certain aspects of their assigned gender and of their true gender.

As a transman and a feminist, I believe that modern feminism only stands to improve the social acceptance of genderqueer and transgender people due to the overlap of issues that feminism seeks to resolve and struggles that genderqueer and transfolk face.

Oliver
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  • This is really well said, and I appreciate your being so forthcoming. Honestly, I don't understand why anyone gives a rip about gender roles, or any kind of roles at all. I don't know why people care what other people think, feel, want or whatever. Just avoid people you don't get along with. It can't mathematically be everyone, so damn everyone else. And this word 'assigned' is really incorrect. There was no assignment going on. No one was is charge, is in charge or ever will be. You are tall, fat, orange or whatever and that is just as random as anything else in the universe. So what? – Scott Rowe Jul 24 '22 at 01:46
  • "We are forced to claim that we knew from birth" - I haven't heard people say that, because we don't know anything at birth, but I have heard people say that they were trans from birth, or at least as long as they can remember, with various anecdotes to support that (although it may have taken varying amounts of time to figure that, and to find the words to express it, especially when/where the idea of being trans was/is still relatively unknown in society). That may not be the case for everyone, but it's certainly the case for plenty of trans people. – NotThatGuy Nov 26 '23 at 21:07
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This may be less of an answer than a defense of the question -- I like @AlexanderSKing and I consider him more brave than misinformed. My own reaction is exactly @Oliver's, and I don't intend to compete with him.

The question leaves out a very important complicating factor. There really are three players in the game here. Framings of gay identity, transgender understandings and different kinds of feminism all compete to shape our assumptions about gender in definite and permanent ways. In the process, they all step on one another's toes to one degree or another. Pretending they all happily get along lies somewhere between posturing and wishful thinking. Here is one cycle of conflicts that have yet to be reconciled.

It is primarily the stability of the understanding upon which the broader society has accepted gay culture that relies strongly on gender roles being largely socially constructed, with inborn nature not matching the social construction. Feminism only gains from this perspective when women want a chance to play men's roles, not when they want to be valued for themselves and truly integrated into an equal society that acknowledges the full range of natural behaviors.

Feminism focussed on the latter: increasing the real social value of women as they already contribute to society, without becoming any more like men, also exists. And it contains branches that adopt basic gender differences traceable to physical differences as a positive fact we have not yet adequately valued. (E.g. Dianic Witches and the likes of Christina Hoff-Summers) We have never truly cultivated natural female (or male) nature because we have overlayed it with a bias toward the demands of social roles. To my mind they are right, but this returns certain gay men to the position of being inadequately male at a basic level.

The casualties of this conflict turn to history and identify a historical trend of maintaining a 'psychologically hermaphroditic' sex or 'third gender' of effeminate males, often as a marked variety of priest, and often placing them in the roles of confessor, arbitrator or ambassador. (E.g. , "The Zuni Two-Spirit" a' la Ambassador We'Wha, the Hermaphrodyte imagery in Alchemy, half of all Marian Orders of Franciscan Priests.)

Transgender advocates can just look at that and accuse those men of being self-hating transgendered individuals who cannot own their identity because they have been afforded a place due to male privilege.

Other gay men obviously don't want to see a contingent of people who would rather identify with them rather than apart from them further degraded by what they see as aggressive political correctness. So they more strongly cling to the notion that all of this is about other people trying to impose an identity on them. They often go too far with this, to the degree that they deny the validity or extent of claims about intersexual/intergender identity.

And around and around we go...

Dynamics like this are real and matter to those trapped in them. So having outsiders point them out is not a horrible thing that needs to be beaten away with a stick.

  • Sorry, but the "three players are? "Queers" (meaning gays?), "feminists", and "transfolk"? And what does"Other gay men obviously don't want to see a contingent of people who would rather identify with them rather than apart from them further degraded by what they see as aggressive political correctness. So they lean into the notion that all of this is about other people trying to impose an identity on them, to the degree that they infringe on valid claims as to the extent of intersexual identity" mean? – gonzo Dec 03 '16 at 00:25
  • @gonzo. I have added some detail, broken up some overcomplicated sentences, and removed some colloquialisms. I hope it makes more sense now. –  Dec 03 '16 at 01:50
  • Pointing out tension brought about by misunderstanding differs from making a strong claim that two positions are necessarily contradictory, and doing so offensively. The original (unedited) question was not nearly so innocently probing or merely suggestive as your reading implies (and it remains problematic). I can't reply to your other comments within this comment, and somehow I doubt that whatever I say will be to your satisfaction. But what was being asked did not have the value you suggest. Engaging in that level of discourse implies a pre-existing understanding which was not demonstrated. – commando Dec 03 '16 at 04:01
  • @commando I still feel you are imputing malice where stupidity suffices. I am not in any way implying the author has the breadth of perspective on this issue that people who have to navigate the issue first hand. But this kind of problem is all a deeper network of exactly the same contradictions those never challenged by any of this face when they encounter these issues. If we still can't make sense to one another, we should take better perspective on the rest of the people to whom we make no sense. –  Dec 03 '16 at 04:29
  • Oh, I'm sorry, it looks like I miscommunicated. I never meant to impute malice - only ignorance. But ignorance isn't precluded from my accusations of perniciousness, and my frustration stems in large from the fact that asking such a "brave" question seems like a great deal of misplaced effort. It's essentially a request to be spoon-fed information, whereas taking the ten seconds to google "transgender feminism" will immediately yield a half-dozen relevant results. This isn't to mention the incorrigibility of the asker in response to my comments. If one's opinion is already formed, why ask? – commando Dec 03 '16 at 04:33
  • @commando -- I have a bizarre past, and I certainly know Dianic witches and radical Faeries who totally doubt the authenticity of M-to-Fs, and propose shallow psychological theories of them as overprivileged males with bizarre envy issues, and I know transsexuals who try to tell inter-gendered people who prefer to identify as bisexual men that this is a cowardly betrayal, etc. This stuff is complicated and for some reason that ultimately makes no sense, it all just hurts. Adding extra defensiveness is somehow automatic. –  Dec 03 '16 at 04:36
  • You're right, of course. And I'm sure your experiences eclipse mine. I'm still a young person coming to terms with my queerness, and in such a vulnerable situation it was hurtful to see the question, especially as first phrased, on a site for which I feel a certain familial affiliation. I stand by my words - but I grant that they came from a place of layered protectiveness. – commando Dec 03 '16 at 04:42
  • @commando And to my eyes, it seems to me that you are the one with the overdeveloped theories that you won't see questioned, addressing someone wholly unused to even thinking about this. The theoretical bases behind gay/trans/feminist identity politics and the science that support them are still very weak for the quantity of assertions made. –  Dec 03 '16 at 04:42
  • My primary claim being the innocuousness of the trans identity amidst feminism, I'm not sure I see your point. The borders of my claims are subject to dispute, but my core assertion was simple, pre-scientific, and echoed by Oliver: the line of thought motivating trans-exclusionary rhetoric is founded in a misunderstanding of what constitutes the trans experience (viz. trans folk ostensibly adhering to certain insidious beliefs and social practices by necessity). Scientific evidence is just a cherry on top of that reality. – commando Dec 03 '16 at 04:45
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    Sorry, we overlapped there. But ultimately, your generation has a theoretical basis and a breadth of support that mine lacked, so this kind of conversation will hopefully be less vicious, and more fact-based. But perspective must be maintained. A lot of 'facts' about these subjects are terrilby finely filtered by political correctness, and ultimately not as convincing as they need to be. –  Dec 03 '16 at 04:45
  • But this is ultimately psychology, and psychological 'facts' based in taking experience as it is given have been used to uphold racism, force conversions to religions, etc. as well. Documenting an experience does not ensure it is not caused by social manipulation. –  Dec 03 '16 at 04:47
  • I am sorry that I am in the habit of beating up on people for not listening. You have seen where it has gotten me with others. And I hope you do take this for what it is. A request that you consider the frailty of those around you, and not an attempt to control how you think. –  Dec 03 '16 at 04:50
  • If I've understood correctly, our agreement-in-fact is overshadowed by a methodological criticism you're making of me. I suspect this takes us to nuances on the context of the discourse not quite worth the rabbit hole. I should presumably stop here, since this is something we could easily discuss for aeons. But I think we're on the same page - or, at least, reading the same chapter. – commando Dec 03 '16 at 04:56
  • @commando -- Surely. And sorry to keep with the addendums... But one more: I also want to back away from 'trumping' your experience. I am just a gay guy whose actual experience of coming out has been relatively untraumatic, and who could easily have been asexual my entire life. But I have been very close to folks who eventually identified as transsexual and/or intergendered in the context of a religious circle that forced a high level of emotional honesty. So my experience is all empathy and no real investment. That probably makes it easier for me to be academic about it all. –  Dec 03 '16 at 05:10
  • Jobermark thanks for defending me. @commando thanks for the edit, I acknowledge that my original formulation of the question was somewhat offensive - as it was based on popular media accounts of the topic, not any direct knowledge of the community involved. I asked the question here exactly because I felt it was safe place where the audience understands that questioning philosophical assumptions doesn't necessarily imply some form of bigotry. – Alexander S King Dec 03 '16 at 19:55
  • I thought this essay might be of interest: https://quillette.com/2019/01/02/strange-bedfellows-the-peculiar-alliance-between-centrist-liberals-and-radical-feminists/ – gonzo Jan 03 '19 at 21:19
  • and around... and around –  Jan 03 '19 at 22:58
  • Almost every part of this answer is egregiously factually incorrect. 1. The framing that gay, trans and feminist people are in conflict when the same people usually advocate for all 3 (never mind gay trans feminists). 2. Implying that feminism is primarily about "when women want a chance to play men's roles", and feminists who want equality "also exist", even though the literal definition of feminism is about equality. 3. "Branches" of feminism may look down on being gay, but those hardly speak for the majority. 4. History is more complicated than the narrative you're trying to spin here. – NotThatGuy Nov 26 '23 at 21:52
  • Trans advocates don't commonly accuse people of being self-hating, and you saying they cite male privilege just seems like pure conspiracy theory. 6. Your point about gay people feeling "degraded" by the existence of trans people only makes sense if you equate being gay and being trans, yet they're obviously very different. 7. If anything needs to be "beaten away with a stick" it's people trying to argue that others shouldn't be allowed to exist, and supporting that with false and incoherent arguments like those in this answer.
    • – NotThatGuy Nov 26 '23 at 21:53