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Marti of Transadvocate posted yesterday about certain perennial topics of discord in and around the trans community. This is worthy of deep contemplation because, as i've mentioned before, the terminology we transfolk choose to use for ourselves, versus the terminology which has been foisted upon us, is a question about which we need to have sustained discourse.
I hadn't seen the terms "women born transsexual" (WBT) or "Harry Benjamin Syndrome" (HBS) before. They are interesting.
The idea behind renaming "Gender Dysphoric Disorder" as "Harry Benjamin Syndrome" is to recast transsexualism as an endocrine disorder rather than as a psychological disorder. I'm not unsympathetic, but this is not representative of transfolk in general. Not all of us seek or want hormonal or surgical therapy, not all of us want our gender identity to be medicalized in the first place. It also presupposes a questionable bio-psychological causality. I think there may be some usefulness to the term HBS but it is not an interchangeable replacement for gender dysphoria.
At first glance i thought the term WBT was a direct response to the term "womyn born womyn" used by some to distinguish women judged as female at birth from gallae. But when i googled it, i didn't see any discussion of this matter at all, nor was it raised in Suzan Cooke's essay in which she mentioned why she and her partner coined the term. So i deduce that the purpose of the term is to downplay the "trans," to counter the dominant culture's gaze, which wants to see only the procedures and paraphernalia of our transition, to focus instead on the way transfolk see ourselves.
Using emphasis to demonstrate more clearly the meaning of the term, then, a "woman born transsexual" is a woman who happens to have been born transsexual. For a person who sees herself as inherently female but otherwise defined by society because of, essentially, an unfortunate birth defect, this might be an appropriate term.
To be honest i'm not sure how i feel about this term. On the one hand i approve of the term's basic goal, as tending towards expressing more clearly than "transwoman" how we see ourselves. See, the world sees us as "trans" first and woman... well, usually never, but if ever, then definitely not first.
Secondly, i know MTF transfolk who would not really fit this depiction, because they have taken the identification of "trans" as part of their identity. So on the basis of that alone, the term "woman born transsexual" can never be a blanket replacement for "transwoman" and could even be divisive.
But there is a second, somewhat savage, dimension of divisiveness here. Only some gallae have any chance of actually being seen as women first: those who pass. For transfolk being able to pass can be a ticket away from the numerous limitations we face for the crime of being trans. Think, for example, of light-skinned black people who have 'passed for white' and the opportunities they gained by doing so. Opportunities they should have had in the first place, of course. Not that being a woman in a misogynistic culture is necessarily great shakes, but, judging by some of these stats from 1999, in some ways it sure beats being a tranny.
So when Suzan Cooke says "goodbye to being transgender" she comes across as having a nasty overtone, and it is plain as day that she has never checked her own privilege. She writes as if any galla can easily assimilate into society as a woman:
It's a nice gig if you can get it, Suzan. I can definitely sympathize with wanting to escape the traps and stigmata heaped on transfolk (ETA: and let me be clear on this, i have no disapproval for people who go "stealth"), but not all of us have the luxury, even after surgery and hormones. Having the luxury of moving beyond into the relative utopia of passing, she doesn't see the need for trans advocacy.
IOW she's saying that anyone who doesn't pass can go to hell. And her term WBT can be seen as reflective of this attitude.
Suzan is right to want to escape the negativity, since none of us deserve it. She is right to want to escape from the way the culture sees transfolk, because it does not define her any more accurately than it defines any of us. But she is wrong to blame the transgender community for it; this is just old-fashioned victim blaming. The negativity comes from the rest of society -- the people who beat us, preach against us, kick us out of our houses, and fire us. If she is ever found out, she will be no better than the rest of us "trannies," and i hope she keeps that in mind in the future when she contemplates trans activism.
I hadn't seen the terms "women born transsexual" (WBT) or "Harry Benjamin Syndrome" (HBS) before. They are interesting.
The idea behind renaming "Gender Dysphoric Disorder" as "Harry Benjamin Syndrome" is to recast transsexualism as an endocrine disorder rather than as a psychological disorder. I'm not unsympathetic, but this is not representative of transfolk in general. Not all of us seek or want hormonal or surgical therapy, not all of us want our gender identity to be medicalized in the first place. It also presupposes a questionable bio-psychological causality. I think there may be some usefulness to the term HBS but it is not an interchangeable replacement for gender dysphoria.
At first glance i thought the term WBT was a direct response to the term "womyn born womyn" used by some to distinguish women judged as female at birth from gallae. But when i googled it, i didn't see any discussion of this matter at all, nor was it raised in Suzan Cooke's essay in which she mentioned why she and her partner coined the term. So i deduce that the purpose of the term is to downplay the "trans," to counter the dominant culture's gaze, which wants to see only the procedures and paraphernalia of our transition, to focus instead on the way transfolk see ourselves.
Using emphasis to demonstrate more clearly the meaning of the term, then, a "woman born transsexual" is a woman who happens to have been born transsexual. For a person who sees herself as inherently female but otherwise defined by society because of, essentially, an unfortunate birth defect, this might be an appropriate term.
To be honest i'm not sure how i feel about this term. On the one hand i approve of the term's basic goal, as tending towards expressing more clearly than "transwoman" how we see ourselves. See, the world sees us as "trans" first and woman... well, usually never, but if ever, then definitely not first.
Secondly, i know MTF transfolk who would not really fit this depiction, because they have taken the identification of "trans" as part of their identity. So on the basis of that alone, the term "woman born transsexual" can never be a blanket replacement for "transwoman" and could even be divisive.
But there is a second, somewhat savage, dimension of divisiveness here. Only some gallae have any chance of actually being seen as women first: those who pass. For transfolk being able to pass can be a ticket away from the numerous limitations we face for the crime of being trans. Think, for example, of light-skinned black people who have 'passed for white' and the opportunities they gained by doing so. Opportunities they should have had in the first place, of course. Not that being a woman in a misogynistic culture is necessarily great shakes, but, judging by some of these stats from 1999, in some ways it sure beats being a tranny.
So when Suzan Cooke says "goodbye to being transgender" she comes across as having a nasty overtone, and it is plain as day that she has never checked her own privilege. She writes as if any galla can easily assimilate into society as a woman:
Because most of us assimilate as members of the sex that we have been reassigned to and are loathe to make spectacles of ourselves few stand up to contradict the politicos who claim to represent us. ... The transgender community is like a cult that pounds extremely negative messages into the heads of people treated for TS/HBS. Its fear mongering aims to convince post-sex reassignment surgery people to stay in the transgender ghetto rather than assimilate in to the world of members of their new sex.
It's a nice gig if you can get it, Suzan. I can definitely sympathize with wanting to escape the traps and stigmata heaped on transfolk (ETA: and let me be clear on this, i have no disapproval for people who go "stealth"), but not all of us have the luxury, even after surgery and hormones. Having the luxury of moving beyond into the relative utopia of passing, she doesn't see the need for trans advocacy.
IOW she's saying that anyone who doesn't pass can go to hell. And her term WBT can be seen as reflective of this attitude.
Suzan is right to want to escape the negativity, since none of us deserve it. She is right to want to escape from the way the culture sees transfolk, because it does not define her any more accurately than it defines any of us. But she is wrong to blame the transgender community for it; this is just old-fashioned victim blaming. The negativity comes from the rest of society -- the people who beat us, preach against us, kick us out of our houses, and fire us. If she is ever found out, she will be no better than the rest of us "trannies," and i hope she keeps that in mind in the future when she contemplates trans activism.
