Would Transgender exist in a more fluid society?

[irish_deutsch]

A lesbian friend today said that men need to stand up as women did, for their rights to expand the limitations society imposes in terms of appearance and behaviour., in short the binary system. As a result of the female stance women today enjoy far greater freedom of expression than men in most cultures

Comments

[splinterjete]

the assertion that 'men' need to expand the social norms for what is acceptable gendered behaviour has often been used as a ploy to exclude trans women from women's space. it not only renders our self-proclaimed identities as invalid but also is more insidiously pejoritive in that it makes us seem less able to challenge social expectations that are placed on us.

what is missing from such feminist's assertions is that the gender binary does, in many ways, exist. while it is not without its cultural antecedents and modifiers, it certainly exists beyond the realm of simple social constructionism. the intrinsic authority that all women and men - trans and cis - feel about their gender is perhaps the simplest piece of evidence in support of this.

that said, i would assert that as men and women, whethre we be trans or cis, we should be free to express our gendered existence within those categories freely and, for the most part, boundlessly.

but please (and this is a general yearning) do not erase gendered existence entirely, or at least do not do it only for trans people while leaving cis people's gendered existence as unchallenged (as these arguments blindly do).

and your last point - that there are fewer trans men than trans women - well, that is actually something that i would owe to social construction. the medical establishment is more interested and more attuned to sexual exceptionality as it extends towards the feminine spectrum. this pretty much owes to the way we privilige and, more basically, normalize masculine behaviour in our world. we thus erase trans men and obsess about trans women which in turn inflates their visibility and therefore 'countability'.

~b*

[scialytic]

I don't know you, but based on this comment alone, I love you.

:)

[splinterjete]

:) thanks. my name's rebecca and i'm from toronto (canada). i occasionally get on my soapbox and write stuff like this.

~b*

[splinterjete]

it is now - i'll take it. thanks bella...

~b*

[pirate_poet]

hear, hear!

i'd also like to add that it is a common misconception (usually on the part of "well-meaning- non-trans people) that there is an assumed responsibility with trans* people to be the ones to "expand"/"break down" gender binaries and what-not, to challenge sexism, etc. trans* people are no more "responsible" for challenging society's gender norms than any other group of people, non-trans, trans, whatever.

[splinterjete]

well-put!

it's not about smashing the binary or being/becoming a 3rd gender sort of thing; being trans is about becoming who we are on the inside and this just as likely (or not likely) to be as 'gender-normative' as cis people.

besides, there are way more gender-ambigious cis people that i know anyways.

~b*

[pirate_poet]

that's not to say that we shouldn't try and make more spaces for more people-- non-binary identified people have just as much right to self-naming and existence as binary-identified people (again, be they trans, non-trans, or otherwise identified or embodied). i'd like to think it's the responsibility of all people just as people to somehow try and make "more spaces for more people"-- whether that be across gender stuff or race, class, etc. but heh, i could be a little hokey idealist there. ;shrugs: for some trans people, their being trans is about "smashing the binary" and some do very much id as/with a third gender... but not all. basicallty, blanket statements suck and are always somehow wrong.

[terry_terrible]

What she said. Plus people who have exhibited the synptoms of gender dysphoria and the wish to change thier sex (or did actually live as the other sex) have existed in many times and cultures were there was much more gender expression fluidity than in european/north american culture in last five hundred years.

Though there maybe aspects of drag or cross dressing that are culturally constructed, the evidence overwhemenly indicates some varients of transgenderism such as tressexualism seems to be biologically based.