Monday, September 14, 2009

Monday Media Watch: Oh NYT, You've Done It Again

Oh, New York Times! You mixed-up kid! When you're not panting all over the latest Dan Brown novel (for shame, Janet Maslin, for shame) you're punting muddle-headed essays on gender on us.

Let's take a look-see...hm, they talk about Caster Semenya--hey, join the club! I used the controversy to talk about gender issues too, seeing as gender and appearances were a major part of my life. What's Peggy Orenstein got to say?
I had my own reasons to be fascinated by Semenya’s story: I related to it. Not directly — I mean, no one has ever called my biological sex into question. No one, that is, except for me. After my breast-cancer diagnosis at age 35, I was told I almost certainly had a genetic mutation that predisposed me to reproductive cancers. The way I could best reduce my risk would be to surgically remove both of my breasts and my ovaries. In other words, to amputate healthy body parts. But not just any parts: the ones associated in the most primal way with reproduction, sexuality, with my sense of myself as female.

I...see.

No, wait, I don't.

I mean the whole point of the Caster Semenya story is how people question your gender, right? Now, not to diminish Ms. Orenstein's pain here. I am well aware of how terrible cancer, breast cancer, and the surgeries proposed are, and how not having breasts or a womb or ovaries can make you question your femininity and your sense of yourself as female, as a woman. (I'm rather intimately acquainted with that, actually.)

But like they say over here, quoi?
So I began to fret: without breasts or hormone-producing ovaries, what would the difference be, say, between myself and a pre-op female-to-male transsexual? Other than that my situation was involuntary? That seemed an awfully thin straw on which to base my entire sense of womanhood. What, precisely, made me a girl anyway? Who got to decide? How much did it matter?
Um...the difference would be that you thought of yourself as a woman? Ya think? And waitaminute--involuntary? Are you kidding me?

I guess you can say that starting treatment to transition is voluntary--I mean, you have to decide to do it; nobody makes you. But the being trans part isn't.

Oh, goodness, ducks, there's a lot to pick apart in the essay--like when she says biology is destiny! Sorta! But it totes shouldn't mean anything to women's rights or stuff (which seems pretty baffling.) She does inch close to something important though:
According to Sheri Berenbaum, a professor of psychology and pediatrics at Penn State who studies children with disorders of sex development, even people with ambiguous biology tend to identify as male or female, though what motivates that decision remains unclear. “People’s hormones matter,” she said, “but something about their rearing matters too. What about it, though, no one really knows.”

There is something mysterious at work, then, that makes us who we are, something internally driven. Maybe it’s about our innate need to categorize the world around us. Maybe it arises from — or gives rise to — languages that don’t allow for neutrality. My guess, however, is that it’s deeper than that, something that transcends objectivity, defies explanation.
Now, that I can agree with. I mean, that's the story of my life, right? Except that in my case, my sense of gender was at odds with my body. I didn't choose a middle way or androgyny or something like that (though people do and that's just as valid as my own gender), but instead was impelled to think of myself as female. Why? And why is it so hard for some people to accept that about me--why do people cling to narrowly construed models of gender? What is it in human culture or the human brain that does that? These are good questions! Ms. Orenstein, maybe you'll leave me on a good note!
I know that my sex could never really be changed by any surgeon’s scalpel.
Thunk. Boy it's a good thing my desk is 5,000 miles away.

I mean, I know what she means, and it actually follows the same course as my own thinking: my gender was female before, during, and after my surgery. But sheesh, lady, for TS and intersex people, surgery can be Kind. Of. Important.

And that's just it. She wants to talk about gender, she even brings in the example of a famous person who is intersex (or presumed to be, thanks to the leaks of evil, evil people), but does she engage with any intersex or transsexual people, who sure as hell know a lot about intrinsic gender identity?

Fuck no.

People get all in an uproar, it seems lately, about the word cis as opposed to trans. (Right now on a message board I still read we're having our latest battle about it, a three-way fight between cis folks who don't want the word applied to them, trans folks who want it applied in the neutral and descriptive way, and other trans folks who oppose its use and want to be nice in hope of getting a cookie from the cis folks.) But an article like this shows exactly why we need to have a word like this: because the privilege of not only never wondering about your gender identity, but never needing to know anything about people who have, is astonishing and smothering. So many of the questions Ms. Orenstein ponders have been batted around for years. There's research, books, testimonials, diatribes, and even blogs.

There were answers. But privilege deafened her to them.

5 comments:

  1. Holy shit that's awful. I mean, wow. There's not anything good in that. "My gender is innate and ineffable and intersex people's are probably, but trans? Oh, that's a choice and kind of an icky one 'cause knives and lady parts make me nervous." Fuck you too, thanks.

    On something happier: You're in Paris! That's so very. Do have lots of fun. :)

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  2. "What, precisely, made me a girl anyway? Who got to decide? How much did it matter?"

    Well, the things is, those are interesting questions! I say this because I started asking myself those questions after I made some F2F trans friends as well as from reading your blog. My identity as a woman was always such a given that I never thought about it much until then.

    It's her answers or her way of approaching them that are so stuuuuupid.

    "How not having breasts or a womb or ovaries can make you question your femininity and your sense of yourself as female, as a woman."

    I can only speak for myself here, but it seems to me that it's possible to confuse *sources* of identity with the *expression* of that identity.

    Like, I have this strong and immutable sense of being a woman, but not because I happen to have boobs. The possession of boobs, however, is one of the physical ways in which I experience being a woman and present myself as a woman to my community.

    I think it's part of a larger philosophical thing wherein we are not our bodies, but our bodies are part of us. Part that we will eventually leave behind.

    Anyway, it was incredibly obnoxious of this chick to dismiss the experience of transgender women in this blase way where she was not even openly doing so as much as just leaking condescension like some kind of faulty radioactive waste facility. Especially this gem:
    "So I began to fret: without breasts or hormone-producing ovaries, what would the difference be, say, between myself and a pre-op female-to-male transsexual?"

    Oh noes! You'll be just like ONE OF THE DAMNED! You poor thing! Lunch?

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  3. P.S.

    I wish there were an "edit comment" function so I wouldn't look so much like a dweeb with two comments in a row when something else up and occurs to me.

    Here, I thought just for fun I'd look at my own cis-gender privilege in my first comment.

    "Like, I have this strong and immutable sense of being a woman, but not because I happen to have boobs. The possession of boobs, however, is one of the physical ways in which I experience being a woman and present myself as a woman to my community."

    Let's see what privilege is evident in this paragraph alone, and in my whole comment:

    - I can identify as a woman with confidence, because I don't expect having to defend or explain my identification, because it won't be attacked, questioned, pathologized or responded to with bewilderment;
    - I can present myself as a woman to my community and expect to endure sexism (which sucks) but not sexism AND transphobia (which sucks twice as much);
    - While my identity as a woman does not *depend* on having female sexual characteristics such as boobs, I get to enjoy having said boobs and other physical expression of my gender identity without having to undergo expensive and painful medical procedures;
    - I can confidently criticize a trans-bigoted cis-female writer because doing so will not provoke attack or silencing simply on the grounds of my gender;

    Cat or others, anything you'd add to that list?

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  4. "Well, the things is, those are interesting questions! I say this because I started asking myself those questions after I made some F2F trans friends as well as from reading your blog. My identity as a woman was always such a given that I never thought about it much until then"

    Me too! And your second comment expands on your first and I appreciate it. Learning by the day here.

    earwicga ("apparently my OpenID credentials could not be verified"?!?)

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  5. And of course when I re-pressed post after it said I couldn't it did with my name!

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