Tag: politics

dryad dance

Came across and was stupidly affected by another discourse thread, one side current of the whole “what is biological sex” mess of the last week. In this case views from an intersex person, which does mean I want to acknowledge the challenges faced by this group rather than minimize them; obviously I cannot speak for them, and mostly I can just speculate.

In this case the person was expressing how either full-on denial of “biological sex” as a concept, or equating it with gender, would be denying and making invisible their experiences. This bothers me because as noted, the idea of/how someone being “biologically male/female” matters to me; I experience dysphoria from being concepted on the wrong side of such a division. For this perspective I have usually argued several things:

  • “Biological sex” without further definition is poorly defined. This is not the same as denying it, but rather saying that it is not a straightforward, simple, obvious categorization; it is a construct insofar as that we have to decide on boundaries for spectra of bodily properties (effective bimodalities are still continua). That does not make it unreal, only definition dependent.
  • Moreover, we can and should reference that biological property of the brain self-identifying (my “opt-out”/”opt-in” terminology) as a deciding factor where necessary in defining “biological sex” for organisms where this makes sense, like ourselves.
  • Third, the properties of the sex property continua are not static under transition but changing.

This challenges the position of the person whose words I read in that there are circumstances where we would let gender, in fact, be the deciding factor on the “biological sex” of a person. In response to claims of intersex erasure or validity denial as a result of this, I would respond two things – the first, that the overall composite level leaves intact the various properties (which are the more concrete features affecting either a dyadic or intersex person’s existence). The second, that this may have relevance as a response to the experiences of intersex people – the failure of acknowledging that assigning biological sex first and foremost should be left up to ourselves underlies the oppressions some intersex people do face, as far as I understand it.

(Elaborating briefly there on my own limited understanding – there exists a class of intersex cis people assigned the sex they identify with without anything unusual noted at birth; with intersexuality discovered during puberty or even much later as part of a reproduction issue. These individuals in most cases will see themselves wholly and fully male/female as assigned, whether they acknowledge an intersex label or not in addition. Some such individuals may be trans (and imagine the challenges of being a CAIS XY trans man – you have XY karyotype and testicles, but cannot ever respond to testosterone in any way), and may recognize trans experience as well. More vocal in the discourse are those who were nonconsensually operated on as children to enforce either assignment made, often without being informed. To me it seems that for either group, the problem lies first in not being allowed to make one’s own assignment of “biological sex” and whatever cascades off of that, and second in the experience of having atypical characteristics.)

So I would say that recognizing either scope of experiences and needs comes with no requirement for a coherent “biological sex” concept to omit self-identification as one aspect, nor for that type of concept to not be recognized as complex. Recognition of the biological continua themselves go a long way and are also part of my trans experience – I seek to changed sexed properties of my body also for their own sake, I suspect. That those properties themselves (and the nonconsensual medical treatment downstream of them) affects and informs many intersex experiences is obvious, and while acknowledging and labeling it may be a choice in some regard, it is not an unconstrained source. I am not saying either trans or intersex people choose their bodies, or live lives unaffected by their bodies, quite the opposite. Intersex identity is no more fake than trans body dysphoria is.

The person whose words I read made the odd claim that the sex assignment of bodies is better described as labeling as typical or atypical, than as male or female, but this feels absurd – literally most characteristics typical of a male body would be considered atypical for a female body and vice versa; the typical/atypical, while clearly determining whether an early-diagnosis intersex person experiences surgeries they do not consent to or not, is only defined once one has clarified what it is typical/atypical in reference to. More fully, surely recognizing we are assigned (and later, perhaps, re-assigned under own volition) male or female is not controversial? The course those processes takes then leaves us with cis/trans, dyadic/intersex experiences which we may end up acknowledging.

That is, I posit we can recognize the very real and important influence of sexed body properties for the life histories of intersex people without 1) adhering to a simple composite “biological sex” definition that cannot incorporate self-identification and 2) failing to recognize how sexed body properties can be changed. I do not see where there is visibility or recognition of intersex lived experiences and the impact of the body that is lost under these systems.

The point was well made that comparing dyadic trans people to intersex people fails to recognize the involuntary nature of much of the intersex experience (something, however, which also applies to the trans experience in absence of transition), and also that while the cause may differ, a medically transitioned dyadic body may well occupy much the same region in the spaces of sexed property continua as an intersex body does. To deny this latter part is to say we somehow still are always only confined to our birth-assigned sexes. It is also important to notice both that 1) many intersex individuals experienced tremendous trauma and 2) many dyadic trans people would intensely want to be intersex, even knowing all that, because that would mean in some small ways being further away from one’s assigned sex.

Further the point was made how trans identity could not exist without a gender assignment at birth system; this is wrong; if we self-assigned genders later (sort of what I did?) then the discrepancy with the body norm (regarding, again, sexed body properties) within those sexes/genders would still cause dysphoria and a need to transition.

The quip was made – echoing that which I heard from TERFs – that unless there was a reality to biological sex, then defining us as trans would not work in the first place, in absence of reality of source/target sexes. As noted above, my definitions of male/female, men/women are not independent of sexed body properties, simply recognizing the whole as allowing for opt-out/opt-in (to degrees, thereby enabling nonbinary existence also here). That is, once more, this definition need neither be circular nor deny reality of transition outcomes, and is no more “just a social construct” than anything else.

luna reverse

Pitfall of morning twitter to wake; trans friends reposting TERF material to laugh at. Exposes me to it, sometimes rabbit holes me to identity threat dysphorically deconstruct and analyze. In this case, came to a clearer phrasing of what may be a useful insight, and which I had also pre-transition.

As noted, I use sex and gender interchangeably to reference human relating to (in action, perception, emotion, organizing…) people based on sexed characteristics, including biological and social ones, the latter including self-identification, overriding others via opt-out, opt-in. It is a social construct (so are chromosomes, says molecular biologist Sofia, but it is even clearer for “sex” as a whole). As culture and language shifts so does its meaning. To me and most people in the societies where I am at home, my sex is female, I am a woman. This is what matters most. To those with a more narrow definition (same-label contruct “sex” but referencing only some or a single bodily sexed properties like karyotype or position in a reproduction tree), I may not be.

The culture change is a shift towards the use I favor. Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) centrally reject this shift, and demand the labels be narrowly defined to reference specific sexed bodily properties as essences of male/man, female/woman. In so doing they also deny the legitimacy of trans or cis modality (the latter by default) as they consider these properties unchangeable. This is a conflict which resolves eventually, and I think the presence of trans people in public spaces is how it is resolved, by anchoring our existence as fact in the eyes of the majority.

My hypothesis now is that a subset of assigned-female-at-birth (AFAB) TERFs (aside from conservatives, etc.) reject the label shift because in principle they are trans in denial. Specifically, AFAB agender nonbinary trans. This may sound arrogant and projecting. My view comes from having occupied an analogous space for long and recognizing the emotional tone of the rhetorics used. During my two decades identifying as agender, I would have subscribed largely to the TERF talking points of “gender is irrelevant” and “sex is solely specific biology and external oppression, otherwise empty of content”.

I would have subscribed to these as such a gender nihilism and sex minimalism made it possible for me to push away my discomfort with being seen (also by myself) as having male sex. My central dysphoria coping mechanism was the frantic denial of gender and the minimizing of the importance of sex (except an obstacle to be overcome by feminism). So long as I could do that I could function, though not happily. Any ascribing of any content to the gender/sex labels beyond that – unimportant biology, external oppression – felt terribly dysphoric, like being drowned or transformed into a non-being, like being forced into an identity that othered myself to myself.

Isn’t this exactly what drives a large segment of TERFs? Trans people (and I remember the very same fear and reaction myself) are terrible implications of a scenario of sex/gender being something more than that, an intrinsic rather than extrinsic identity. They like I cannot endure that idea because it is (socially, existentially) dysphoric.

What then is the solution? What this subset of TERFs need – freedom from a misaligned female/woman gender/sex assignment – is achievable by opt-out under the wider construct model: by considering themselves AFAB agender, the labels no longer will apply to them (and they will face the same challenges all other nonbinary trans people do, but this is already the case in their lives as they live in patriarchy with the rest of us). The oppressions many/most women face (externally by the actions of others, internally by our limited choice of role models, internally by properties such as having a uterus and an estrotypical body) are faced also by non-woman AFAB people, and we need to become better at recognizing and verbalizing this fact as part of the trans agenda. That is to say, AFAB nonwomen not passing as cis men experience misplaced misogyny (and AMAB women experience rightly placed misogyny variably depending on what we pass as).

So in the best of resolutions, the trans community should highlight and welcome agender people (AFAB and AMAB alike), recognize how a more complex (i.e. respecting opt-out, opt-in) sex/gender construct lets also those trans people reduce their dysphoria, and at the same time, not fail to highlight how under patriarchy, misogyny is directed both at women and at non-women being read as women. The fight against misogyny is ours to fight as feminists, all of us. We must also not fail to recognize specific challenges faced by uterus-bearing people (including many trans men). We do these things already, but we can get better at them. And in so doing, we are also creating a better home for those wayward agender siblings of ours currently shoring up the TERF ranks.

The issue thus, said TERFs demand to keep the sex/gender woman/man, male/female labels for their minimalist/nihilist project. But really their need is not as great – they need it only to negate it, and can accomplish the same by transitioning agender. Whereas for binary trans people as myself, we really cannot flourish at all without access to that label. So the only end point of this culture shift I can be OK with is the one I work towards. However, our opponents can, as outlined above, in many cases find equal flourishing there.

So you whose involuntary womanhood really does not define you other than as having XX karyotype and a uterus and experience of misogyny, and for whom any other labeling feels oppressive and painful, come be my agender trans sibling. Let’s fight patriarchy together.