There’s a concept I really like called the lie-to-children.
When I was first taught about atoms, I was taught that atoms looked kind of like a solar system, with electrons (planets) orbiting around a nucleus (sun) made of protons and neutrons. This is, of course, completely and 100% wrong. But when you’re six you can’t understand what an atomic orbital is or how an electron is both a particle and a wave at the same time, so that lie is good enough. And you can use that as a model to build on when you’re older.
A lot of trans feminists have pointed out lately that certain common tropes explaining how transness works are, in fact, not true! For instance, look at this helpful diagram:
[A gingerbread man, with Identity in the brain, Orientation in the heart, Sex in the genitals, and Expression all over the body. Four spectra are labeled “gender identity: woman, genderqueer, man”, “gender expression: feminine, androgynous, masculine”, “biological sex: female, intersex, male”, and “sexual orientation: heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual.”]
There are so many problems with this diagram. I’m not just talking about weird classification errors like “so people who have transitioned are intersex?” and “what about asexuals?” I mean, it’s just wrong to say that gender identity is not connected to gender expression (it is sometimes, and other times it isn’t! Complicated!). Your biological sex affects way more than just your genitals (yes, even your brain). The genderbread person doesn’t define “gender” at all. A lot of trans feminists have started questioning whether gender identity even makes sense as a concept. Et cetera.
So yeah. It is very easy to critique.
I think we should understand concepts like the genderbread person, gender identity, and even (ugh) “woman born in a man’s body” as lies-to-cis-people, the same way the solar system model of atoms is a lie-to-children. Transness doesn’t work that way. But it’s good enough to start with until/unless you learn a more accurate model. It conveys important concepts like:
- Just because you were born with a vagina does not mean you are a woman.
- Trans people are real and you should treat them respectfully.
- Being trans is not the same thing as being really really gay.
- You can be butch and a trans lady and you are still a trans lady and not Really A Man.
- Genderqueer people exist.
- There are people who do not fall into the sex or gender identity or gender expression binaries.
- …and so on and so forth.
It gives the average cis person the necessary information to treat trans people respectfully. Which is… pretty much exactly the information they need, unless they’re very interested in the topic of gender or they’re in a close relationship with a trans person or there’s some other extenuating circumstance. So I think it’s okay.
Of course, you do encounter a problem when cis people don’t quite understand that these models are lies-to-children and start assuming that this is how trans people Actually Work and are like “but what if I identify as a table?” So, like, cis people: “woman born in a man’s body” is not actually how gender works, but it’s good enough for now!
Thing of Things 
I love it.
The gender bread model is actually a model I use. Despite its shortcomings, it is immensely closer to the truth, and internalizing* it has been helpful in following transfeminist discussions.
I’m also cool with being told reductionist or outright false lies, so long as those lies are a) useful, and b) I’m told it is a false model.I’d also very much prefer to know the domains where the model breaks down, so that I know when to stop applying it.
*I don’t actually have a word with the exact meaning I want, and this one is closest to what I mean.
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There’s a term among some IT folks that I think describes what you’re looking for in place of the term “internalizing”: Grok.
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Closer. I mean that the gender bread model is a model I know inside and out, and can apply it on an almost instinctual level. The only issue I take with “grok” is the denotation that the model is part of me and my identity.
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Although still problematic, the person who made the genderbread person updated it about 5 years ago…. There is now a genderbread person 2.0 which is a bit more inclusive of excluded identities.
http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2012/03/the-genderbread-person-v2-0/
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I am now imagining ways to extend this to every possible discipline. “Lies to Laypeople” would be a really cool series.
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“All models are wrong, some models are useful”.
Note also that you overinterpret(ed) the information presented in the diagram by writing “it’s just wrong to say that gender identity is not connected to gender expression”. There is no indication from the diagram that the positions on those two axis are unconnected.
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I am a cis person, and I find this post rather insulting. Specifically, this part:
> It gives the average cis person the necessary information to treat trans people respectfully. Which is… pretty much exactly the information they need…
This implies that cis people are too ignorant, too evil, or too stupid to treat other people respectfully by default — which is why trans people need to prepare some carefully structured set of white lies, in order to trick cis people into respecting them.
Now, I will grant you that disrespectful, and outright hostile, cis people do exist. However, such people are unlikely to be swayed by your gingerbread diagram, because they already hate you to begin with, so your solution doesn’t work.
I will also grant you that ignorant cis people do exist. In fact, I personally don’t know all the in-depth details about the gender/sex/orientation/etc. interactions, so I am one of them. However, detailed knowledge of a person’s sexual preferences or mechanics is completely orthogonal to whether I should be treating that person with respect or not (as long as that person isn’t hurting anyone, as per the usual disclaimer). Conversely, if someone is treating you poorly solely because of e.g. your sexual orientation, than that someone is a bad person in general; whether he is cis or not doesn’t matter.
On the other hand, I should point out that sometimes people treat you with disrespect for reasons that have nothing to do with your gender, sex, orientation, or lack thereof. For example, if someone showed me that gingerbread diagram and told me “just pretend this is true for now and see if it makes you respect trans people more” — then, as of now, I would be inclined to treat that person with a lot less respect, regardless of that person’s own sociobiological parameters.
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I don’t think that it implies cis people are evil. I think it implies that most cis people have not had to think about gender as much as most trans people and that therefore will have a harder time understanding it.
And there is a difference between deliberately being mean to trans people and accidentally disrespecting someone’s gender. Some cis people just hate trans people, for whatever stupid reason (frequently Jesus. This is a queenshulamit blog comment, I am required by law to say something grumpy and barely relevant about Jesus.)
However, there are lots of cis people who just don’t understand trans people and might accidentally say a disrespectful thing about trans people’s gender. For example if you think a trans women are men in dresses, you will refer to them as men or he and end up hurting them. If you think that trans men are just superduper-butch lesbians who “turned into men” you will assume all the trans men you meet are attracted exclusively to women and end up upsetting gay, bi and aroace trans men. If you don’t know that genderqueer people exist or what gender neutral pronouns are, you will end up upsetting genderqueer people. If you think that how someone dresses is what their gender is, you night think “Raisin is wearing a dress, I guess they are not genderqueer any more! She must have gone back to being a girl!” and then you will upset Raisin. (I didn’t give the hypothetical genderqueer person an unusual name to be mocking, it is because Ozy and I have a joke about Cousin Raisin.)
None of the cis people in those examples are being mean on purpose. They just don’t know these things because they never had to think about them. Some cis people might have had to think about them (E. G. Intersex people who are the same gender as they are assigned at birth, cross dressers, people who are massively gender non-conforming – although all those cis people are in a fuzzy area between cis and trans) but most cis people won’t. I didn’t know all the genderbread things.
Nobody is born with magical knowledge. Trans people learn that you can be a different gender than the one assigned at birth by existing and being a different gender than the one assigned at birth. We cis people have to be taught because we do not have that experience. Saying that this is patronising is like saying “these people from France who have been speaking French all their lives have made a book of very simple French phrases to teach people who have never spoken French how to speak French! Do they think that just because we have never lived in France we are stupid? do they think we lack necessary empathy to communicate with French people? Do they think we are francophobic bigots?” Non, they think because you have never lived in France you have (probably) never had to understand French words, and they are going to give you simple phrases at first because you are not going to automatically be fluent in French.
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You outline some scenarios in your post, but all of them fall into at least one of two categories: a). orthogonal to the issue or respect or lack thereof (as per my previous comment), or b). problems that the “let’s lie to cis people” approach does not address.
For example, there’s no way for me to know a priori whether a given person is cis or trans. When I am addressing a person for the first time, I am going to use my senses to make a best guess as to that person’s gender; and in fact, most likely I will do so subconsciously. This means that I could misgender a trans person by accident.
The gingerbread approach does nothing to solve this problem, because even if I knew all of the sociobiological factors of gender and sexuality in minute detail, I would still misgender that poor trans person — since the prior for any given random human being trans is quite low.
If the trans person confronts me and corrects the misgendering, I have several options. I could start an argument about the person’s “true” gender. I could get hostile and start preaching about Jesus. Or I could say, “my sincere apologies, I didn’t know”, and use the correct gender from that point on.
Unfortunately, the gingerbread approach doesn’t do much to solve this issue, either, because the preferred response — apologizing and using the correct gender from then on — is already covered by the more general principle of “treat people however they would prefer to be treated”, i.e. “don’t be an asshole”. On the flip side, educating that Jesus-preaching guy about all the intricacies of gender is probably a futile task anyway, since the kind of person who screams Bible verses at total strangers is unlikely to read your pamphlet anyway.
To borrow your own example, it sounds to me like you’re saying, “we need to teach basic French vocabulary to Americans, it’s the only way they’ll ever learn to stop kicking French people”. To which I would reply, “well, I’m an American, and I try to do my best every day to avoid kicking anyone, because I am a normal person just like you”.
Of course, if you want to teach Americans to speak French, or to teach cis people about other genders, then you should do it ! Knowledge is almost always good, and the more people we can communicate with, the better. Of course, some people prefer to stay at home and talk to no one, and that’s fine too.
I am not objecting to the “education” part. I am objecting to the “cis people / non-French speakers are stupid and disrespectful by nature, and this problem can be solved by sweet white lies” part.
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Bugmaster:
Another option, which is probably most prevalent among many non-awful but clueless people, is to go “huh?? I am confused?? Explain yourself???” Which is not cruel in the way that kicking people is, but which is likely to be immensely frustrating to the trans person thus interrogated. (And I think “disrespectful” is a reasonable way to interpret that sort of thing, because indeed it does not contain a lot of respect for the person’s identity.) Based on my experience of having been a non-awful but clueless and argumentative person, if my first exposure to the notion of transness had been someone matter-of-factly coming out to me IRL, the chance that I would’ve instantly gotten over my confusion and said “my sincere apologies” is very low.
Or to put it another way – I don’t think I would’ve realized without learning something about transness that respecting someone must include respecting their gender. Nor that avoiding inflicting harm must include avoiding making bad assumptions like the ones queenshulamit brought up. For most people, having a clue about the diversity of gender experience is massively helpful in not othering people outside the expected categories.
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There’s another interesting issue here. We assume that people for whom more-sophisticated-than-intuitive gender theory is relevant (trans, queer, GNC, etc.) would spend more time thinking and researching it than the general population. This is probably true to some extent, but provides no guarantees. In the US I know about 15 transwomen, and they mostly have very high level of understanding of gender theory; only one of them (despite living in the Bay Area) understands it on the level of “I wanna wear dresses, and they are for girls; also, women are sexy, therefore I wanna be a woman”. At the same time, in Russia I know maybe about 10 transwomen, and only one of them DOESN’T understand gender on the level of “I wanna be a woman because of the sweet female privilege; also, stop your bs about the third gender – the nature has created males and females for procreation”. So although the absolute number of cis people who don’t really understand the gender theory is obviously bigger than that of trans people (just by sheer numbers), and the proportion is probably higher too, they’re definitely not the only ones who would benefit from learning more.
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@Bugmaster – if I understand you correctly, your problem is Ozy’s use of the word “respectfully” – you think that by saying cis people need 101-type stuff to respect trans people, Ozy is saying that cis people who don’t know this stuff will go around trans-bashing or telling trans people they are going to hell or some such.
Now, let’s go back to the French example. If you thought the French for “Please pass the salt” was “Je voudrais mettre un parapluie dans votre trou du cul” then you would go around hurting people and behaving in a way which at the very least appeared to lack respect. Maybe “you need to be taught simple French to respect French speaking people” is a poor word choice, and “you need to be taught simple French to avoid accidentally hurting people” is a better word choice, but I think you are getting way too hung up on one possibly-questionable word-choice in this whole post.
Would you have a problem with “It gives the average cis person the necessary information to treat trans peoplein a way that will not hurt them” instead of “It gives the average cis person the necessary information to treat trans people respectfully”?
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“treat people however they would prefer to be treated”
Bugamaster this is not an ethical guideline most people follow. Of course it needs qualifiers. But most people do not seem to think “treat people as they wish to be treated” is true in general. If you really think most people are tolerant and accepting in general, why ate trans youth having such a hard time?
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What Esther said. If someone believes genderqueer people don’t exist, they will probably not treat me in a way that doesn’t hurt me. This is not because they value my pain or they’re evil or anything. It’s because they are missing a piece of factual information that is actually really important to treating me well. Similarly, someone who believes that I like to be screamed at every five seconds will behave in a way that I find hurtful, even if they are trying their best to treat me well.
If I believed that every cis person who has mistreated me mistreated me because they were bad people, I would have to believe that cis people are somewhere between fifty and seventy-five percent bad people– including people I like and even love. I think that is far more offensive than applying to cis people the commonsense observation that people sometimes mistreat each other out of ignorance.
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> If someone believes genderqueer people don’t exist, they will probably not treat me in a way that doesn’t hurt me.
Well, I do know that genderqueer people exist, but if I met you randomly on the street, then, as I said above, it is very likely I’d treat you in a way that hurts you — unless you wore a big placard that said “I am genderqueer, and my preferred pronoun is xyz” or something. Just knowing that genderqueer people exist does not automatically enable me to determine who is genderqueer and to what extent.
> Similarly, someone who believes that I like to be screamed at every five seconds will behave in a way that I find hurtful, even if they are trying their best to treat me well.
Right, but it is not necessary to know that genderqueer people exist in order to stop screaming (literally or metaphorically); it’s enough to know that this particular person standing in front of you is asking you to stop.
Obviously it could still be helpful to know all the intricacies of a person’s gender/sex/etc., but now we are no longer talking about something as basic as “treating another person with respect”, but about developing some sort of an ongoing conversation where both parties are well-informed.
In this case, the “lies to children” approach still doesn’t work, because you’re dealing with adults, not with children. This means that you could say, “here’s a very simplified model of my gender, but of course it’s more complicated than that, here’s where you can read more”, and expect to be understood. But if, instead of this, you’re saying, “here’s a simplified model of my gender, and I’ll tell you that it’s 100% true because this is all your little cis mind can handle”, then you’re just being… counterproductive. Even if you manage to avoid alienating your audience, you still end up misinforming them.
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Whether or not all people who know genderqueer people exist hurt me is a totally separate topic from whether people who don’t know genderqueer people exist hurt me. And, in practice, getting people who don’t know genderqueer people exist to use the pronouns I prefer totally does involve telling them the simplified lies-to-children version of how transness works.
I mean, what’s your goal here…? Would you like me to give everyone a gender studies textbook and be like “this is required reading for interacting with me!”
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I think that Bugmaster overestimates the intelligence of the masses. Most people are not able to understand the complexities of gender.
A tabloid publishes some photoshopped pictures of a celebrity and everybody points and laughs. If you can explain gender to them in simple, relatable terms, then you might have a chance at convincing them that this is not okay.
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n0ahsiegel – I don’t think Bugmaster overestimates the ability of people to understand gender, but I do think they overestimate the willingness of people to accept things they don’t understand.
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People tend to *react strongly* when faced with an unusual gender expression. I think it is obvious why: we are sexual beings and gender ties into sex in a very deep way. When a man sees me, should he feel attraction? What does it mean if he does? This is confusing for straight guys, since I’m clearly AMAB. Likewise, how should cis women treat me? The fact that I am AMAB and in the women’s room, and that I am a lesbian — how weird is that? What does it mean? Why does my employer allow me to do that?
Yes, cis folks need a simple trans 101 that they can understand in a few minutes, cuz many of them are confused by us and they aren’t all going to read *Whipping Girl*.
Myself, I don’t understand genderqueer or gender fluid. In fact, it seems very weird to me. Someone had to explain it.
I still don’t understand non-binary identities in any visceral way. But I know enough not to completely fuck up. I got this knowledge by reading someone’s “lies for binary identified trans women,” which is all I really needed.
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Lies to children are not only about literal lies to literal children; it’s just that such lies are common when dealing with children, and everyone knows the sort of phenomena you mean when you reference children. Any time there is a significant barrier to full understanding (from lack of experience to being just too tired to teach a full gender studies course to that dude on the bus who keeps asking why he shouldn’t call you “sir”) we tend to default to simpler, sufficient, and false explanations to get our point across.
… what? I actually don’t know what you’re taking about at this point. I’m not seeing anywhere that states or implies that cis minds can’t handle the truth. I see the idea that cis minds will have a harder time understanding and empathizing as implicitly assumed. I also don’t think there’s anything wrong, insulting,or alienating about that: cis people generally lack the experience that trans people have in this field.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen “this is 100% true” in any explanation of a reductive or false model, except for maybe when we tell kids things like “don’t drink the stuff under the sink: you’ll get very sick.”
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I pretty much disagree with everything Bugmaster said, for reasons that have already been point out, but I wanted to highlight this portion:
This is, I think, an important point. Lies to children are only ok (from a productivity and an ethics perspective) if you tell people that they are lies. Many years ago, I was immensely confused about trans people, because I was told the “woman in a man’s body” myth, and I believed it and thought that’s how the majority of trans people viewed their experiences. It was awful, because understanding trans identities on that level left me vulnerable to TERF arguments about how trans people are just reinforcing gender roles and blah blah blah. Had I been informed that I was receiving a simplified model, and that the truth was much more complicated, I would have been aware of my own ignorance, instead of feeling well-informed and able to make those kinds of judgments.
Unfortunately, most of the time I see the Lies to Children tactic used, it’s not accompanied by any disclaimer that it’s a simplified model. And far too often, the “children” end up getting yelled at simply for taking people at their word (see, e.g. “Die Cis Scum”). Sure, lies to children are useful and necessary, but they need to be used with caution. The children must know they are being lied to.
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@ozy:
> And, in practice, getting people who don’t know genderqueer people exist to use the pronouns I prefer totally does involve telling them the simplified lies-to-children version of how transness works.
Ok, so let’s pretend that a person in obvious distress tells you, “hey, you totally misgendered me, my chosen pronoun is bun/bunself, please use it”, and that you’ve never heard of this concept before. What is your reaction ?
Personally, I would react by saying, “oops, sorry, I’ll use bunself from now on” — not because I know anything about otherkin, or care about their cause, or because I have a Ph.D. in Otherkin Studies; but simply because I don’t like hurting people.
> I mean, what’s your goal here…? Would you like me to give everyone a gender studies textbook and be like “this is required reading for interacting with me!”
Ideally, yes, but in practice most people don’t have the time to read the textbook. Hence, if someone is interested in interacting with you on a personal level, you could tell them the simple version, followed by, “but this is just a simple and inaccurate version, read this book here to find out more”. As wfenda says, above, without that disclaimer you end up quite literally lying to adults, and that’s bad, for a variety of reasons.
That said, if the requirements for interacting with you are complex, and far outside of a regular person’s experience; and if incorrect modes of interaction cause you great distress; then realistically you probably shouldn’t hang out with people who haven’t read the textbook. You don’t owe other people anything; you shouldn’t have to endure continuous pain just because they want to interact with you, but don’t know how.
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Bugmaster, it’s great that you’re fine with modifying your language to accommodate others even if you don’t understand it, but most people are not like that. Most people internalize pronouns strongly and will not put in the effort to use language in a new way if they don’t have at least a rudimentary understanding of why that’s necessary. Which I think is somewhat understandable – people like to conserve effort and not do difficult things that don’t feel necessary. Which is why it’s necessary to explain at least a bit of why this effort is on fact necessary.
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@veronica d:
> When a man sees me, should he feel attraction? What does it mean if he does? This is confusing for straight guys, since I’m clearly AMAB.
Er… yes, maybe (*) ? But why do you care what random straight guys think ? If the answer is, “because they are making undesired passes at me”, or “because they keep pestering me to put on pants”, or something; then, as I said before, this is a problem that the “lies to children” approach does not solve.
> Likewise, how should cis women treat me? The fact that I am AMAB and in the women’s room, and that I am a lesbian — how weird is that? What does it mean? Why does my employer allow me to do that?
First of all, hang on, is there actually a debate going on regarding whether lesbians are allowed in women’s bathrooms ? What ? That is just confusing to me, isn’t the answer “yes, duh” ?
Secondly, if the question you’re asking is simply “how should cis women treat me [in the bathroom]”, then the answer is “with courtesy and respect” regardless of what’s in your pants. Actually, the same answer applies outside the bathroom, as well.
On the third hand, if the question you’re asking is, “in general, what should be the policy for corporate employees vis a vis bathrooms”, then we are delving into complex socioeconomic issues, and that gingerbread figure is probably insufficient for resolving them. You could argue, “no Bugmaster, the issue is really simple”, but we are talking about corporations here, which means that lawyers get involved, and they tend to complicate everything…
(*) I’ve never experienced such feelings so I can’t tell from personal experience one way or another.
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@llamathatducks:
FWIW, my chosen pronoun is “he”, though I am one of those “cis by default” people, so it’s not that big of a deal 🙂
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Pretty tangential question (if you think this belongs in the open thread I can repost it there): How should we treat lies-to-children with respect to strawmanning, mottes and baileys, and all that good stuff? If a religious person explains a Biblical story in a lie-to-children way, and then someone pokes holes in it and the person responds with the way hermeneutics Actually Works, can she be accused of motte-and-baileying? Would it be strawmanning to only deal with the lie-to-children version if, say, the apologist didn’t make it clear she didn’t have an audience of rationalists in mind? Most importantly to me, do we have, or can we come up with, a shorthand for people to say something like “I’m giving you the lie-to-children, so if you want to have a real talk about this give me a chance to give you the full account”?
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One problem with this for religions is that it’s usually unclear what the true version of a religious belief is. It’s not as if religions get together and form consensuses the way scientists do.
So when one believer tells a lie-to-children version of a Biblical story and other believers believe it, there’s really no way to definitively say “that version is the true version and everyone else believes in a simplified one”. Each version is a version accepted by some believers. On top of that, whether an interpretation of a religious teaching is considered a lie-to-children version or a true version can vary with the passage of time as different interpretations fall in and out of favor.
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That’s a fair point. I had in mind religions like Catholicism where there more or less is an orthodox interpretation, but I was probably not being clear enough. But let’s not fight the hypothetical, is what I’m getting at a sound observation?
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“It’s not as if religions get together and form consensuses the way scientists do.”
I’m not sure their livers could handle the mechanisms scientists use to form consensus. 😉
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Nick: I was pretty much agreeing with you. If a religious person tells you a lie-to-children version of his belief, there’s no way (unless he outright says it) for you to know whether he’s simplifying his belief or whether that’s the version he thinks is really true. And even if he doesn’t believe it’s true, it is likely that other believers do.
For a concrete example of this, Ozy recently explained that people saying that homosexuality is unnatural don’t really mean that it isn’t found in nature. But even if the Pope and some Christian thinkers don’t mean that, that’s how it gets explained to people and that’s the version most people who say that genuinely believe in. I can equally well describe this as “some Christians think homosexuality isn’t natural (using the everyday definition), but the Pope and some Christian thinkers have managed to rationalize away the problems with that by redefining ‘natural’.”
I’d certainly not call it strawmanning to address the version that people actually believe in and point out that homosexuality exists in nature.
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This also totally applies to feminism and other assorted SJ movements with their 101-spaces filled with nice sounding language for the uneducated masses, but then many more controversial commitments once you get out of them.
Is it “lies to children”, or motte-and-bailey?
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So, here’s the danger of motte-and-bailey accusations: One person’s “introductory version” is another’s motte. Creationists regularly accuse evolutionists of motte-and-bailey tactics — not, so far, using that exact phrase, but give them time — and most of us here would presumably consider that unfair. Yet there really is a “101 version” of evolutionary theory, simplified to the point of being actually wrong in some of its particulars, but still useful for introducing the concept to laymen.
Bottom line, it isn’t enough just to say “This is a motte-and-bailey!” You need to be able to show that it’s a dishonest one — that your interlocutor is expecting you to take some intermediate step on faith, or hiding an assumption somewhere, or not being forthcoming with their true goals.
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I also thought that the Bohr model of the atom was like that, until I actually learned it in university physics. It is not “100 % wrong.” It is entirely rigorous and explained results that contradicted prior models, and correctly calculated spectral lines of hydrogen to within the experimental margin of error of its time. There was of course that little problem of how Maxwellian electrodynamics predicted an orbiting charge should constantly emit radiation and rapidly collapse to the nucleus, but, you know. Small steps. It was certainly much more correct than any prior model of matter.
Though, I guess that link there is actually a strong supporter of the real point you’re trying to make, isn’t it?
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I’d like to repeat my praise of A Human’s Guide To Words as the thing that was basically the catalyst for my ability to finally understand gender stuff. I really think that seeing genders as similarity clusters in personspace is a prerequisite for being able to have any kind of meaningful conversation about the topic.
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Are they? Seems to me trans people keep insisting that they are not. I mean, not in those terms, but they say it’s not physiological and it’s not behavior, which doesn’t exactly leave a lot of axes to judge distance on.
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Okay, I was oversimplifying a bit. The analogy I have in mind is that “blegg” and “rube” refer to clusters in thingspace, but our brains try to come up with a binary category assignment to each object. Some people react very strongly to being called “blegg” or “rube” independently of any traits typically associated with the category in question. The need to prevent dysphoria outweighs the relatively minor inefficiencies associated with nonstandard use of these terms. (If any trans people feel this is inaccurate, please correct me).
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The similarity clusters in personspace exist and are useful to think about if one wants a theoretical understanding. There is room for debate about whether the word “gender” should refer to the clusters or not.
similarity clusters -> category-assignment model -> some people want to model themselves as belonging to a particular category -> out of politeness, we redefine the categories so as to put people in the category they want.
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I don’t think we entirely throw out the basics of the categories. There is a reason we divide people socially into two sexes/genders. What binary-identified trans folks are saying is, “Hey, I really belong in that other category, here’s why…” [1]
Except regarding *why*, you get a different explanations from different people, mostly because we don’t all fully understand ourselves at that level. We use the vocabulary we have to share our experience. A trans person who is religious might talk about “a woman’s soul,” while one who is science-y might talk about pre-natal hormones or whatever. But if you listen long enough you do begin to hear a deep truth about our gender.
And these days *most* of us take hormones and work to change our appearance so that we are read as being our true internally-felt gender. For most of us this works pretty well.
But then, not everyone can afford hormones or whatever. Some of us cannot quite pass. So trans folks also ask cis folks to make room for our variety. Likewise some of us get tired of explaining why to skeptical cis people, so we get prickly about it and stop explaining. We just assert our identity and back it with politics.
Which, politics is the mind killer, but we have to do it. There isn’t a better choice.
(Myself, I think it remains useful to explain why, near as I understand, at least to good faith listeners.)
But the “Human Guide to Words” thing — yeah I think it is super important and the perfect way to approach these questions. When you interrogate my gender, I get to wonder, “Why do you categorize bleggs and rubes this way rather than that? What is your hidden query?”
It could be that your hidden query is not-so-nice, or entirely selfish, or shallow and sexist. If you believe things for shitty reasons or if you are stubborn, I get to judge you for that. I get to *question* your behavior. You might have to answer for your beliefs.
(I’ve seen men on forums assert directly that “womanhood” was entirely about who they would sleep with. For real. They said it in plain words. One is tempted to ask if their mothers are women.)
But do not complain. I have to answer for my gender every day, all the time. My gender is under constant scrutiny, constant skepticism, constant speculation, by people who are as stubborn as they are ignorant. I very much wish the LW semantics stuff was required reading. It would move the conversation forward by a huge amount.
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[1] And I guess non-binary people are saying, “Neither category quite works for us, so we need some space in between…” — or at least they say something like that. I’ll let non-binary folks speak for themselves.
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Eh, I don’t know that it’s “lies to cis people” if you’re explaining that this is just a model for the basic concepts. “This is not actually how it works in real life, but it’s a useful way of explaining these things” is something you can tell an adult, or a bright child.
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Blame Mr. Pratchett.
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Only partly on topic – this intrigued me:
I hadn’t heard of this before. What’s (potentially) wrong with gender identity?
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At the risk of being overly direct: the space around these concepts doesn’t seem complex so much as it seems obfuscated.
If we wanted to be clear, we could just skip ahead to the relevant facts. Depending on the context, we could say stuff like:
“Pat’s skeletomuscular system would be typical for a male” or “Pat prefers to be socially grouped with the people who use ‘she’ pronouns,” or even “Pat’s endocrine system is atypical enough that doctors should pause and think before following the guidelines for people of either sex.”
The sex/gender/orientation framework seems like an attempt to split out the various questions that would motivate us to try and categorize Pat in the first place. Then it gives each dimension its own set of terms.
Philosophically, that’s great. It gives a way to respond to gender-questions with a “what are you really asking?” and then to give an answer that doesn’t imply too much about other possible questions.
Politically, it works a little too well. Allowing a clean separation like, “Pat is male-sexed and female-gendered” creates an opening for less enlightened people to declare that sex is the thing they really cared about. After all, who doesn’t do chromosomal screenings on a first date?
That’s going to be hurtful in all kinds of ways, especially to people who are really sensitive about how they’re being grouped with others. So we see people pull back from it and muddy the clean categories.
But this reaction seems to have lots of its own philosophical traps. Asserting that gender is hard (and not merely a poorly-posed question) requires people to say that it’s objectively real in the first place. That seems to have all kinds of implications that people wouldn’t want to adopt.
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In practical terms, people do not separate sex and gender, nor are they likely to do so. So whatever trans folks are asking for it must apply to both.
Which, certainly my doctor must understand my physical reality. Likewise my sexual partners will have to deal with my genitals. But these are not unique facts for trans people. Many cis people have atypical genitals or varied sexualities. Many cis people have particulars of their medical history that put them outside the norm.
(Funny story, a trans woman friend went to see a doctor who recommended a pap smear. My friend said, “Well, I wasn’t born with a uterus.” The doctor gave her a sad look and said, “Ah, yes, sometimes that happens.”
Yep. Sometimes that happens.)
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I would be very interested in a follow-up post ‘Truths for Adults’, please.
I’ve been really frustrated by Trans and TERF disagreements for a long time, because it seems to me that there are many people on both sides of the argument who are compassionate and thoughtful. Especially as trans-feminists and radical feminists probably agree quite strongly on many other important areas of feminism.
For example, you say: ‘A lot of trans feminists have started questioning whether gender identity even makes sense as a concept.’ AFAIK, one of the base beliefs of TERFs is that gender identity doesn’t make sense as a concept, but when they say it, it always precipitates a screaming match. If trans-feminists and TERFs actually agree on this issue, then what on earth are they fighting about?
If it turns out that trans-feminists and TERFs have actually agreed all along, but they’ve just been disagreeing over simplistic lies for children that niether actually believe, then that’s going to be vexing.
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I think that the non-lies-to-children version is “no one really knows why people are trans, but one model is gender identity.” Personally, since writing this, I’ve wound up in the hardcore anti-gender-identity camp: I don’t know what it would mean to be a “nonbinary” if that doesn’t affect anything about my thoughts or behavior, you know? But I am (for some reason) made unhappy by being considered a man or a woman– that is an observable fact.
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Anti-gender-identity for yourself, or for others? If the latter, that seems close to the typical mind fallacy, given that some people strongly identify with a particular gender. Where does dysphoria fit into that model? Or do you consider dysphoria more a matter of sex than of gender?
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I myself am socially dysphoric. I just don’t think that my social dysphoria is because I have Undetectable Essence of Nonbinary. I prefer framing it as “I am distressed by being called a girl or a boy”, this being a fairly obvious empirical fact.
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It makes perfect sense to me to be willing to go very, very far in accommodating my friends. But as I understand it the goal is that every person in society be doing this for every other person. It just seems like a really huge ask to say “everyone, please completely abandon the notion of biological sex”.
I work in pensions, and our mortality tables are sex-distinct. I would literally become worse at my job in a measurable and quantifiable way if I abandoned these. Multiply this problem by 1000 for doctors.
Am I misunderstanding the goal?
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I am incompetent at using blog comment systems. This was supposed to be a reply to stargirlprincess @ January 28, 2015 at 8:52 pm and the rest of that comment chain.
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Trans individuals have a medical history. No one is suggesting one ignore someone’s medical history in contexts where this matters. If one is estimating my life expectancy all sorts of medical issues are very relevant. If I was trans than me being trans would be important to know to estimating my life expectancy.
However there is a giant difference between viewing a trans women as a “woman who had some medical issues that affect her life expectancy*” vs a transwoman as “biologically male.”
What characteristics of gender are central is not clear. Trying to put chomosomes or gender assigned at birth in the “central” part of gender hurts people for no reason. Also the framing of things is important. Any definition that assigns transwomen as X-male or transmen as X-female is a horrible harmful choice.
Just to signal I am no social justice warrior consider again the SJ ideas around “prejudice” vs “Racism.” It is not at all value free that the SJ movements tries to define “racism” the way they do. In my opinion its a bad, harmful definition and hey should stop using it. Similarly people should stop defining things in ways that hurt trans people.
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SGP: I’d think that even if chromosomes or gender a birth is not central, it’s central for the purpose of many medical issues. After all, different characteristics can be most important to the concept depending on why you’re using the concept.
I don’t think it would make much sense for an otherkin to insist “I am a cat”, *and* then tell the doctor “it is hurtful to describe yourself as treating humans, or even that you treat people who are biologically human. You’re a doctor who treats humans and a certain subset of cats.” Especially if he then extends it to everything the doctor says: “You recommend checkups every six months for humans and certain cats. Humans and certain cats should have a BMI within this range.”
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This kinda reminds me of Hegellian dialectics. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis) Thesis (proposition) is that sex , gender, presentation etc. are equivalent. Antitheseis (negation of thesis) is that sex, gender, presentation etc. are completely unrelated. Synthesis (reconcilliation of thesis & antithesis) is that, while sex, gender, presentation etc. are independant, there are tight clusters in personspace and, in many cases, the metrics used to determine which cluster to which one belongs are somewhat fungible.
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I am personally really against the genderbread cookie. The gnderbread man implies that at least some transowmen are “biologically male” and some transmen are “biologically female.” Fuck that shit.
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Why?
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My personal answer would be transowmen/transmen are women/men not “partially” women/men. Its insulting and untrue to say otherwise.
However I will “try” to look at this from a different perspective. Even if you only grant that transwomen/transmen want to be considered women/men then describing them as women/men in any way is hurtful. Saying they are X-male/female is going to cause people to treat them in ways different from how they want to be treated. And this includes the fact that trans people want people to think of them as a certain gender (or genderqueer). If you definition of X-male/female defines transwomen/men are men/women then your definition is contributing to society thinking of and treating trans individuals in the wrong way if we want trans individuals to feel happy and accepted.
The second argument is intended to not depend on opinions about what “being female really means.” My opinion is that some transwomen I know would be very displeased if you called them “biologically male.” And in fact would be uncomfortable if they knew you though of them as “biologically male.” So I am basically back to “fuck this biologically-X shit.”
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Okay, so, at this point, I think I need a content warning:: The following is not hostile (IMO), but probably counts as transphobic by some definitions, and includes some hypothetical quotes that are hostile. I don’t think it violates the commenting rules, and I apologize if it does. I won’t feel insulted if no one replies to this, although I hope someone will, since I think frank discussion is the only way to move forward on issues like this. Still, I’m not going to suggest that anyone prioritize frank discussion over avoiding triggers, if that’s not what they feel is best.
My personal answer would be transowmen/transmen are women/men not “partially” women/men. Its insulting and untrue to say otherwise.
To me, this sounds like “red egg-shaped objects/blue cubical objects are bleggs/rubes, not ‘partially’ bleggs/rubes. Its insulting and untrue to say otherwise.” (As does, for that matter, saying the same about XX cismen or XY ciswomen.) That may be a useful political tactic if there are loud and assholish people declaring “red egg-shaped objects/blue cubical objects are rubes/bleggs that just need a thorough re-painting to get rid of their perverse and unnatural coloration!” but that doesn’t make it true in any objective sense.
However I will “try” to look at this from a different perspective.
Thank you. I am attempting the same thing, but with a fair bit of difficulty.
Even if you only grant that transwomen/transmen want to be considered women/men then describing them as women/men in any way is hurtful. Saying they are X-male/female is going to cause people to treat them in ways different from how they want to be treated. And this includes the fact that trans people want people to think of them as a certain gender (or genderqueer).
This, I think, is the rub for me. Gender is one of a handful of attributes (along with race (for individuals of mixed-ancestry only) and religion) where it’s considered somehow reasonable not only for people to care how others perceive them (everyone does that about all manner of things), but to feel wronged if they are not perceived the way they want to be, even if the perceptions are not in any objective sense inaccurate.
Before I proceed further, I want to stress that last qualification. Because certainly, it is reasonable to feel wronged if people believe things about you that are unambiguously false. Examples with respect to gender might include “oh, he doesn’t really think he’s a girl, he’s just doing it for attention” or “he’s only that way because he didn’t get enough attention from his father, and ended up identifying with his mother instead.” Statements like that are fucked, and it’s quite reasonable to be angered and aggrieved by them.
But “I define ‘a man’ as someone with a functional SRY; transwomen have that, and that means they’re really men!” is different. It’s not factually wrong, it’s just using a different set of definitions than transwomen would like.
I consider myself liberal, and I prefer to have others consider me liberal as well. I have some characteristics that are strongly atypical for a liberal, but I think I can make a pretty good case that those are incidentals, not essentials, and that I’m a liberal with some unusual characteristics, not “partially a liberal.” And I will get angry, and regard myself as having been wronged, if someone labels me not-a-liberal based on something factually inaccurate, e.g. “Osberend isn’t a liberal; he dislikes brown people for not being white.”
But it is not evidently inaccurate (although it might be contestable) to say that my views on immigration are “right-wing” (as a friend recently did) or that I hold a “conservative” position on abortion. That’s not really how I think of my politics, and I’d rather people didn’t describe them in quite those terms, but I think that everyone would agree that it would be ridiculous for me to angry at someone for doing so, let alone to claim that they had wronged me or treated me badly. Indeed, I think that almost everyone would angry that it would be ridiculous for me to have either of those reactions to someone deciding that support for pro-choice abortion politics is so important to what it means to be a liberal that I am “really” a moderate, or even a conservative.
So why should gender (or race, or religion) be special? Why should self-administered thought reform* be a moral obligation for anyone who doesn’t really *lieve that transwomen/transmen are women/men, rather than it being up to transpeople to make peace with the fact that in this matter (as in so many others, for transfolk and cisfolk alike), not everyone is going to view them the way that they want to be viewed?
Pronoun preferences for social use are fine, I have no problem with pronoun preferences. (Other than invented neuter pronouns, I suppose, but I’m perfectly fine with singular “they.”) Wanting to be grouped with this or that sex-gender socially, outside of contexts where biologically or history is relevant, sure. And hoping or preferring to be seen as one sees oneself, absolutely. Who doesn’t hope that**? But feeling like it strongly matters whether that hope is fulfilled (by everyone, everywhere), let alone believing that other people have some sort of a duty to fulfill that hope? Where does that come from?
*I’m thinking here of Ozy’s example of “a friend who is trying but still sees me as a girl”/”okay, but you’re a girl REALLY” as a cause for pronoun-use misgendering in Intent Is, In Fact, Fucking Magic. While I might be misinterpreting, there seems to me to be a clear implication that a transperson’s friends should be trying to see them as the sex-gender they identify with, and hopefully eventually succeeding.
**Other than about negative traits one perceives in oneself, of course.
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I don’t know. I have it as a terminal value. It hurts a lot to be seen as a girl. I don’t go “I am not a girl, so why are you seeing me as a girl?” the same way I go “I am not an athlete, so why are you seeing me as an athlete?” I go “being a girl hurts it hurts so much stop stop stop stop” and that makes me not identify as a girl. Expecting my friends to try not to see me as a girl is expecting my friends to try not to seriously hurt me, which is a reasonable expectation.
Why do I feel this way? IDK. Hormones or something?
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Hmm, that seems like a fairly reasonable take.
I do notice something interesting, assuming it’s not just an accident of phrasing (or an interaction effect with BPD): There seems to be some conflation in your description of being a girl or identifying as a girl with being seen by others as a girl. Are these actually two distinct things that hurt you, or do they strike you as somehow being the same thing?
To return to my attempt to relate this to something I can grasp (which may be fundamentally futile): I don’t know whether identifying as a moderate or conservative would hurt, exactly, but it would certainly be extremely uncomfortable for me. But having other people view me as a moderate or a conservative is, at worst, annoying. “I am a liberal, but some people do not view me as one, even some people who know me and are not crazy.”
Does the sentence “I am not a girl, but some people view me as one, even some people who know me and are not crazy” not work because the second half is painful in its own right, or because it seems somehow self-contradictory?
For whatever it’s worth, either intrinsically or in contextualizing these questions, I don’t see the disembodied-voice-plus-a-profile-pic that I’m currently interacting with as [adjective-of-woman*].
*Technically, I suppose that would be “womanly,” but usage, man.
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The second half is painful, yes. The first half is simply confusing. I don’t know what not being a girl would mean outside of being thought of as a girl being painful (and, I suppose, my preferences about my physical sex).
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The second half is painful, yes.
Fair enough.
Tangent: I kinda wonder if anyone has investigated and/or attempted to improve the effectiveness of psychotherapy for eliminating misgendering-induced dysphoria, without attempting to eliminate transgender identity. This seems like a worthwhile project, but the fact that it relates to a polarized issue without falling neatly into either political “camp” might make it tricky.
The first half is simply confusing. I don’t know what not being a girl would mean outside of being thought of as a girl being painful (and, I suppose, my preferences about my physical sex).
Huh. That first half is . . . that wouldn’t even come up in my list of “ways I am not a girl.” (Neither would the second half, actually.) If I had to pick one, I’d go with something like “I don’t instinctively think of myself as a girl.” If I were to refer to other people at all, it would be either “other people overwhelming don’t think of me as a girl” or “I’d rather/em> other people didn’t think of me as a girl” . . . but that’s not really central in the same way that my not seeing myself as a girl is.
Granted, it’s pretty hard for me to imagine someone seeing me as a girl in any context other than maybe online (and probably not for very long), so it’s possible that I’m mistaken. But honestly, I don’t think it would be likely to cause me pain, at least from a stranger or casual acquaintance. (Frankly, I might even view it as a net positive if a lesbian I was attracted to viewed me that way, or if it otherwise got me concrete benefits without concrete drawbacks. But again, I could be mistaken.)
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The definition of “man” or “woman” is not clear. In fact the clusters corresponding to “men” and “women” are very ambiguous. If you are going to draw lines then where you choose to draw them is not a value free or morally neutral decision. There are conceptualizations of “male” and “female” that do not harm transgender-ed individuals. If zie decides to instead use one of the harmful conceptualizations I am not going to be happy with zir choice. Picking bad definitions is the source of many problems. We both agree that the SJ definition of racism/sexism as “prejudice + power” is extremely harmful to discussion. Would you defend it on the grounds its not “factually wrong.” I wouldn’t.
On the duty toward thought reform:
“But feeling like it strongly matters whether that hope is fulfilled (by everyone, everywhere), let alone believing that other people have some sort of a duty to fulfill that hope? Where does that come from? ”
My answer is this. If something is important to you (it does not matter why) and someone cares about you they should make a serious effort to do what you ask of them. Transgender people often care very much about the gender people see them as (and imo one’s thoughts will manifest in behavior, at least in subtle ways). So if you care about a transgender person, or a loved one of a transgender person you should try very hard to see them as the gender they want you to (I feel icky saying that instead of seeing them as their gender but I am trying to be convincing to people who do not share my beliefs).
If one tries hard to think of a transgender person as X gender and cannot do it then fine. This is unfortunate but life is unfortunate. Even some clearly decent people like Scott cannot seem to manage this. I would guess like all things seeing transgender people as the correct sex is much harder for some people than others. I will not harp blame on those who tried and failed.
I will note I am willing to bite the bullet on the implications of this. If someone deeply thinks they are a Squirrel then you should do your best to think of them as a squirrel. Sadly the thingspace difference between Human and Squirrel is pretty large so unfortunately I doubt most people can really think of another (seemingly) human person as a Squirrel. But if you care about the squirrel-kin or zir friends you should do your best.
Even in extreme cases like human squirrel one has alot of wiggle room in thingspace. Its not hard to consider Sandy from Spongebob both a Squirrel and a person. Or Salem from Sabrina the teenage witch. There is an extreme amount of arbitrariness to how we define words and think about concepts. A special case of “try your best to help loved ones or friends of loved ones” is to be willing to try to move around these definitions and conceptualizations if you can mange it.
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That’s a really good way of explaining it, Stargirlprincess, and I’ve got a lot to think about.
My personal preference as to my own thoughts would be to get more precise. I’m totally happy to move the labels “man” and “woman” to include transmen and transwomen – to me, they’re just words, and why would I use them to hurt someone if I can avoid it?
I think a different case would be if someone who I thought was mistaken (let’s say a believer in a particular religion or a particular alternative medicine) would be deeply hurt if they know I thought they were wrong. I wouldn’t do my best to believe they were right, but if they weren’t hurting themselves, or if conflict wouldn’t help the situation, I wouldn’t confront them with it.
With trans issues, it’s a little more fluid – in my completely unqualified opinion, the question is “are you willing to move the definition of word x to include person y” than it is “are you willing to believe that person y fits the definition of word x you used 10 years ago.” And I am willing – words are wind to me, but I wouldn’t want to hurt someone if I can avoid it, particularly if I can avoid it nearly costlessly.
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I’m reminded of Natalie Reed’s final blog post. She was musing at length on the issues involved with the inevitable oversimplification involved in Trans 101 type things (e.g. the Genderbread Person and its offshoots). (She also challenged the concept of gender identity in some of her late posts.)
http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2013/03/19/trans-101/
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Yes, she was a major inspiration for this post.
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I think the real danger is that you don’t actually know who in your audience is cis. As a trans-ish person who didn’t yet realize it and who got the lie-to-cis people version and took it at face value, I had a hard time sorting my stuff out because I was working with a terrible framework.
And also a hard time building a relationship with the community because I would notice that the lies were, lies, and say ‘hey, these are lies’, and then be told that I was being transphobic.
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