Are you a man or a woman?

Someone says to a transgender person "but you were born a man!" and my head wants to explode. No one is born a man or a woman, but instead male or female with the added non-negligible array of intersex conditions and ambiguous genitalia which leaves us unable to instantly pick a binary designation at birth. All this because nature abhors uniformity. 

Guest post by Joanna Santos

It turns out the perfect binary never truly existed but the idea was created and maintained to suppress any natural human gradations found everywhere else in biological processes. 

If we base ourselves exclusively on science this perfect binary isn't real. It was a cultural artifact where religious leaders and the ruling class could have the predictability they needed, and for most people it worked if imperfectly. 

Tolerance or intolerance?

Many native cultures have tolerated and even embraced those who exhibited gender variance. Others, more steeped in orthodoxy, fought it vigorously as it contradicted dogma that couldn't contain flexibility. 

People in those latter cultures with the most need to transition, were obliged as much as possible into stealth. Even variations of expression were discouraged to the point of physical arrest and incarceration well into the 20th century. 

Blanchard debunked: Surveys show that all kinds of people experience "autogynephilia"

 

Online surveys show that gender embodiment fantasies (called "autogynephilia" and "autoandrophilia" by transphobic researchers) are common among all groups of people: transgender and non-transgender, men, women and those nonbinary.

Anyone who follows the intense anti-trans propaganda of the day, will have made note of the way the "autogynephilia" theory is used to invalidate transgender women and other gender variant people. "Gender critical" TERFs love the theory, as it allows them to present trans women as perverted predators. 

The theory has been falsified and dismissed over and over again, both by scientists and those that truly know something about being trans: transgender people. The tactic of the theory's supporters is often to confuse and obfuscate, or they double down on the analytical basis for the theory, ignoring the fact that it is this world view that has been falsified. Moreover, there is always a small detail somewhere you can use to confuse readers that do not know the topic well, or you can simply lie. 

In this post I am going to present data from several online surveys, some of them quite extensive, that have not been part of the academic discussions about the "autogynephilia" concept, but which nevertheless provide a rich amount of data about gender, gender variance and sexualities.  

They document that erotic crossdreaming (as in imagining yourself being the "other" gender relative to the one assigned at birth) are quite common in all relevant groups of people, straight and gay, women and men, transgender and those that are not trans. The fact that such fantasies are so common, destroys the credibility of the "autogynephilia" theory, which states that only male assigned people who are attracted to women can have such fantasies.

And what is truly interesting is that these surveys look at erotic crossdreaming as part of a much broader phenomenon: Embodiment fantasies in general, where people get turned on by the idea of having a body of any gender, including the one they identify as. This proves that the erotic cross-gender fantasies found in some trans women and other MTF (male to female) gender variant people represent a subcategory of a common human trait.

Transgender people, evolution and sexual mimicry

 Are trans and queer behaviors examples of "sexual mimicry"? 

Anonymous asked me the following over at tumblr:

"Sexual mimicry occurs when one sex mimics the opposite sex in its behavior, appearance, or chemical signalling. It is more commonly seen within invertebrate species, although sexual mimicry is also seen among vertebrates such as spotted hyenas. Sexual mimicry is commonly used as a mating strategy to gain access to a mate, a defense mechanism to avoid more dominant individuals, or a survival strategy."

Thoughts?

Gender variance in the animal kingdom

The concept of sexual mimicry is an attempt by some evolutionary biologist to explain gender variance in the animal kingdom.

I know of many female dogs who will gladly hump a bitch in heat. Heck, they may even embrace a human leg in order to get attention or whatever it is female dogs try to achieve by this kind of behavior. It might not be sexual at all in that context. 

What does the word "gender" really mean?

The main problem with the term gender is that it is not referring to one phenomenon only, but many. It is this ambiguity of language that makes discussions so confusing. But it also this complexity that makes the topic so interesting. 

The reason for this ambiguity is that the language most people use today has been developed within a culture that requires you think of male and female as "natural" and mutually exclusive. Moreover, these concepts of male and female are supposed to determine everything you are or can do.

However, reality does not care. Nature does not care. And everyone violates these rules on a daily basis. Everyone!

Here are the most important phenomena referred to as "gender":

Biological sex

Biological sex refers to what is called "gametes", as in sperm and egg. Gametes are real, so biological sex is real. 

Still, the two sexes are not mutually exclusive. Nature throws a lot of dice that comes up intersex, with different chromosomes (as in XY women and XX men) and a wide variety of ambiguous genitalia and sex characteristics.

Many species reproduced by way of gametes, as in human sperm an eggs. Other species have other ways of continuing the species.

By the way: Not even post-modernist gender philosophers deny the existence of gametes.  They are simply pointing out that our understanding of what the existence of biological sex means for our daily lives is colored by culture, and that the scientists themselves are also influenced by culture when they develop and present their theories. 

They are right about this, and scientists may also change their views based on new concepts and new ideals developed elsewhere. Homosexuality and gender dysphoria are, for instance, no longer seen as mental illnesses.  

Note also the way transphobes try to present  the statement "gender is the same as biological sex" as science. That statement represents, at best, 19th century science. I know of no serious scientists today – whether they come from the natural sciences or from the social ones – that argue that the complexity of cultural gender can be reduced to gametes, genitalia or chromosomes. 

Cultural gender

Throughout the ages various cultures have created an insane number of social rules as to how men and women should dress and behave. A Roman man would not be caught dead in trousers. Most cis/het American men today will not be seen in a toga ("Eeeeek! A dress!!!)

What is crossdreaming?

What is crossdreaming? A crossdreamer is someone who, to a larger or smaller extent, is driven towards imagining and expressing themselves as another gender.

The narratives about what makes gender variant and transgender people who they are, have often been colored by the thinking of transphobic people. These negative  narratives are also retold because queer and trans people have to respond to such invalidating theories and rhetoric. 

But what if we for once leave the bigots behind and talk about crossdreaming from an independent and positive standpoint?

As I see it gender variance normally reflects some kind of mismatch between a person's assigned gender and experienced gender.  This is often referred to as gender incongruence.

But we have to keep in mind that such incongruence comes in different colors and intensities. Some end up identifying completely with "the other gender" (relative to the one assigned to them by society at birth), while others simple feel the need to express sides of themselves that others try to deny them, because this is not what "real boys" and "real girls" should feel or do. 

Why are trans people trans? Part 2 ( A Look at Well Known Narratives)

In part 1 of this article I explained why we need to look into what makes transgender people trans. In this part I discuss some of the most influential theories and explain why I think one of them is better than all the others.

The theories attempting to explain trans identities

 I will focus on the four of the most dominant scientific models found during the last 150 years or so:

1. The Rainbow Model
2. The Body Trap Model
3. The Psychodynamic Model
4. The Two Type Inversion Model

There is also a wide research field addressing gender roles and gender identities in the social sciences and the humanities. Gender studies have, for instance, contributed greatly to our understanding of gender variance. 

But that tradition is most often based on a given acceptance of transgender identities, and is more interested in explaining the way social systems lead to oppression based on gender. It rarely considers the interplay between biology, culture and psychology, which I suspect is the primary concern of Tailcalled, who invited me to this discussion, so I will not describe it here. 

That sort of thinking has greatly influenced my reading of the science of gender and transgender identities, though.

The Rainbow Model

The dominant model for explaining transgender identities these days is what I will call the Rainbow Model. It is a non-reductionistic model, in the sense that it does not reduce sex and gender to a simplistic biological sex binary or one single factor of origin.

Modern research has uncovered a mind-boggling complexity as regards  the development of biological sex, both as applies to the development of the body (both prenatally and after birth) and the formation of a conscious gender identity.

Why are Trans People Trans?

What makes trans people trans? A lot of theories have been presented, and few of them survive the test of time. Currently the dominant model is what I have called the Rainbow Model, where a transgender identity is seen as the end product of a complex interplay of factors, some of them biological. In this three parter, I look at several approaches to explaining what makes trans people trans.

Tailcalled, who has been taken active part in the "autogynhephilia" debate over at reddit, has invited me to an online debate about what makes trans people trans. I can do that. We have agreed that we will both publish a blog post giving some pointers as to how see the "etiology" (cause) of transgender identities, as starting points for our discussion.

This is my blog post. Tailcalled's one can be found here.

So the question is: What makes trans people trans?

Sounds easy, doesn't it? All we have to do is to find some relevant scientific papers and take it from there. But it is not that easy. Not that I am dismissing the role of science in such a debate. I have been writing about this kind of research since 2009. 

The problem is that science is not a kind of platform where you can look at transgender lives with purely objective and disinterested eyes. Scientists are as human as the rest of us, and their preconceptions and prejudices directs their research questions and the way they conceptualize what makes trans people trans. 

Even the terms we use are fluid and ambiguous, because they have to be as we move through a cultural shift where traditional ideas about sexuality and gender are being questioned along a wide front. That is, as I see it, a very good thing, but it makes it harder for people to discuss this topic, as people from different communities have different life experiences and understand the relevant words in different ways.

Transphobic propaganda and the myths of desistance and regret

The great majority of transitioning trans people do not regret their decision to live as their true gender.

It is interesting to see how transphobic, lesbian,  "radical feminists" (TERFs) use the exact same arguments that were used to invalidate and marginalize lesbians. 

The most common one was that homosexuality was an acquired sexual perversion caused by the propaganda of the homosexual movement. If you could protect children from the gay movement, there would not be any lesbians.

This is obviously the same argument that is used today to stop lesbians from adopting children. Lesbian parenting is unnatural, will hurt the children and make them gay and so on and so forth.

The desitance-argument

The desistance-argument forms the foundation of the TERF argument against the the identity of transgender people. Since so many gender variant people, in the end, do not chose to transition, the TERFs assume that none of them are really of the gender they claim to be.  They have been duped by trans activists.

This is a completely misleading reading of the research available, as it mixes up gender nonconformity with gender identity. 

Variation in gender expression is used as a way of exploring both identity and sexuality among straight, gay and queer people. You will find “butch”, “femme” and “androgynous” people among all of them. 

The majority of these people are not gender dysphoric. They do not experience a severe misalignment between their gender identity and their assigned gender, or between mind and body. They simply express masculinity, femininity or any other aspect of cultural gender in a way that feels right for them.

When Real Life Gets in the Way of Transphobic Science

Gigi Gorgeous first came out as a gay man, then
as a trans woman, and now as a lesbian, falsifying
the autogynephilia theory in the process.

Two recent articles and a YouTube blog post present lives that prove the stereotypes of transphobic psychologists wrong. 

Meet Ekundayo Afolayan, Gigi Gorgeous and Kat Hamilton!

Sexology has caused a lot of suffering in queer and transgender circles.

Since the late 1980s terms like "transvestic fetishism" have been used actively to invalidate the  identities of male to female transgender people, mostly by reducing their sense of self to some kind of sexual perversion.

The clearest example is the the autogynephilia theory of Ray Blanchard, which is based on traditional gender stereotypes and a strict binary understanding of sex, sexuality and gender.

He is basically reducing sexuality, gender expression as well as gender identity in male to female trans people to a function of sexual attraction. In other words:  Who you are attracted to determines what kind of transgender person you are. And male to female transgender persons are either effeminate gay men or mentally ill straight men, according to this theory.

In real life there is no one to one relationship between sexual orientation on the one hand and masculinity and femininity on the other.

In real life there is no clear boundary between male to female transgender people who love women and those who love men, neither when it comes to appearance, behavior, desires nor when they first become aware of their gender variance.

Modern sexology often reduces the identity and
sexuality of trans and queer people to
"autoeroticism", a strategy used to invalidate
gay, lesbian and transgender people for more
than a century. (Thinkstock)

But that is exactly what the theory requires.

"Homosexual transsexuals" (this is what these researchers offensively call straight trans women who love men) are described as effeminate and sexy young transitioners, while "autogynephilic transsexuals" (i.e homosexual and bisexual trans women) are masculine, unattractive,  and "late-onset".

Actually, this binary encompasses non-transitioning transgender persons as well, including drag queens and crossdressers.

I am not going to repeat the main arguments against the theory here. You will find ample documentation here and here.

In this post I will present three recent publications made by people who all violate the borders set up by Ray Blanchard.

Coping with gender dysphoria without transitioning

Felix Conrad has published a new ebook: How to Jedi Mindtrick Your Gender Dysphoria, containing some pretty useful observations and advice for those MTF crossdreamers who do not go down the road of transitioning.

Felix' inner wise man talking to his inner woman.
(Photo of female Luke Skywalker by MJ MIller.)

The recent interest in transgender issues has been of great help to transgender people of all types.

Yes, the bathroom laws represent a back-clash, but you only get a back-clash when society is changing, and in this case in a much more tolerant direction.

Non-transitioning

There is still one group of transgender people  --- and I am using the term in its broader, umbrella meaning of gender variance here -- who remain invisible, though. Or, at least, less visible.

These are the gender dysphoric transgender people who -- for a wide variety of reasons -- decide not to transition.

This is the group Felix Conrad, our MTF crossdreamer philosopher per excellence, targets in his new book How to Jedi Mindtrick Your Gender Dysphoria.