So some stuff came up in the thread about identification and gender-delineation in Illinois. I found myself making comments like this:
Also, while hormones are less of a change than hormones and surgery, they’re not a trivial regimen to embark on by any means. If medical intervention is a necessary standard for seriousness–again, a different discussion–then I don’t think they can be called insufficient.
And this:
Exactly. This proposed legislation doesn’t actually protect transpeople against discrimination if people perceive them as trans, per se; all it does is give them the option of privacy if they want it, with the understanding that discrimination is very very common. Anyone who seems not to be correctly gendered will probably face all kinds of difficulty simply getting around, let alone trying to get into any gender-separated space. This is why posing as a transsexual doesn’t seem like such a great way to escape notice. The only way to solve that is to prohibit discrimination or harassment of transpeople or perceived transpeople; the only way to retain the arguable greater protection afforded by this scrutiny is to allow transpeople to face harassment and discrimination if they don’t pass.
I was mostly trying to point out the ignorance demonstrated by the quoted legislators, and the fact that the surgery requirement fails even on the ostensible merits. It is arbitrary even if we accept the premise that it is not arbitrary to privilege easy administration over bodily sovereignty.
Setting aside for the moment whether or not any one person can talk about the needs of a large and diverse group, I really don’t have the right to arbitrate here at all. And I don’t want to sound as though I do. I did go through a transition, my own. I did spend a couple of years–admittedly in one of the safest places to be incongruent–with transgendered papers, with identification that either outed me as an ftm or simply confused the hell out of people. Now I deal with incongruity again. But it is not my place or anyone’s to decide what level of medical intervention someone else can be obligated to bear in exchange for a freaking driver’s license.
I think I’m still not being quite clear. I think it is wrong to hold a discussion like this about the right of a group of people to forego surgery or sterilization–or, hell, exogenous hormones–that they might not, you know, want. I don’t think that any majority from any constituency may burden a minority with such a hardship, and I include the trans community such-as-it-is in that. On the other hand, we don’t have the right to speak about any of these things as though they are unnatural or mutilatory for everyone. However, if I pretend that I am an insider, let alone some sort of emissary tranny, then I add even greater weight to the idea that surgery can be mandated via legal delineation of gender. I also make it even more difficult to talk about the enormous real-life consequences of social, legal, and physical transition. A lot of these problems are no longer mine. That’s huge.
And Holly just sent me a link about Margaret Cho: born-again trannychaser (Oh, Margaret). I can talk about the politics of fetishization, I suppose, and maybe even bring in the gender-bodhisattva crap, but I don’t think I have the right to tell her to back off. She doesn’t want my spreading, estrogen-saturated ass anymore. I need to be careful about whatever tendency I have to speak for. In that and many other ways, I am cisgendered. I’ve got to acknowledge that and the sweet, sweet privilege that comes with it.