So, After Ellen recently published an article hot mess of transphobic fail on the cotton ceiling, a term coined by Drew DeVeaux to explain queer trans women’s experiences with “simultaneous social inclusion and sexual exclusion”. Other than the entire premise of the article—a cis woman questioning the validity of trans women’s experiences of discrimination—there are so many instances of trans ally fail, I don’t think I can even count them. I’m going to touch on the broadest type of ally fail in the After Ellen piece, then explain my beef with author Marcie’s take on what the “real” issue is, and finally try to respond to questions like, “So what are we supposed to do? Date people we aren’t attracted to?” (Spoiler alert: Obviously not.)
Let me try to lay this out for you, Marcie, as a fellow white cis lady. I bet you’ve experienced sexism; fuck knows I have. Can you always prove that what happens to you is a result of sexism, and not your own lack of vigilance, or your own lack of qualifications, or some other aspect of your character? I can’t! Sexism is often unquantifiable and unprovable, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know it’s happening. I sure hope you’d be mad as all hell if you explained your experience of systemic sexism to a dude, and he responded by telling you that you couldn’t prove it was sexism and not just one of your own character flaws.
Now, sexism and transphobia aren’t the same thing, but allyship works very similarly for any oppressed group, and a fundamental requirement of allyship is believing members of the group whose struggles you are supporting. If dudes want to avoid being sexist douchebags, the first step is believing women when they say “Sexism happens, and this is how I experience it.” (Usually the prerequisite to that step is a big dose of sitting down, shutting up, and thinking, especially if your initial response is skepticism.) Surely you can see how, if you want to avoid being a transphobic, exclusive douchebag, your first step as a cis woman is believing trans women when they say “Transphobia and transmisogyny happen in queer communities, and this is how I experience it.” This is all assuming you actually want to be an ally to trans women; if you don’t think that’s necessary or important, then I beg you to refrain from commenting on issues like this ever again. You’re giving me and all other queer cis women a bad name, and I don’t want your voice being perceived as mine.
Leaving aside the fact that you, as a cis woman, have no place deciding that the issue is “rather” one of an “underlying cultural problem of how women treat other women,” I think this assertion is flawed. Let’s make no bones about it; trans women are women, and thus the discrimination they face is a feminist issue. That does not mean their experiences of being women are identical to cis women’s experiences of being women; in fact, I believe that feminism must take into account the vastly different and particular ways oppression plays out in various women’s lives. Reframing a specific experience of cissexism and transphobia—not being considered datable or fuckable by the majority of one’s queer community—as simply women treating each other badly is not only delusional, it’s exclusive. Like, come on feminism, haven’t you learned yet that you can’t just look at white, middle-class cis women’s lives and assume that “all women” have the same struggles? Please see “My Feminism Will Be Intersectional or It Will Be Bullshit,” or Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Until feminism can hear and contend with the specificities of different women’s different oppressions, it will continue to fail the vast majority of women.
I also completely disagree that “the fight for gender equality and the fight for sexual equality should be fought separately”. 1976 called; it wants its radfem, lesbophobic bullshit back. We tried separating those struggles already, remember? It sucked, and it didn’t work (or, less negatively, it had limited results and was unable to contend with a hell of a lot of women’s problems). Once again: come on feminism, haven’t you learned yet that you can’t just demand that women who experience multiple forms of oppression check some of them at the door? Haven’t we, as feminists, as women, as queer people, learned yet that all these systems of oppression reinforce each other, and when we try to “focus” on only one at a time, the real outcome is that we focus on only one small group’s needs at a time? Though gender and sexuality are different things, and it’s part of both the struggle for gender equality and sexual equality to convey that fact to the broader hetero mainstream, gender equality and sexual equality are inextricably entwined. When we queer cis women refuse to date or fuck queer trans women, it’s an issue of sexuality: who queer women feel they can date and/or fuck and still be with a woman, how queer women feel they can date and/or fuck and still be doing it queerly.
Final point: I think we can probably start by agreeing that most queer cis women, as things currently stand, do not often date or fuck trans women. Let’s try an exercise: draw your web. Yes, L Word-, Our Chart-style. How many trans women are on there? I will admit, right here, right now, that I have never dated or fucked a trans woman, and that to the best of my knowledge, exactly one of my close friends has. Cis women, I preemptively request that you please spare me the trope of accusing trans women of being (male) sexual predators acting entitled to cis pussy, accusing them of misogyny and indignantly demanding, “So what are we supposed to do? Date people we aren’t attracted to?!” Obviously not. Please don’t. If you’re asking that question in this context, you have a hell of a lot of personal work left to do before you can come close to being a decent partner to a trans woman.
At risk of sounding repetitive, because this is becoming a bit of a catchphrase for me these days: QUESTION YOUR DESIRE. If you have spent any time thinking about how damaging and fucked up it is that every women’s magazine photoshops models to be skinnier, whiter, and less wrinkled, then you’ve already started. Standards of beauty, aesthetics of fuckability, are not created in a vacuum. They come out of real societies, and they are built on that society’s sexism and racism and ableism and fat negativity and, yes, cissexism and transphobia. Furthermore, desire is not static or permanent. Do you think the same things are hot now as you did when you were fourteen, or has your desire evolved and expanded?
Desire is malleable. Desire changes, and it changes based on many things, including our understandings of what’s hot, who’s a woman, and what lesbian and/or queer sex is. We become less transphobic by learning to see our cis privilege and recognizing instances of cissexism, transphobia, and transmisogyny when they occur. The more we do that, the more “real” trans women become to us, the more legitimately women they become to us—NOT that they need our approval. We do not do this because they need our approval as women; they are women whether we are able to see it and whether we act like it or not. We do this because we recognize that our perceptions are warped and incorrect, and because we want to see clearly. We do this because we are giant assholes when we can’t recognize all women as such, and we’d rather not be assholes. Therefore, what is being asked of us is that we take apart our desire, see its transphobia and transmisogyny, and then we remake it. For me, this is actually a core element of queerness, and don’t fucking tell me it’s impossible, because I do it all the time and so do tons of people out there. Once again: question your desire. Do more. See more. And hey, date more and fuck more, too.
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8 Responses to Dear Marcie: The Cotton Ceiling and Questioning Desire
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You know, I haven’t read the piece you’re talking about — and after your cogent demolition I wonder if I should
, but I’m commenting because it’s one of those moments of serendipity. I just finished “Victory,” Linda Hirshman’s history of the gay civil rights movement in the US, and there were several passages where she said that the gay rights movement came from much farther behind than either the black civil rights movement or feminism, and kept going when they stalled. And if I look at my own lifespan (I’m 40) I have to say, the progress that queer folk have made in my lifetime does seem to outstrip the progress that both women and people of color have made.
I don’t know what to think about her explanation for why this is. Apologies in advance for the long quote I’m about to copypaste here, but I think you’ll see how it relates to what you’ve written in this post:
Emphasis mine. I’ve been going over that and other points Hirshman makes in my mind the past few days, and to be honest I have no clue what I think yet.
For context, Hirshman is describing a specific moment in time; basically, O’Brien made the case for intersectionality that Hirshman is criticizing here in 1970, and one of the results was the formation of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), which was formed by people who left the GLF after O’Brien and other leaders gave $500 of the group’s money to the Black Panthers.
I think the key point for me is that a decent gay rights activist does want to advance anti-racist projects, even if they’re white. A gay rights movement that is fundamentally anti-racist isn’t exclusive of anyone but racists; a gay rights movement that tries to focus “only” on gay rights issues and doesn’t actively make itself anti-racist is exclusive of anyone who experiences racism. I’d rather have POC than racists in my gay rights movement, personally! He may be right that when movements get more inclusive, they weaken, but I think that’s because a gay rights movement that was previously ignoring issues of race was probably majority white and, unfortunately, probably majority racist. When it got less racists, racist white folks bailed. (Keep in mind that I don’t necessarily mean “would commit a violent hate crime” by “racist”! Racism appears in myriad benign and insidious ways, and I believe that white folks are by default racist in a racist society that privileges them systematically. The only way to get less racist as a white person is to genuinely try.)
And also:
Hear, hear. Seconded.
This!
After Ellen yet again proves itself pretty clueless when it comes to issues of transmisogyny.
Foget about wanting sex, I would just like to have a conversation where I don’t see the figurative door closing in my face the moment a lesbian works out I’m trans.
I am starting to wonder whether it is simply a case of being used to make up the numbers when it suits, but ignored socially. Intersex friends say similar things too.
Yeah, that too. Sex and dating are just one manifestation of a systemic problem in dyke culture.
[mod-added TW: denial of the legitimacy of trans folks' genders]
“Let’s make no bones about it; trans women are women, and thus the discrimination they face is a feminist issue.”
That would be “in your opinion”. Trans women are born males who believe they are female though there is no physical evidence at all suggesting they are female. For the most part, the rest of civilized society accepts their desire to live as women and to alter their bodies to appear as though they are women. That doesn’t mean society actually agrees that they are women. It’s not being transphobic to disagree with trans people. It is not transphobic for cis people, male or female, to reject physical intimacy with trans women as unappealing when they find out they aren’t female. It isn’t discriminatory because sexual preference for male or female sex partners is not a social construct.
Trans people seem to be insisting that sexual desire is based on gender identity and physical appearance. Because that is true for trans people, and some non-trans people as well, doesn’t mean it’s true for everyone else. While sexual response is malleable to some extent, gays and lesbians know that it is also hard-wired. There is an extensive and still current history of treating homosexuality as a choice. Now trans women are trying to tell lesbians that their desire should be based on physical appearance and gender identity, not on sex. That lesbians more readily accept trans men as sex partners and at mich fest is considered a problem by trans women. In that case trans men are also betraying trans women.
Underlying this phenomenon is the inescapable truth that most people, straight and homosexual, still respond sexually to birth sex not gender identity. No matter how you dress up the intellectual argument, it still boils down to telling lesbians that their sexual preference is not hard-wired. It is telling lesbians that their sexual desire for females is invalid. Lesbians have heard that before.
I read one rant (by a trans woman) that it is insulting to trans men that lesbians accept them but not cis men and that lesbians who have sex with trans men should be questioning their own sexuality and referring to themselves as bi.
Some trans women seem to be trying to aggressively impose their identity politics on other people’s sexuality. In my opinion many, probably most, cis people who respect the right of trans people to present themselves as whatever gender they want to present themselves as do not actually agree that trans people are the opposite sex to which they were born. That doesn’t make us transphobic because there is no objective proof that gender exists at birth. It doesn’t mean we aren’t allies to trans people in the sense of gaining rights and in the sense respecting a trans person’s desire to be treated as the sex they present themselves as, and to have access to medical treatment.
First things first: obviously this is my opinion; I wrote it. Second thing: I’m cis. Any trans women reading this should feel free to weigh in or correct me if I’ve got anything wrong. Third thing: I posted the above comment despite incredibly insulting and denigrating content because I’m willing to try to respond to what’s raised here. I don’t have the time or the energy to put into an ongoing debate, and lots of trans women have written lots on these issues. I would encourage you to seek them out, and to be truly open to what they have to say. Either you’re willing to hear trans women, learn from them, and respect them, or you’re not, and I can’t convince you to do those things no matter how hard I believe that doing those things is necessary to being a kind, ethical person. Any future transphobic comments on this thread will not be published as per my commenting policy.
Trans women are born and designated male. “Male,” “female,” and the physical characteristics associated with those categories are defined by culture and language; without culture or language, sex designations do not exist. There are a lot of reasons a binary sex structure is what emerged, despite the fact that there are more than two sexes that occur naturally among humans, albeit not with equal frequency. You can check out Anne Fausto-Sterling for some intro-level critiques of the binary sex system. One reason a binary system has dominated could be that there are two most-common configurations of primary and secondary sex characteristics, but if you’ve had even basic exposure to feminism or feminist theory, the links between a binary sex and gender system, its enforcement, and patriarchy should be clear to you. A binary sex and gender system benefits patriarchy and works to keep women inferior by grafting any number of less-valued binary traits onto them. Male/female, strong/weak, active/passive, public/private, work/home, etc. are examples that are commonly discussed in 101 feminist theory classes. As a sidenote, I’m referencing academic feminist theory a lot not because I think it’s the best place to turn for trans positive reading (it’s not), and not because I think it’s the only or the most legitimate source of critiques (it’s not), but because I have a strong background in it, so these references come readily to mind. This also seems like a domain that might be accessible to you, Gisele, based on the tone of your comment.
As to your assertion that “for the most part, the rest of civilized society” accepts trans women, that is just patently ludicrous. Trans women face some of the highest rates of violence in this world specifically because society does not accept them enough even to afford that superficial level of “ugh, if you say so” acknowledgement of the legitimacy of their genders and presentations. Trans women also have to jump through ridiculous hoops in order to be permitted to alter their bodies if they want or need to, and being trans is still a mental illness according to the DSM.
I don’t know that it’s true that most people respond most strongly to assigned-at-birth sex. I think that given how prevalent that assumption is, and how few people are exposed to the idea that there might be more possibilities for gender than man-with-penis and woman-with-vagina, and how beneficial it is to systemic structures of patriarchy, heterosexism, and cissexism…it’s not surprising that our overall impression is that “most people” respond most strongly to assigned sex. I don’t think that most people actually think about what it is that attracts them to a person most fundamentally; I do, but I’m a queer, kinky, polyamorous leatherdyke who geeks out about this stuff as a hobby. My mom is awesome and she gets it when I tell her about queerness and transness, but I doubt she’s ever sat there and tried to figure out if she wants her partner for his dick or for his patience, his long hair, his corny jokes, or the sweetness and support they give to each other.
As to the question of choice: Whether people choose to be gay or lesbian or queer or are “hard-wired” that way doesn’t matter. Our relationships, our love, our attraction, and our lives as partners together should be respected. Point final.
Trans women are not trying to tell lesbian women what their desire should be based on; they’re trying to ask people to continue down a path many of us have already started down: reconsidering what defines a woman. Naturally, if you are a lesbian and you are attracted to women, reconsidering who counts as a woman is going to change whom you see as a viable sexual or romantic partner. Feminists, lesbians included, have protested against being reduced to pussy to fuck or uterus to make babies for decades; I think lesbians and feminists, both cis and trans, are already on the same page in that regard: the pussy does not make the woman. We do not want pussy to make the woman, because we are more than pussy, every single one of us. I love my pussy and for me it’s an intrinsic and important part of my womanness. I hope to birth children in my future, and I believe that for me, that will also be an important experience of my own womanness. That does not mean every single woman must be as in love with her cunt as I am with mine; that does not mean every woman must have a cunt; that does not mean every woman must birth babies with that cunt. A trans woman’s way of embodying womanhood and living womanhood is simply one more equally legitimate way of doing it. The idea that there is one universal experience and definition of womanhood is racist, classist, able-ist, and yes, transphobic as all hell, and this has been explained by many people in many different ways. The example I used is a very physical, embodied one, but this principle can be generalized to other facets of womanhood, too; transphobic radical feminists are fond of saying that trans women were “socialized” as men and therefore cannot be true women, as if there is one essential way or one essential set of ways that women are socialized in any given community, city, or country. You could maybe start with bell hooks, if you want to start taking apart that idea of a universal experience of womanhood.
I’m suspicious of anything that tries to legislate other people’s identities. Sure, I have extremely strong and judgmental personal feelings about who should use the word dyke, the word queer, but I would never feel comfortable or justified in trying to tell someone that they aren’t what they believe themselves to be. I don’t think lesbians should be mocked, excluded, or seen as less legitimate lesbians for being interested in, admiring, dating, or fucking men, cis or trans. I do think that it can indicate pussy-based/cissexist understandings of gender when people have as a policy “cis women and trans men only”. Identity exists on more bases than the genitals of the people you date and fuck. Finally, a word on “being an ally”: the number one directive is to listen to what the group you’re trying to support needs. Allyship is also not something you can decide you’re doing; we cis folks cannot decide we’re being good allies, especially if we’re refusing to listen to or respect what trans women are saying about their own lives and experiences and needs. This cotton ceiling issue is one thing some trans women are saying; an ally would treat that as true.