criticizes in his book ) has likened sex reassignment to doing liposuction on anorexics , apparently not noticing that, um, anorexia
kills people
while sex reassignment for adults
saves lives.
All this has contributed to the mainstream trans community’s feeling that it makes more sense to emphasize issues of gender identity rather than issues of sexuality. After all, under any reasonable understanding of human rights, one’s sex life ought to be one’s own business so long as one isn’t hurting anyone else.
It’s also worth mentioning, given how often cultural sex politics play out in universities, that academic feminists have always seemed a lot more supportive of trans
gender
than tran
ssexuality
—that is, when they’ve been supportive at all. The history of feminism and trans issues has been fraught with tension, especially since feminist Janice Raymond’s 1979 book,
The Transsexual Empire
, which accused trans women of actively undermining the work of “real” feminists by supposedly giving in to the heterosexist patriarchy by simply switching over from stereotypical male to stereotypical female. Raymond even claimed, “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves .” Some feminist groups, like the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, still shun transgender women, admitting only “womyn born womyn.” (So much for Simone de Beauvoir’s observation that women are not born, but made.)
Add to
that
the fact that, in many places, discrimination against trans people has been perfectly legal in housing, employment, even schooling. Then add the history of police refusing to investigate (or even participating in) gay-bashings and murders of trans people, not to mention emergency workers refusing to treat trans people with life-threatening injuries, and you get a group understandably vigilant about possible violations of their rights .
In short, there is always a lot at stake politically and socially when you’re talking about transgender. And yet, while some of Bailey’s best friends really were gay men and trans women, in his clueless privileged way, he didn’t worry about his work’s political implications for sexual minorities. He worried only about what’s
right
scientifically, and he decided that Blanchard’s taxonomy was right about the salience of sexual orientation to male-to-female transsexuality. Bailey gave quite sympathetic portrayals of all the trans women in his book, including Juanita and Cher, and he firmly concluded that the ultimate happiness of individual transgender people is what matters most, even if transitions leave families or communities unhappy. But Bailey made the mistake of thinking that openly accepting and promoting the truth about people’s identities would be understood as the same as accepting them and helping them, as he felt he was. Where identities as stigmatized as these are concerned, it just isn’t that simple. The shame and derision accorded trans women like Juanita and Cher doesn’t disappear just because a few scientists may be
personally
fine with the idea that men might become women primarily because of reasons of sexuality, not “trapped” gender identity. As I came to learn, Bailey thought sexuality was a plenty good reason for lots of actions. But the trans women who attacked Bailey for his book understood that the world would probably not agree.
And they weren’t interested in finding out. They wanted the whole business of Blanchard’s taxonomic division shot down. Transsexuality should appear only as the public could stomach it, as one simple story of gender, a tale of “true” females tragically born into male bodies, rescued and made whole by medical and surgical sex reassignment. And there should be absolutely no mention of autogynephilia or any other sexual desires that might make trans women look to the sexually sheltered like the perverts they were historically
kills people
while sex reassignment for adults
saves lives.
All this has contributed to the mainstream trans community’s feeling that it makes more sense to emphasize issues of gender identity rather than issues of sexuality. After all, under any reasonable understanding of human rights, one’s sex life ought to be one’s own business so long as one isn’t hurting anyone else.
It’s also worth mentioning, given how often cultural sex politics play out in universities, that academic feminists have always seemed a lot more supportive of trans
gender
than tran
ssexuality
—that is, when they’ve been supportive at all. The history of feminism and trans issues has been fraught with tension, especially since feminist Janice Raymond’s 1979 book,
The Transsexual Empire
, which accused trans women of actively undermining the work of “real” feminists by supposedly giving in to the heterosexist patriarchy by simply switching over from stereotypical male to stereotypical female. Raymond even claimed, “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves .” Some feminist groups, like the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, still shun transgender women, admitting only “womyn born womyn.” (So much for Simone de Beauvoir’s observation that women are not born, but made.)
Add to
that
the fact that, in many places, discrimination against trans people has been perfectly legal in housing, employment, even schooling. Then add the history of police refusing to investigate (or even participating in) gay-bashings and murders of trans people, not to mention emergency workers refusing to treat trans people with life-threatening injuries, and you get a group understandably vigilant about possible violations of their rights .
In short, there is always a lot at stake politically and socially when you’re talking about transgender. And yet, while some of Bailey’s best friends really were gay men and trans women, in his clueless privileged way, he didn’t worry about his work’s political implications for sexual minorities. He worried only about what’s
right
scientifically, and he decided that Blanchard’s taxonomy was right about the salience of sexual orientation to male-to-female transsexuality. Bailey gave quite sympathetic portrayals of all the trans women in his book, including Juanita and Cher, and he firmly concluded that the ultimate happiness of individual transgender people is what matters most, even if transitions leave families or communities unhappy. But Bailey made the mistake of thinking that openly accepting and promoting the truth about people’s identities would be understood as the same as accepting them and helping them, as he felt he was. Where identities as stigmatized as these are concerned, it just isn’t that simple. The shame and derision accorded trans women like Juanita and Cher doesn’t disappear just because a few scientists may be
personally
fine with the idea that men might become women primarily because of reasons of sexuality, not “trapped” gender identity. As I came to learn, Bailey thought sexuality was a plenty good reason for lots of actions. But the trans women who attacked Bailey for his book understood that the world would probably not agree.
And they weren’t interested in finding out. They wanted the whole business of Blanchard’s taxonomic division shot down. Transsexuality should appear only as the public could stomach it, as one simple story of gender, a tale of “true” females tragically born into male bodies, rescued and made whole by medical and surgical sex reassignment. And there should be absolutely no mention of autogynephilia or any other sexual desires that might make trans women look to the sexually sheltered like the perverts they were historically
Similar Books
