Time and time again, transmisogynists and transphobes go back to
that old excuse that they are just standing up for the reality of “biological
sex” when they spew their ignorance and hate. They say that no matter what a
trans woman does, no matter what she believes, she’s still actually a man.
Others cede the fact that trans women are women, but stop there and say “gender
is what’s between your ears, sex is what’s between your legs” and therefore
trans women are still males. Although this is a popular idea, it is based on a
misunderstanding of biology, social constructs and anatomy, and it needs to
stop.
A lot of this misuse of the
idea of “biological sex” has, unfortunately, been centered around
discussions of activist and Orange
is the New Black actressLaverne Cox. Cox recently
became the first out trans person (Chelsea Manning was on the cover before she came out) to be on the cover of Time
Magazine. However, inside the magazine, Time said that an easy way to gain some understanding of trans people
is to realize that gender and sex are two different things. They say that “sex
is biological, determined by a baby’s birth anatomy” and then go on to call
trans women “biological males” and trans men “biological females.”
They are trying to good allies,
explaining what many see as a complicated issue, but what they are really doing
is using a simplistic and outdated understanding of biology to perpetuate some
very dangerous ideas about trans women. This type of dialogue allows
people to think that they are doing trans people a service, when really they
are just continuing to see them as something other than “real women.”
Another article
about Cox came out at about the same time. This one, however, was
very upfront about using what its author thinks is a good understanding of
biology to claim that trans women are not even women at all. Written by Kevin
D. Williamson for the National
Review and later republished by the Chicago
Sun-Times (who then removed
it and issued an apology), this article is called “Laverne Cox is
Not a Woman” and aggressively uses Williamson’s complete misunderstanding
of “biological sex” (and yes, I’m using scare quotes on purpose) to
misgender not only Cox, but all other trans people. He says that we need to pay
attention to the “biological reality” of sex instead of the delusional world
that trans people are living in.
In the article, Williamson says that (get ready for
some extreme ignorance and hate here) we are experiencing a new transgender
phenomenon, one where we have lost grip on reality. He says that we have an
“obsession with policing language (that is based) on the theory that language
mystically shapes reality…” However, just because we say trans women are women,
that, according to him, doesn’t change the fact that they are men.
He
instead calls Cox “an effigy of a woman,” based on his belief that sex is a
biological reality and “is not subordinate to subjective impressions…” He adds
that “No hormone injection or surgical mutilation is sufficient to change
that.” He seems to believe that sex as we describe it is a thing that just
exists, that a clear, inarguable and binary definition for sex just springs
forth from nature. Unfortunately, Williamson isn’t alone in this type of
rhetoric. There’s actually a wide group of people, some “allies,” some
lawmakers and some just outright bigots who all rally behind the idea of using
the social construct of “biological sex” to misgender trans women.
The thing people like
Williamson want to cling to the most is the idea that sex is an immutable,
universal biological reality that is therefore easy to categorize. Although
many are willing to call trans women women (or specifically “trans women” or
“transwomen” or even “male women”), they say that that is just their gender.
They argue that gender is cultural and that sex is an unchanging biological
fact, and that therefore their sex is still male. This is used to support “Womyn born Womyn” spaces, create fear
around so-called
“bathroom bills,” disallow trans women from
competing in women’s sports and even defend violence against
trans women.
Since “biological sex” is actually a social
construct, those who say that it is not often have to argue about what it
entails. Some say it’s based on chromosomes (of which there are many non-XX/XY
combinations, as well asdiversity among people
with XY chromosomes), others say it’s genitals or gonads (either at
birth or at the moment you’re talking about), others say it’s hormone levels
(which vary widely and can be manipulated), still others say it’s secondary sex
characteristics like the appearance of breasts, body hair and muscle mass
(which vary even more). Some say that it’s a combination of all of them. Now,
this creates a huge problem, as sex organs, secondary sex characteristics and
hormone levels aren’t anywhere close to being universal to all men or women,
males or females.
No comments:
Post a Comment