Transgendicus Gregarius

Following up from a discussion on Facebook today, where the age old debate of whether or not crossdressers are actually transgender came up. The usual arguments from both sides (“any form of gender variance is trans”, vs “it’s the Rocky Horror types that spoil it for the rest of us.”)

So are crossdressers transgender? Clearly some are not. They are men who enjoy wearing traditionally feminine clothing. They happily identify as cisgender men. But it’s equally possible that some people who consider themselves crossdressers also find themselves on the transgender spectrum with respect to their gender identity.

The problem is in focusing on the behaviour, rather than the reasons behind it. Crossdresser and transvestite describe behaviours whose motives are open to interpretation, often based on established prejudice. Even though there are fetishistic and non-fetishistic crossdressers (and the same is true of transvestites) everyone’s more familiar with it being a fetish, and what they see is a man with a kink for dressing as a woman.

So maybe it’s time to cut these terms lose. To leave ‘crossdresser’ for someone who is a man, with no gender identity issues, who just likes to dress as a woman, either for sexual or non-sexual reasons. Or, indeed, a woman who does the reverse.

If there’s a gender identity drive behind it, then let’s focus on that. Since the term (along with transvestite) is typically used to describe people who don’t live full time in a gender role contrary to their assigned sex at birth, we’re talking about the non-binary branch of transgender: genderfluid, genderqueer, agender, bi-gender, poly-gender.

I’m not here to tell anyone how to identify. I am here to say that if you don’t want to be seen as a man who likes wearing women’s clothes, then you’re best off avoiding the terms ‘crossdresser’ and ‘transvestite.’ There are other options out there, now.

And if you are a man who happily wholly identifies as a man and likes to play dress-up, then ‘crossdresser’ can be something that describes you. And hats off to you. It’s no less valid than being transgender, just different. Besides, a few years down the line, you may discover there’s more to it for you. A lot of the ones who consider themselves ‘truly trans’ forget their roots, and how they got where they are.

Some cars are red. Some cars are Volvos. Are Volvos red? The rather obvious answer is that some of them are, and some of them are not. And it’s the same case with crossdressers and transgender identity. So rather than debating whether crossdressers are transgender, let’s accept that there’s crossover, and that there are both transgender and cisgender crossdressers. So if you want to know whether an individual crossdresser considers themselves transgender, just ask them. If you want to answer the question of whether crossdressers are transgender, then yes they are, but only in the same sense that Volvos are red.

The answer isn’t especially useful.

Since the subject comes up quite often, and the answer isn’t straightforward, I’ll put it here. Calculating the date of Sparkle is slightly less complicated than figuring out Easter, but not as straightforward as it should be.

It’s usually the second full (Friday/Saturday/Sunday) weekend in July, and fits neatly between LFF and London Pride the weekend before, and Brighton Trans Pride the weekend after. However, if July 1st falls on a Saturday or Sunday, Sparkle becomes the first full (Friday/Saturday/Sunday) weekend in July. Unless they change this routine, Sparkle Friday should always fall on 6th to 12th July, inclusive.

So …
July 1st is a Monday: Sparkle begins Friday 12th July
July 1st is a Tuesday: Sparkle begins Friday 11th July
July 1st is a Wednesday: Sparkle begins Friday 10th July
July 1st is a Thursday: Sparkle begins Friday 9th July
July 1st is a Friday: Sparkle begins Friday 8th July
July 1st is a Saturday: Sparkle begins Friday 7th July*
July 1st is a Sunday: Sparkle begins Friday 6th July*

*If July 1st is a Saturday or Sunday, Sparkle Friday clashes with Leeds First Friday (LFF sometimes changes dates because of this) and Sparkle Saturday clashes with the London Pride march day.

This is in no way official, but certainly fits the last 7 years that I’ve been going. I strongly advise against booking any non-refundable non-amendable accommodation until the official dates are published on the website. You never know when they might throw us another curveball.

Something I’m seeing increasingly within the trans community is people claiming that it’s “reductive, narrow minded and transphobic” to have a genital preference. These are invariably bisexual or pansexual trans women who seem to think that because they don’t have a genital preference, nobody else is entitled to one, either.

Yes, there are actually trans women out there insisting that any lesbian who refuses consider them a partner because of their penis is “transphobic.” That lesbian might stand with the T in a parade. She might offer her support in every way she can. She might never have uttered a transphobic slur in her life. But the fact that she considers a penis to be a deal breaker in the bedroom makes her ‘transphobic.’ So you take an ally and call them ‘transphobic’ anyway. Is it any wonder that the TERFs are gaining traction in the lesbian community?

This seems to be exclusively a trans phenomenon. If a straight person stands up for gay rights, but refuses to get intimate with someone of the same sex as them, nobody starts yelling ‘homophobe.’ To qualify as phobic, someone needs to demonstrate negativity or hostility to someone else at a social level. There’s a world of difference between kicking a same sex couple out of your taxi for kissing, or refusing to make them a pizza, and refusing to join in a threesome with them.

As one of my friends put it, some trans people use the cry of ‘transphobia’ as a sword and shield against anything that they don’t feel suitably accommodates them as a trans person. In this case, they’re upset that their dating pool is somewhat restricted by their trans status. So let’s accuse everyone of being phobic.

True, the situation is slightly different with someone post-surgery. Then you get into the sticky situation of whether a genital preference can also include a preference for congenital (as at birth) sexual parts. But still, it’s the person’s choice to make. When it comes to a sexual coupling, freely given consent by all parties involved is what matters, along with each person’s perception of the other’s sex and gender: just because you see yourself sexually as female and a woman, it doesn’t oblige a partner to see you the same way for the purposes of having sex with you. Again, this isn’t the “refusing to make you a pizza” situation. Yes, it’s pretty upsetting if someone drops you like a hot potato the moment they find out you’ve had surgery, but unless the rejection is hostile, it’s just withdrawal of interest and consent, rather than transphobia.

Most of all, this attitude is homophobic (it’s also heterophobic, if you accept that such a thing is possible.) The gay rights movement has spent over 50 years listening to heterosexuals tell them they have an obligation to be heterosexuals. Now they have to listen to trans bisexuals and pansexuals telling them they have to be bisexuals and pansexuals.

We are forever telling LGB people that if they can’t stand with the T’s, then they don’t belong under the LGBT umbrella. Well the same goes for the T’s who can’t respect that some L’s and G’s have an exclusive genital preference. If, as a T, you can’t stand with the L and the G, then you don’t belong in LGBT either.

I recently took the plunge and decided to go full time. Originally still ‘bloking up’ for work, but having had a great conversation with my employer, I’m transitioned there, too. New e-mail addresses. New business cards on the way.

It’s an interesting paradigm shift. In some ways, predictable, and in others not. So here are a few random thoughts and experiences.

Shaving every day and putting on makeup isn’t the chore I thought it would be. As a part-timer, I’d often go several days without shaving, and obviously I’d only put makeup on for ‘girl mode.’ But shaving takes about 5 minutes, and I’ve got my daily makeup routine down to less than 10. I have long hair anyway, so really the only other difference is putting on the bra (and popping the falsies) and having other clothing options besides jeans, T-Shirt and trainers.

It’s fantastic not to have to justify ‘dressing.’ Part-time, I would question whether I really needed to do ‘girl mode’ to go to the cinema or out to the pub. I would often find reasons why ‘bloke’ made more sense. Doing ‘part time apart from work’, that switched to defaulting to ‘girl’, and only doing ‘bloke’ if the situation expressly required it (which it did for work until I officially transitioned there.) And of course now, it’s just what I do every day.

It’s made life a lot less complicated. For example if I had a day that was just travel, I could do it in a dress, but if I got a work related call en route, I’d have to stop and change, or (if it wasn’t urgent) find an excuse to put it off to another time. There’s no need to do that, now.

Pitfalls?

While the toilet situation doesn’t really bother me, the changing rooms one does. So I’m reluctant to go swimming, or camping where I’d need to use gendered shower facilities.

Having makeup on throughout the day means you can’t spontaneously decide to wash your hair (at teatime, for example.) It has to wait until last thing at night, or first thing in the morning.

I still haven’t figured out ‘appropriate workwear.’ Black dresses with tights and boots seem to be favourite at the moment, but I need to diversify.

Apparently my hosting provider is migrating this blog over to WordPress. The upshot of this is that, for now, I can’t update the heading or right hand column text to reflect where I’m currently at. I’ll change those once I’m able to, again.

So I’ve given my thoughts on sexuality before: there are only four sexualities, depending on whether (all other preferences being met) you’d be sexually interested in the same sex as yourself, other sexes, neither or both. These are homosexual, heterosexual, asexual and bisexual respectively. And I think in logical terms of sexuality, this still stands. If you’ve ever done Boolean algebra, you’ll know that there are four possible permutations of two binary possibilities. You’re either some degree of same sex interested or you’re not. You’re either some degree of other sex interested, or you’re not. Four possible outcomes.

But I’ve come to realise that’s overlooking the nuances of what people consider to be sexuality. And people very much see a second spectrum in addition to anatomical preference. This, I believe is the gay/lesbian, pan, straight spectrum, and furthermore, it runs independently from the four logical sexualities outlined above.

So where Kinsey’s famous scale runs from 0 (completely heterosexual) to 6 (completely homosexual) with different degrees of bisexuality filling in the 1-5 range, I see a second scale running A (other gender attracted) through to G (same gender attracted) which is based largely on gender presentation and identity of the respective parties concerned.

Suddenly a lot of things make sense. The bisexual male who is interested in both women with vaginas and women with penises is still ‘straight’ – he’s likely an A1 to A5 on the matrix. We know he’s not traditionally bi, because he can’t get excited about a masculine presentation, no matter how tight the cycling shorts or how ripped the six pack. The trans woman who is only attracted to other women is still a lesbian, regardless of who has male or female physical anatomy. She’s going to be a G1 to G5. Equally, the male who is interested in both men and women, as long as they also have male anatomy, gets to be B6 through to F6.

For this to work, we need to stop considering ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ synonymous with ‘homosexual.’ We need to stop considering ‘straight’ to be synonymous with ‘heterosexual’ and we need to stop considering’ bi’ to be synonymous with ‘pan.’ And that’s going to be difficult. But once you detach gender preference from anatomical sexual preference, a lot of things that previously didn’t make sense suddenly do. The scale doesn’t run conveniently as a 45 degree line from A0 to G6. People can appear absolutely anywhere on the chart.

This is one that’s been bugging me for nearly 20 years. Having been born with glanular hypospadias, I’ve repeatedly been told that it is an intersex condition, and equally repeatedly been told that it isn’t. The Intersex Society of North America lists it in its statistics on intersex incidence, but is suitably woolly as to an actual definition, preferring ‘disorders of sexual development’ (a term which, itself, is problematic, since many intersex people don’t want to consider themselves disordered.) Most medical professionals will tell you that it doesn’t warrant an intersex diagnosis, and that it’s a male birth defect.

Well surely if anyone gets to define medical conditions, it’s the World Health Organisation. And yes, unlike nearly everyone else (who just allows a medical professional to call intersex or not as a subjective diagnosis) the WHO actually provides a definition.

What’s finally conclusive to me is two extracts from this page:

http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html

“Intersex is defined as a congenital anomaly of the reproductive and sexual system.”

“…This estimate sits within range; from genital anomalies, such as hypospadias…”

So hypospadias is a genital anomaly – a congenital one (i.e. present at birth) of the sexual system, and therefore someone who is born with it is intersex.

I know it shouldn’t matter. It’s not like my life revolves around it, but I’ve been somewhat perturbed to keep receiving contradictory answers for nearly two decades. I’ve always felt I was intersex on the basis of having hypospadias, but I didn’t feel comfortable identifying as such. Not being certain, it felt too much like appropriation.

So that’s done and dusted now. If the WHO says I’m intersex, then that’s good enough for me. As an aside, when I have sex with a male, it’s technically a heterosexual act, since we are two different sexes.

Or why it’s time to separate gender identities and roles from biology.

I’ve written this piece to address two separate issues. One being the everyday belief that gender and sex are synonymous, but also the increasing assertion that I’m seeing in trans circles that sex is an artificial social construct, just as gender is. It expands on my previous post, so apologies for the repetition.

A lot of dictionaries still define sex and gender as the same thing. If you look up ‘woman’, you will see it defined as something along the lines of ‘adult female.’ Though note the empahsis on ‘adult.’ Below is why I feel this is outdated.

Some key differences between sex and gender.

Sex is universal. Every culture has a concept of ‘male’ and ‘female’ that is broadly defined as ‘has penis’ or ‘has vagina.’ That’s not to say that sex is a binary. There are intersex people (often born with neither typically male nor typically female sexual organs) and transsex(ual) people who have achieved a physical state contrary to their birth sex (or sometimes somewhere between male and female) through hormones and surgery. But the binary fits well over 90% of the population perfectly. Men with feminine traits and women with masculine ones are far more common.

Sex is tangible. It takes a brief physical examination to establish the sex of most humans, animals, and even some plants. There are key indicators that differentiate between male and female. Gender is not tangible. It is a societal role. Age and species are both factors (you wouldn’t call a 6 year old female human a woman. You wouldn’t call a 20 year old male horse a man, either.) Sex/gender is relevant, too, but once you begin to distinguish between them, you hit a fork in the road. Which one actually matters? What’s between your legs, or your own sense of masculinity or femininity?

Some cultures already have roles for people who don’t fit neatly into the gender binary. But even though Western society still clings to the binary, it already acknowledges at least four separate gender roles: boy, girl, man and woman. Boy is distinct from man as girl is distinct from woman. At exactly what point does one become the other? Well that’s a thorny question in itself. What’s clear is that girls, boys, men and women each have traditionally different societal roles: clothing options, behavioural options, career options etc.

Sex roles remain constant throughout the world (at least in the sense of male and female.) Gender roles vary wildly (a woman’s role in Saudi Arabia being very different from that of one on the UK.)

I believe the key here is to keep sex about sexual (rather than asexual) reproduction. The method by which most advanced animal lifeforms, and even many plants, reproduce. It takes an egg and a sperm or a pollinated flower to create new life. It’s a mechanism that creates genetic diversity by ensuring that plants and animals mix their genetic material, rather than just constantly replicating their own (note: the human ‘true hermaphrodite’ – with fully functional male and female sexual organs and able to fertilise themselves – is a myth.) Sex is about the two sexes (male and female) required to make this happen. Primary sexual organs are the body parts that make this mechanism possible. While ‘sexual activities’ covers quite a broad spectrum, ‘having sex’ generally refers to direct stimulation of those primary sexual organs, though not necessarily in ways that lead to reproduction. Sexuality is about whether you’re interested in ‘having sex’ with the same and/or other (not opposite) sex. (As an aside, let’s stop confusing matters by inventing new sexualities for every conceivable preference.) These are important points of reference, but let’s not get things back to front here. That your anatomy is normally associated with sperm producer or egg producer is what makes you male or female. This doesn’t mean that being unable to do either of those things (due to fertility issues) negates your sex. It doesn’t mean that arriving at it through surgery negates it, either.

Gender, on the other hand, is a belief system. It’s something we’ve invented, and which varies from culture to culture. We traditionally expect it to align with biological sex (and yes, the crossover of pronouns between gender and sex usage is confusing) but nowhere is this written in stone. There’s just a general understanding that males and females have different clothing options, different behavioural expectations, different career opportunities. None of which need to be directly connected to what’s in your underwear. This is gender. It has no rational basis, it’s just been that way for so long that most people don’t bother to question it.

Of course you’re free to identify as you please on an individual level. My concern here is that we’re constantly eroding the points of reference. It’s useful for discussion purposes to be able to distinguish ‘man’ from ‘male’ and ‘woman’ from ‘female.’ If we make them both mean the same thing (either from the perspective that they are both sexual abolutes, or from the one that says both are social constructs) then we lose valuable means of discussion. When someone seriously suggests ‘person with a penis’ and ‘person with a vagina’ as everyday terms in place of ‘male’ and ‘female’, you know you’ve crossed the line from ‘political correctness’ to ‘political correctness gone mad.’