Transsexual Feminism
I did already talk here about feminism and femininity and transgenderism. But antoher really interesting aspect is transsexualism and feminism. First of all we have to ask ourselves why a transsexual woman would be a feminist. Many people still think that a transsexual actually does adopt every aspect of a stereotype old-fashioned female role model – that would include being suppressed by a man. But just as not all lesbians look like men and not all men suppress women anyway, why should all transsexuals want that kind of a stereotyped self-affirmation?
Well, first of all there are also lesbians among us and they don’t happen to be into men anyway. Then there are a lot of self-conscious straight women too, why should they want to be oppressed? Well, one might argue now that a transsexual is predestined to hate men – some people still believe that we are doing things like HRT and SRS because we hate men and therefore ourselves. However, when halfway reasonable and intelligent, we’d say that we rather dislike our bodies or gender role, not the men in general. So a transsexual isn’t a feminist just because she hates men – at least I don’t.
So we come to the last problem – a lot of the radical feminists actually hate transsexuals because when gender is nothing but a social construction – as they argue – why would someone change sex then? To them we simply have to be men because every other answer would make them question their viewpoint.
But there’s more to feminism than just outdated radical views. Some time ago being radical was completely necessary to achieve some goals, but nowadays it’s not something that rather screws up things than make them grow. We simply cannot afford to blame men for everything bad that happens to women – not that men weren’t responsible for some of it (and for even more in the history) but still, it’s not like some women wouldn’t make things more difficult for themselves too. Let me make an example about that: At grammar school I heard a lot of the gals say “I’ll study this or that subject” and when I asked, on what job they want to work on they said surprisingly often – “Actually I want to get married afterwards and then found a family.” Why study then at an expensive university, maybe even with a limited number of students, when you don’t use it during the next twenty years? Not that I blame housewives that also want to have some degree to work later on, but when they say from the first place that they just go to a university just to find a man it’s rather a waste of resources others could need.
Now, what exactly would a transsexual woman do here? All right, there are also many transsexual housewives, but less than one would guess. We simply had to work on our way before so many of us simply learned to survive on their own. This doesn’t exclude things like love and partnership but often excludes complete dependency. Now of course many transsexuals stay away from feminism because of the old-fashioned radicals that still spook around here and there and are still listened to surprisingly often.
However, others still are feminists in some way – let’s say in many different ways. What is really interesting is that we have quite another approach to some things like being a woman or femininity in general. Although some time ago a woman nearly had to give um being feminine to achieve something this is nowadays not necessarily the case in western society – she can normally be the way she is and whether this is tomboyish or feminine doesn’t really matter. And when a “normal” feminist had to fight for not being discriminated just for being a woman, a transsexual started off with the same fight, just from another perspective. We also get discriminated for being women, only that we rather get discriminated because of the y-chromosome or the outing than for just being a woman – that second part follows at a time when we are already used to make our way in this world so we can handle in quite easily in most cases. This and the fact that we spent at least some time in another role that appeared inappropriate to us gives it quite another background – we first fought for rights most women take for granted. It doesn’t mean that we are the ones that always had the harder life and should be pitied for that, but it also gives another approach to feminism altogether. This includes also gender studies, which can be partly rethought trough that.
I’d never say that we are feminism, but we still are a surprisingly important part of it – last but not least because we might have some things to say that very few people already heard.
Your feminist Liz
