Editorial

by Katherine Cummings

(The Gender Centre advise that this article may not be current and as such certain content, including but not limited to persons, contact details and dates may not apply. Where legal authority or medical related matters are cited, responsibility lies with the reader to obtain the most current relevant legal authority and/or medical publication.)

Radical feminists like Janice Raymond and Germaine Greer are totally opposed to the recognition of transgender women as women

Let Women Be Women

Some time ago I was asked to write a piece about what it means to be a woman in a queer context (in my case, transgendered). I knew it would not be a simple task. I do not like the use of "queer" in this context although I understand the climate of defiance that sets out to rehabilitate words which have been used against oneself or one's sub-culture. Language has its own inertia and is not easily reshaped by the wishes of a minority. I do not see myself as queer. I see myself as a woman with a somewhat unusual history.

Before considering the larger question, however, it is necessary to know what we mean by "woman" and there is no simple answer, because almost every definition has one or more exceptions. There are legal, social, physiological and psychological definitions and none is more "real" than any other.

Taking physiology as a starting point, if we rely on external genitalia, the usual starting point for the assignment of newborn, there are immediate challenges to definition, as children born with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (C.A.I.S.) will look female at birth and will grow up looking female although they have XY chromosomes, their internal genitalia are unformed and they are infertile.

Most children born with C.A.I.S. are raised as female and most continue in the female role even after they discover that they have XY chromosomes. Nor can we rely on chromosomes as a reliable guide. There are many variations on the standard XX or XY formats. XXY is not uncommon and there are various other versions of the chromosome layout, including people born with a mosaic chromosome pattern which involves both XX and XY and other variations in their gene structure.

Some babies have a self-explanatory condition called micropenis. If a newborn is considered by doctors to have a penis too small to be functional, parents are sometimes persuaded to allow the child to be surgically converted to female. This entails a lifetime of hormone therapy and a series of surgical operations as the child grows and, of course, "s/he" is raised and socialised as female.

Feminists sometimes restrict events to "women born women" or, in extreme cases even the suffix "-men" is forbidden and the event becomes one for "womyn born womyn". In the light of the paragraphs above, however, and acknowledging the existence of C.A.I.S., mosaic and micropenis children raised as female, these exclusions are really based on "women assigned at birth as women", which is somewhat different.

It is understandable that women who feel strongly that men have dominated and oppressed women for eons should wish to have times and places where they can be sure that the presence of men will not be tolerated, a space where they can speak freely and behave in any way they see as appropriate.

This brings us to the question of transgender. Radical feminists like Janice Raymond and Germaine Greer are totally opposed to the recognition of transgender women as women. Raymond sees transgenders as an attempt by men to infringe on female "territory" and usurp female rights. Greer simply detests transgenders and derides them at every opportunity. She tried to have Rachel Padman, a male-to-female transgender academic, fired from her post at the all-female Newnham College, Cambridge but the academic board, who had been aware of Rachel's history before they hired her, stood firm.

It is clear that Raymond and Greer and their ilk do not see transgender women as "real" women. Yet if transgender women are really men, as is implied, are transgender men really women? Would the radical feminists welcome female-to-male transgenders, with their beards, baritone voices, male-pattern baldness and gymnasium muscles to their restricted meetings, or would they be seen as traitors to the cause of femininity, and cast into outer darkness or to a special limbo created for the unassignable?

Another area of contention is that of shelters and refuges provided for the homeless and the abused. Clearly it would be inappropriate for male-to-female transgenders to be admitted to male refuges, yet a number of female refuges have closed their doors against transgendered women. I can understand the fears of women in a refuge, who may have suffered abuse from men, finding a person in their midst who, to their eyes, is a man in woman's guise. Yet a transgendered woman may need a refuge as much as a woman assigned her womanhood at birth, and may also be vulnerable to abuse if she is not given shelter.

Anecdotally, the restrictions appear to be based on incidents of inappropriate behaviour on the part of transgendered women in female refuges, and if the anecdotes are accurate then the refuge would have every right to eject the perpetrator, just as they would have a similar right to eject a genetic woman for similar behaviour. But specific examples of inappropriate behaviour in no way justify a blanket prohibition of a whole sub-class of their clientele.

It has been suggested that separate shelters should be provided for the transgendered, but this would create a ghetto situation which is the last thing a transgendered woman wants or needs.

Transgenders and the intersexed are often clumped together with gays, lesbians and bisexuals but one of the significant differences is that whereas gays and lesbians leave the straight world to join their own sub-culture, transgenders do not wish to join other transgenders but would prefer to be seen as a man among men, or a woman among women.

Transgender is not a sexuality and a transgendered person may be straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual or asexual.

How then can transgendered women be expected to fit into the queer milieu? Are they doomed to be outsiders from straight society at large; from the company of women; from lesbian events; and even denied entry to the emergency refuges set up for distressed females? The problem derives most often from the human habit of generalising, of assigning characteristics to a racial group, a religion or to any recognisable sub-set of humanity.

It is not possible to define with any confidence what a woman is and there will always be disputes where definitions fail. Perhaps the only valid strategy is to allow for self-definition, as we do for Aborigines, and apply similar rules of validity for that self-definition, namely that the self-defined woman is genuinely living the female role to the best of her ability, and that she is generally accepted by the society in which she claims membership.

Shelters and refuges should, by all means, eject or censure those who misbehave whether they were assigned female gender at birth or affirmed it at some later stage. But until they trespass, the authorities should find it in their hearts to be charitable and compassionate to those who find themselves, through no fault of their own, in a world of refuges and shelters, a world whose customs and rules they must learn and respect while much of what they have accumulated in their earlier socialisation is suppressed and put away forever. Segregation is not the answer. Inclusion may be.

Straight, gay, lesbian, transgender, or in any other way queer, let women be women.

Suffer little children

Recently I was invited to appear on Channel Seven's Sunrise show to comment on the appropriateness of sixteen-year-old German pop singer Kim Petras having gender reassignment surgery. I pointed out that Kim had adopted a female lifestyle for much of her life, that her parents, who were presumably authorised to make legal decisions for her, had agreed, and that the German authorities had also been persuaded that this was the right route for Kim to take. In the light of Kim herself, her parents and the medical authorities all being in agreement, I asked why anyone else's opinion needed to be sought. I pointed out that most transgenders know in childhood who they are and what they want, and that to spare a transgendered child the agony of puberty, with all the physiological processes which would later need to be reversed was entirely justified whether by delaying puberty through hormonal therapy or by going directly to surgical intervention.

The G.P. that Channel 7 uses on these occasions disagreed with me, saying that nobody under the age of eighteen should be allowed to have surgery. This is the cookie-cutter approach to therapy. Everyone is the same and everyone must follow the same route, regardless of individual differences. I couldn't agree less. I would have pointed out that a lot of children are arbitrarily assigned surgically to a gender, virtually at birth, on the agreement of parents and medical authorities, and without any input from the child, but our tiny segment of time on air did not allow for my second comment to be made. I am glad, however, to report that in the following weeks two more cases of young children in Britain (nine and twelve years old) being allowed to transition from one gender to the other were in the news. The website Second Type Woman includes a twenty-nine page article titled "Treatment of Young M.T.F. Transsexuals" . The article contains details of a significant number of transgendered children who have been allowed to transition and start the therapeutic processes necessary for reassignment at an early age. These include a Japanese child, diagnosed with G.I.D. at age six and allowed to transition at seven.

So much for cookie-cutters!

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.