In the past several days since
Caitlyn Jenner was featured on the cover and in the pages of Vanity Fair magazine, I’ve read several articles that have claimed a feminist stance in
critiquing her “coming out / coming in” process. These pieces are thought provoking, for sure. And they raise points that are core to
feminism, past and present, as I understand it (granting that there are as many
forms of feminism as there are people claiming the name). On the other hand,
they also raise points that are at the very heart of what it means to
“transition” from a male to a female identity—or, as some would describe it, to
affirm one’s lifelong identity as woman. And also at the heart of what it means
to take a trans-positive stance vis-Ã -vis questions of gender identity and
gender expression (i.e., who one is
as male or female, and how people choose to present themselves).
This has been a hard blog to
write (and its length reflects that difficulty). I’ve hesitated to wade into
this morass, both because whatever I say is bound to tick off a few people (and
I prefer to make conversation, not war) and because I have no better
perspective on the controversy than a lot of other folks who have already
weighed in. But a couple of folks have suggested that I write about it. And
part of me has been hankering to do just that because it taps into this amazing
chaos created by the intersection of gender (complicated enough in its own
right) and feminism (ditto). I’ve spent a lot of time with these issues over
the years, and the topic has huge meaning for me—hence, this blog.
Fair warning: I don’t have
answers, only musings. The key to grappling with these issues and their
occasional conflicts, it seems to me, is to settle into living with uncertainty
and ambiguity. So be prepared. Here goes.
Part 1. The main feature.
Caitlyn Jenner’s
self-presentation in Vanity Fair
was, on many levels, stunning. What an extraordinary journey she has had, and
what a remarkable moment this was in the burgeoning transgender movement! Besides,
no one knew quite what to expect as Bruce bowed out and Caitlyn strode in, and
her entry was dramatic. Much of the reaction to the photo spread dealt with how
striking her appearance was—made up and gowned, and from what I’ve read
(because I haven’t seen the whole issue), photographed in luxurious settings
and lovely poses. Initial responses spoke to her beauty and her courage, and
social media were all atwitter (so to speak) with the story of another
important person publicly claiming a trans identity, adding to the recent swell
of such folks.
Part 2. The flap: some “feminist”
critiques.
Within a day or two, the
critiques began. Among them were pieces challenging the massive praise for Ms.
Jenner, her choice of the means by which she would come out, and her
description of what it means to be a trans woman. Some of these articles /
columns / blogs were largely anti-trans commentaries, and I won’t be commenting
on those. Among the others were several whose writers described their stance as
“feminist”—a vague enough claim to cover a lot of intellectual territory. These
seemed to encompass two major arguments, and I’ll start by describing those,
far too briefly. Stick with me for this. You may or may not agree with these
points, but I’ll come back for a second look from a more trans-affirmative
perspective—with which you also might or might not agree. And then another round
attempting to wrap it all up.
The first critique is based on
the feminist notion that women have routinely been valued only for their
appearance and that they are expected—indeed, carefully and steadily taught—to
be attractive rather than active. The argument is that Caitlyn Jenner’s version
of becoming a woman reinforces these narrow stereotypes through a photographic
essay that presents her as ultra-“feminine,” posed, busty, made up, and
air-brushed. This critique was clearly stated in a New York Times column by Rhonda Garelick. The column is titled “The Price of Caitlyn Jenner’s
Heroism”—already hinting at the problem—and the third paragraph summarizes her
key point: “Caitlyn Jenner’s transition is more
than a private matter. It is a commercial spectacle on an enormous scale,
revealing some disturbing truths about what we value and admire in women.”
Garelick goes on to describe Jenner’s clothing, her hair, her makeup, and her
poses as classic expressions of a view of women that values them only insofar
as they are beautiful, passive, and on display. She continues: “This seems less
the liberation of a true self than a reminder of the straitjacket requirements
of acceptable, desirable womanhood.” The closing paragraph underscores the
point. Garelick writes, “While the fanfare around the emergence of Caitlyn may
advance our acceptance of transgender individuals, it does so, in this case, at
a price: the perpetuation, even celebration, of narrow and dehumanizing
strictures of womanhood sustained by the fashion and entertainment industries.
True liberation of gender’s vast spectrum should ask more of us than that we
simply exchange one uncomfortable, oppressive identity for another.”
The second
argument is based on the feminist notion that one’s identity as a woman is
shaped not by biology, as Jenner has suggested in references to her “female
brain,” but by gender-related experiences that begin in the cradle (or before)
and end in the grave. The crucial point here is that gender is made, not born. It
is not a matter of innate “tendencies” or “brain differences,” but a product of
years and years of living within the constraints set for women by society. Thus,
the experience of someone who transitions to womanhood in adulthood simply is
not, cannot be the same as the experience of being a woman for life.
This position
was at the heart of another NYT column by Elinor Burkett titled “What Makes a Woman?”
Aghast at the brain argument, Burkett writes, “Suddenly, I find that many of
the people I think of as being on my side—people who proudly call themselves
progressive and fervently support the human need for self-determination—are
buying into the notion that minor differences in male and female brains lead to
major forks in the road and that some sort of gendered destiny is encoded in
us. [That sort of argument] was used to repress women for centuries. But the
desire to support people like Ms. Jenner and their journey toward their truest
selves has strangely and unwittingly brought it back.”
To counter this misconstrual, in her
view, of what shapes women’s identity, Burkett cites a neuroscientist who
explains that the differences between
male and female brains are caused not by innate differences but by the “drip,
drip, drip” of experience, of the gendered environment. At least from an
outside perspective, the drip, drip, drip of Bruce
Jenner’s earlier life included decades of the sort of privileged experience
that comes to men without their noticing. So however Caitlyn dresses and moves
and speaks, whatever roles she assumes, she will never know what it means to
have been a girl/woman from birth, to have lived in that one-down position for
all those decades. (Burkett disregards the fact that men are also harmed by sexism,
but that’s another blog.) In fact, Burkett suggests that trans women’s
insistence on being regarded as “real” women threatens the very meaning of “woman.”
(This aspect of Burkett’s column has itself received a fair amount of commentary—like this Huffington Post article).
Some of what fuels the position that Burkett
represents—with its obvious edge of outrage—is the sense that a challenge to
gender binaries was the explicit aim of the feminist movement decades ago, long
before trans issues had received notable visibility. That early feminist work,
she argues, is why we now see so much less gender discrimination than we saw back
then, when the feminist movement was the only gender-binary-smashing game in
town. We should be together in this, feminists and the trans movement, she
seems to say. But instead, trans activists have missed the boat, retreated to
the biological determinism, and abandoned the position that previously brought
such dramatic (if still incomplete) change.
Part 3. Some trans-positive responses
OK, those are the two prominent feminist
positions I spotted. Now, let me suggest another, more trans-positive
perspective. First, let me acknowledge that, not having experienced a
disjunction between my physical self (or my assigned gender) and my gender
identity, I can speak only from things I’ve read and conversations I’ve had
with trans folks. With that fiat, my hope is to present a counterpoint to
Garelick’s and Burkett’s arguments from the position of an ally to trans folks
and a lesbian who has shared some similar experiences of prejudice,
discrimination, and opportunity deriving from non-mainstream identity.
First, let’s consider Caitlyn
Jenner’s hyper-feminine (in the traditional sense) self-presentation. I have
two thoughts. First, whose business is it how she dresses, uses make up,
presents herself in her behavior, poses, mannerisms? Plenty of women who aren’t
trans identified are extremely focused on appearing “feminine,” spending
fortunes and hours (to paraphrase T. S. Elliott) preparing a face to meet the
faces that they meet. The (other) Kardashians come to mind. Now, we may not
prefer their choices, might even think them problematic. But other folks might
think the same of our manner of self-presentation, and whose business is that?
Second, and on a very different
plane, despite the critics' insistence that the Vanity Fair piece portrays a woman preoccupied with abiding by the
limiting rules for women’s appearance and behavior, it seems obvious that Jenner's choice to transition was indeed a very self-defining and self-affirming act. It
was far from passive. Her choice of physical accoutrements—clothing, hair, make
up, mannerisms—could be seen as defiant rather than submissive. This
presentation is the epitome of the self-presentation that was denied her when
she was living as Bruce. She claims her gender identity with an exclamation
point, affirmatively and unapologetically.
As for the challenge to Jenner’s
biological claims, we simply don’t know enough about the brain to claim either that
trans people’s brains, women’s brains, or men’s brains are unique in some way
or that they are not. Personally, I resist a purely biological explanation for virtually
any complex experience, but we simply can’t answer this question at this point.
Besides, why does it matter?
To the argument that Jenner (and
other trans women) fail to recognize the experiences of oppression they’ve escaped by virtue
of their late entry into their identity as women, I have two reactions. First, trans
women (and other trans people) have, in fact, experienced their own version of
oppression, suppression, repression over the years of coming to this point in
their lives. And I’m guessing they weren’t immune to sexism. Their awareness of
themselves as women could easily have made them acutely sensitive to the sexism
they witnessed, knowing it could be directed at them. The bias they’ve faced isn’t
the same as the version of oppression that girls and women experience, but who’s
to say that it’s less painful—or less valuable. It’s true that trans women have
not lived their entire lives as the direct objects of explicit and implicit
sexism—indeed, they may have enjoyed male privilege for some part of their
lives. And it’s true that they therefore reach adult womanhood with a different
perspective on life. So what? Those of us who grew up as women, dealing with
sexism for decades, also reached adulthood with unique perspectives. While we
can argue that the shared experience of lifelong sexism creates a bond among
non-trans women, it needn’t drive a wedge between us and trans women. On the
contrary, it could sensitize us all to the consequences of oppression of any
sort.
Second, what are we doing here,
deciding who is a “real” woman? What are the criteria? Will there by tests?
What sort of self-presentation will legitimize my identity as a woman? How long
must I have lived as a female for it to “count”? If I’ve been targeted by
severe sexism for a while, does that make up for my earlier years? Or is it all
about being female at birth? If so, how will we respond to people with intersex
conditions? Who among them will count as women? If the feminist movement has
taught us anything it’s the danger and the cost of shoving people into narrow
identity categories. Do we really want to start our own round of that sort of treatment
of others?
Part 4: Is there a “right” answer?
By now, you (like I) may be
sufficiently flummoxed by these arguments and counter arguments to be wondering
what the “right” answer is. I don’t know. But I’ll share a few of my personal
thoughts about it.
First, the matter of Jenner’s (and
perhaps other trans people’s) buying into, even exaggerating long-standing
gender stereotypes. I think both sides have a point here, and I suspect their
intersection offers a deeper message for us. To be honest, the question of
whether trans folks might reinforce gender stereotypes (or, if you’re into such
debates, may reinforce the gender binary itself) has been a matter of some
concern to me. I cut my feminist teeth on the notion that “feminine” was too
close to “oppressed” for comfort. Back in the day, shaking off rigid
expectations around dress, make up, behaviors, occupational choices, etc. was
the heady heart of feminism. We especially worried, as Garelick does, that the
traditional image of women, found in the media and in our lives, would unduly
influence young girls, presenting as “ideal” a very constricted view of who/how
they could be as women. It should not come as big news that this constricted image
has not disappeared. Just visit the toy section of your local department store
to see the range of choices girls now have: which pink-garbed “princess” doll
would you like? I realize that the “pay-off” of this particular form of
self-presentation is huge, so the odds are stacked in favor of girls’ opting
for an image similar to the one we see in Jenner’s Vanity Fair article. But to lay that at her feet—or the feet of trans women in general, a tiny fraction of
women who present themselves in this way—is to ignore the multitude of other
images of this ilk that we encounter every day. If the portrayal of women we
see in this magazine is something that we need to work on, then let’s work on that instead of criticizing Caitlyn
Jenner’s invocation of that widely displayed image.
This leaves two items: the question
of whether trans women can rightfully claim identity as “real” women—presumably
thereby threatening the integrity of “woman” as an identity category—and frustration
at the apparent disregard for early feminist work that challenged binary gender
categories decades ago. On a personal level, I admit to having had reactions similar
to the authors' in both of these areas over the years. With respect to the first point, my issue was
not whether trans women “counted” as women, but whether women who identified as
lesbian by choice counted as “real” lesbians. It was only when I began to think
of identity not as an essential, predetermined quality but as a product of life
experiences, cultural understandings, and lots of contextual factors that I got
over it. My conclusion: your claim to a “lesbian” identity is defined by your
experience, not mine. I feel the same way about trans women’s identity as
women.
And with respect to the second point,
I’ve also had moments of distress at a sense that the trans movement doesn’t recognize
the legacy of 1970s feminism, which was grounded in precisely the notion that binary gender categories were stultifying
and should be challenged at every turn. I have similar moments when I hear
young feminists talk about sexism as if it were just discovered. Don’t they
know we already figured that out? Don’t they realize how far we’ve come as a
result of our work way back then? But some years ago, someone suggested to me
that it would make more sense to celebrate the fact that these ideas persist as
important cultural themes. Sure it would be nice if we were finished with
sexism—and racism, heterosexism, cisgenderism, classism, ageism, ableism, and
the rest. But the crucial thing is that we’re still having these conversations,
or else none of it could possibly change. I feel the same way about the
challenges to gender brought by the trans movement. Sure, I’d like them to
acknowledge how 1970s feminism—and later, the LGB movement—helped pave the way
for their work. But in my less selfish moments, I’m just glad that we’re still
moving, now with them.
Part 5: The bottom line
IMHO, both the praise for and the
critiques of Caitlyn Jenner’s process bear bits of insight and bits of myopia.
Both seem right to me, and both seem wrong. Which actually makes total sense.
Especially in the middle of such a major cultural shift, how could we not be uncertain and ambivalent.
The trans movement brings us an
opportunity—even a responsibility—to examine long-held beliefs about the nature
of gender. This is no small undertaking, given that as a culture, we feel so
certain that gender is dichotomous and fixed. But the openings for challenging
this view abound. In our midst are young folks who defy this notion—youth who
identify as queer or as gender queer, those who reject all identity categories
as too confining. Sure, some of this is the nature of youth—but that doesn’t
make the challenge to our thinking any less valuable. Looking beyond our own
society, cross-cultural research has long pointed to the potential for a much
more nuanced understanding of gender, and we can surely learn from this work. Our
dichotomous view really isn’t the only “reality” out there. Just think of the
expansive space we could clear for individual expression if we could let go of
our expectations about what “gender” should mean. If we could realize what
Garelick called the “true liberation of gender’s vast spectrum.”
And this brings me back to feminism,
which also needs some attention. Recent events—well before the Caitlyn Jenner
story—have highlighted a simmering conflict between certain feminist groups and
trans women. I’m thinking of stories about the end of the Michigan Women’s
Music Festival, an old-time feminist celebration that has long wrestled with
this issue, and stories about women’s colleges and their deliberations over whether to admit trans women, among others. Perhaps paradoxically, as Burkett
herself pointed out, feminism long ago rejected the rigid expectations for
women and men based on biological sex. It’s not hard to spot the connection
between that early feminist insistence that one’s biological being not define
one’s life experience and trans people’s commitment to living a (gendered) life
that feels authentic to them. It’s precisely this connection that led some of
us years ago to argue that the strongest ally of the trans movement should be
the feminist movement, and vice versa.
There’s work ahead for those of us
who care about these issues. It’s always easier to slip back into the comfort
of the known, but somehow, I don’t think this thriving movement is going to let
that happen.
Hang on, folks. We’re not finished
with this conversation. Not by long shot.
© Janis
Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to
the post.
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