asking to make sure i understand correctly; not trying to be annoying/mean.
you say that gender is a tool for control. if i understand the introduction to feminism against cisness correctly, emma heaney describes "women" to be a united political front of those controlled/disempowered by sexual difference, even if they live drastically different social identities. would it be right to infer that trans womanhood is recognisition of one's social position under transmysogynystic violence? it seems off to me to describe trans womanhood as a consequence of violence though. basically im asking how does gender identity, transition and euphoria fit into this framework?
thanks for your efforts and time spent on explaining things!
This is not something Emma Heaney says, in fact she argues against such 'strategic essentialism' throughout her introduction, saying
This scholarship addresses patriarchy without reifying the
categoriesâwoman and manâthat do its brutalizing work.
feminization as a social process both adheres in and exceeds the category woman.
The closest she gets is when she says:
Those who are called women are tasked with representing this universal reality [of the universal penetrability of bodies], but that signifier woman is only shorthand for the object of feminization, a category that can be mobilized in many ways, as this introduction has demonstrated.
But this only notes that women are disproportionately affected by feminization, not that "woman" is a viable identity grounding for a feminist movement.
She explicitly argues for a coalitional movement which is built around opposing sexual difference and cisness, both of which affect everyone. One of her key examples a young fat boy named Laymon, who is frequently sexually harassed, and feels a kind of connection when he sees some young girls get raped, but is unable to act on this feeling because he is a boy and they are girls, that is to say, because of cisness.
it seems off to me to describe trans womanhood as a consequence of violence though. basically im asking how does gender identity, transition and euphoria fit into this framework?
I mean... yeah. trans womanhood is a consequence of violence. It is not possible outside of the violent act of sex-gender assignment. That does not mean it cannot be anything but sad and miserable, she cites a passage from Jules Gill-Peterson's essay Estro Junkie which would immediately self-defeat this claim, but the fundamental truth of all trans existence is that it is founded in act of violence we seek to correct.
Heaney also has a lot to say about (gender) identity.
For Laymon, his status as a minor makes his body vulnerable; his identity as a boy and eventually a man forms how those experiences affect him In the long run. For Mock, her femininity, trans status, and status as a minor make her body vulnerable. (emphasis mine)
Identity structures your experiences, and changing your identity changes how your experiences will effect you. Heaney doesn't spell this out, but this is why egg cracking is like that. Your identity has changed, but with it the very meaning of your experiences, both past and present, are suddenly changed with it.
The act of transition isn't something Heaney focuses on a lot because on of the most basic aspects of sex to her is that it can be changed, not just through transsexualism but even just getting older. She says,
Your sex can change regularly, to the extent that the same person can occupy the position of masculinist personhood during one period, in one relation, or even in one moment and then the position of feminized nonperson, excluded from being in another period, relation, or moment. This can occur just as a well body can become sick, either for a time or for evermore, and as a young body will certainly become old. A body that is racialized in one way in a given social context will be racialized differently or unmarked by racialization in another.
Transition under these conditions is hardly even remarkable, it is only the ideological of Cisness's obsession with us that makes transness special.
I hope this helped! You seem to have misread Heaney's introduction pretty thoroughly, which isn't super surprising given the text is academic in nature and hard to understand out of context. If you have any other question for me about it, I'd love to answer them! I love her introduction, and it's great to see some people reading it! <3
