I feel the combined weight of women's and trans oppression in my own life. I am forced to battle both, simultaneously. As a result, I personally experience the relationship between women's and trans liberation, because these demands overlap in my own life. Everywhere I've traveled across the United States talking about fighting trans oppression - from a crowded potluck supper in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to an over-flow audience in a cavernous university auditorium near Northampton, Massachusetts - women of all ages turn out, enthusiastically ready to discuss how the trans movement impacts on women's liberation.
We need to expand that dialogue, because women don't just need to understand the links between what they and trans people suffer in society, they need to realize that the women's and trans liberation movements need each other. Sex and gender oppression of all forms needs to be fought in tandem with the combined strength of
these two movements and all our allies in society.
The development of the trans movement has raised a vital question that's being discussed in women's communities all over the country. The discussion revolves around one pivotal question: How is woman to be defined? The answer we give may determine the course of women's liberation for decades to come. The question can't be considered without understanding that women face such constant dangers and harassment, day-in and day-out, that the attempt to define woman is generated by the need for safe space and clear-cut allies. That's a completely valid need. But how can we create safe space for women?
I think that if we define "woman" as a fixed entity, we will draw borders that would need to be policed. No matter what definition is used, many women who should be inside will be excluded. Let's look first at the question of how woman can or cannot be defined. Some
women hold an "essential," or biological definition, that one is born woman. Others, who define themselves as social constructionists, argue that women share a common experience. I don't think we can build women's communities or a liberation movement based on either.
A biological definition of woman is a dangerous direction for the womenâs movement to take. To accept that biological boundary would mark a definite break with the key principle of the second wave of womenâs liberation in the United States: that biology is not destiny. Simone de Beauvoir wrote, âOne is not born but one becomes
a woman.â The heart of that wisdom is that one should not be limited in life or oppressed because of birth biology. This is a truth that has meaning to all trans people and all women.
Of course, as a result of the oppression women face growing up in such a violently anti-woman environment, some women draw a line between women as allies and men as enemies. While itâs understandable that an individual might do so out of fear, this approach fails as theory. It lumps John Brown and John D. Rockefeller together as enemies and Sojourner Truth and Margaret Thatcher together as allies. This view of who to trust and who to dread will not keep women safe or keep the movement on course.
A view that the primary division of society is between women and men leads some women to fear that transsexual women are men in sheepâs clothing coming across their border, or that female-to-male transsexuals are going over to the enemy, or that I look like that same
enemy. Where is the border for intersexual people - right down the middle of their bodies? Trans people of all sexes and genders are not oppressors; they, like women, rank among the oppressed.
After years of television and Hollywood movies and schooling full of prejudice, all of us have absorbed a biological definition of what is ânormalâ and what is not. But in a society rife with internal struggle, even a hard science like biology can be misused in an attempt to justify inequality and oppression. While we were dissecting frogs, biological determinism crept into our classrooms.
Biological determinism isnât just a recognition that some people have vaginas and others have penises. It is a theoretical weapon used in a pseudo-scientific way to rationalize racism and sexism, the partitioning of the sexes, and behavior modification to make gender expression fit bodies.
If we reject a fixed biological boundary to define women as a group, what about the view that women share a common oppression? I believe this is also a perilous approach that can particularly lead to glossing over racism and class oppression. Two broad currents emerged within the second wave of womenâs liberation in the United States. One was represented by feminists who analyzed womenâs oppression from a socialist-materialist viewpoint, the other by those who examined the psychological construction of woman. Both branches identified women as a group defined by oppression. Both currents recognized that arguments of biological determinism have been used by the patriarchal ruling classes for centuries as a weapon to justify womenâs oppression.
However, since the rise of feminism, the definition of âwomanâ has been increasingly linked to a number of shared bodily experiences, like rape, incest, forced pregnancy, and battering. The underlying assumption is often that this physical oppression, experienced as a result of having a biologically female body, is the defining element of âwomanhood.â But women are not the only ones who experience the horrors of rape, incest, sexual humiliation, and brutality. And common bodily experiences that the majority of women on this planet share are hauling water and carrying firewood or working on an assembly-line - those are class experiences.
Do all women share the same experiences in society? What about the male-to-female transsexual women who have helped build the womenâs movement over the years? They experience womenâs oppression on a daily, even hourly basis. So if facing womenâs oppression defines being a woman, how long do you have to live it before youâre âinâ? Many lesbians went through a long period of heterosexuality before coming out. Would anyone argue that they should be excluded from lesbian
gatherings because they were heterosexual during their formative years? Do white women share the exact same experience as women of color? Do poor women and rich women share an identical experience? What about the experiences of disabled women, single mothers, lesbians, Deaf women? Women endure many different hardships and experiences. The sum total of our experiences and our resulting strengths and insights are just a small part of how many ways there are to be âwomanâ in this society.
Recently I had coffee with someone Iâve known since she was a teenager. âI donât think of you as a woman,â she explained to me quite cheerily, âbut as a very, very sensitive man - the kind that is so sensitive they donât really exist.â I asked her how she arrived at this categorization. âWell,â she said, âI grew up without any real power as a girl. So I learned how to use being a woman to get around menâs power, and thatâs not something I see you doing.â What she really meant was she learned to use being âfeminineâ to get around menâs power.
But I grew up very masculine, so the complex and powerful set of skills
that feminine girls developed to walk safely through the world were useless to me. I had to learn a very different set of skills, many of them martial. While we both grew up as girls, our experiences were dissimilar because our gender expressions were very different. Masculine girls and women face terrible condemnation and brutality - including sexual violence - for crossing the boundary of what is âacceptableâ female expression. But masculine women are not assumed to have a very high consciousness about fighting womenâs oppression, since we are thought to be imitating men.
As the womenâs movement of the seventies examined the negative values attached to masculinity and femininity in this society, some thought that liberation might lie in creating a genderless form of self-expression and dress. But of course androgyny was itself just another point on the spectrum of gender expression.
And remember the adage that you canât tell a book by its cover? Well, you canât read a personâs overall consciousness by their gender expression. In addition, gender doesnât just come in two brands, like perfume and cologne. Take masculinity, for example, particularly since thereâs an underlying assumption that the brutal and insensitive behavior of some men is linked to masculinity. Yet not all men dress, move, or behave in the same way. The masculinity of oppressed African-American men is not the masculinity of Ku Klux Klan members. Gender is expressed differently in diverse nationalities, cultures, regions, and classes.
And not all men in any given group express their masculinity in the same way. At a recent speaking event, I couldnât help but notice a man in the audience who was very masculine, but there was something in his gender expression that held my attention. At a later reception, he told me that he learned his masculinity from women - butches had mentored him as a young gay male. He learned one variation
of an oppressed masculinity.
Those who are feminine - male and female - donât fare any better when it comes to assumptions about their gender expression. Feminine girls and women endure an extremely high level of sexual harassment and violence simply because of their gender expression. A great deal of woman-hating resides in attitudes towards femininity. And a great many bigoted generalizations are made about femme expression
like: âThe higher the heels, the lower the IQ; the higher the skirt the lower the morals.â So femme women are also not assumed to have a very high consciousness about fighting womenâs oppression.
And what about males who are considered âeffeminateâ? Feminists have justifiably pointed out that the label is inherently anti-woman. But it is also anti-trans, gender-phobic, and anti-feminine.
The oppression of feminine men is an important one to me, since I consider drag queens to be my sisters. Iâve heard women criticize drag queens for âmocking womenâs oppressionâ by imitating femininity to an extreme, just as Iâve been told that I am imitating men. Feminists are justifiably angry at womenâs oppression - so am I! I believe, however, that those who denounce drag queens aim their criticism at the wrong people.
There is a difference between the drag population and masculine men doing cruel female impersonations. The Bohemian Grove, for example, is an elite United States club for wealthy, powerful men that features comedy cross-dressing performances. But thatâs not drag performance. Many times the burlesque comedy of cross-dressed masculine men is as anti-drag as it is anti-woman.
In fact, itâs really only drag performance when itâs transgender people who are facing the footlights. Many times drag performance calls for skilled impersonations of a famous individual, like Diana Ross or Judy Garland, but the essence of drag performance is not impersonation of the opposite sex. It is the cultural presentation of an oppressed gender expression.
Our oppression and our identities - as drag queens and kings - are not simply based on our clothing. The term âdragâ only means âcross-dressingâ to most people. By that definition, we are people who put on garb intended for the opposite sex as a kind of masquerade. Itâs true that the word drag is believed to have originated as a stage term, derived from the drag of the long train of dresses male actors wore. But
in fact, it is our gender expression, not our clothes, that shapes who we are.
Hopefully, the trans liberation movement will create a deeper understanding of sex and gender oppression. Everyone has a stake in the struggle to uncover how much cultural baggage is attached to the social categories of man and woman. In addition, the womenâs movement has an opportunity to make a tremendous
contribution by reaching out to all who suffer from sex and gender oppression. Drag queens and kings, and many women who have not been a part of the womenâs liberation movement, do not necessarily reflect the same consciousness as those who have been part of a collective movement for change for twenty years. But that doesnât mean that they donât feel their oppression or donât want to fight for their liberation.
The womenâs liberation movement that shaped my consciousness exposed the institutionalized oppression of women. The movement revealed that inequality begins at a very early age. But simply looking at the differences between what boys and girls are taught only reveals a broad analysis of sexual oppression. Just as girls experience different messages based on whether they are feminine, masculine, or
androgynous, boys do too. Itâs absurd to think that messages of woman-hating and male privilege will produce the same consciousness in a male youth who grows up believing he will be part of the âgood-ole boys clubâ and one who grows up fearing humiliation and violence at the hands of men. If the consciousness of male-to-female transsexuals was shaped early on by âmale privilege,â then why would they give it up?
What is the consciousness of a child who is assigned one sex at birth, but grows up identifying strongly with another sex? We need to examine how many ways there are to be a woman or a man, and how gender oppression makes sex-role conditioning more complex.
Everyone who is living as a woman in this woman-hating society is dealing with oppression every day and deserves both the refuge of being with other women and the collective power of the womenâs movement.
All women need to be on the frontlines against all forms of sex and gender oppression in society, as well as in fighting all expressions of gender-phobia and transphobia. In the simplest of terms, these twin evils are prejudices we have been taught since an early age. Gender-phobia targets women who are not feminine and men who are not masculine. Trans-phobia creates fear of changing sex. Both need
to be fought by all women, as well as by all others in society.
As a rape survivor, I understand the need for safe space together - free from sexist harassment and potential violence. But fear of gender variance also canât be allowed to deceptively cloak itself as a womenâs safety issue. I canât think of a better example than my own, and my butch friendsâ, first-hand experiences in public womenâs toilets. Of course women need to feel safe in a public restroom; thatâs a serious issue. So when a man walks in, women immediately examine the situation to see if the man looks flustered and embarrassed, or if he seems threatening; they draw on the skills they learned as young girls in this society to read body language for safety or danger.
Now, what happens when butches walk into the womenâs bathroom? Women nudge each other with elbows, or roll their eyes, and say mockingly, âDo you know which bathroom youâre in?â Thatâs not how women behave when they really believe thereâs a man in the bathroom. This scenario is not about womenâs safety - itâs an example of gender-phobia.
And ask yourself, if you were in the womenâs bathroom, and there were two teenage drag queens putting on lipstick in front of the mirror, would you be in danger? If you called security or the cops, or forced those drag queens to use the menâs room, would they be safe?
If the segregation of bathrooms is really about more than just genitals, then maybe the signs ought to read âMenâ and âSexually and Gender Oppressed,â because we all need a safe place to go to the bathroom. Or even better, letâs fight for clean individual bathrooms with signs on the doors that read âRestroom.â And defending the inclusion of transsexual sisters in womenâs space does not threaten the safety of any woman. The AIDS movement, for example, battled against the right-wing characterization of gay men as a âhigh-risk group.â We won an understanding that there is no high-risk group - there are high-risk behaviors.
Therefore, creating safety in womenâs space means we have to define unsafe behavior - like racist behavior by white women towards women of color, or dangerous insensitivity to disabilities. Transsexual women are not a Trojan horse trying to infiltrate womenâs space. There have always been transsexual women helping to build the womenâs movement - they are part of virtually every large gathering of women. They want to be welcomed into womenâs space for the same reason every woman does - to feel safe.
And our female-to-male transsexual brothers have a right to feel welcome at womenâs movement events or lesbian bars. However, that shouldnât feed into the misconception that all female-to-male transsexuals were hutches who just couldnât deal with their oppression as lesbians. If that were true, then why does a large percentage of post-transition transsexual men identify as gay and bisexual, which may
have placed them in a heterosexual or bisexual status before their transition? There are transsexual men who did help build the womenâs and lesbian communities, and still have a large base of friends there. They should enjoy the support of women on their journey. Doesnât everyone want their friends around them at a time of great change? And women could learn a great deal about what it means to be a man or a woman from sharing the lessons of transition.
If the boundaries around âwomanâ become trenches, what happens to intersexual people? Can we really fix a policy thatâs so clear about who was born âwoman"? And there are many people, like myself, who were born female but get hassled for not being woman enough. Weâve been accused of exuding âmale energy.â Now thatâs a frighteningly subjective border to patrol. Do all women - or should all women - have to share the same âenergyâ ? If we were going to decide who is a ârealâ woman, who would we empower to decide, and how could the check-points be established? Would we all strip? How could you tell if a vagina was not newly constructed? Would we show our birth certificates? How could you determine that they hadnât been updated after sex-reassignment? dna tests? The Olympics tried it, but they had so many false results they went back to relying on watching somebody pee in a cup for the drug test as the âsexâ test.
I understand that it took the tremendous social upheavals of the sixties and seventies to even begin to draw the borders of womenâs oppression. When I was growing up, no one even acknowledged that the system was stacked against women. But the womenâs liberation movement laid bare the built-in machinery of oppression in this society thatâs keeping us down. Itâs not your lipstick thatâs oppressing me, or your tie, or whether you change your sex, or how you express yourself. An economic system oppresses us in this society, and keeps us fighting each other, instead of looking at the real source of this subjugation.
The modern trans movement is not eroding the boundaries of womenâs oppression. Throughout history, whenever new lands and new oceans have been discovered, maps have always been re-charted to show their relationship to each other. The modern trans liberation movement is redrawing the boundaries to show the depth and breadth of sex and gender oppression in this society. It is this common enemy that makes the womenâs and trans communities sister movements for social
justice. What does it mean to be a woman in this society? How many different paths lead to woman? How varied are our experiences, and what do we share in common? Isnât this the discussion we need to have in order to continue to build a dynamic womenâs movement? And yet, we canât even begin the examination until all those who identify as women are in the movement. Itâs not a definition thatâs going to create safe space. Definitions have created some pretty unsafe space for many of us who were born female.
Letâs open the door to everyone who is self-identified as woman, and who wants to be in womenâs space. (Not every woman wants that experience.) Letâs keep the door unlocked. Together we can plot tactics and strategy for movement-building. And we can set some good-sense ground rules for what constitutes unsafe behavior. What should the sign on the door of the womenâs movement read? I think the key to victory are these three simple words: âAll women welcome.â
But in addition to fighting womenâs oppression, we need to recognize and defend other sites of sex and gender oppression and organize an even larger struggle. The womenâs and trans liberation movements are comprised of overlapping populations and goals. Perhaps the unity of our two huge movements for justice will birth a new movement that incorporates the struggles against all forms of sex and gender oppression. The combined power of women, trans people, and all of our allies could give rise to a powerful Sex and Gender Liberation movement!
-Chapter 14, Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg
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