“I am She as You are She as You are Me and We are All Together”:
The Politics of Gender Identity on Women's Campuses
If you read the comment threads that grow in response to
articles on trans issues published on the web, you will probably
notice violent exchanges between trans activists and those who
question the validity of trans identities. The most violent seem to
occur between non-trans women who argue that the claim of male-to-
female transsexuals to be women violates their own identities as
women, and male-to-female transsexuals who argue that those who deny
they are women violate their right to be ho they know are. The
arguments often mirror each other. For example, like anti-trans
feminists who argue that accepting people born male as women is
inherently misogynist, some trans activists argue that equating
womanhood with female biology is inherently transphobic. These
commentators disagree about what “woman” means, but they seem to
agree that anyone who asserts a definition contrary to their own,
even among the comments of an online blog, is committing an act of
violence against everyone they define as a woman.
In a world in which both trans and non-trans women face many
life-threatening problems, including the constant threat of physical
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violence, why do the opinions of strangers matter so much? As my
gender therapist taught me when I was just beginning gender
transition, “What other people think about you is none of your
business,” she said. At first, I was outraged, and then I realized
that she was right: none of us can control what others think of us,
and if my sense of self depended on what others thought of me, I
would never survive.
I learned this lesson well enough to return to my teaching
position at an Orthodox Jewish college as a woman after receiving
tenure as a man. But I still have a visceral response when anyone
questions the validity of trans identity, as though, without
universal agreement, I can't be who I am. Why do semi-literate
comments from online strangers who have no actual control over my
life seem to threaten my existence? And why would women who aren't
trans feel that my assertions of female gender identity threaten
their ability to be who they are? How could anyone think that male-
to-female transsexuals, a tiny but fabulously downtrodden minority,
might wield such power?
To explore these questions, I started to read these comments
more seriously, and began to realize that the sense of violation they
expressed was not merely transphobia or the sort of paranoid
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fantasies Janice Raymond, a founding figure of anti-trans feminism,
spun in her book The Transsexual Empire. Trigger warning: I am about to
read and discuss one of these comments in detail. Anyone who finds
anti-trans perspectives too disturbing for academic analysis should
insert their ear buds now.
A couple of years ago, the Huffington Post published a chapter from
my memoir of gender transition. The original title of the chapter was
“Being a Man”; they changed it “Transgender: Why I Chose to Become a
Woman.” In response, Rose Verbena, a commenter who identified herself
as a lesbian, voiced a perspective I've often heard not only from
anti-trans feminists but from women who would be appalled to think
they had anything in common with either lesbians or feminists.
According to Rose Verbena,
The man in this story – like every other "trans woman" – is a
biological male. His sex is male. That's what he is. Male.
There's nothing he can do about that but accept it. If he wants
to cross-dress or behave in non-masculine ways, who is stopping
him? But he will never be a woman, because he's male. The
whole "trans" movement is based on the most delusional,
oppressive, sexist interpretation of what it means to be a
woman, and women are sick to death of this, especially lesbians.
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Lesbians have had enough of MEN "mansplaining" to us what it
means to be a woman. News flash, guys: you'll never know.
Because you'll never, ever be one.
Go find a different obsession and leave women out of it.
According to this view, physical sex and gender identity are
inextricably linked. If I am biologically male – and no matter how
long I live as a woman, every cell of my body will always include a Y
chromosome that marks it as male – then I can “never be a woman.”
It's easy to argue that Rose Verbena is confusing two different
things, and that gender (as any lesbian should know) is a cultural
construct, while sex is a biological condition. But Rose Verbena
speaks for many when she insists that the term “woman” refers to an
essential fusion of biology, socialization, and personal history.
When Rose Verbena says she is a woman, she is referring to an
identity forged over a life lived as someone born, raised and always
seen as female.
Even if she admits that biology isn't the same as gender, Rose
Verbena would argue that gender is inseparable from biology, because
biology assigns us to the socially constructed gender categories that
crucially shape our lives. For women like Rose Verbena, being a
woman entails physical and social experiences that I will never know.
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She has no choice but to be a woman, no matter what that identity
brings her; I, on the other hand, am exercising the ultimate in male
privilege by not only choosing to present myself as a woman but
demanding that she and others who were born, raised and always lived
as girls and women accept me among them.
This isn't just a matter of gender theory or political ideology.
If Rose Verbena has to accept me as a woman, then there won't be any
public women's-only spaces in which she and others born female can be
sure they won't encounter people they see as men. A sexual abuse
survivor explained it to me bluntly: “I want to know,” she said,
“that when I go to a women's space, I won't see anyone who reminds me
of my abusers.” In this sense, and in many others, accepting someone
like me as a woman redefines “woman” in ways that affects everyone
who identifies as a woman.
It's easy to dismiss Rose Verbena and those who share her views.
I can ignore them, as my therapist suggested, or ridicule them, as
others on the comment thread did; I could censor them, demanding that
they be expunged from comment threads on my essays; I could name and
shame them as transphobes on social media, even – as too many trans
activists do – verbally abuse them in my own comments, even threaten
them with violence. But to realize how easy it is dismiss Rose
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Verbena's views is to realize how little actual power voices like
hers have over my life. Rose Verbena's comment didn't stop me from
living as a woman, or keep others from accepting my gender identity;
her words didn't enact legislation preventing me from using public
restrooms, or inspire mobs to assault me. Indeed, in response to what
she said, others in the thread voiced their support and compassion.
That's the way free speech is to supposed to work: by inspiring more
free speech.
Moreover, I don't want to dismiss Rose Verbena's comment,
because, despite the profound differences in what we mean by “woman,”
Rose Verbena and I have lot in common. Like her, I feel oppressed
when other people define me; like her, I am deeply invested in the
category “woman,” and see it as central to my identity, my life
story, the deepest truths about myself and my place in the world –
and like Rose Verbena, I become enraged when others define “woman” in
ways that are not compatible with what “woman” means to me. To both
of us, assertions of gender identity represent an extraordinarily
powerful form of language – language that we use to define ourselves,
our lives, our places in the world, and our relationships to others.
Since Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, it has been common to talk
about gender in terms of performativity – that is, as symbolic action
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that effects real change in identity. The idea was introduced by a
linguist, J.L. Austin, who, unlike Butler and many who have followed
her in talking about gender as performative, was focused on
specifically on declarative sentences, such as those we find in a
wedding ceremony, which, Austin noted, transform single people into
spouses. When I got married this past January, I experienced the
power of performative language first-hand; once I said, “I do,” I
became a wife, an identity that others are legally compelled to
recognize whether or not they think I look or act like a wife,
approve of my relationship, or support gay marriage. That is the
power of performative language.
Declarations of gender identity are not performative. My saying
“I am a woman” doesn't compel Rose Verbena or anyone else to
recognize me as a woman; by the same token, I am not transformed into
a man when Rose Verbena calls me a man. Declarations of gender
identity are constitutive, rather than performative: we use this
language to constitute – create, develop and maintain – identities
that connect us to others who identify themselves in the same terms
we do. Both Rose Verbena and I – along innumerable other people –
depend on the word “woman” to constitute our identities, but none of
us can compel others to accept what we mean by “woman.
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The psychological and political stakes surrounding declarations
of gender identity are so high that is difficult to talk about how
the language of gender identity works without becoming embroiled in
painful, sometimes violent conflicts – which is why I gave a “trigger
warning” before reading Rose Verbena's comment. To examine this kind
of language without becoming enmeshed in such conflicts, let's turn
to a fictional declaration of gender identity: the first line of the
Beatles' song, “I am the Walrus:” “I am he as you are he as you are
me and we are all together,” Since I hate saying “I am he” even for
demonstration purposes (such is the constitutive power of gender
identity declarations), I will take the liberty of rewriting the line
as “I am she as you are she as you are me and we are all together.”
John Lennon probably wasn't thinking about gender when he sang
this line, but this peculiar sentence exemplifies how the
constitutive language of gender identity works. As we see here, the
first step in constituting a gender identity is to say “I am” – to
declare that one exists as an individual. But that declaration of
individuality is immediately qualified by defining oneself in terms
of a shared gender category: “I am she.” “I am she” is both a
declaration of who I am in myself, and a declaration of who I am in
relation to others. The combination of those two declarations
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constitutes my gender identity. But as “I am she as you are she as
you are me” makes clear, when we constitute our gender identities
through such declarations, we are not only defining who we are, but
defining those with whom we identify ourselves. When I declare “I am
she,” I am saying that “I am she” in the same way as “you” [others
who identify as she] are ‘she,” which means that, with respect gender
identity, I am saying that “you” – anyone who identifies as “she” –
are “me”; that is, I am saying that my declaration of gender identity
makes us identical. That's what an identity is: an assertion of
sameness despite difference. And that is why, when I say “I am she,”
I am saying that “we” – everyone who identifies as “she” – are “all
together,” connecting by the identity-constituting terms we share.
That isn't a problem as long as everyone agrees on what it means
to be “she,” but as feminists have discovered with respect not only
to male-to-female transsexuals but women from different economic
classes, races, ethnicities and cultures, even people who have two XX
chromosomes and no Y chromosomes often very different definitions of
what it means to be a woman – what it means to be “she.” Those
differences dog every effort to constitute women as a single,
homogenous political group. We see the same problems cropping up
wherever we find identity politics, including within what is
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euphemistically or wishfully called “the transgender community.” For
example, some transsexuals feel they little in common with those who
have non-binary gender identities and resent being lumped into the
same “we”; even transsexuals who identify as transgender are often
criticized by those with non-binary identities for perpetuating the
oppression associated with male and female identities. The term
“transgender” includes so many relationships to gender that when I
say “I am transgender,” I hardly feel I am constituting my identity
at all.
But when I say “I am she,” I am constituting my identity by
claiming kinship with others who say “I am she” – a claim that Rose
Verbena finds delusional and insulting, given our differences in
biology, socialization and personal history. But what really upsets
her is that, thanks to the constitutive nature of declarations of
gender identity, when I say “I am she,” she also hears me as saying
“you are me,” defining not only who I am but who she is. Like most
people, Rose Verbena doesn't want anyone else to define her – which
is why she experiences my saying “I am she” as “sexist” and
“oppressive” to her and to all people who identify as “she” in the
way she identifies as “she.” I am not trying to oppress Rose Verbena
by presenting myself as a woman, and Rose Verbena, as she makes
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clear, isn't trying to oppress me – as she says, she isn't trying to
stop me from “cross-dress[ing] or behav[ing] in non-masculine ways.”
But the constitutive nature of declarations of gender identity means
that, for better and for worse, all of us who say “I am she” are “all
together,” no matter how differently we define “she.”
But as we have seen, declarations of gender identity are not
just a matter of nouns and pronouns. Rose Verbena and I disagree
about what it means to say “I am she,” but we agree about what I call
“the syntax of identity,” the system of identifications and
differentiations through which constitute our sense of ourselves in
relationship to others. To both of us, for example, saying “I am she”
means both “I am not a man” and “I am fundamentally like all others
who are women.” And when we say “I am she,” both of us are expressing
gender identities that we experience as essential, unalterable givens
of our existence.
Though views like Rose Verbena's are often dismissed as “gender
essentialism,” I and many transsexuals and trans-activists rely on an
implicit essentialism in arguing that trans people not only have a
right but a need to express our gender identities, and that our
gender expressions should be perceived and respected as expressions
of who we truly are. When I say, as I have often said, “I can't live
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as a man because I am not a man, and I had to start living as a woman
because that was the only way to be my true self,” I am saying that I
experience my gender identity as a fixed essence. Indeed, for me, the
fact that my female gender identity is at odds with my body and male
socialization proves how fixed and essential that gender identity is
to me: if I could have changed my gender identity to fit my body and
social role, I would have, because it was so hard, so dangerous, so
painful to those I loved, so seemingly crazy, to insist, despite all
the available evidence, that “I am she.”
But gender essentialism gets messy when we tie the idea that our
individual gender identities are unchangeable to the idea that
everyone who shares the same gender identification is essentially
similar with regard to gender.
As Rose Verbena points out, there are many ways in which I
differ from her and the vast majority of people who identify as
women. Before I began living as a woman, my female gender identity
was all I could point to support my sense that I was she, and I was
acutely aware that I had no way to tell if my sense of being female
gender was anything like that of people who were born, raised female
and identifying as women. Like many transsexuals, I spent much of my
life before transition tormenting myself with such questions,
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attempting to establish, once and for all, whether my sense of female
gender identity represented something in me that made me essentially
like non-trans women.
Once I began to live as a woman, my focus, and my anxieties,
shifted from essence to performance. Phenomenological problems were
translated into practical problems: could I talk, move, think, love,
write, dress, and otherwise live in ways that proved I was a “real”
woman, that, given a chance to express my gender identity, I could be
she as other shes are she? The answer, of course, is “no.” Apart from
being heard as a man on phone calls, I usually “pass” as a woman well
enough to get through daily life without being harassed or assaulted.
But it was both disappointing and a relief to realize that no matter
how I present myself, there is nothing I do can to prove that my
female gender identity is the same as those born and raised and
identifying as female. I feel, as I have always felt, that “I am
she,” but no matter how I live as a woman, in important ways, I will
never be “she” in ways that make me similar to the vast majority of
those who identify as women.
Unlike me, Rose Verbena has a lot in common with the majority of
those who say “I am she,” though those similarities are not as great
nor as universal as binary gender identities encourage us to assume.
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Many people born, raised and identifying as female have uteruses,
breasts, menstrual cycles, bodies that produce much more estrogen
than testosterone, and so on, but many of those whom Rose Verbena
would unhesitatingly accept as women do not have these primary sex
characteristics. Many women who were raised female share certain
forms of socialization, but socialization varies so greatly by class,
ethnicity, community, religion and historical period, among other
variables, that those who were “raised female” may have little in
common beyond the fact that when they were growing up, they were
socialized in whatever ways their families, communities, cultures and
so on considered appropriate for females – and, alas, their local
version of misogyny. In some cultures, Rose Verbena's sexuality would
disqualify her from being seen as a “real woman.” Certainly, when
Rose Verbena says “I am she,” that declaration means something
different from what heteronormative women – those who take
heretosexuality as the standard or “correct” sexual orientation –
mean, as was clear when one of her fellow commenters, a self-
identified conservative Christian woman, said I wasn't a “real woman”
because I would never know what it was to spend my life cooking and
cleaning for an unappreciative man.
And when it comes to female gender identity, Rose Verbena and
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others born, raised and identifying as female are no more able than I
am to prove that their sense of female gender identity is the same
anyone else's. For all of us, then, the assertion “I am she as you
are she as you are me” represents an act of imagination, a
translation of our own individuality into shared terms that identify
us with billions of people whose ways of being “she” may differ
significantly from ours. Though transsexuals tend to be more aware of
it, everyone to whom female gender identity is important lives with
uncertainty about how akin our gender identities really are to others
– or rather, we all live with the certainty that there are people who
mean something very different when they say “I am she” than we do.
That shared sense of uncertainty fuels the ferocity of fights
over who is “really” a woman. This ferocity is further fueled by the
fact that we constitute our gender identities not only by claiming
kinship with others who are like us, but by distinguishing ourselves
from those who are not like us. Both Rose Verbena and I define our
female gender identities in opposition to male gender identities.
Because we live in a world where misogyny and violence against
women are rampant, the stakes in distinguishing a female “us” from a
male “them” are not only personal but political, and, all too often,
a matter of life and death: in many situations, women distinguish a
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female “us” from a male “them” in order to identify possible dangers.
For male-to-female transsexuals too, distinctions between male and
female can be crucial. If we are seen as women, we are subject to the
same threats and discrimination as anyone seen as a woman. If we are
seen as men presenting ourselves as women, we are even more likely to
be targeted for violence and harassment.
Though less drastic, the social implications of distinguishing
men from women are, for many of us, also very important. Most people
in most societies, including ours, are homosocial, socializing most
frequently and intimately with those they perceive as being of the
same gender even in mixed-gender situations. Homosociality is the
basis for institutions, like women's colleges, where membership is
based on shared gender identification.
But it is hard to create homosocial events, spaces and
institutions if we don't have a clear, shared understanding of what
it means to say “I am she” or “I am he.” Both Rose Verbena and I rely
on the constitutive power of gender identity to help us create
relationships that are based on those identities. It is both tragic
and comic that even though we both prize female gender identity, our
conflicting definitions of what it means to say “I am she” undermine
the shared understanding of female gender identity and diminish its
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constitutive power.
As some of you have probably been thinking, the conflicts
between Rose Verbena and me reflect old-fashioned commitments to the
gender binary. That binary turns gender identity into a high-stakes,
zero-sum game by forcing everyone to identify and live only as male
or female. If we could smash the gender binary, or at least declare
it obsolete, no one would have to (or be able to) fight over who is a
man and who is a woman, worry about measuring up to gender
expectations, or suffer misogynist oppression.
This is a utopian idea, by which I mean not that it is ideal,
but that it is, for the foreseeable future, impossible, just as
Supreme Court Justice John Robert's idea that we can eliminate racism
and racial discrimination by eliminating laws protecting voting
rights and affirmative action laws is impossible. No one, not even
the Supreme Court, can simply erase categories of identity on which
people have long relied to define themselves and others. We have been
using racial distinctions to constitute identities, relationships and
institutions in this country for centuries; but human beings around
the world have been relying on binary gender distinctions for
thousands, or tens of thousands, of years. Today, there are upwards
of six billion people on this planet who define themselves as male or
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female; even if we could somehow “smash the gender binary,” we would
be violating billions of people's right to define and express
identities as they understand them. To me – someone with an old-
fashioned binary gender identity – that sounds more like totalitarian
oppression than liberation.
But what if, instead, we focus on freeing individuals to define
and express gender identities however they choose? Trans theorists
and trans activists often link individual freedom to define gender
identity and expression with utopian visions of a post-gender-binary
world. But as we see at Mount Holyoke and many other institutions, it
is possible to extend individual gender freedom without eliminating
binary gender.
This idea has been translated into social practice in the ritual
of declaring pronoun preferences when introducing oneself. This
ritual is common at transgender gatherings, and is increasingly
practiced in any gatherings that welcome those who identify as
transgender. Declarations of pronoun preferences free trans and non-
trans people alike to determine, name and express their gender
identities however they choose at any given event.
Such practices, and the radically individualistic theories of
gender self-determination that stand behind them, seem like breaks
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with cultural tradition, but Americans can trace them back to the
early nineteenth century, when they were famously expressed in Ralph
Waldo Emerson's essay “Self-Reliance.” Like contemporary transgender
theorists and activists, Emerson argued that individuals need not and
should not “conform” to socially agreed-upon categories and
conventions that misrepresent who they truly are. “No law can be
sacred to me but that of my nature” Emerson proclaimed. “[T]he only
right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is
against it.”
Emerson not only argues that his individual “nature” trumps the
“sacredness” and “right” of social norms; he argues against any
subordination or accommodation of individuality to social convention
or others' expectations, an argument that directly anticipate Sandy
Stone's call in “The Empire Strikes Back: a Post-Transsexual
Manifesto” for transsexuals to ignore binary gender conventions that
require them to deny or distort aspects of their physiology and
personal history. Stone argues that transsexuals shouldn't try to
“pass,” to fit binary gender conventions that make them seem “like”
others who identify as men and women. Emerson goes even further,
arguing that no one's identity should signify anything but an
individuality that “reminds [us] of nothing else.” Both recognize,
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embrace and celebrate the unintelligibility of the identities those
who refuse to present themselves in terms of accepted conventions.
Stone sees that unintelligibility as a way to “reconstitute”
“conventional gender discourse … into new and unexpected geometries”;
Emerson says simply, “To be great is to be misunderstood.”
The practice of declaring pronoun preferences reflects these
quintessentially Emersonian assumptions. When we declare our own
pronoun preferences, we agree that we won't infer individuals' gender
identities from how they look or act. Instead, we will accept
whatever gender identities individuals express, whether they identify
themselves through traditional binary terms, through recently minted
terms, such as “zhe,” or through words they have made up themselves.
But declaring pronoun preferences not only frees individuals to
define themselves; it changes the meaning of both gender and
identity. For example, when I declare that my preferred pronouns are
“she/her,” it is understood that I am not necessarily saying that I
have always identified, or will always identify, as “she/her.” It
doesn't imply that I have a permanent female gender identity, or that
I embrace feminine modes of gender expression. The declaration means
only that right now, and until declaring otherwise, I wish to be
referred to as “she/her.” And because it is understood that I can
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define the terms of my gender identity however I choose, even if I
say “I am she,” I am not claiming that I am like anyone else who says
“I am she.” Both Rose Verbena and I could sit in the same circle,
declaring the same pronoun preferences, secure in the knowledge that
they mean whatever we personally take them to mean.
Emerson couldn't guess that his doctrine of self-reliance would
eventually blossom into the theory and practice of individual gender
self-determination, but he did anticipate the social problems that
would be faced by those who refuse to constitute their identities in
terms of shared conventions and insist on their absolute
individuality. He even offers a model coming-out statement, one whose
arguments will be familiar to many trans people:
Say to [those you love], O father, O mother, O wife, O brother,
O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto.
Henceforward I am the truth’s.... I shall endeavor to nourish my
parents, to support my family...—but these relations I must fill
after a new and unprecedented way.... I must be myself. I cannot
break myself any longer for you... If you can love me for what I
am, we shall be happier.... [but] I must be myself. .... I do
this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your
interest, and mine, and all men’s [sic], however long we have Ladin 21
dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day?
You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as
mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at
last.
Emerson's terms eerily anticipate those in which I, and many trans
people, have announced our determination to stop living “after
appearances” and express gender identities that contradict the
genders we were assigned at birth and upon which we have built our
familial, social and professional relationships. He knew that others
would find our refusal to conform to socially sanctioned identities
hard to understand, and he recommends that we rely in our coming-out
conversations on what have become the twin pillars of assertions of
trans identity: that we must be true to ourselves, and that we can no
longer endure “living after appearances” that misrepresent who we
are.
As I noted above, Emerson and contemporary transgender theorists
like Stone not only accept but celebrate the unintelligibility of
identities that are purely self-determined. Certainly, there are
people whose gender identities don't fit within the gender binary and
have no choice but to express those identities in terms that are not
widely understood. But as W.H. Auden said, to be free is often to be Ladin 22
lonely. Many transgender people want not only to be free to express
their identities, but for others to understand the identities we
express. Moreover, many non-transgender people find it hard to relate
to those whose identities are unintelligible to them. And though we
have seen a veritable explosion of new terms for gender identities,
if gender is really completely self-determined, such inventions are
self-defeating: no matter how many new terms we develop, once we
agree on what they mean, they become “conventions” that, as Emerson
argues, may misrepresent the individuals they are used to describe.
We cannot know whether any individual will embrace these terms, or,
if they do, what those terms might mean to them. The result is a
“Tower of Babel” effect – the transformation of gender from a widely
shared identity-constituting language into innumerable individual,
mutually unintelligible languages that make it impossible for gender
to fulfill its traditional social and psychological functions. As I
noted with regard to my participation in the pronoun-preference
ritual, that Tower-of-Babel effect extends even to those like me who
assert binary gender identities. For example, the pronoun-choosing
ritual reflects the understanding that someone who “looks” like a man
or a woman may identify very differently, and, contrary to the “I am
she as you are she as you are me” syntax of the gender binary, that
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bodies, clothing and other forms of gender expression may tell us
nothing about individuals' gender identities. This is true of some
people – when I lived as a man, it was true of me – but it is not
true of me today. But there is no way for me to assert the durable,
life-long meaning of “she” for me in a context, like the pronoun-
preference ritual, where it is understood that my gender identity is
nothing more than what I say it is at a given moment.
Defining gender as a matter of self-determination moots the kind
of conflicts that arise between Rose Verbena and me about what
affirmations of binary gender mean, but it creates conflicts between
those who see gender as completely self-determined and, like Emerson,
happily accept the social consequences of expressing an identity that
others don't understand, and those who value having gender identities
that relate us to others, and accept the sacrifice of individuality
that defining ourselves in shared terms requires. This tension
between individual freedom and communal belonging is built into
social system. Too often, that tension has been ignored by trans
theorists and activists, who present individual freedom as an
absolute necessity, without regard for those who want and need gender
identities that make sense to and relate them to others – just as
those who insist that everyone must conform to traditional
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definitions of male and female ignore the fact that no individuals
ever perfectly fit those definitions, and that some can't fit them at
all.
Affirming gender diversity requires us to recognize that there
are people whose gender identities and expressions are more
complicated than the gender binary conventions allow, but it also
requires us to recognize the diversity of ways in which people
understand gender and identity. We are accustomed to such diversity
in terms of religious beliefs. Christians who believe that Jesus was
the Messiah and Jews and Muslims who don't have views of history that
directly contradict one another. Such contradictions can't be
resolved through learned debates, scientific research, or even wars
of extermination. We have to learn to live with them. If we are
smart, we not only acknowledge that different people may hold very
different views of gender and identity, but try to learn from these
differences, because those who hold views other than ours also hold
pieces of the puzzle of what it means to be human.
Mount Holyoke and other women's colleges that have wrestled with
the questions raised by transgender students and applicants are on
the cutting edge of efforts to reckon institutionally with gender
diversity. To get a sense of the state of the art – and right now, itLadin 25
is an art rather than a science – let's examine Mount Holyoke's
admissions policy as presented on the college website's FAQ:
Mount Holyoke College’s policy on the admission of transgender
students states that it welcomes applications for its
undergraduate program from any qualified student who is female
or identifies as a woman. Can you clarify “who is female or
identifies as a woman”?
The following academically qualified students can apply for admission consideration: Biologically born female; identifies as a woman Biologically born female; identifies as a man Biologically born female; identifies as other/they/ze Biologically born female; does not identify as either womanor man Biologically born male; identifies as woman Biologically born male; identifies as other/they/ze and when “other/they” identity includes woman Biologically born with both male and female anatomy (Intersex); identifies as a woman
The following academically qualified students cannot apply for admission consideration: Biologically born male; identifies as man
I suspect that Mount Holyoke's founder, Mary Lyon, would find
Ladin 26
much of this policy baffling – particularly the distinction between
physical sex and gender identification. Of course, she was intimately
familiar with women who rebelled against conforming to their
culturally assigned roles and other forms of gender expresssion. As a
scientist and champion of women's education, she herself was such a
woman. For her, though, defiance of conventions of gender expression
did not signify that women were not women. As for many feminists
today, the refusal of biologically born female adults to “act like
women” challenged conventional understandings of what it meant to be
a woman rather than signifying that the individuals involved had
different gender identities.
But while Mary Lyon would have found many aspects of this
admissions policy hard to understand, she would have felt right at
home with the policy's emphasis on biological sex. Every gender
category in this policy is first defined in terms of the body – how
one is “biologically born” – and only secondarily by gender
identification. Indeed, if she had skipped to the final part of the
policy, she might have felt that nothing had changed at all. “The
following academically qualified students cannot apply for admission
consideration: Biologically born male; identifies as man.” Who is
considered a woman for purposes of admission to Mount Holyoke? Anyone
Ladin 27
who is not a man.
The gender binary lives.
But though gender binary language and assumptions are woven
throughout Mount Holyoke's admissions policy, that policy combines
them with individualist (perhaps Mary Lyon would say “Emersonian”)
understandings of gender which defy conventional binary assumptions
and cannot be expressed in binary terms. That combination – marked
here by semi-colons – signals broad acknowledgment and acceptance of
diversity of gender identity and expression, but it does not address
the differences in understandings about gender and identity
represented on either side of the semi-colons.
Like Mount Holyoke, most institutions working to accommodate
gender diversity have focused on helping those with non-conventional
gender identities or expressions feel safe, welcome and included.
This is crucial, sometimes life-saving work, but it doesn't address
this other form of gender diversity: diversity of understandings of
gender and identity. That form of diversity tends to be discussed
only when it precipitates public conflicts, such as the controversy
over whether “The Vagina Monologues” is transphobic, or the political
battles over which bathrooms should be used by trans school children.
Ladin 28
We often talk about these conflicts in terms of civil rights:
the right of equal access and protection, the right to freedom of
expression, the right to freedom of religion, the right to feel safe
in public institutions. But no matter how apt they may be legally or
politically, civil rights terms make it harder to address the
differences in understandings of gender and identity that underlie
these conflicts. The language of civil rights implies that those who
disagree with us are uncivilly wrong, an implication that makes it
difficult to discuss or be respectful of those differences. The lack
of respectful discussion not only fuels conflict and vitriol; it
makes it hard for those enmeshed in these conflicts to recognize what
our different understanding gender and identity may have in common.
As Muslims, Jews and Christians who engage in interfaith work have
found, there is often common ground to be found among otherwise
irreconciliable beliefs. That common ground can become the basis for
dialogue, tolerance, peaceful co-existence, and, even cooperation.
Though Rose Verbena and I will never agree on what it means to say “I
am she,” we both value female gender identity, the relationships that
identity helps us build, the sense of solidarity with others that it
fosters. We have both suffered for saying “I am she,” and we have
both persisted in the face of gender-based discrimination and
Ladin 29
violence in affirming our female gender identities. Even if she and I
never feel that “we are all together,” surely we can learn to live
side by side; even even though I will never be she as she is she,
surely we can cooperate in efforts to improve the status of women.
It may take decades for our culture to learn to reckon with
gender diversity and to develop laws, policies and social etiquette
that assures everyone, regardless of gender identification or
expression, equal rights, protection, access, opportunities, and
dignity. After all, we are still far from achieving these goals with
respect to other, more familiar forms of difference, such as race and
class, and for that matter, binary sex. But if our goals are equal
respect, protection, access and opportunity for everyone, we must
practice our principles in the ways we treat one another, including
those who hold very different views of gender and identity. We will
never come to a single understanding of gender and identity, but we
already understand what it means to treat others, including those we
disagree with, with respect, with kindness, with compassion. When we
do, we nudge ourselves, and one another, toward a humanity so
capacious that, whatever our differences, “we are all together.”
Ladin 30
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