Tag: feminism

Transitions #8

December 30th, 2024
In trans women’s eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognised as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world.
In a trans woman’s eyes, I see someone who understands that, in a culture that’s seemingly fuelled on male homophobic hysteria, choosing to be female and openly expressing one’s femininity is not a sign of frivolousness, weakness or passivity, it is a fucking badge of courage. – Julia Serano, Whipping Girl

This is a common transmisogynistic pattern of thought:
```
P1: Women’s bodies are inherently sexual. That is: to be a woman is to be a sex object.
P2: Men only dress and act like women as part of a sex act - because they desire to be a sex object.
P3: Trans women are men who dress and act like women.
C: Trans women are engaging in a public sex act, the content of which is to present herself as a sex object.
```
P1 is generally unspoken, while P2-3 may be explicitly affirmed in defending C. This pattern leads to a wide range of injustices, including public bathroom laws, three articles laws, bans on drag performances, bans on gender affirming care, and the “trans panic defense” as a justification for murder. Since we (trans women) are, according to this line of thought, engaging in a public sex act, we can be regulated and punished. Using a public restroom becomes sexual harassment, wearing women’s clothing become public indecency, drag performances become sex work, gender affirming care for minors becomes grooming, and murder is justified because trans sexuality is a form of coercive trickery. There is a clear line from trans women being sex objects, to the everyday activity of trans women being a sex act, to violence and oppression and deprivation.

Notably, there are some redundancies in the reasoning and it can consistently be presented as such:
```
P1: Women’s bodies are inherently sexual. That is: to be a woman is to be a sex object.
P2: Trans women are women.
C: Trans women are engaging in a public sex act, the content of which is to present herself as a sex object.
```
P2 and 3 in the original argument are sometimes presented as justifications for the connection between P1 and C. This is because the person who engages in this pattern of thought does not typically affirm that trans women are women, and so must explain why they still fit the sexual object role. Cross-dressing or similar actions or identities are therefore used as both a bridge and a smokescreen. However, this move is only at the surface. What drives the transmisogynistic argument is an internal affirmation that trans women are women without an external or public affirmation. Trans women are oppressed as women, but part of this oppression is to for our identity as women to be denied. However, the denial of our womanhood only works because we are women.

Many of the forms of oppression trans women face are variations on women’s oppression more broadly. If you are a woman, it is safer to use public restrooms in a group. If you are a woman, you must self-monitor your appearance to avoid dangerous interactions and a loss of social status. If you are a woman, anything you create will be interpreted according to your perceived sexual value. If you are a woman, changing or expressing or valuing your body is an impurity and invitation to unwanted sexual behavior. And, if you are a woman and you are assaulted or even murdered, it is justified because all women want it and all women are temptresses. In all of these cases, we, as both trans and cis women, are reduced to sex objects, are denied our autonomy, self-ownership, and safety, and are subject to the property(object)-owning authority of men.

Misogyny is the pervasive dehumanization of women, and it takes different shapes depending on how our womanhood is perceived. All women are criminals for the misogynist, but what the crime is may differ. The crime of the trans woman is to be assigned a different sex at birth and to transition, but it is only a crime because we are women. The denial of the transmisogynist is self-defeating, because their accusations only work with the presumption of affirmation. Transmisogyny is misogyny and the liberation of women generally and of trans women in particular is biconditional. To abolish transmisogyny we must abolish misogyny and to abolish misogyny we must abolish transmisogyny. Trans liberation is a necessary path in defeating patriarchy.
```
Let me listen to me and not to them
May I be very well and happy
May I be whichever they can thrive
Or just may they not.
They do not think not only only
But always with prefer
And therefore I like what is mine
For which not only willing but willingly
Because which it matters. They find it one in union.
In union there is strength.
- Gertrude Stein, Stanzas in Meditation
```
Image: Man and Woman I by Edvard Munch (1905)
What is a Woman?

October 24th, 2024

On ne naît pas femme: on le devient. – Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

This is an adaptation of a writing from a Queer Memoir class. Parts of this text have incorporated elsewhere on this site.

To Matt Walsh.

I: The Bio-Survival Circuit

Activates at birth. Either/Or. Nurturing/Noxious. Trust/Suspicion.

The body is a woman.

How do you think of your body? Is it a contained whole? Is it an assemblage? Are sensations part of you or are they separate? Are your perceptions within or do they come from the outside? Where does your experience begin and your self end? Is experience all there is? If you could change that experience would you? What does it mean to hate your body? What would it mean to enjoy it?

Is your body a man’s body, Matt Walsh? What are the manly parts of it? Are your sensations manly? Your perceptions? Your experiences? Which is it? The body or the mind? Are you a real man, or do you just say that because you don’t know what else to call yourself? Does it give you pleasure to be a man? Or are you duty bound? Does manhood ever feel stifling? Do you ever want to escape? Or do you like the thrill of power? Is that power yours or Father’s? Do you like it when Father decides? Do you like the body having rules? Is that the man part of you? Or is that fear? Perhaps both.

Transitioning is an act of survival.

II: The Emotional Circuit

Activates by motor activity. Mine/Yours. Dominance/Submission. Cooperation/Competition.

The mind is a woman.

Breathe in. 1 2 3 4. Hold. 1 2 3 4. Breathe out. 1 2 3 4. Now again, but listen. In. 1 2 3 4. Hold. 1 2 3 4. Out. 1 2 3 4. What does your breath sound like? What does it feel like? Is that your spirit? Is that your pneuma? The in, the out, the hold? Or the 1 2 3 4? Where is your soul? Where is the mind? If they looked at your brain, would it be pink or blue or gray? Are your chromosomes carved into your esse? Does your ghost have a cock?

When was the first time you thought “I’m a boy?” When were your first manly thoughts? Was it when you breathed air rather than amniotic fluid? Was it when you played with trucks rather than dolls? Was it at baptism, all glory to God from whom all gender flows? Do you hate these questions? Does it seem so obvious to you? Boy/Girl. Man/Woman. Penis/Vulva. XX/XY. Dirt/Rib. Is your reason a manly reason? Are your emotions manly emotions? Would Descartes be proud of you? Is the wax melted or solid? Penis ergo sum? Is that it? Is that really it? Is that your conclusion? I am man, the extension of the penis, the thinking of the Y chromosome? 1 2 3 4. Breathe breathe breathe. 4 3 2 1.

Transitioning is an act of expression.

III: The Dexterity-Symbolism Circuit

Activates by conceptual thought. This/That. Up/Down. Forward/Back.

The past is a woman.

When did you learn the words “woman” and “man?” Who did you learn them from? What did they teach you? Did they teach you at all? Did you learn by memorizing or by doing? By craft or by repetition? When did you start performing? Have you ever stopped? If you got the chance to be still, would you take it? Or does being a man require you to perform forever?

Think back. When was the first time you saw a girl and instead of thinking “friend” or “person” you thought “girl?” When was the first time you thought of someone as fundamentally different from yourself, as being an other-gender? What signs let you know? What signifiers? What aesthetics? Was it her dress? Was it your toy gun? Did you divine the presence of XX chromosomes or did you see the flowers on her skirt? Was it the way her mom told her “a lady doesn’t do that” or the way your dad said “man up?” When did you know your dad was a man and your mom a woman? Did you always know? Did they tell you? Did you acquire it by anamnesis? Is there gender in Hades? Are there women in Elysium? Would you prefer there not be?

Transitioning is an act of knowing.

IV: The Socio-Sexual Circuit

Activates by learning. Past/Present. You/Me. Then/Now.

The present is a woman.

The first time you kissed a girl, did you do it like a man? Did you enjoy it? Or did you not know what to enjoy? When you touched her did you think “I’m touching a woman?” Were you present or elsewhere? Here or there? What did it feel like? Or is that too womanly to consider? Did you desire her? Or did you desire a woman, any woman? Are you heterosexual because of the way you long to touch and be touched, or because of the way the machine fits together? Do you ever want to break the machine?

When you fuck, do you think of your penis as a man’s penis? Is your penis required? Have you ever fucked without one? When you kiss your wife goodnight is the kiss manly? Are you kissing her or are you kissing “a woman?” Is there a difference between kissing her and kissing another? The first dance at your wedding – who decided? And did it matter whether the song was manly or womanly? Did you look at her and think “woman” or did you look at her and think “my beloved?” When you proposed, was it because you wanted to spend your life with her, or because that was the next step in being a man? When you imagine love, is your love gendered? What comes first, love or chromosomes? Can you have one without the other? Really think, Matt – have you ever loved someone without only loving an image of them?

Transitioning is an act of love.

V: The Neurosomatic Circuit

Activates by leisure. Space/Time. Freedom/Constraint. Here/There.

The future is a woman.

Have you always been a man? Will you always be? If you could be reborn right now, would you choose to be a man again? The eternal return of the penis: always and forever a man, over and over and over again. Or would you experiment? Have you ever considered what it would be like to be a woman? What it would feel like? What it would sound like? What are the qualia of being a woman? What are the qualia of being a man? Can you ever understand what it is like to be a woman? Are you free or are you unfree? Are your chromosomes a cage?

When you were making that film, did you have an answer in mind? Did you think it was obvious? Binaries floating around in a miasma, ordered by the divine Man? Is the Great Chain of Being a manly one? Are you above and them below? Are you scared that you might fall? Is the surface getting slippery? What lies down there? Are you scared because you don’t know what you might find, or because you know who is down there and you don’t want to be treated accordingly? Does it ever feel like you’re rolling a boulder up a hill? Does it ever get heavy? If you had the chance to stop pushing, would you? Or are you so dependent on the boulder that you would rather do nothing else?

Transitioning is an act of freedom.

VI: The Neuroelectric Circuit

Activates by abstraction. Possible/Actual. Relative/Eternal. Territory/Map.

Life is a woman.

Who was the first woman? Was it Eve? Lilith? Lucy? Was there a microorganism swimming around with a bow and pigtails? Is the invention of the penis required for the invention of man? Do we need testosterone for male animals? Can anyone be manly without the human sequence of chromosomes? When you call your dog “he” or “she” what is the reason? Is it purely the genitals? Does the dog know she’s a girl? Know he’s a boy? Why do we call snakes “he” and “she?” Is a cloaca gendered? Why do we call the ocean a woman? Does the sea have a vagina? Do the waves ovulate? What are the Atlantic’s chromosomes?

Do you know how metabolism works? How estrogen works? Testosterone? Do you know what is involved in gender reassignment? Do you know that not all trans people want HRT or surgery? How many trans people have you talked to? If I came to you, five o’ clock shadow and all, and said “I’m a woman” I assume you’d scoff. But if another trans woman had undergone HRT and surgery would that matter to you? Does any of this matter to you? Or is part of being a man to be a fortress? Nothing in, and only cannon-fire out? If women and men are biologically separate, why does a small change in metabolism produce a lot of the features you identify with female and male? Why do you care when the body doesn’t? Is this why you emphasize the genitals and chromosomes? Can’t be other features, which are malleable, it needs to be the non-malleable ones. Except of course even genitals are malleable, and chromosomes do very little to stop metabolic transformation. All around, quicksand mistaken for stone.

Transitioning is an act of creation.

VII: The Neurogenetic Circuit

Activates by anamnesis. Mortality/Immortality. Immanence/Transcendence. Self/Other.

God is a woman.

Do you call God “he?” What about Jesus? What about Gabriel? What about the Ophanim? Show me on this diagram where the angel’s dick is. Does God have a body? Does God have parts? If there was no XY-carrying sperm involved in the generation of Jesus, does that make her intersex? Does it bother you that I called Jesus “her?” Is it bad to misgender God? Does the divine have pronouns? Do you want to pray about it?

Do you believe God makes mistakes? And if the answer is no, what is the mistake? What if I told you that I don’t believe I’m “a woman trapped in a man’s body?” What if I told you I’m a woman in a woman’s body? There was no mistake – there is only appearance and recognition and transformation. Do you believe God is so weak as to be incapable of creating a trans woman? Is your vision of creation so muted that it can be reduced to two pairs of letters: XX and XY? Does it matter to you that those are not the only chromosome combinations? Or do you believe God made a mistake those times? You call yourself a “Christian fascist.” Who do you follow? Is it the carpenter? Or is it Caesar? Is it the Spirit? Or is it the pater familias? Do you feel the flames licking your feet? Will Jesus welcome you in the ouranōn? Or will she say “render unto Caesar what is his?” Do you fear God or do you fear Father?

Transitioning is an act of theosis.

VIII: The Neuroatomic Circuit

Activates by astral projection. Micro/Macro. Human/God. Being/Nothing.

I am a woman.

Are you scared, Matt? Does the abyss make you shake? Is the dark night of the cis soul too impenetrable? Or is the problem that it is penetrable? That it’s permeable? That you know there’s something else once you walk through? What if there’s nothing holding you together? What if the self is an illusion? What if a man is an empty box? What if a woman is a raging fire? What if the Leviathan is hollow? What if the woman-king returns?

Do you feel the new world creeping in? Do you smell the rotting corpse of your kingdom? I’m here, at daggers drawn with the existent. What do you have? A badly-made documentary? A meme turned into two hours of nothing? What is a YouTube video compared to self-creation? Does the money you made from our suffering give you peace? Or is peace for a man impossible? Do you want peace? Or do you know that we will never give it to you? Does the smoke burn your lungs? Do you call us traps because we trick you, or because to accept us as women would be to undermine your own power? Do you feel us sawing off the legs of the throne? Do you feel it wobble? Are you so scared of self-creation that you would rather destroy the world with you inside it? Are you so afraid of alchemy that you will poison the future? Are you so fearful of freedom that you will turn the universe into a prison?

Look at me when I’m talking to you. Look at me when you attack. Look at me when we fight back. Look at me when we turn lead into gold. Look at me when we build the new in the ashes of the old.

Transitioning is an act of rebellion.

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. – Timothy Leary

Image: Woman-Child by Joan Snyder (1977)

Tag: feminism

Transitions #8

What is a Woman?

I: The Bio-Survival Circuit

II: The Emotional Circuit

III: The Dexterity-Symbolism Circuit

IV: The Socio-Sexual Circuit

V: The Neurosomatic Circuit

VI: The Neuroelectric Circuit

VII: The Neurogenetic Circuit

VIII: The Neuroatomic Circuit