I’ve noticed a lot of posts recently about transgender and it has made me wonder about why transgender is seen as something that is divisive within feminism. I’ve always come to things in an inclusive way, attempting to celebrate diversity and not excluding people. Perhaps being a deaf woman has made me understand how hard it is to feel included in things, to have a voice in a world that is for hearing people. Even in the most inclusive environment, I will still feel excluded because the environment is somehow not quite up to task (for example, being with lovely friends that try to make sure I know what is being said, but yet it’s too noisy or I get tired with lipreading, etc).

I feel that even though the feminist movement is supposed to be for everybody, sometimes it can unwittingly be exclusive, whether intentionally or not. This has been a hard post to write and I wasn’t sure about posting it or not, but this is how I feel about things, however confused some of these thoughts might be.

Something I find very difficult is trying to be not just woman, but a person. Yes, I am female, but I want an end to gender stratification. I want an end to assumptions people make about you because you are, or appear, female. I define as a woman, yet I am much more than JUST woman. And what does woman mean, outside gender, outside all these constructions around the term? Does it mean the ability to menstruate, to give birth, or does it mean someone with the ‘body’ of a woman? Because many women do not menstruate (indeed, women do not menstruate throughout their whole lives with the menopause), have the ability to give birth or have traditionally ‘female’ bodies. We define being male or female in language that was imposed upon us by a society where terms are determined in gendered language. Like Simone de Beauvoir said, we are not born, but become women (and men).

Transgender and Transsexuality shows up gender for what it is – a construct. I find this quite interesting and cannot see where feminism has an issue with gender bending. We all have aspects of us that society classifies as “masculine” or “feminine” – both men and women. I can see why some aspects may seem problematic, such as feeling that you are somehow the wrong ‘gender’ which is different to feeling you are the wrong ’sex’.

For me, gender is and has always been a construct and I do not feel that it is innate at all – it is learned and has changed over time (or remained the same..). We live in a society that forces labels on people, that labels us from birth. It then forces us to take on traits of those particular labels, according to what is accepted at the time.

In my other post, I said that the tactics that transgender individuals used in the RTN north march made the march into something that it wasn’t. It was a march to end violence against women, and to certain people became a ‘women born women’ only march, even though RTN organisers said that all were welcome (hey, even men were allowed to march in the mixed march!). It seems to me that somehow, somewhere, people may have their wires crossed. RTN London, for example, allows women and transgendered individuals who identify as women on the march. Because it is a march to end violence against WOMEN.

There is no silencing of transgendered people on these marches, there is no particular exclusion of transgendered male to female individuals. The people that use particular tactics to hijack marches and make it about something else completely – those people should not be doing this. Marches to end violence against women are not the place to champion for transgender rights, even though their voices are important.

For me, it is not about whether I ‘ally’ with feminists OR transgendered people. It is more a case of letting individuals define themselves according to what they feel and understand. If somebody feels they are trapped in the wrong kind of body, that is the way that they feel. If someone defines themselves as a female and as a woman, then let them define themselves that way (NOT as cisgendered).

Transphobia means somehow disliking transgendered people or somehow thinking them ‘wrong’ or ‘deluded’, it is physically or verbally abusing them. It is discrimination and exclusion of transgendered people. However, I can understand both sides of the argument, and feel there needs to be some communication about these problems. Most feminists do not have ‘transphobia’, as far as I can tell. They are just angry at the hijacking of women only space for purposes other than women centred activism. To deny that women are discriminated against is to deny that there needs to be feminism. To say that ‘woman’ doesn’t exist is to take away the reason that many trans people change their sex or gender in the first place (because they don’t feel male/man or they don’t feel female/woman).

I can also see a real need for women-only space BUT also think that trangendered male to female identified people should be made to feel welcome in these spaces if they identify as woman. I know there is much discussion of being born with male privilege, but feel that trans mtf people may have felt female their whole lives (from a young age), may have experienced discrimination because of it, and may have experienced a period of time where they are treated as women, with all the discrimination and sexism that comes with this. I know that some people do not agree, or will agree, or some that don’t really know what they think about this. But this is just my humble opinion. I think that transgendered/transsexual people should have the right to articulate their experiences just as women born women/female people do.

Being a deaf woman means that I am excluded from much of what happens within the feminist movement. At marches, it is really hard to keep up with chanting because the chants change so often – I have to constantly lipread people around me (not easy when trying to avoid bumping into people or tripping up). Rallies are difficult without notetakers or lipspeakers – I do know some sign language but not enough to be able to follow a signer all the time. Leafleting is hard because when people ask questions, I cannot always lipread them. And yet I am still a feminist because I am angry about how I am treated as a woman and as a deaf person by society.

I consider myself a radical feminist in that I think there needs to be examination of the roots of patriarchy. That spiral that goes down and down where you suddenly find the root of all this and go ‘aha – there you are!’ and see how society is completely gendered. You pull things up and examine the roots, the meanings and the whys and wherefores, the subtle intonations. You start to notice things are somehow wrong that you didn’t think were particularly wrong before. I think that ‘radical’ has somehow been conceptualised as separatist, which is different (although not mutually exclusive – sometimes rad fems become separatists). Even if I have felt before that other people do not consider me radical ‘enough’ to define as such.

I see no problem aligning myself with radical feminist thought. It doesn’t mean that I won’t and can’t criticise some of it though – its all relevant but if we didn’t criticise there would be no point and we would all agree with each other about everything…which would be a bit boring! I feel that diversity is a good thing, particularly as I have been brought up to believe that diversity, inclusion and difference is a good and positive thing.

I hope that this at least makes some sense despite my confusion. I haven’t personally experienced the situations that some people have been experiencing, but I am trying to make some sense of it. If I’ve got anything wrong, then please don’t be afraid to comment.