photo by Trace Peterson

Caitlyn Jenner Isn’t Bad for Women,

Transphobia Is Bad for Women

I was in contact with The New York Times this week after Elinor Burkett’s ill-informed, poorly-argued, deeply offensive op-ed “What Makes a Woman?” appeared on the cover of their Sunday Review section. I pointed out to them that this is at least the third time a white cisgender woman has weighed in on Jenner since the Diane Sawyer interview (turns out it’s at least the fifth), but I have yet to see a trans woman, the demographic to which Jenner belongs, discuss her.

They asked me to write an op-ed on spec and this is what I submitted, which they eventually passed on. Who knows, they may be publishing other trans women writing on Jenner (they have a lot of catching up to do!). Maybe my writing wasn’t up to snuff. Though I want to point out that given women’s advocacy around representation in media through VIDA, and also how documented the racial bias in media is, I find the way The Times keeps centering white cisgender women’s perspectives on Jenner deeply disturbing. I’m loath to “rock the boat” and argue for my own existence as a trans woman of color writer and journalist, especially when many other trans women who back me up privately are enduring the constant emotional and material repercussions of visibility. But arguing for my existence feels par for the course this week as The New York Times has already sparked a situation where I and other trans women have been constantly put in the position of having to debate our humanity. So without further ado….

The aftermath of Caitlyn Jenner’s official announcement of her new name and gender identity through a glamorous Vanity Fair cover has re-ignited familiar criticisms against transgender women, giving such arguments immense exposure because of Ms. Jenner’s celebrity. Questions around trans women’s acceptability even appear on the pages of publications that normally uphold the equal rights of all people, because they assert that transgender women harm cisgender women and so it becomes necessary to disapprove of one group for the sake of another.

The major concerns against trans women in general and Ms. Jenner in particular are that we perpetuate a regressive, unrealistic model of womanhood; we advance the pernicious idea that there is an inherent mental difference between men and women; and that our histories of being perceived male results in a group of people raised with male privilege to be classed among those who have endured the effects of patriarchy from birth. Yet these critics do not account for how the medical community and broader society have upheld and reinforced regressive models of womanhood as a condition of our acceptance as women for decades, and that paradoxically, it is the continued rejection of our womanhood through the argument that one must be born female to be a “true” woman that is primarily responsible for our need to maintain conventional female roles. Thus, the effective tool for advancing the rights of all women is not the rejection of trans women but our widespread acceptance, so that we can devote our resources to advancing the cause of all women, while making use of the particular knowledge we’ve gained from our specific histories.

The most common and tenable of these arguments, that Ms. Jenner’s super-glamorous, conventionally sexualized Vanity Fair cover sets unrealistic beauty standards for women, must be carefully made, because few critics account for how the medical community and broader society disproportionately puts transgender women’s bodies under scrutiny compared to our cisgender counterparts. In the Times’ recent “Transgender Today” feature, Scarlet Tatro tells a typical story of being refused hormones because she “didn’t look the part enough,” which led to her self-medicating to relieve her dysphoria. In contrast, I was prescribed hormones after my first therapist visit and approved for surgery after my second, in part because I was deemed “attractive” and “appropriately female” by my therapists in their recommendation letters. I made sure to dress and behave in as conventionally feminine a manner as possible during these visits, knowing that my presentation would play an important role in receiving medical care. While conventional appearance might be a matter of self-esteem or acceptance for cisgender women, it is typically a prerequisite for trans women’s very ability to exist outside of our minds, as it has historically been the only way for medical gatekeepers to consider us viable as women.

This does not even account for the way our bodies are scrutinized in public, and how the tiniest signs of gender-nonconformity can trigger harassment, discrimination, and violence. Ms. Jenner, even now, is the victim of constant online harassment, so normalized that few people waste their breath decrying it, and it would surprise no one if numerous people and institutions wouldn’t hesitate to discriminate against her if given the chance, or that many people would wish to inflict her harm. Imagine if her presentation were even less conventionally attractive, if she had dared to put on dresses or worn makeup without the benefits of cosmetic enhancement. Ms. Jenner’s wealth protects her from physical abuse though not from the psychological burdens she undoubtedly has to bear for publicly asserting her womanhood. Then imagine what it’s like for the vast majority of trans women who are not Ms. Jenner, who do not have the wealth to undergo cosmetic procedures or wear glamorous clothes, who do not have the means to protect themselves from discrimination, harassment, or violence. To criticize Ms. Jenner for wanting to be beautiful to feel comfortable as a woman is to ignore the lives of vast numbers of trans women who have the same wants but not the means, wants driven not merely by trivial vanity, but by the need for safety and survival.

This desire to exist and survive also drives the narrative of inherent difference that angers so many cisgender women about transgender women. When Ms. Jenner said, “My brain is much more female than male,” in her Diane Sawyer interview, as a way of describing the gender dysphoria she has felt from early childhood, many women, including myself, found such a strict division between men’s and women’s brains reductive, as it potentially promotes the idea that men have inherent brain capacities that women do not. What critics don’t account for is that this language has long been necessary for trans women to justify our transitions. We’ve long had to assert that our female minds are trapped in our male bodies, that we’ve always felt ourselves to be girls and women inside, etc., in order for the medical establishment and broader society to listen to our urgent needs. Complicating this narrative risks being denied our desire to exist in the world rather than just our imaginations.

What’s confounding about the anger around the survival-driven assertions of trans women’s mental difference from other male-assigned people is that the same women who decry this reduction of male and female brains often simultaneously assert that men and women are reducible to the history of their bodies. The line of reasoning is that while we mustn’t define brains as either male or female, it’s nonetheless necessary to assert a clear line between women who’ve possessed biologically female bodies all their lives, and women whose bodies have been formed and modified through technology. The implications of this difference exert themselves not only in cisgender women’s biological experiences like menstruation and childbirth, but also in living their entire lives under the oppressive forces of patriarchy.

This is the most pernicious criticism of transgender women because it asserts that not only our actions but our very existence is harmful to cisgender women. The advancement of a clear line between “women born women” and trans women drives many of the arguments around excluding trans women from women’s spaces, of dismissing anything we say or any successes we accrue as indicative of our male privilege, and, indeed, the belief that no matter what we believe or do, we will always be inherently men.

Yet upon examination, reducing men and women to the history of our bodies engages in exactly the same logic as reducing us to the inherent qualities of our brains. Not only have there been non-menstruating and infertile women since the existence of women, but technology has had widespread and lasting effects on cisgender women’s lives as it has for trans women. Birth control and safe abortion technologies allow cisgender women to exert control over their bodies, and I know a number of women who take birth-control drugs that suppress their periods continuously. There are also many cisgender women who have needed to have mastectomies and hysterectomies to prevent or stop cancer. To follow the logic of a woman’s identity being tied to her body would mean to argue that these women are not women to the same degree as women who menstruate without technological intervention, who do not interfere with their potential for pregnancy, and who have not modified their bodies to prevent or cure disease. To deny trans women our womanhood because of our bodies amounts to arguing that a particular type of woman is superior to all other women, a type that is ironically seen as regressive by so many of the radical feminists who argue against transgender inclusion.

Arguing against trans women on the basis of our history of male privilege is even more laden with false assumptions. The fact that Ms. Jenner has managed to muster the resources to land on the cover of Vanity Fair, through her initial celebrity as an Olympic athlete and subsequent reality TV success, in no way erases the emotional and psychological burden her transition has had on her. She like any human being has led a complicated life, and any benefits she’s accrued through male privilege must be balanced against the crushing burdens of being trans. Moreover, using the single, most well-known, economically privileged example of trans womanhood and the potential benefits of male privilege doesn’t account for the burdens trans women face by any objective measure, from attempted suicide rates many times that of the general population, enormous risks of violence, and severe under- and unemployment. If our history has been marked by male privilege, that privilege doesn’t seem to have overcome the enormous barriers we face in society. Maybe this is because trans women experience male privilege differently when we are fundamentally alienated from the genders we were perceived to be, and also that the same patriarchy that oppresses women born in female-assigned bodies bears its weight even more crushingly on women who defy social strictures by asserting their womanhood despite being male-assigned.

The most perplexing aspect of transgender exclusion, especially by cisgender women, is that it actually perpetuates rather than diminishes the oppression of all women. Fortunate to have passing privilege without cosmetic intervention, I lived for a decade with only partners and close friends knowing that I’m trans. During that period, my strong and consistent advocacy on behalf of all women was not assumed to be a product of my “male privilege,” but the assertions of a woman who rightfully argued for women’s equality. Ironically, the fervency of my advocacy was driven in part by a history of being perceived male, of having visceral knowledge of the divergent assumptions people make of the same person depending on the gender they express.

At the same time, I felt enormous pressure to maintain qualities of conventional womanhood and not be too forthright in my assertions for fear of exposing my transgender identity, not because it’s a history I’m in any way ashamed of, but because I knew that doing so would compromise many people’s perceptions of my womanhood, including the perceptions of other women I advocated for and with. I know a number of trans women who continue to live in this way, “stealth” as it’s called in the transgender community, and they by and large are more careful to adhere to conventional norms of womanhood because any misstep could compromise their physical, emotional, and economic well-being. If we lived in a culture where one can be openly trans without fear of our fundamental self-perception being compromised, there’s no doubt that this would lead to trans women being able to occupy a broader range of women’s models, which by extension would be good for all women.

This focus on biological difference is thus particularly vexing for the swath of trans women like me who would otherwise have been able to simply live as presumed cisgender women had we not disclosed as trans. Many of us disclose in order to expand the understanding of women, only to find other women seeking to devalue our identities and dismiss our experience. These women who devalue us would have never known our histories had we not disclosed, could have spent their entire lives treating us as compatriots and even friends. To thus judge and dismiss us for revealing a fact about ourselves that would otherwise have gone unnoticed is to expose how damaging the prejudice is against trans women, that it’s possible to treat someone with dignity and respect until they reveal a single, invisible truth about themselves. I hope this chilling reality isn’t lost in a country with a history of repressing some of its citizens on the basis of invisible yet “quantifiable” measures. The fact that many trans women seek medical intervention to look like and even live as cisgender women is primarily reflective not of our privilege or deceptiveness, but of a society that is always one step away from robbing us of our human dignity.

Cisgender women argue that trans women are placing an undue burden upon them, by forcing them to reconceptualize their womanhood, as though such a burden is unique in the context of equal rights struggles for all people. Europeans had to reconceptualize what it meant to be human in order to accept that their slaves and the indigenous people they conquered or killed were not animals. Straight people are needing to reconceptualize the long-lasting tradition of marriage as they accept the inclusion of gay people into that institution. What’s arguably unique and exciting in the case of cisgender women’s acceptance of trans women is that rather than one marginalized group oppressing another, cisgender women’s acceptance of trans women can actually lead to the strengthening of the broader women’s movement. A world where trans women are fully accepted in society cannot happen in the absence of a world where cisgender women are also afforded the same acceptance and respect. The sooner cisgender women do the work of fully accepting transgender women as women, the sooner we can funnel our energies into advocating for the equality of all women.