I corresponded briefly with a girl who is, for lack of a better term, a TERF. She never responded to my last letter, which is too bad. I’m not going to post her reply to my previous note, which prompted this one, because it was a private Ask. But, I will share what I sent back to her with all of you, because I wrote it, and I think it’s important.
In her last note to me, she had essentially said that she very strongly resents males trying to define womanhood to her, and that women deserve a way to sort themselves by shared oppressions, and safe spaces in which to discuss issues specific to themselves. That, like other trans women, I am male, and that I (and other trans women) are trying to tell her that the word “woman” is not for her or other women to use anymore, but for us (trans women) instead.
Here, more or less, is my reply:
I agree, I also would resent males trying to define womanhood to me. I would resent anyone doing that. I don’t know what other trans women may have said or been reported to have said, but for my part, I am not interested in telling anyone that the word “woman” is no longer theirs. I am interested in bringing everyone’s definition to the expanded place that includes women like me. It is not a zero-sum game. Acknowledging that I am a woman will not make you less of one.
I am not a man who believes he is a woman. I am a woman who believed she was a man. I do find it ironic that your issue is with someone else telling you what your gender means in terms of fitting into larger society, but that that is the very thing you are then doing to trans women.
Trans women have quite a lot in common with cis women insofar as how society treats them. Yes, our childhoods were different. But I also don’t know any trans woman who would not give anything to be able to go back and have an even slightly more authentic-feeling girl’s childhood. If you are a cis woman, you cannot understand the hell that is gender dysphoria. You can sympathize, but you cannot empathize. It is something I would not wish on anyone.
So I again agree with you, we deserve a way to categorize ourselves by our shared oppression. Trans women have many experiences that distinguish them from cis women. The difference matters enough to be worth thinking of these two groups of people as two separate groups, in some instances. But they have many more things in common than they have differences, so it is more useful more often to think of them as one general category of people: women.
Being groomed to be oppressed from birth is probably the single greatest difference between your childhood and mine. But, sadly, it does not take long before the publicly out trans woman experiences the vast majority of daily misogynistic microaggressions and more minor sexual assaults, the kind that are still incredibly damaging, but too common to take the time trying to report when, most likely, nothing will come of it anyway.
I was groped on the street in December. I have my pepper spray, and I’ve been keeping myself prepared to deal with a direct physical assault of any kind. But I was not prepared for someone walking the opposite direction to just reach out and run his hand along my crotch, across my thigh to the outside of my leg, and then just keep on walking, never breaking pace even slightly.
I had never in my life experienced anything remotely that vile. I think I was in shock, because I was so confused by the unexpected nature of the assault. I ended up getting on my bus and going to school anyway, because it was finals week, and I could not be late. But it did some very real and lasting damage. I could not focus for at least a week. At all. I was hypervigilant for over a month. I am far more uneasy around unfamiliar men than I was before that, and the catcalls that were previously just annoying are terrifying, now.
I had involuntary and grossly intrusive thoughts that disgusted me, and left me feeling like a disgusting sub-human for having them. Sometimes the thoughts would also arouse me, which made me feel even more disgusting, because all of it was out of my control. All of it. These thoughts would just show up, and destroy hours of my life because I could not focus on anything else when they arrived. Perfect timing, right at the start of finals week. My therapist tells me that all of that is normal in response to sexual assault.
It was barely three months since I was out publicly as trans. Three months. That’s how long it took for someone to sexually violate me. Yes, it was a very minor assault, as sexual assaults go. But people who have never experienced one at all have no idea the kind of deep and lasting psychological damage even a minor sex assault can have. It really does not take long before the trans woman is living the same day-to-day experiences as any other woman of her ethnic background and social status.
Except that sometimes, people call her a man.
So, I’ll leave you with this question. Who decides what you are? Are you what you say you are, or are you what other people call you?
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