Q: Isn’t it unfair that rich white trans women like Caitlyn Jenner can claim to be oppressed and get away with it?

A: The world favors rich white people in many ways. But it’s a mistake to focus on Caitlyn Jenner, or on making sure that no trans person ever receives more than they deserve. Instead, we should focus on fixing the ways in which many trans people receive less than they deserve: job discrimination, housing discrimination, harassment, rejection by family, and refusal of health care and other necessary services. If, as a result of a defending the rights of the majority of trans people, we occasionally give someone a benefit they didn’t earn, that won’t be the worst possible outcome.

Rich white people have been enjoying unearned advantages for centuries. Even if a few of those rich white people are trans, the underlying problem is not the movement for trans rights. Rather, the problem is the unearned advantages that rich white people have over poor people and people of color.

Further reading

Q: Is being trans some kind of new trend?

A: The short answer is no. Trans people have probably been around for as long as civilization has been around. 

We do have records about the lives of specific trans people historically. 

For instance:

  • Osh-Tisch was a 17th-century Crow warrior who fought against European invaders and whose gender was baté, which is variously described as transfeminine, nonbinary, or two-spirit.
  • The Chevalier d’Eon was an 18th-Century French diplomat, spy, and Freemason who lived as a man for 49 years (during which they infiltrated the Russian court of Empress Elizabeth by cross-dressing), then lived as a woman for 33 years.
  • Posthumous DNA evidence suggests that General Casimir Pulaski, known as the “Father of the American Cavalry,” may have been trans and/or intersex.
  • The Public Universal Friend was a preacher who founded a Quaker Society, identified as “genderless,” and was referred to by followers as “the Friend” in place of gendered pronouns.
  • Dr. James Barry was a closeted trans man born around 1789 in Cork, Ireland. Barry was a military surgeon who lived as a man for his entire adult life until his death in 1865. 
  • Private Albert Cashier was an Irish-American trans man who served as a Union soldier during the Civil War. Though historians speculate that he originally presented as male in order to enlist, he lived as a man for his entire adult life.
  • Mary Jones was a black trans woman who worked as a sex worker in New York City in the early 19th century. She was sentenced to five years in Sing-Sing prison for ‘crossdressing’ after being vilified in the media for being trans. 
  • We’wha was an artist from the Zuni tribe who lived in New Mexico during the second half of the 19th century, and witnessed the European colonization of the West. Her life was governed by a completely different set of gender concepts from ours; the name for her gender role was lhamana, which is a kind of two-spirit. 
  • Lucy Hicks Anderson, born in 1866 in Waddy, Kentucky, was a black trans woman who lived as female from an early age. She sold prohibition liquor and ran a brothel. She was arrested and jailed for perjury for identifying as a woman on her marriage certificate. 
  • Jack Bee Garland was a trans man who worked as a reporter, cabin boy on a troop transport ship, interpreter and nurse for the US military, and later performed charitable work with the American Red Cross. He was discovered to be trans after his death.
  • Dr. Alan Hart was a closeted trans man who transitioned socially and medically in the late 1910s and lived as a man until his death in 1962. He was a radiologist and epidemiologist who (among other significant accomplishments) conducted groundbreaking research on X-ray screening for tuberculosis. 
  • In 1930, Lili Elbe was among the first trans women to undergo medical transition. 
  • Sir Lady Java was a trans activist, exotic dancer, singer, comedienne, and actress. When she performed in the late 1960s in Los Angeles, it was illegal to engage in the “impersonation by means of costume or dress a person of the opposite sex.” She sued the city over this discriminatory law and lost, but the law was later overturned.
  • Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were trans women of color who are often credited with being the first brick-throwers at the Stonewall Riots in 1969. They were activists who later founded an organization called STAR, which provided community support and shelter for trans people in New York City.
  • Tracey Norman was a black trans woman who modeled for Clairol in the 1970s while closeted, but could no longer find work as a model after she was forcibly outed as trans. 
  • Lou Sullivan was one of the first openly gay trans men. He was an American activist who lobbied for recognition of gay trans men, in addition to outreach work with trans men, writing and editing literature for and about gay and trans people, and other activist work. He died of AIDS-related complications in 1991.
  • Willmer “Little Ax” Broadnax, born in 1916, was a gospel singer and closeted trans man who lived as a man for his entire adult life until his death in 1992. 
  • Robert Eads was a trans man who was born in the 1940s and medically transitioned in the 1980s. He passed away in 1999 due to complications from ovarian cancer because doctors refused to treat a trans patient.
  • Leslie Feinberg was a gender nonconforming novelist. In 1993, zie published Stone Butch Blues, which “is widely considered…to be a groundbreaking work about the complexities of gender.”

These are just a few examples.

Public protests by trans and LGB people predate the 1969 Stonewall Riots and include a 1965 sit-in at a Philly coffee shop that refused to serve people who ‘looked homosexual’ or gender nonconforming, and the Compton Cafeteria Riots in 1966.

And there wasn’t always an LGBT community or movement: During much of the 20th century, trans people were systematically excluded and erased even by LGB people campaigning for their own rights.

Some cultures have traditionally accepted or at least acknowledged gender nonconformity.

For instance: 

  • ‘Two-spirit’ is an umbrella term for nonbinary genders which are associated with some Indigenous North American cultures. Some of these cultures also have more specific terminology for trans identities and/or non-normative gender roles in their native languages. 
  • ‘Māhū’ is a traditional Hawai’ian word used along the lines of ‘transgender’ or ‘third gender.’ 
  • ‘Hijra’ is a Hindustani word for a particular nonbinary gender role, variously translated along the lines of ‘transgender,’ ‘third gender,’ or ‘intersex.’ 
  • ‘Muxe’ is a third gender category in Zapotec cultures of Oaxaca, Mexico. The word is used along the lines of ‘trans’ or ‘nonbinary.’ 
  • ‘Fa’afafine’ is a Samoan third gender category; they embody both masculine and feminine cultural roles. 
  • Traditional Jewish culture and religion sometimes recognizes a number of gender/sex categories, including ‘Androgynos’ (along the lines of ‘intersex’) and ‘Tumtum’ (someone “whose sexual characteristics are indeterminate or obscured”).
  • Various cultures have terms for a third gender category that’s not exactly equivalent to ‘trans woman,’ ‘drag queen,’ ‘effeminate man,’ or ‘gay man,’ but may overlap with any of the above; including ‘Kathoey’ in Thailand, ‘Waria’ in Indonesia, and ‘Femminiello’ in traditional Neapolitan culture. 

The existence of such concepts does not necessarily mean that gender nonconforming people of these cultures do not face discrimination or stigmatization.

The Nazis destroyed a library of scientific and medical research about trans people. 

There was a significant movement for LGBT liberation in Europe in the 1920s, which was quashed by the Third Reich. The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexuality Research) was a progressive organization in Berlin which included a physical library of research and records regarding trans and LGB people. In 1933, the Institute was tragically destroyed by a mob of Nazi book-burners. In other words, the Nazis successfully suppressed not only LGBT individuals, but also empirical information about trans and LGB people which might have prevented decades of misunderstanding and stigmatization. 

Gender nonconformity is/was taboo, and often punishable by law. 

In cultures where gender nonconformity is suppressed, people can’t be openly nonconforming, so of course you don’t hear about them as often. It isn’t just Nazis: Many societies, including some U.S. states, still punish gender nonconformity via (for starters) laws against homosexuality, medical transition, and crossdressing; laws that restrict legal identification (legal name and gender marker); defining being trans as a mental illness or disorder; and not actively prohibiting discrimination or violence toward gender nonconforming people. 

As a result of such policies and practices, many people who might have considered themselves trans today were forced to remain closeted and/or were described as crossdressers or homosexuals. For instance, there’s a long history of women crossdressing or otherwise presenting as men in order to participate in activities from which women were forbidden. Famous examples include the following: 

While some of these ‘crossdressing women’ were undoubtedly women who simply wanted the same opportunities and advantages allowed to men in their societies, it’s quite possible that some of them were actually trans. In most cases, it’s probably impossible to tell for sure, since the terms and concepts we use to describe trans experiences today had not yet been developed. 

Further reading

Q: How do you have sex?

A: Under most circumstances, it’s inappropriate and intrusive to ask somebody such personal questions about their sex life. Please don’t bring this one up with your trans co-workers or acquaintances.

But when I hear this question, part of me wants to reply: How do you have sex? Is your approach to sexuality really so limited that none of your skills or capacities would be useful in a relationship with a trans person?

Good sex isn’t just about reproduction, nor is it narrowly focused on genitals: it’s about pleasure, creativity, and communication. And once you stop being pruriently focused on the mechanics, those central guiding principles are the same whether you’re cis or trans.

Further reading

Q: You can’t measure gender identity, so why think it’s real?

A: What is gender identity? An individual’s gender identity is how they think of their own relationship to gender, including their assigned sex at birth; their body; their gender expression or presentation (like wearing a dress or makeup, having short hair, or using soap that smells like sandalwood); and gender roles and expectations in their culture, community, or society (like the stereotype that men are rational and women are emotional). It’s part of their self-conception, like thinking of yourself as a Christian, a citizen, or a philosopher: Someone else might not know that you identify in these ways by looking at you, and they might define these concepts differently than you do. It’s built into the definition of gender identity that it is self-identified. The term ‘gender identity’ is sometimes attributed to psychologist John Money in his 1969 book Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment.

Lots of psychological phenomena are real even though they’re vague and difficult to quantify: emotions, desire, faith, degrees of certainty or confidence, mental illnesses and disorders, love and attraction, ethical values. Like gender identity, these phenomena can’t be measured directly in practice, so in order to measure them indirectly, we rely heavily on how individuals report their own experiences. What I tell you gives you generally reliable information about what I’m thinking and feeling. By listening to individuals’ self-reports, we learn something about their internal mental lives, which helps us to predict the effects that certain psychological phenomena (like their self-conception, emotions, or confidence) might have on their behaviors and interactions with others. 

In psychology, researchers and clinicians use coding to pick out common elements of patients’ observed behaviors and self-reports, then develop scales to measure and assess the relevant phenomena (e.g. gender dysphoria) at the individual and general levels. As in the natural sciences, social scientists and medical professionals are always trying to improve the accuracy of the methods used to measure the phenomena they’re interested in. 

Further reading

Q: Are trans activists just trying to shut down discussion?

A: It would be wonderful if we could all have a mutually respectful discussion about the philosophical meaning of gender, or about the many social issues that affect trans people. Unfortunately, many cis people make this discussion more difficult by derailing conversations with ignorant and irrelevant questions, or by talking about trans people in ways that indicate disgust and contempt.

On the one hand, there is no shame in ignorance. Everybody starts out knowing very little, and it’s impossible to attain knowledge of everything. If you don’t know much about trans people’s lives and experiences, but you want to learn, that’s wonderful and laudable. If you know a bit and want to know more, that’s wonderful too.

On the other hand, there is a kind of loud, confident ignorance that deserves to be shut down. If you find yourself acting like an expert on trans issues, and you are not yourself trans, this is a sign that something may be amiss. Perhaps you should hesitate before expressing your opinions. You’re still welcome to participate in the conversation, but remember that conversation has two parts: a talking part, and a listening part. Don’t forget the listening part.

Further reading

Q: Are trans women destroying women’s sports?

A: Trans women have been competing in women’s sports for decades, and so far, women’s sports have not been destroyed, so evidence points to “no.”

But doesn’t being trans confer an unfair advantage in women’s sports? In fact, it’s not clear whether, or how much, being trans confers an advantage at all. Testosterone enhances performance, but typically, trans women pursue medical interventions that suppress their testosterone levels. (Some regulatory bodies require them to do so, in order to compete as women.) Probably in some sports, being trans confers advantages through mechanisms like greater height, or greater muscle mass that lasts even after testosterone is suppressed. But the evidence doesn’t always point in that direction (see this discussion of distance running by Johanna Harper), and in general, we don’t see trans women dominating women’s sports.

Even granting that being trans confers an advantage to some athletes, it’s not clear that the advantage is unfair, or even what the standards for fairness should be. As runner Aimee Mullins points out, human bodies come with a such a variety of features that it’s futile to demand “a level playing field.” Mullins has been accused of having an unfair advantage because she runs on prosthetic legs (“How Abled Should We Be?” she asks in the title of her essay); access to fancy training facilities and equipment is unequally distributed; athletes differ widely in attributes like height and body shape; and procedures like golfer Tiger Woods’ LASIK surgery could be considered either a performance enhancement or the repair of an unfair disadvantage. Demanding that trans women’s bodies be exactly like cis women’s bodies is similarly misguided; cis women’s bodies aren’t exactly like each other.

Scrutinizing trans women athletes puts them in a double bind: either they lose, or if they win, they are assumed to have won unfairly. This backlash affects not just trans athletes, but also cis athletes whose bodies are deemed gender-nonconforming.

There are tricky philosophical questions about what counts as fairness in sport. But none of this justifies the level of vitriol that is often aimed at trans women athletes. Trans inclusion has not killed women’s sports, and is unlikely to do so in the future.

Further reading

Q: What if you regret transition?

A: Transition is a big life choice. And of course, any big life choice (including getting married, having children, changing jobs, pursuing a graduate eduction, or transition) might end in regret. But all of these life choices can nonetheless be reasonable and worthwhile. You certainly shouldn’t try to interfere with others’ choices on the grounds that they might regret their decisions.

The majority of trans people are happy with their choice to transition. “Transitioning,” of course, is not just one thing; it’s a process with many steps. But regardless of how you ask the question; regret is rare. Here is a little information about satisfaction and regret for different parts of the transition process.

  • Social transition: According to the 2015 US Transgender Survey, about 8% of respondents socially “de-transitioned,” meaning that they had “gone back to living as their [sex] assigned at birth, at least for a while.” Of that 8%, however, the majority (62%) had re-transitioned, and were once again living as a gender other than the one assigned to them at birth. The most common reasons for de-transition involved social pressure from parents and other family members, and difficulties associated with employment, harassment, and discrimination. Only 5% said they had de-transitioned because they realized that transition was not for them.
  • Genital surgery: It is very rare for trans people to regret genital surgery; most studies put the regret rate at 1-2%. (See Brynn Tannehill’s citations.)
  • Chest surgery: People whose breasts are disordant with their gender identity sometimes choose to have their breasts removed. Studies suggest that it is rare to regret this kind of surgery; a recent study by Frederick et al reports that 83% of patients surveyed were very satisfied with their surgery results and 100% would recommend the surgery to others, while van Grift et al report that 94-100% of patients are satisfied with their surgery 4-6 years out.

Of course, if someone regrets transitioning, they deserve support and respect (just like anyone else who has made a choice they regret). But here, as in other contexts, “what if you regret it?” can be used as a weapon of control, rather than an expression of genuine concern.

Further reading

Q: Is being a trans woman an autogynephilic sexual fetish?

A: Probably not, but this question is a little hard to answer. The concept of autogynephilia is so loaded with bad presuppositions that it’s not clear whether there are any facts about autogynephilic sexual fetishes at all.

The word “autogynephilia” was invented by heterosexual cis male psychologist Ray Blanchard in 1989. Here’s how he introduces the term:

Gender identity disturbance in males is always accompanied by one of two erotic anomalies. All gender dysphoric males who are not sexually oriented toward men are instead sexually oriented toward the thought or image of themselves as women. The latter erotic (or amatory) propensity is, of course, the phenomenon labeled by Hirschfeld as automonosexualism. Because of the inconsistent history of this term, however, and its nondescriptive derivation, the writer would prefer to replace it with the term autogynephilia (“love of oneself as a woman”).

Ray Blanchard, The Classification and Labeling of Nonhomosexual Gender Dysphorias

That’s a lot of flowery language, but here’s what’s going on:

  • Somewhat confusingly, Blanchard uses “male” for all people who were assigned male at birth (that is, people who got the “it’s a boy!” treatment as babies), regardless of what they are like now. So his classification lumps together trans women, male crossdressers, genderqueer people who were assigned male at birth, and a bunch of other categories.
  • If you were assigned male at birth, and you like to wear dresses or be called by she/her pronouns or consider yourself a woman, Blanchard classifies this as a “disturbance.” This language already suggests that there’s something wrong with being a trans woman.
  • Blanchard is saying that everybody he’s studying (trans women, male crossdressers, genderqueer people who were assigned male at birth, etc.) has one of two kinds of sexuality, without exception:
    • either they are attracted to men
    • or they are attracted to the image of themselves as women.
  • Blanchard considers both kinds of sexuality to be “erotic anomalies.” This language suggests that there is something wrong with trans women’s sexualities (or at least with the only kinds of sexualities that Blanchard can imagine trans women having).
  • For Blanchard, “autogynephilia” means “being attracted to the image of yourself as a woman.”

So to sum up, Blanchard thinks that if a trans woman is not attracted to men, then she must be attracted to the image of herself as a woman. His language throughout the article suggests that there’s something bad, abnormal, or perverted about a trans woman being attracted to the image of herself as a woman, and also that trans women are actually men.

All three of these assumptions are wrong. More recent research (along with common sense) shows that trans women’s sexualities are too varied to fit into Blanchard’s narrow two-type theory. And there’s nothing bad, abnormal, or perverted about being attracted to the image of oneself as a woman. It’s common among both trans women and cis women (that is, women who are not trans): psychologist Charles Moser surveyed a sample of cis women, and found that between 28% and 93% met Blanchard’s criteria for autogynephilia. And of course, trans women are not men.

Even if (contrary to observed fact) all trans women were attracted to the image of themselves as women, that wouldn’t make being a trans woman a fetish. Trans women are entire human beings who spend the bulk of their time doing non-sexual activities like working, sleeping, engaging in hobbies, doing chores, and spending time with loved ones. To reduce them to their sexuality is objectifying and demeaning.

Further reading

Q: Why are trans people so angry?

A: Trans people are angry, sad, and afraid because we’re subject to (for starters) erasure, gaslighting, microaggressions, misgendering, familial estrangement, harassment, relationship abuse, corrective rape, coercive conversion therapy, assault, murder, sex trafficking, dysphoria, mental illness, suicide, workplace discrimination, poverty and homelessness, police brutality, civic disenfranchisement, performative allyship, barriers to health care, and on top of all that, TERFs on Twitter telling us we’re lying for attention. Wouldn’t you be angry?

Note: The trans community is diverse and intersectional. Trans people are exponentially more at risk of being the targets of violence and aggression if they’re POC, undocumented, disabled, autistic, and/or LGBQ. Statistically, trans women of color are the most at risk. 

Further reading

Q: A trans woman once said something angry and violent to me; does this prove that trans women perpetrate male violence?

A: Let’s break down the different things that are wrong with this argument.

You can’t blame the actions of one person on everybody in the group. Different trans women are different people. Treating them as interchangeable is transphobic and sexist.

Violence is not unique to men. Women also commit rape and sexual assault, intimate partner abuse, homicide, and workplace bullying. When a woman behaves violently, it’s not male violence. It’s just violence (which is still wrong, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator).

Your interpretation of the behavior as violent or threatening may be influenced by a double standard. People often classify a trans woman’s behavior as threatening or violent in cases where they would accept the same behavior from a cis woman. This double standard is not so different from the one that says that cis women are angry and violent when they behave in ways that would be considered acceptable coming from a cis man.

This Twitter thread documents examples of cis women deploying arguably violent tactics in pursuit of feminist goals: political uses of violent jokes; politicized images of weapons; violent tactics including assault and arson in the fight for women’s suffrage; violent rhetoric (or sometimes physical attacks) aimed by women at other women. Some of the tactics in the thread are morally acceptable, and some are not, but none of them show that cis women are disposed to commit male violence. (What would that even mean?) Similar behavior by trans women does not show that trans women are disposed to commit male violence. (Again, what would that even mean?)

So to sum up: Trans women are human beings, and therefore are capable of anger and violence (both justified and unjustified). But there’s no evidence that trans women are more prone to these behaviors than other people, nor is there any reason for labeling these behaviors “male” when a trans woman displays them.

Further reading