Some people are, for whatever reasons, more aligned with a particular set of socially-constructed gender norms than other people are. If you happen to be really aligned with the gender assigned to you at birth, you’re probably going to find it easy to live as that gender. If you happen not to be especially aligned with the gender you were assigned at birth, nor especially aligned with a different gender, you may never really pay a lot of attention to your gender expression, other than to be a bit irked when other people impose gendered expectations on you. But if you find that the gender assigned to you and your personal alignment are pretty much at odds with each other all the time, you’re probably going to find yourself thinking about it a lot.

In my mid-20s I had breast-reduction surgery and the thing that went through my mind when I woke up and looked down my top was this overwhelming sense of ‘This is how they were always MEANT to be.’ Since puberty hit at 11, I’d just had this continual awareness that how I was was wrong somehow- my breasts were always *them*, they were not *me*, they were some sort of alien growth that I was condemned to lug around while no one could understand that there was something WRONG. After the surgery, it was like being freed to be the way I knew, in some bone-deep way, I should have been all along.

And now move that outwards- imagine it’s not just a particular body part, but the entire thing. It’s a weird feeling unless you’ve experienced it- the conflict of your form from the way you KNOW you ought to be, that this is Not *You*.

(It’s also meant to demonstrate how, regardless of whether your life is actually easier after the reboot, it would not necessarily be peculiar to want to change back, even if doing so would entail substantial costs.)

Not the world’s greatest comparison, as an actual transgendered person has been the opposed gender to their internal desire their whole lives, as opposed to waking up one morning at age 36 as the opposite gender as a total surprise event. Not QUITE comparable…but to be honest, say that I knew it was coming…to be *very* honest with you, I wouldn’t really be that distressed. I’m not particularly attached to my tits, I don’t find that men have much coarser skin than women anywhere on their bodies except where they’ve artificially coarsened it by shaving or hard manual labor, it would be a relief to have short hair that people admired for being short, and I would be absolutely indifferent to being called “he,” just as I am to being called “she.” Frankly, my professional life would be much easier and I would have to put up with a lot less shit all around in nearly every social setting…Vi, I think I’m the wrong person to try to make this point with. Which was actually my point all along.

So, what exactly is feminism supporting then, conceptually speaking?

The notion that since gender is socially constructed—and thus, gender identity is constructed from social experience—we ought to generally trust people when they say they’re women, or when they say they’re men, or when they say they’re neither men nor women, regardless of the shape of their bodies.

Gender identity is made in trans women in fundamentally the same way that it’s made in cis women (and likewise for trans men). That renders trans identity neither more nor less valid—and neither more nor less gender-reifying—than cis identity. (It also seems to indicate that at least in the instance of gender, role-identity construction is much more objective than subjective—that is, we primarily teach, “this is what a woman is,” and only secondarily teach, “and you are one.” Which isn’t at all surprising.)

So, my feelings (or rather, lack thereof) don’t arise from being cisgendered.

But they are, assuredly, enabled by it. You don’t get to have a milquetoast gender identity if you’re trans any more than a starving person gets to feel so-so about a sandwich.

Note that I mean that fairly literally: there are in fact starving people who would turn down a sandwich for various reasons. And there are people who could be trans, but don’t feel their gender identity strongly enough for it not to be beaten out of them in one of a dozen ways: literally, psychologically, medically….

From what little I know of and have read of Greer, she seems to have a real issue with transgendered women…

I think the issue with Greer isn’t really Greer, and is more intense systematic transphobia in some feminist communities. (I mean, yeah, she spews hate, but when we see ten thousand hate-spewing preachers, for example, the correct response isn’t, “man, look at those ten thousand individual assholes.”)

What on earth about being a woman in the eyes of society would anyone find himself or herself yearning for..?

It’s not about yearning.

Imagine this actually happened: You wake up tomorrow with no tits, no hips, a penis (operational…), stubble, coarse skin, short hair, the whole manchilada. And everyone acts like this is perfectly normal. They call you “he.” They talk about what a great father you are. It’s like your life has been utterly re-written.

If that sounds like a Kafka-worthy mindfuck… well, there you go.

However, the best way that I’ve had it explained to me (by a mtf high school student I know) is that it’s like losing an arm. Even after a really long time and after you’ve gotten used to not having that arm, sometimes you forget and reach for something with the arm you don’t have. Or how some people will report that the space where there used to be an arm itches. Because subconsciously, you still expect to have an arm there. And when you can’t scratch the itch or pick up whatever it is, it’s jarring to remember that you don’t in fact have an arm, and you have to start over with the whole process of getting used to not having an arm.

Being cis, I’ve never felt any disconnect between what my brain/subconscious says I am, how society sees me, and what my body looks like. I’m a woman and I present as a woman and I have woman parts and everything matches and so there’s no problem there. But in her mind, it’s like not having an arm. She’s also a woman. And she expects that as a woman, she’ll be accepted as a woman and have female parts and everything else, until she goes to the bathroom or some insensitive idiot says something and reminds her that as far as they are concerned (or as far as her body is concerned), she isn’t. And it’s jarring and heartbreaking and she has to start the whole thing all over again. And she can minimize the effects of it, but it’ll never go away completely. All because the gender she was assigned to (or that matches the biological parts she has) doesn’t match up with the gender she *is* psychologically.

I’d suggest checking out some of the big trans blogs. Two that I read regularly (and have learnt a LOT from) are:

Questioning Transphobia (which has a specifically Trans 101 section as you scroll down the right sidebar – plus a whole lot of links to other good blogs)

Taking Steps

Also, in terms of the definition of birth gender: I think that maybe a better way of thinking about it would be to use the term “gender ASSIGNED at birth” (often shortened as GAAB).

Use of the term “birth gender” reinforces the idea that trans people “change” gender. My understanding (which is not complete!) is that this is probably not the best way to conceptualise trans-ness.

Using GAAB instead emphasises that all of us – even those of us who are cis – have been shoved into the gender binary at birth, without our consent and potentially against our will. Now, it may not end up being a problem for most of us, those of us whom that gender fits, but it still HAPPENS to all of us.

It also emphasises that a cis-woman (for example) who is assigned female at birth is no more “innately” female than a trans-woman – it’s just that the cis-woman was lucky enough to have been assigned, at birth, a that fit her.

There’s a bunch of reasons, but just to grab one at random, just walking down the street, a person presenting as a woman is much less likely to induce startle reactions in passers-by than a man, is much more likely to be presumed to have emotions, has much more flexibility in clothing and is much less likely to be involved in a gender-based physical altercation. Also such a person is likely to be excused from participation in male-bonding exercises such as street harassment and gang rape. The more men who question the idea that their biology is destiny, the better I think.

You’re right to say that there are very few hard-wired differences between the sexes. It’s because the process of gendering is the same for everyone – random images your brain absorbs at different points when you are growing up, which your brain then attaches to your sexyfuntime system – that the presence of absence of a penis really has no bearing on what kind of person you feel like being.

Unfortunately presence/absence of a penis does have a significant bearing on what kind of person other people and society treat you as. If you have a penis but want to act or dress in a way that’s “girly” (no more or less legitimate than vagina-americans dressing up in female drag), other men might decide to use violence to force you to conform.

In this way I don’t see any difference between feminism and trans-feminism, because both are about fighting against the idea that other people have the right to tell you what your gender presentation should be, and then enforce that with violence. It’s not about trying to be one or the other: it’s about recognizing that who you are and what your genitals look like are two separate things, and that whether you are an innie or an outie is something between you and your doctor. It shouldn’t determine how you dress and act, because that’s oppressive and harmful to everyone, and it’s not the business of Joe Gender Enforcer on the street what’s under my skirt.

If who you are or what kind of sex you like to have more closely matches one of the two options in the larger cultural binary, and one of the many sub-options of your own personal gender pantheon, then it is your right as a human to decorate your body in such a way and to express whatever body language and intonation etc. that your mirror neurons liked best, so that others treat you the way you want them to. It’s not about being treated like a man – it’s about being treated as an individual, not as one of two flavors of ambulatory genitals.