Bodies That Matter: On Trans Legitimacy

As David Buller says in a recent Newsweek article on the limits of evolutionary psychology, human variation is not noise in the system; it is the system.

Most arguments about transgender — as opposed to bio-genders — are based on the issue of legitimacy. Bio-bodies have it; trans-bodies don’t. They are “real” man and “real” women, we want to be them. And if not to approximate them as closely as possible.

Postmodernists are quick to point out that arguments about legitimacy tend to be diversionary. They are not actually about what is “real” but rather a political tactic. Some bodies are empowered and others are disempowered and marginalized.

This is not limited to transgender. Around the turn of the last century lesbians (“inverts” in the language of the time) were attacked for not being “real women.” Not to be left behind, in the 1970s, lesbian-feminists attacked stone butches for not being “real” lesbians. And so it goes.

The same tactics are deployed endlessly, in different contexts, to the same effect.  This is a crucial insight.

But I want to make a different point. I think arguments about legitimacy are diversionary in a different, and perhaps even more  important way.

I think making the argument about legitimacy has the effect of enabling bio-gendered bodies to maintain hegemony over the discussion of gender. That is, as long as we are not among Butler’s “bodies that matter,” then bio-genders are automatically legitimated to enact what gets counted as feminine and  masculine.

We contest the system of legitimacy – whether we count as men or women or not – and not whether the system of gender – of what counts as masculine or feminine – should itself be contested.

As long as we play this game, two things happened. First, we play by someone else’s rules, which is always a losing game. We agree to rules for bodies that don’t look like ours. For instance, the fact that I have a long, slender neck is probably considered feminine. But what do I do with my six foot height, or my broader shoulders?

I guess I can play them down or simply say that’s a masculine part of me. But what would it mean to contest the definition of what counts as feminine in a way that encompassed them?

By confining the argument to my legitimacy, to whether I’m really a woman or not. I never take the risk of interrogating the definitional boundaries of what is feminine.

And that’s the second thing that happens. By not challenging the rules, masculinity and femininity themselves are never contested, never forced to change, are never pushed or stretched by the full complement of bodies that are – including ours…

But I think that’s exactly wrong. Instead of trying to look as much like standard-issue bio-feminine (and masculine) as possible, we should be willing to redefine the boundaries in ways that better suit our selves and our bodies.

In other worlds, we should stop arguing about who counts as legitimate, and focus on redefining what kinds of gender displays are available as feminine or masculine.

This is a game I might be able to win. I don’t know if I’ll ever be counted as a woman – probably not in this lifetime and in any case it’s pretty dependent on others recognizing my legitimacy as such.

But I can and will argue that being a petite femme is not the only way to understand femininity and that’s something I can enact myself, all six feet of me, every day, whether others like it or not.

Because the popular (even in the trans-community) view of transgender is wrong. We are not “mistakes” that doctors “fix” so we are like everyone else.

We are not a noise to be eliminated, we are part of the system. Our variability is our purpose.  Our bodies are a naturally occurring variation that opens that up the gender system. We are a doorway out. And we had better stop screwing around with wood-working and passing and get good at it.