While watching The View
yesterday morning, I was disheartened to hear the transphobia coming
out of the mouths of every host sans Barbara Walters, who has for a
while now seemed the only one of the cohosts to truly understand
transgendered people and be sympathetic to their plight and cause.
(Even Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar seem to miss the point on this
one.) While discussing Thomas Beatie, the “pregnant man,” Sherri
Shepherd went to the extreme to point out her belief that Mr Beatie
is indeed not a man, and Joy Behar expressed her “annoyance” with
the Beaties choices:
When I
reached out to Sherri Shepherd via Twitter, explaining to her the
difference between sex and gender (ergo the difference between “male”
and “man”), here is the “direct message” (or private message,
for those of you not in the Twittersphere) I received back:
(If
you can't read it from the screen capture, it says: “a man cannot
have a baby. i'm not talkin about how you feel. a man does not have
the internal organs to birth a child.”)
Now
before I continue, I need to stop and make a few points. The first
is that I have been a fan of The View since
it premiered in 1997, when I was only 11 years old. Back then I
thought watching it was interesting and cool because it made me feel
more grown up. Over the subsequent 12 years, I've grown up and taken
more and more interest in the social issues they discuss. The
View has grown up, too; it now
discusses more serious comments in a more even-handed, analytical
manner than it did when it premiered. The current lineup is,
arguably, the best they've ever had, and at a time when many shows
begin to wane in relevance and ratings, The View
remains fresh and interesting.
Next,
I want to express my appreciation of Sherri Shepherd. She's a funny
woman, and I've found her infinitely entertaining on The
View. I also think she is
sometimes subjected to unwarrented criticism from the blogosphere,
and I do believe Sherri is an intelligent woman. This isn't the
first time Sherri has responded to my Tweets, and she is great fun.
I really like her.
Finally,
I have to make a confession. I myself struggle with understanding
transgendered issues. I'm a gay man, and I've always felt that I'm
just that: a man who is attracted to other men. I have never felt
uncomfortable in my own skin (well, at least not because of my
reproductive organs), and I've never once felt that I was meant to
have been born a woman. (I have sometimes wished it, but that's just
because there's a hot straight guy I want to sleep with. :b) For
me, understanding those feelings is something completely alien, and
it is hard to comprehend. Furthermore, I have a hard time
reconciling transgenderism (I refuse to refer to it as gender
identity disorder, because I don't think it's a disorder at all) with
my feminist belief that gender is a social construction. That,
though, is another blog for another time.
Still,
I don't doubt that transgendered people really do feel that they were
born in the wrong body. And I don't think that a transgendered
person, in the case of Thomas Beatie a female to male—or FTM—is
any less a man than am I. Because gender is a
social construction, I believe that a person can identify themselves
as a man or a woman regardless of their physiological sex.
And
therein lies the point I was trying to make to Sherri. Sex and
gender are two different beasts entirely. Sex is a physiological,
biological trait like eye colour and height. It is chromosomal.
Merriam-Webster defines sex as:
1:
either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many
species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male
especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures
2:
the sum of the structural, functional, and behavioral characteristics
of organisms that are involved in reproduction marked by the union of
gametes and that distinguish males and females
Gender,
on the other hand, is a complete social construction. Gender is the
societal assigning of certain appropriate behaviors and traits based
on physiological sex. To put it another way, gender is what we tell
males and females they should be. Merriam-Webster defines gender as
“the behavioral, cultural,
or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.”
Gender
is assigned based on sex, but gender is fluid, and both males and
females can have a gender expression that is not in line with the
behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits typically associated
with their sex. Gender is a collection of behaviors societies
attribute to a sex. And these gender norms can change. In ancient
Egypt, men wore makeup. In the Victorian era women didn't play
sports. In the 1950s women weren't expected to have jobs. Now
they're expected to “have it all.” In the 1980s men who cared
about their appearance were abnormal; now they're “metrosexual.”
I'm
not going to spend an exorbitant amount of time explaining how gender
is different than sex, because I think the readers of my blog are
intelligent enough to have figured it out on their own (if they
didn't already know). My point is that a man can self-identify as a
woman, if not a female, and vice versa. Is Thomas Beatie a male? I
don't know. I don't really know how the medical community defines
changing ones physiology, especially since I assume, anyway, he is
still chromosomaly female. But that's not the point. The problem is
the co-hosts of The View kept
insisting Mr. Beatie isn't a man.
He is definitely a man. Gender is a social construction and
therefore assigned, not inherent. If something is assigned, it can
be reassigned. Thomas Beatie reassigned his gender identity to fit
what he felt it truly is. That makes him a man. Not a woman. A
male? I honestly don't have the answer to that. But he most
certainly is a man.
It's
actually very timely that Mr. Beatie gives birth again this week,
because out in California, the land of Prop H8, a radio station has
recently found itself in a heap of hot water over vile comments made
about transgendered children on its morning show. The
Rob, Arnie, and Dawn show
on KRXQ in Sacramento aired a show at the end of May in which the two
cohosts, Rob Williams and Arnie States, made vicious statements about
transgendered children. Some of the more vile, frightening comments
Williams and States calling transgendered children “freaks” and
States saying that if his (hypothetical) son ever put on a pair of
high heels he would beat said son with said heels. Dawn Rossi, the
third co-host, was the only one to defend trans children.
This
blatant transphobia ignited a firestorm throughout the blogosphere,
and was broken by Autumn Sandeen over at Pam's House Blend. GLAAD
soon stepped in and has done a brilliant job at drawing attention to
the hatred espoused by Williams and States. In a broadcast last
week, the cohosts addressed their statements and criticism, refusing
to apology, playing the role of victims being bullied, and defending
their hateful remarks as an expression of freedom of speech.
Following that, several advertisers (over 10), including McDonald's
and most recently the University of California at Davis Medical
Center—which in recent years has been the recipient of hundreds of
thousands of dollars in fund raising on behalf of KRXQ and The
Rob, Arnie and Dawn Show—have
terminated their contracts and relationships with the station and
show. Now forced into a corner, this morning at 7:30 PDT (that's
10:30 EDT/9:30 CDT) the show will return, after being off-the-air for
the past three mornings, with a two-and-a-half hour show dedicated to
transgendered issues. Autumn Sandeen will be in the studio, as will
TransYouth Family Ally executive director Kim Pearson. The station
will be fielding listener calls, and I think it will be a truly
fascinating dialogue.
The
comments on The
View and
on Rob, Arnie, and
Dawn in the Morning are
definitely in different leagues. Rob Williams and Arnie States
advocated violence toward children (despite their protests to the
contrary) and the women on The
View simply
expressed their ignorance. (I don't mean ignorance as in stupidity,
but ignorance as in simply not knowing.) However, both are
indicative of a wider social issue, which is the lack of
understanding and compassion for transgendered people. It's a
serious problem when we can't even pass a trans-inclusive hate crimes
act through Congress. (And it's disgusting that the gay community
was willing to throw our trans brothers and sisters under the bus to
get the act passed.)
Transgendered
people are simply expressing a different gender identity. Gender has
nothing to do with physiology and therefore nothing to do with sex,
which means a person can identify as a man and not be biologically
male. These comments serve to reaffirm my personal belief that
homophobia and transphobia are really the byproducts of sexism and
patriarchy.