Let’s Not Project Our Beliefs Onto Others

Copyright 2013 by Dallas Denny

We transfolk interpret ourselves in unique and private ways. My reality is not your reality. My experience is not your experience. My identity is not your identity. And your reality, experience, and identity are yours, and not necessarily mine.

We should remember that.

Of course we do share experiences, identities, and realities — it’s what makes us a community — but we should remember and value our differences and not presume to speak for others without first checking with them.

This morning, when reading the transgendernews feed, I came across a repost of piece by Meggan Summerville. It’s titled,  What Not to Say to a Transgender Woman.

As an opinion, Meggan’s post is excellent. She says exactly how she feels about being addressed with nonfeminine pronouns or asked about her genitals, and she explains her preference for the term transgender over transgendered.

Meggan’s opinion, however, is just that — her opinion. She doesn’t necessarily speak for me, or, I suspect, lots of other transfolk.

Ordinarily I would have let Meggan’s post go unremarked — but she hit three out of four for me, and I thought there might be a lesson in it for all of us.

Title

I have problems with Meggan’s title. Although she says that wasn’t her intention, it suggests she is listing universal truths: this is what we ALL don’t want you to say. That would be fine if it reflected a clear consensus, but I don’t think it does, at least not on all her points.

Of course Meggan is free to say whatever she wants, but in this case several of her points consist of her personal preference — first for the term transgender, and second for not being addressed with group pronouns that don’t refer exclusively to women. She’s writing from her perspective. A better title would be What Not to Say to THIS Transgender Woman.

While I’m at it, the term transgender, which commonly used as an umbrella, doesn’t describe my primary identity, which is this: I am a transsexual woman. I’m not offended by being classed as a transgendered person, but many transsexuals will be and won’t like even the revised title.

Transgender vs. Trangendered

While more people seem to be using the former term than the latter, there’s not yet consensus. Consequently, it makes little sense to insult someone for using one term or the other, especially when you are yourself confused about the parts of speech. Meggan manages to insult the intelligence, or at least the education, of those who prefer the -ed ending. She wrote:

The word transgender is not a verb and thus cannot have a past tense. I am no more transgendered as President Obama is blacked or James Gandolfini was Italianed. This is just following simple grammar rules. I see this happen all the time from mainstream media, bloggers, and even medical professionals. I was shocked when I looked at my medical records this year and saw “transgendered” repeated multiple times. Supposedly educated people wrote these notes and yet the lack of knowledge was surprising.

Err — except in Richard Ekins’ and Dave Kings’ idiosyncratic use of the term transgendering,[1] transgender is not a verb. It is sometimes cringeworthily (is that a word? If not, it should be!) used as a noun, as in “I’m a transgender,” but its primary usage is as an adjective.

Adjectives, as you know, describe a noun. “I’m a happy camper.” “I’m a hardworking farmer.” Or “I’m a transgendered woman.” The nouns here are, of course, camper, farmer, and woman. In the last case, transgendered, the adjective, describes a characteristic of a woman. The person being described is not a transgender, but a woman.

Like me, writer and educator Jamison Green, typically uses the (-ed) ending when he feels it is linguistically appropriate. In a chapter we co-write for the forthcoming book Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, this is how we explain our preference. Jamison wrote this particular paragraph, but I agree with it in its entirety:

We often prefer the adjective transgendered to refer to individuals who transgress binary gender norms. Our reasons? First, being transgendered is not the same as being “deafed” (a common example invoked to mock usage of “transgendered”), it is more like being “deafened,” or like being “gendered” by our own or others’ perception of us in relation to the conventional notions of gender/body relational assumptions active in a given culture. We have gender, and we are not gender, yet we are gendered; people are gendered (unlike deaf people, who have deafness, may have been deafened, and are deaf). Second, transgender is increasingly used as a noun and to categorize individuals in a simplistic manner, as if their variance from gender norms were their most significant feature. Using it as an adjective helps ensure that it modifies a noun, rather than becoming one, which we feel increases the term’s capacity to dehumanize us. We realize we are breaking from APA, GLAAD, and AP usage, but we feel the distinction is important, even as we realize that no one person or group can absolutely control the evolution of language, and we think that’s good! We also note that other well-known writers of transgender experience use the terms in this way, notably Jenny Boylan, Susan Stryker, and Kate Bornstein [3] to name a few.

We would never say “transgendered community,” but we should certainly be able to say (for example) ‘transgendered experience’ — or ‘transgender experience’ — depending on how we feel it flows and communicates in the context in which it’s used.

This is not to say a case for the use of the term transgender can’t be made, but clearly, a preference for transgendered isn’t justification for insult.

Pronoun Usage

Meggan writes:

So here’s the reality — if my health insurance, the State of Illinois, the State of California, and the U.S. State Department ALL see me as female, do me a favor and show me the same respect and use the proper pronouns.

Few transsexual or transgendered men or women would take issue with this. Consequently, Meggan was well within her rights to speak for all of us on this issue.

Slang

Meggan writes:

The top two most obnoxious colloquial terms for me are “dude” and “guy.” These words send shivers down my spine and always have.

The use of these terms is quite different when used to refer to a single person or a group. While women are sometimes called dude, it’s unusual usage, and many and probably most women would take exception to being called a guy. On the other hand, “you guys” is commonly used to refer to groups of both mixed and single sex. It has become gender nonspecific.

In this case Meggan isn’t writing about deliberate or even unintentional pronoun misattribution. She’s saying she finds the use of gender-nonspecific language offense because it doesn’t affirm her femininity. That’s clearly a personal issue. It doesn’t offend me to be addressed as a group by a server in a restaurant with “Hey, you guys,” and I’m certain there are others who feel like me. Meggan’s post implies we all take exception to such usage. It’s just not true. It’s not something you don’t say to a transgender woman. It’s just one of her pet peeves.

Inappropriate Questions About Genitalia

It’s absolutely inappropriate for strangers or casual acquaintances to ask us about the state of our genitals. Have we had the operation? Do we still have —

I’m offended when this question is asked of me — not that it ever is — and I suspect most of us are similarly offended. This is an area in which Meggan could safely presume to speak for the community — but not in the way she does.

When you meet someone new at work or at church or on the street would [you] ask him or her what’s between their legs? Of course not, unless you want to get slapped or punched or fired for sexual harassment.

On my first reading I saw this as suggestive of a response one might expect from asking a transsexual or transgendered woman such a question. I now see I misread. Meggan is clearly saying anyone might so respond. My apologies to Meggan for my immediate comment on her blog.

Nonetheless, I find the invocation of violence offensive and unfortunate. There were any number of better ways to have made that point.

In looking over Meggan’s many other posts, I found nothing offensive. Her Trans Girl at the Cross blog is a good one, and you should read it, especially if you are a Christian or are in transition. She should be commended for her work. And yet I felt I should write in response to just this one of her many posts. I think it was because it’s representative of writing which projects the author’s opinions upon an entire community. I can think of many such instances from the past, but it would serve little purpose to highlight something Virginia Prince or Merissa Sherill Lynn wrote twenty years ago. Meggan, I’m sorry you took the blast for what’s a common problem in our community. I’ve no doubt done worse myself.

Notes

[1] cf Ekins, Richard, & King, Dave. (2001, July-September). Transgender, migrating, and love of oneself as a woman: A contribution to the sociology of autogynephilia. International Journal of Transgenderism, 5(3).

[2] In response to my comment on her blog, Meggan says she wasn’t writing about group usage. Certainly that makes a difference. However, other comments write of hearing cisgendered women being called dude and guy. If it’s meant as a nongeneric statement and not as a reference to a woman’s former gender, and we become offended, it’s our own personal issue. Some of us really don’t give a damn.

[3] Jamison informed me just now Kate recently decided to go with transgender, without the -ed.

Tags: Dallas Denny, featured, Transgender, transgendered

Category: All TGForum Posts