Cissexuality & Trans Feminist Existence
In recent years, issues around transsexuality and transgender have found a place in feminism. This is no surprise given that at feminism’s theoretical core are questions around what ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are, and if anything further challenges our definitions of ‘female’ and ‘woman’, and deepens our ideas about how we identify with and experience our sex/gender, it’s transsexuality.
However, as well as enriching feminist thought, trans people’s contributions have also upset some of its most deeply held notions around sex and gender. This is particularly the case with radical feminists who view the changing of the physical sex we were born so as to able to identify as the opposite sex to be reifying the link between male body equals ‘man’/female body equals ‘woman’ they want to see broken.
More tensions emerge when the concept of ‘cisgender’ comes up. Wikipedia defines cisgender as: “a match between an individual's gender identity and the behavior (sic) or role considered appropriate for one’s sex”. Radical feminists take issue with some trans people’s claims that this describes how female born women experience their sex/gender identity- and it’s clear to see why.
At the heart of radical feminism is resistance to the idea that being born with a set of xx chromosomes predisposes you to particular behaviours (i.e. will coo over babies) and interests (i.e. shopping for shoes). Such dictates are nothing more than products of white capitalist patriarchal ideology, social constructs created for the purpose of maintaining male dominance over women (women will stay in their place if they’re left holding the baby and unable to walk properly in that new pair of heels).
Therefore, it’s easy to see why radical feminists do not claim the cisgender label, as many of them aren’t comfortable with the gendered behaviour and role they are expected to exhibit as a result of being biologically female. As a female born radical feminist, I include myself here. One of the reasons I came to identify as a feminist is because my own possession of a womb has never encouraged any maternal feelings towards children or excitement over high heels, so cisgender is not an identity I can claim.
However, I do identify as ‘cissexual’ and it’s cissexuality I want to explore further here, for I feel that engaging with this concept can go some way to dispelling the tensions and hostilities that currently dominate dialogue between radical and trans feminists and instead lead us to envision and create stronger trans/radical feminist alliances.
Julia Serano in her book, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, offers a useful starting point for female born radical feminists wanting to understand what cissexuality is.
Serano describes a cissexual as someone who has “only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned”. By “subconscious sex” she means the sex our brain expects our bodies to be. For trans people this is different to the sexed body they were born with, whereas for cis people it’s the same.
Cissexuality is feeling comfortable with inhabiting our born female bodies without any innate discomfort and without some internal notion that we should physically be the opposite sex (as trans people experience).
Acknowledging this does not mean radical feminists can no longer challenge the patriarchal gender roles expected of women they find so uncomfortable to fit their bodies, minds and tastes to.
I too am uncomfortable with living up to, and presenting myself as, the patriarchal heterosexual feminine stereotype. I don’t do make-up, babies, dresses, soft music, high heels, or girly chat. I identify with and gravitate towards more masculine-coded styles of dress, music sub-cultures and intolerance for social fripperies. The thought alone of having to wear a dress makes me feel awkward; having to perform that heterosexual femininity makes me feel uncomfortable in my own skin, upsets my sense of embodiment.
However, someone’s cissexuality or transsexuality is not determined by how comfortable they are with meeting external patriarchal gender roles, but by whether or not they feel reconciliation between their internal sense of what sex they should be and their physical sex. To paraphrase Julia Serano, it’s about the extent to which we “feel at home” in our sexed bodies. Therefore, I don’t think a cis radical feminist’s discomfort at having to wear a dress or conform to other feminine wiles should be conflated with the discomfort a trans person experiences as a result of being born a different sex to the one their brain expects them to be.
Despite my distaste for the feminine gender role - which is where I claim my radical feminism - the quite visceral discomfort I feel at the thought of wearing a dress, my fashion choices being influenced by my favourite male rock stars and wishing I could get away with displaying the same nonchalance my male work colleagues do when there’s any discussion of weddings and babies in the office- this does not extend to my feelings towards my female sexed body. I do not want to be physically male. I feel no deep discontent with inhabiting a female body, of being physically and biologically female; and this is where I claim my cissexuality.
Thinking about cissexuality and transsexuality, as Serano encourages here, in terms of being about whether or not we experience our physical sex as matching our subconscious sex – and not about any match between physical sex and socially constructed gender stereotypes– is what creates that space for trans/radical feminist alliances to emerge. Claiming our cissexuality allows female born radical feminists to acknowledge their privileges in relation to trans women whilst also not compromising their resistance to the restrictive gender roles foisted upon our sexed bodies for white capitalist patriarchal ends (a resistance many trans feminists also share and around which alliances could be formed).
Re-defining ‘gender’
Some may still take issue with this notion of cissexuality, since all this talk of having a ‘subconscious sex’ and ‘feeling female’ suggests that claiming a sex/gender identity is about more than just identifying as a particular physical sex but may also arise from something more innate. And to acknowledge these innate feelings could be deemed to be upholding gender, as gender is conceived as the ideas and constructs we form around physical sex.
But I think the addition of notions such as cissexuality and subconscious sex trans people have brought to feminism, take feminists to a point where we can no longer posit sex and gender as two mutually exclusive categories, with the former being something concrete and the latter a mere social construct. I think we need to consider the possibility that how we come to identify with, embody and present ourselves as a particular sex/gender arises from a bit of both.
As a result, we perhaps need to focus on re-defining ‘gender’ and change what it’s constituted of, rather than trying to abolish it completely- because I don’t think we can. Even if we do obliterate the gender roles created by white capitalist patriarchy, our physical sex won’t be the only thing that remains. We’ll still be left with a sense of personal embodiment, arising from the way we feel within and about our bodies and we’ll still choose to dress and express ourselves in particular ways as a result.
By re-constituting gender in this way, by making it about an individual’s sense of embodiment and the way they choose to express themselves as a result, myriad sex/gender identities could potentially emerge to replace those restrictive and homogenous patriarchal gender roles used to stereotype us when we conform to them and discriminate against us when we don’t.
Forming alliances
To acknowledge how concretely sex/gender identity can be felt - for cissexuals and transsexuals - is also wholly compatible with radical feminism’s insistence on the materiality of the body.
There’s been much suspicion amongst radical feminists – which I share – of the shift in feminist theory away from treating the body as a fleshy substance and a site of women’s oppression and instead towards a celebration of the body as nothing more than spectacle, free to perform any number of roles and appear in any number of guises.
Yet the examination of our innate feelings towards the physical sex we were born and how we inhabit that sex, and recognising the pain associated with this for transsexuals, is in tune with radical feminists’ emphasis on the materiality of the body and their concern with the ways in which gender oppression can be keenly felt on our minds and bodies.
Of course, cis women don’t always inhabit their female bodies with ease. I’m not denying that the pressure to meet male-defined beauty ideals can cripple a woman’s self-esteem and lead to feelings of intense loathing for her body. That cis women starve themselves because they hate their fleshy female curves and cut themselves to dispel the ugliness they feel on looking in the mirror is enough proof that possessing a female body isn’t always a source of contentment.
But we shouldn’t be trying to be prove who has it worse - cissexual or transsexual women - when it comes to how we feel about our bodies and the oppressions we face as a result of possessing those bodies.
Female born radical feminists should stop conflating their discomfort with fitting patriarchal feminine gender stereotypes with a trans person’s discomfort with the body in which they were born.
We can do this by exploring and claiming our cissexuality.
Then perhaps the hostilities exchanged between female born radical feminists and trans feminists can cease and instead we can unite against the way in which the dominant white racist, failing-capitalist, patriarchal power structure discriminates against those of us – cis and trans - who question and resist the arbitrary and restrictive sex/gender roles expected of us based on our born physical sex, and instead work towards the recognition and celebration of the multitude of sex/gender expressions that could emerge when we’re allowed to be ourselves in accordance with what feels right to our individual sense of self.
By Michelle Wright
Summer 2009
A shorter version of this essay was originally published in Issue 8 of Subtext (feminism, politics & culture) magazine
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