In case you don't use Facebook (in which case, drop into comments and tell me how you found this) and have been living under an internet-rock, Facebook now has 58 gender options, not just male and female. These include a lot of terms that could refer to your bloghostess - transwoman, transfemale, MtF, and others. But I'm sticking to plain old "female."
Facebook made this change to accommodate people like me and to better capture the nuances of gender. And to people who choose to utilize these new options, because they feel something other than male or female better identifies them, I say great - I'm glad you have that option. (Admittedly, the only uses I've seen of the new gender and pronoun options "in the wild" are strictly novelty. But I know people who use them in earnest exist.) But I am not one of them, even if I'm in the target demographic. Here's why:
"Transwoman," (to pick an example) is a perfectly accurate description of me. I wouldn't bristle in the slightest if someone referred to me that way. However, the way I see it, I am only a transwoman by circumstance. I am not transitioning because I identify as a transwoman; I am a transwoman because I have to transition to be fully female. That is, I desire to be, and choose to define myself as, female; the trans- modifier simply specifies that I wasn't always that way.
I do not want an intrinsically trans femininity for myself. I'm trans and I'm not ashamed of that. But by defining my gender in terms of being trans, I feel I'd be preemptively alienating myself from my femininity. I'd be defining myself as a non-native female, in terms that anchor my identity to my past and set me apart from other women.
I choose to be a woman, and only an accident of birth makes me specifically a transwoman.
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