Fugitivus Discussion Forum

I decided to look it up to be sure but in most online dictionaries the word gender, where one is referring to people, is defined as such:


And that is precisely my problem with it. The very definition of the word makes it a binary. Perhaps it is possible to redefine the word or perhaps it is possible to come up with a better, more inclusive term altogether. The term as it exists however, is not something that I created and I do not feel that I am erasing the experiences of trans-people when I want to see it gone. Why would wishing to see a term gone, that merely discriminates and describes people and human characteristics as polar opposites of one another, as erasing anyone's experiences?

From what I gather trans-people certainly aren't comfortable being shoved into a gender box at birth anymore than I am. My solution to the problem is not wishing for a different box, but wishing for no box at all and having the freedom to define myself. However as long as these boxes exist and are tied to my biological sex then I will be oppressed and so will trans-people. If gender doesn't exist it doesn't prevent anyone from making changes to their identity or their physical characteristics, but it does prevent people from seeing anyone as "abnormal" and stigmatizing them.

Perhaps that's precisely it, Megann. Perhaps people who are not gender-binary-compliant have discovered gender as something completely apart from how it has been defined by the patriarchy. If you're so uncomfortable with the word itself, I see nothing wrong with coming up with a new one.



Because right now, that's the only word that helps describes their experience. Taking that word away leaves them without something to tell the world something important about themselves. That is, in effect, silencing them.

I still think you're stuck on the idea that gender= behaviors/roles/etc. Trans people are not just playing a role. Not all trans men are masculine, and not all trans women are feminine.

Adding: I feel like I got a little too bold with my statements there. I don't feel as though I'm qualified to speak for trans people, so if I went too far, I apologize. And I may have to step out of this conversation soon, as it's starting to cause me anxiety.

It's true I cannot menstruate, or get pregnant, or whatnot, but who cares? I can take hormones, and feel like shit when I forget, or run out. I can have boobs, and estrogen flowing through my veins, long flowing hair, or short hair, just as biological as anything you brought up up there,
but it too matters not a bit. A trans woman who takes no hormones, gets no surgery, and shares a body with a cis guy is just as much a woman as me, or anyone other woman.
And I don't say that to deny anyones personal experience with their body, but I cannot abide anyone who says anyone who doesn't have a body that's enough like theirs isn't a woman. Would a woman be less of a woman with a hysterectomy? Tricked into being raised as a man before finding out?

And that conditioning you mention. We do get constant reminders. I wore a dress for halloween one year as a kid, it was great. But there were stories about kids like that getting beaten up or worse I heard about afterwards, so I never did again for fear of my life. Throughout my teen years I was adament about not transitioning, because I was afraid everyone would see me as a freak and I'd bring shame to my family, and living an unhappy life as a man seemed better than this. As a teen I saw all the horrible misogyny and knew it was targetted at my gender. I saw all the horrible transphobia and knew it was targeted at me directly. I wanted to wear clothes I wanted to wear really bad, or to have a body I was comfortable in, and from everywhere around me came the messages "you're a freak a freak a freak"
A trans woman's experiences growing up of course aren't going to be the same as a cis woman's, but you could say the same about white women vs black women. abled women vs disabled women. queer women vs straight women. Womanly life is really varied! Would a person not be a woman if they were raised by wolves but thought of themself as a woman?


I never said it was unfamiliar to them, I know that. I also never said cis women were privileged over trans women overall, but that they're privileged over trans women on the axis of cis-privilege.


Trans women face a lot of stuff cis women don't, they also of course face all the misogyny cis women face. This isn't to claim that being trans is the one true oppression or anything, but that there are the very real intersecting axis of transphobia and misogyny.


Gender is not a binary system, at least not the way many trans and genderqueer and other activists use it. There's men, women, genderqueer people, bigender people, trigender people, androgynous people, agender people and so many more!
You cannot completely abolish gender without taking peoples right to determine their own gender. What's oppressive is using it to dictate stuff, that is, enforcing gender roles, or coersively assigning gender. Hell yeah that should be taken away, but that isn't gender itself.

The way I see gender is as something unique to everyone, but not something everyone has, as a mode of expression and thought combined in many cases with physical feelings (for the body and mind cannot, nowadays at least, be seperated). Some people love it, some people hate it, some people want nothing to do with it, some people have none, some people have more than one, some people switch from one to another.
Telling someone that this integral part of their identity needs to be abolished I take issue with.

Soooo, this happened. Will trans people be expected to defend THEIR GENDERS in the face of a biological essentialist moderator on this forum? Will this be treated as an opportunity for "education"? Is this going to be a safe space for transphobia?

Much love and support to Princess Backpack.

My last post disappeared on me.

I said something along of not believing that gender doesn't describe anyone. It is too limited and too one-dimensional for that in my eyes. I also believe that the great thing about feminism is that you can created your own terms and concepts that malestream language either failed to provide for or purposely omitted. I do have serious question marks where "gender" is concerned. It feels to me like feminists who are trying to reclaimed the word "bitch", which is dehumanizing to begin with; or the word "penetration", that implies a lack of women's agency in heterosexual encounters.

You can't menstruate, who cares? Well, I care. Menstruation, especially when I first started it has been a huge influence on my day to day life. For two years I had it at least for two weeks every time and was pretty sick during. I had to plan my whole life around it. Also, anyone noticing you were menstruating was considered shameful and to be avoided at all times. You especially had to hide your pads and tampons and my friends couldn't even discuss it with each other and talked in code. It was that much of a taboo. Talking about things like menstruation is empowering, so it definitely does matter. Also when I get raped there is the added bonus of potentially getting pregnant, so biological characteristics do matter, especially if you are not a woman who has light and short periods.

Earlier this year, a woman I know from the US got pregnant because she forgot that anti-biotics make the BC pill less effective. She is relatively poor and by the time she had the money together for an abortion it was too late. In her state abortion are only legal within two months of conception. She was pretty sick and wouldn't have made it past three months, so some friends of hers scraped the money together for her to go out of state. She got the abortion and as a result is now alive. Don't tell me that biological characteristics don't matter. It sometimes makes the difference between life and death. Pregnancy is no picnic and even when good health care is available, many women still die from it every year. I won't even talk about in what way many women are treated when they are about to give birth in the hospital. I'll give you a hint: It often results in trauma.

edited to add: Will you kindly explain to me what part of considering my menstruation and pregnancies important makes me a "biological essentialist"? Furthermore where have I acting as a mod in this discussion? At the request of the participants, not even myself, I have moved the discussion elsewhere to the board and haven't moderated any part of this discussion. What do I get being called a "biological essentialist" for? I am against gender roles based on sex. I am against genderroles altogether, which I have now stated at least half a dozen times. I have also said that I would not mod this discussion and have not. But no, I am just the "biological essentialist mod". Thanks.

I had all this stuff I kept writing and editing and editing some more about gender and what it means to me as a trans person and what it means to different people and what it means in society and all kinds of things and then I just decided to delete the whole thing because, honestly? Are we really having to do this here? Why are we having to do this here? This forum is seriously going to be a space where trans people have to defend and justify our existence to a cis moderator? This whole exchange has me highly flabbergasted and extremely upset and uncomfortable. A lot of other people have said things much better than I could anyway, but I am kind of shocked than any of it even needed to be said. I am kind of shocked that this conversation is conversating at all.

Ninja'd.

I'm not saying biological characteristics don't matter, I know they do. I know all that.
But my biological characteristics, or how they matter to me shouldn't matter to you.
like at all.

This is why I did not want to have this discussion. I have prepared my posts with care every time and all I get back is labels and some pretty insulting one's at that. I am done. Take care.

Right here (italics mine):