Womyn-born Womyn, Discrimination in Sheep’s Clothing

One thing that the movement uses to try to keep out transwomen and make them into the ‘other’ category, if not try to make them men, is the idea of Womyn-born womyn. Womyn-born womyn is a form of discrimination that exerts cisgendered privilege of having born into a sex that accurately and correctly corresponds to a person’s gender and having been fortunate to be raised and nurtured in their gender identity. Not all people are that lucky and some of us have to deal with sexism and classism in order to rise above our own internalized homophobia, transphobia and prejudices to come to an understanding of who we are and how to get to where we want. Only after that can we persevere in transitioning and after we have successfully transitioned, we have two options. We can fall into the cisgendered world and woodwork and never reveal our transsexual status to anyone other than those that must absolutely know. Or we can stay in the gender community and mentor to other transwomon and fight for our equal rights so that we can remove the stigma of being a transwomon. I have chosen to be a lifetime member of the gender community, as a mentor, a fighter and an activist. However, one of my biggest challenges is to fight womyn-born womyn only spaces and to try to help feminism become inclusive of all womyn.

I would like to make a note that I know the intentions of feminism and this is the only reason why I am trying to save the movement. As an independent womon, I believe in the right of womyn to have political, social, and economic equality with men. I do believe, however, that the feminist movement has been injected with an unhealthy dose of transphobia that still lingers around today. Fortunately though, as it stands on this day it is largely unwanted and it is starting to die off with the people that started the discrimination in the first place. My goal is to educate womyn about this discrimination in the hopes that we can mend our movement and thus, rid ourselves of the risk of repeating the same discrimination that has happened in the past. It’s that old adage, those who refuse to learn about history are doomed to repeat it and the last thing we need is more of a schism in feminism. I see the damage it has done to womyn that have both woodworked and decided to remain out.

Womyn-born Womyn, according to the supporters of the term, is a valid gender identity that is exclusively for womyn who were born as womyn, raised as womyn and currently identify as womyn. The reason they claim that they make this restriction is that as having lived their lives as womyn, they have experienced sexism that entitles them to move about freely in the movement, a luxury that they are not about to extend to transwomyn. They believe that any and all male privilege (either real or perceived) allows us to live better than many genetic womyn. They claim that the experience of being raised as a girl is necessary to be a womyn and important to feminists, and that people who don’t have this experience are not as good as womyn-born womyn. They ask transwomen to “police themselves” and to respect discrimination against ourselves, simply to allow their prejudice against us to continue on unprejudiced.

Of course, if we were to dissect their statements, we would see the core of the idea of womyn-born womyn is covert discrimination against transwomyn. We would see that they are trying to exert cisgendered privilege by restricting feminism to those who were lucky enough to be born in the correct body. The fallacy with this though is that it allows womyn who employ this strategy to deny the fact that transwomyn are womyn as well, and to claim that transwomyn are not as entitled to equality as cisgendered womyn.

Transwomyn have been forced to live as male, even though they know differently. Many have been coerced into living as a male, either from experience when they tried to transgress gender and or from an acute and learned fear. I know that when I was little, I was coerced into believing that being transsexual is somehow wrong or is somehow an inferior state of existence. We don’t have experience of being raised in a loving family that supports our gender identity and supports who we are. I know that now, we have all sorts of families that know this now and support their children and some families that know early on and start transition for their children. Many of us have had to live through a puberty that is incongruous with who we are and makes the experience that much more hellish. We have had to live a life that is a lie and we are now embracing who we truly are and we are not going to be denied our rights to be womyn.

Transwomyn are in fact, victims of sexism more often than genetic women are simply because in many (38 to be precise) states, it is still perfectly legal to discriminate against people because of gender identity. While working for a call centre up in Boulder, I was told I was not permitted to use the ladies room simply because of the fact that I was openly transsexual and had not had the operation yet. If this can happen in Colorado, where there are protections against such acts and in liberal towns like Boulder, one can only wonder what happens in towns that are less liberal. I am currently pursuing a case with the Colorado Civil Rights Division, but the facts remain that this can happen, even though the laws of the state are clear that such discrimination is illegal. We suffer sexist attitudes from people who believe that they have the right to ask us probing, intimate questions about our genitals, whether we are PRE or POST op, that they would never think to ask a genetic woman. We suffer when we have to carry around identity documents with incorrect names or gender markers because we weren’t fortunate enough to have been born in the correct body and thus given a name and an identity that accurately reflects who we are. We suffer sexism when people refuse to recognize us as who we are and instead, refer to us using terms that infer the incorrect gender. We suffer sexism all the time, and many times, it is legal and sanctioned.

As for male privilege, I can only speak of my experience here. I would have to say that whatever male privilege I possessed, it was forfeited the day I went full time. I planned to forfeit it the day I decided to start transition and stop hiding from the truth. I no longer have male privilege, and what I did have before was either automatic and unnoticeable or just simply unwanted. I am now seen as an other simply because my voice is not yet at female range and therefore, not passable. I will probably always be seen as an ‘other’ simply because I choose not to woodwork. But the one kind of privilege that I don’t have that many of the people that have started womyn-born womyn philosophy do, cisgendered privilege. You should feel so lucky and proud to have been born in the correct body and you have every right to do so. But you take it one step further and advocate for what can only be accurately be called cisgendered supremacy.

Their exclamation that being raised as a girl makes womyn-born womyn more important or valid than transwomyn is invalid simply because there is no one experience living as a girl. This is simply because the very essence of life involves countless factors and countless differences, even within the same culture. To try to say that there is one experience that makes womyn-born womyn more valuable than transwomyn could also be used to justify classism, racism and ageism in the movement. Older feminists could discriminate against younger feminists saying that they don’t have the experience to be in the movement. Younger feminists could discriminate against older feminists saying that they should “enjoy their golden years and leave the movement to us” meaning that they don’t want the older feminists there. White feminists could easily use this to weed out black, latina and asian feminists from their movement. The idea of a single experience of being a girl could very possibly hinder feminism and be an attack on it’s credibility.

Lastly, the request that we “police ourselves” out of womyn’s spaces because of the fact that we weren’t lucky enough to be born cisgendered is sick. It’s asking us transwomyn to continue on their discrimination of us by telling us that they don’t consider us womyn, they don’t want us in the feminist movement despite the fact that the ideals of feminism benefit us all, they want a space where they can mingle only with others lucky enough to be cisgendered and they don’t want to have to think about other womyn who weren’t lucky enough to be born in the correct body. I know very well that I never had the opportunity to be born as a genetic woman but I’ll be damned if I apply someone else’s prejudices to my life and limit myself because of other people’s prejudices. I am a womyn and I was born a womyn but pressured to live as a guy. I was coerced into living as a guy instead of transitioning at a young age, especially when the truth about who I am was revealed to me through introspection. I know very well that I don’t have a female childhood, but I am going to be damned if I am going to allow that to exclude me from the feminist movement.

But what could I equate this to, pray tell? Well, let’s say that there are a faction of atheists that gather together in the community, petition government to remain secular and works for the common good of all atheists. But they have a membership requirement known as “atheist-born atheist”, restricting membership to those atheists who were born atheists but also raised atheist and currently identify as atheists. Therefore, those of us who are unfortunate enough to have been born to parents eager to raise us in the Christian faith are immediately excluded because even though we are born atheists, we are born to Christian parents who are ready to install their values into us. Values that we don’t want and were finally able to overcome to become the awesome, rational people that we truly are. And to be told that we aren’t allowed to congregate with other atheists, even though we are atheists as well? Well, that just doesn’t make any sense at all! And yes, I do plan to talk more on “womyn-born womyn” and the discrimination that it promotes on this blog in the near future.

The truth of it is that Womyn-born Womyn has actually hurt feminism, feminists and transwomyn profoundly. Many who have felt the sting and stigma of not being allowed to be in a movement that should support equality for all womyn are suspect of feminism. Those who are so hurt, they don’t understand the intentions of feminism and how they are really in our best interests. They don’t understand that it’s not feminism that is transphobic, just certain people in the movement that have misused their powers and prestige to forward an agenda that is truly transphobic. I can understand that hurt and I have felt it worst when I was reading the Transsexual Empire by Janice Raymond. It felt as though my very soul were being raped and beaten by this womon who didn’t know me, likely didn’t know my sisters and chose to act in an insincere and inhumane way. And it has inspired me to move forward, not to blame feminism for this evil but to blame Janice Raymond and her inability to overcome her transphobia. It’s sad that her prejudices will never allow her to truly know transsexual womyn and what wonderful people we have among our populace.

Sadly, it is not uncommon to communities of minorities to try to discriminate, even within their own ranks. People have been speculating since even before his nomination that President-Elect Barack Obama is not ‘black enough’ to run for president because he has a direct tie to Africa and thus, has not had ancestors that have suffered through slavery. There is a great amount of hard feelings and hostility towards conservative people in the LGBT community, despite the fact that the conservatives in the queer community do not agree with the homophobia in their politicians but can’t inspire the change necessary in their party. Hell, there are even people in the transsexual community which look down on transgender people who cannot transition fully and those who look down on transvestites. What these communities don’t seem to get is the fact that we can only work better when we aren’t fighting amongst one another. We need to come together to advance our common goals, hoping to build stronger communities and a brighter future for all. These schisms in our communities do not solve problems, they only divide us and make it harder to advance towards equality. It makes it extremely hard to fight the people wanting to keep us down.

So, Womyn-born womyn advocates, I want to let you know right here and right now that I am a womon and I will not be told otherwise. I know my history all too well and I’ll be damned if I am going to be subjected to your prejudiced viewpoint. So, let me give you some advice if you want your movement to succeed, charge forward and flourish. More and more transwomen are going into the woodwork and we are a powerful force that could possibly be put to help advance feminism. So, by advocating for discrimination, you are reducing the amount of womyn that can help advance your movement. If not, I suggest you retire from your work in the movement or step down to the front line so that womyn who know that transwomyn are womyn, regardless of their history and can leverage that to the benefit of the movement. If you refuse to do either of these two things, then you are knowingly hindering feminism and forbidding it to grow. And in doing that, you have my contempt.

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