sashene

Not stupid! I have a bunch of overall ‘structural’ complaints about the way these diagrams theorise sex/gender, and also a bunch of more minor/petty complaints about individual components. My overall critique is that they are transphobic and intersexist despite their (supposed) function to do the opposite.

First, I think it’s important to state what the purpose of these diagrams are. They are an educational tool that act as a theoretical intervention into dominant societal conceptions of gender - ie, vagina = girl, penis = boy. The central way this intervention happens is by disaggregating various components of what usually get lumped together as “gender” (but NOT sex, which is an important distinction I will return to later). This is meant to show people that gender is actually a lot more complicated than they might think, and by disaggregating these various gendered components, you can demonstrate how LGBTQ+ people ‘fit into’ these components. 

I think it’s also important to talk about the visual tradition these diagrams are drawing from, which are anatomical diagrams of the human body shown to children and students for the purposes of teaching them about the human body. These “gender diagrams” metaphorise the concept of ‘anatomy’ by superimposing non-anatomical traits onto various organs of an abstracted human form (bear/unicorn/gingerbread). The fact that they are animals or baked goods as opposed to human bodies is very important in their visual language - they are necessarily metaphorical. This ‘anatomy of gender’ is a social anatomy.

So what’s the problem with doing this? I don’t think there’s any inherent problem with this - for example, trans people often have to explain that sex is an assemblage of traits that are not binary, mutually exclusive, or immutable. You could make a “sex trait unicorn” to show that sex isn’t ‘just’ genes or gametes or sexual organs or reproductive capacity or physical traits or birth certificates or etc, and I think that would probably be fine. But these specific diagrams are, perhaps contrary to their purpose, reaffirming this sex/gender aggregation through disaggregating them.

So, getting to the structural critique, I think the biggest theoretical problem with these diagrams are their ‘organ-ness’ - the heart is where sexuality is contained, the head is where identity is contained, and the… chromosomes between your legs are where sex is contained. It visually communicates that bodily organs are distinct containers for gendered/sexed traits. There are several problems with this, so let’s go organ by organ:

(this is getting long so I'm putting the rest under a cut)

lesbian | gay

bi | trans

rainbow | pan

ace | aro

nonbinary | queer

please reblog if you save any! <3

This is why Matt Walsh, JKR, and other prominent transphobic figures asks the question “what is a woman?” and not “what is a man?”, it’s why Posie Parker advocates for armed cis men to go into women’s bathrooms to “protect women from men invading women’s spaces,” its why terfs are so fixated on trans women as ur-misogynists, it’s why right wing politicians like Pierre Poilievre & the Conservative Party of Canada focus their ire on blocking trans women from public spaces.

You aren't being hated because of your masculinity in and of itself; you are being hated because you are transgender. You violate the gender binary, and so you are attacked and oppressed. This transphobia can manifest in hatred for your masculinity, but it cannot be understood as related to "androphobia". I don't think that saying society views trans people as "lost women" or "failed men" is particularly helpful; rather, we're all violations of the artificial gender and sex binary. Don't misgender us in an attempt to define social dynamics.

Were you a cisgender white man, the qualities you have that society considers "manly" would give you structural advantages. Were I a cisgender woman, the qualities I have that society considers feminine would continue to target me for oppression. Structurally uplifting cis women helps me in turn; there is no way to structurally uplift cis men, because they are already the top of the gender hierarchy. Structurally uplifting trans people, of course, helps us both.

You're angry, and not for no reason; there very much are issues that transmasculine people suffer. Cis MRA groups were angry about the draft, about disabled men, about the criminal justice system- and disability rights and an abolishment of the military and carceral systems are real, valid causes! But MRA thought directs that anger towards feminism. MRA subreddits had posts about men expressing very real isolation and ableism, side by side with blaming women like Anita Sarkeesian and the early metoo movement for their problems. Here on tumblr, we see TMRAs condemning any terminology that allows transfems to describe their oppressors an participating in harassment campaigns against outspoken trans women.

I recommend all comic fans to read this 2014 article by Janelle Asselin about the oversexualization of women in regards to a cover of DC's Teen Titans (2014) #1 drawn by Kenneth Rocafort. I use the word women here but the subjects of the cover in question are girls, they are underaged teenagers. Janelle Asselin is known for her work as an editor on Batman, Birds of Prey v2, Gotham City Sirens and Red Robin, as well as creation of the "Hire This Woman" initiative as a writer for ComicsAlliance, spotlighting up-and-coming comics creatives.

The backlash to this article was so severe that Asselin received rape threats, death threats, called slurs, and received misogyny sentiment so vitriolic that the almost 2 decade long running CBR forums had to be shut down, wiped clean of all history, and rebooted.

The article itself is... not particularly intense. It's a straightforward critique, and Asselin goes for a meaningful but pointed tone while making her point in a factual way, perhaps because she could predict what the response would be. She says is that DC needs to take a second look at their demographic and maybe, just maybe, don't sexualize teenagers! She even praises Rocafort for his art.

Former Teen Titans artist Brett Booth accused Asselin for having a hidden agenda behind her criticism as she had left DC, and calling her out for being "sexist to men."

Janelle Asselin later worked as an editor for Rosy Press, which published "Fresh Romance," an anthology of romance comics. She later left the comics industry as a whole in 2016, the same year she came out as a lesbian. In 2017, she explained in an interview the reason she'd left DC in 2011, after she, along with many other women, reported editor Eddie Berganza for sexual harassment and sexual assault (making multiple unwanted advances like kissing), and no significant action was taken until 2017 when Buzzfeed made these allegations public and Berganza was fired.

Rocafort was later a part of the alt-right Comicsgate movement. Brett Booth has a long running history of discriminatory comments but continues to work as a comic artist, notably on several X-Men comics in recent years.

My main motivation for writing this post is for people to understand that misogyny in the superhero fandom is not in our rearview mirror. It is present and prevalent to this day in artwork, writing, as well as the comic industry and culture as a whole.

Links for further reading:

Janelle Asselin's website

Let's Talk About How Some Men Talk to Women In Comics by Janelle Asselin (archived Tumblr post where Asselin discusses firsthand the backlash she received)

Fake Geek Guys: A Message to Men About Sexual Harassment by Andy Khouri (documenting the misogynistic backlash Asselin faced over her article)

The Comics Giant Behind Wonder Woman Is Accused Of Promoting An Editor After Women Accused Him Of Sexual Harassment by Jessica Testa, Tyler Kingkade, Jay Edidin (this is the 2017 article only after which DC fired Berganza)

i hated the sketch i made for this so i decided i might as well experiment with it a little since i wasn't gonna do anything else with it

The batgirllls

now I'm in my 30s and watching the exact dialogue play out over and over on tumblr in trans spaces. tMRAs will sometimes acknowledge that others using "transandrophobia" or "transmisandry" terminology are transmisogynistic, and say they don't approve of it, but then go on to say that "trans men need spaces to talk about the impact of gender on their lives." those who respond in good faith say, "transfeminism the framework you're looking for. you should learn about transfeminism, and it will give you tools to understand the impact of gender on your life." and then these men say, "but we need a space that centers men's experiences."

men's "need" to be centered, and the antagonistic, resentful attitude towards even the suggestion of not being prioritized over women, is misogyny. understand this. it's misogyny even if he's not the one sending rape threats and harassing lesbians and vividly fantasizing about wanting to kill women. the desire to only participate in conversations that center men is the root issue. the more violent and recognizable forms of misogyny are nourished in spaces like this. you reap what you sow, and a space that centers men will grow misogyny (no matter how much you disavow the fruit).

"the most frustrating part of this post is the equation of MRAs, a fully reactionary misogynistic hate group, to trans men trying to speak about their material needs and safety."

see this is the disingenuous thing that men keep doing. you are the only one on this post who is equating trans men speaking about their material needs and safety with MRAs.

there are trans men who engage fully in feminist and explicitly transfeminist spaces (some of them in the tags of this very post!). they discuss, interrogate, learn, and theorize about their issues with transphobia within patriarchal sexgender hierarchies. they are able to do this work without centering manhood and men in their analysis and praxis. they are able to do this work in genuine community with trans women and transfeminized nonbinary people.

men do not need to be centered. men are capable of understanding that their experiences with transphobia are shared with other trans people. this understanding enables them to form actually effective coalition rather than constantly sabotaging collective liberation efforts with transmisogyny.

in the original post when I say:

"men's "need" to be centered, and the antagonistic, resentful attitude towards even the suggestion of not being prioritized over women, is misogyny"

your reaction is exactly what I'm talking about. you came onto this post with so much misogyny.

saying men need space "away from" women

implying feminists don't want men to participate in feminism when this post is literally saying the opposite

calling feminists "childish" and "hostile"; addressing women as "girlies" and infantilizing them and simultaneously framing women as aggressors

saying "men are oppressed in their own ways either unique to themselves or similar to how women are oppressed" (i.e. denying that misogyny actually exists as a structural force) & quoting a guy literally doing the disco elysium "are women bourgeoisie?"

TERF dogwhistles (e.g. "sex discrimination" "transmen")

you offered up a perfect example of the theoretical misunderstanding of how gender operates in trans men's lives that I was critiquing.

"our masculinity is the exact thing that puts us in danger. its the masculinity".

here's a question: if manhood is the reason that trans men face oppression, then why the fuck am I also oppressed as someone who rejected assignment without being a man or pursuing/embracing masculinity? could it be that the oppression we're facing is transphobia? could it be that when we talk about structural oppression of trans people, the structures we are discussing are those of sexgender assignment and enforcement?

could it be that trans women and other transfeminized people experience sexgender assignment and enforcement just like we do, while also experiencing oppressive structures to which we are not inescapably subjected? could it be there are some structures of sexgender enforcement that we have the privilege to not even encounter, to the point we rarely even notice them until transfeminized people point them out? could it be that there is an actual structural reason behind trans women facing the highest rates of gender-based violence?

what is the point of gender theory that doesn't account for or theorize about the causes of these stats? just to flatter men?

when your theory doesn't account for anyone outside of men, it doesn't hold up! it's not bad theory because it's "mean," it's bad theory because it's inaccurate and actively moves people further from liberatory consciousness.

which is why y'all keep ending up aligning yourselves with TERFs and detrans grifters. do you not get why you always have these people in your tags? did you even notice the screenshots you included to support your position included TERF dogwhistles?

it's not the words you're using that I find unserious. it's the entire theory and praxis communicated by those words.

when I said

"no one, of any gender or relationship to their birth assignment, will find understanding around how sexgender functions in their own life if they cannot de-center men in that learning. they might learn ways to describe it (much of which will be misogynistic by virtue of learning this language in spaces that center men) but they won't meaningfully understand it any better than they did when they started."

this is exactly the shit I'm talking about.

you are not doing trans men any favors by telling them not to organize with or listen to the rest of us.

i wonder if the first drive for sexuality being something unchangeable and intrinsic to you had something to do with those things, that queerness was fixed and definable, which meant that there were strict lines to be drawn about who was and wasn't gay/lesbian/bi which was only made worse by trans and nonbinary people who didn't exactly fit the previous molds

ill be doubly honest and say i only interacted w/ the community online at the time bc living in a homophobic country doesnt give you a lot of opportunities to meet up in person which means my view of the whole thing is skewed. im not sure if this makes any sense

What I’m about to say isn’t a diagnosis of the causes behind those discourses (partly because i don’t think there is a single reason animating those arguments), but like I guess in general a very baseline authority people fall back on is biology. Dominant reactionary discourses describe being gay trans etc as a lifestyle choice, as an active decision to participate in sexual and gendered degeneracy, and so a very appealing counter-claim to make is to point to biology - we are born this way, we can’t help who we are just as cishet people cannot help who they are, so you should accept us because we can’t change our identity. That rhetorical strategy requires/assumes a stable sexual and gendered ontology, a primary authority of the body that can’t be altered. While I believe this argument is fundamentally flawed, I think this is a straightforwardly easy argument to make re: sexual orientation. With trans and non-binary people this is more difficult because the foundational claim to our existence is that gender is mutable, is alterable, is subject to change (and also “I’ve felt this way since I was a child” is a pathological model of gender dysphoria that is enforced through medical and psychiatric institutions, not a reflection of lived reality for many, many trans and non-binary people). That doesn’t necessarily mean being transgender is a “choice” (although if someone said they woke up one day and chose to be transgender then that is a perfectly authentic justification), especially because “choice” in these discussions is often framed as individualised, private, detached from the social world - we are all just free agents making rational autonomous decisions in a field of equally rational choices, etc. which I think is a very impoverished way to understand choice and agency. Gender is an institution, it is a set of behaviours and performances that we choose to engage in in many different ways, and my use of the word ‘choice’ there does not imply these choices are free from coercion, violence, or harm. I chose to transition, I chose to engage in performances and behaviours that signal to the social world that I am a man - where that desire to make those choices arises from is another matter, and honestly not one I’m super interested in figuring out. Like if I discovered the ‘origin’ of my transness it wouldn’t make any difference to me. Similarly, how I choose to signal masculinity is very obviously bound up in dominant gendered assumptions. Trans people get accused of upholding gendered norms a lot, but that’s only because we aren’t taken seriously unless we do so! It is a survival mechanism that allows us to better navigate incredible amounts of violence and social exclusion, and arguing that our desire to do gender with our bodies comes from some grade-school assumption that dress = woman and pants = man or whatever is pure projection on the part of cis people. cis men think if they drink pink wine they’ll become gay - trans people are not the ones enforcing these norms here.

Getting a bit far afield here, so to loop back around - I think a stable state of sexual and gendered subjectivity or “being” is very appealing to a lot of people because it’s a way to dismiss reactionary fears and to justify to yourself that your oppression is entirely out of your control (which is true obviously!). Again I think these arguments are flawed because they buy into cisgendered and heteronormative ideas about gender and sexuality, that it is a biological burden imposed on us, that deviance is not a choice, that gender is done to us as opposed to being gendered agents, that we are similarly trapped in a sexual prison and should be accepted on those grounds, etc, but they have massive rhetorical power.  

As I’ve said before I’m a pretty staunch believer in Butler’s assertion that it is social all the way down, that gender is not discoverable in the body but rather the body is the medium through which gender is done in the world. Cis people choose to do gender just as much as trans people do! The only difference is that institutional architecture is set up to facilitate and make invisible (in very misogynistic and racist ways) those gendered practices. I think the stronger counter argument to make is that cis- and het-normativities are deeply violent and miserable status quos that need to be dismantled and discarded, that true choice can only emerge vis a vis gender and sexuality once those institutions are abolished, and that choice is actually a desirable end-goal - I want people to be able to participate in gender and sexuality as free agents, as non-coercive practices that are sites of great joy and wonder and pleasure. And this world is only possible if we accept that there is no gendered or sexual ontology, that it is all smoke and mirrors, that this current system’s primary function is to reproduce the nuclear family, to maintain the hereditary nature of class and wealth and race, to provide a standardised system of labour division, to maintain a distinction between the public and private labour realms, and so on.

So again like, is this what animates discourses about who gets to be counted as lgbtq/queer/whichever label you want to use? I don’t know. Probably some of it has to do with that. Queerness is in party a pathological category that is used to describe a failure to meaningfully reproduce cishet norms and practices, it is a set of relationships you have to legal and political and medical and administrative institutions (which is especially true for trans/non binary people). I like this definition because built into it is the possibility of change - I do not want trans people to be assimilated into cishet society, I want society to become transgender, thereby making transgender an irrelevant medical and legal category of person. Much like communism aims to abolish class by universalising the proletariat, I want to abolish gender by universalising the legal and political and medical mechanisms of transition. Only then will cisgenderism be abolished.

One thing I have been thinking a lot about is something a friend said to me, which is that human rights to do not begin with a definition of human - in the same way, I think trans rights do not require a definition of transgenderism. Just universalise and de-pathologise the mechanisms through which transition is expressed. Make it easy to change your name, remove all barriers to hormones and surgery, make everyone economically secure enough that they can change their wardrobe however they please,  desegregate all gendered spaces, de-gender clothing, remove gender markers from all documents, and so on and so on. Doing so would make both cisgender and transgender an irrelevant legal and political category and, again, allow choice to emerge as a meaningful mechanism of gender expression.