Towards a Less Simplistic Perception of Gender

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One thing I come across again and again when encountering public attitudes towards gender variant people is just how simplistic a model many people seem to be operating with. In order to illustrate, it might help to briefly consider sexual orientation, the modelling of which has some similar issues;

Everybody knows about the Kinsey Scale of sexual orientation, right? You have 0 at one end, which means you’re exclusively heterosexual and 6 at the other end, which means you’re exclusively homosexual. There’s then a scale inbetween with varying degrees of hetero/homoflexibility and bisexuality. The wikipedia entry I linked to above also includes an X for “non-sexual”.

Most people seem to be able to grasp this model and understand it, and firmly declare themselves to be a zero. Phew, that’s sorted that out then! None of that gayness here, except after a few pints, when they might venture they’re actually a one, maybe. I jest, but Kinsey is a very simplistic model and the way people use it to express their sexuality can often be very simplistic.

Klein extended Kinsey into his “Sexual Orientation Grid”, which was an attempt to deal with some of the shortcomings of Kinsey: Your ideal situation could be different from your behaviour, as could your fantasies, and orientation and behaviour can change over time.

Taking things in a different direction was Michael Storms, who proposed that “attraction to men” and “attraction to women” can be considered two independent variables. I think this improves dramatically on one of the main issues I have with Kinsey and Klein – that they see a spectrum with “straight” at one end and “gay” at the other. Instead, Storms suggests, you can be attracted to men and attracted to women in different proportions. The diagram on the right (click to enlarge) illustrates this. One thing it does which Klein and Kinsey don’t do so well is takes asexuality into account.

These are still simplistic – they don’t take into account non-binary and queer identities, for example, nor do they account for the fact that “man” and “woman” can be broken down into multiple attributes in their own right. Someone can, for example, be attracted to a person with very large breasts (to the point of a fetish – something else none of these models handle well), but be less concerned with other aspects of “femaleness” in a sexual partner.

Regardless of their shortcomings, I think people can generally understand them and realise that there are bisexual people (Kinsey), that you can fantasise about same sex encounters while being straight (Klein) and even that you can be independently attracted to men and women, or not (asexuality). Many people will have a conservative reaction to anything other than Kinsey (or even anything other than heterosexuality) and declare it to be nonsense, or perversion, or symptomatic of pathology, but they can usually understand it.

What about Gender?

What depresses me is that while Kinsey has penetrated (oh shush) the public consciousness, and refinements on it can be understood, the same can’t be said for gender.

A grid for just one aspect of gender identity?

From my perspective, I see that there are multiple variables to gender. You can have identity, visible expression, behavioural expression, and so on. Like Klein, each one of these can change over time, can be “fantasised” about, and can be different in terms of expression and ideal. We can construct a Storms grid for each one of them; there’s one on the left and each person might have, say, twelve, or something, each representing a different aspect of their gender identity (such as their presentation, or their identified gender, or their desired social gender, and so-on).

In addition, each one of these can be fluid, and there are probably a whole host of things I haven’t thought of. This stuff is rich, very rich. Instead what we get are media depictions and a public discourse on gender variant people which is simplistic to levels that I find incredibly frustrating: trans stories have to be accompanies with photographs or video of over-the-top expressions of stereotypical femininity or masculinity; anyone without a simple, binary identity, is considered too challenging; surgical status is everything, “If you’ve got a penis, you’re a man”; “But chromosomes”, and so-on.

I also get the impression that the more “educated discourse”, which ought to have at least moved to a point where it acknowledges that this stuff might be complicated, gravitates all too often to the sort of navel-gazing narrative employed by the Julie Bindels and Janice Raymonds of this world – Gender is bad, it exists only to oppress women, gender must be destroyed, gender variant people are either trying to prop up male gender hegemony themselves, or are unwitting tools of some sort of psychiatric illuminati with the same agenda, gender variant people can’t possibly have anything to offer progressive thought, we hate trans people.

There’s good work being done on this. I have very little awareness of much of it – I’ve mostly picked up my level of understanding, which I don’t claim to be anything like complete or even particularly sophisticated, from moving in gender-variant circles. It depresses me that even this places me in a tiny minority. Some work is done by gender variant people, some of it is done by academics who haven’t drunk the Raymond kool-aid. None of it gets enough attention, and it seems to me that while public awareness of trans people has increased, public perceptions of the rich tapestry of gender variance and gender identity are resolutely stuck in a sort of intellectual pre-stone-age.

Gender Governance Group – Be Very Afraid

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Thanks to “Freedom of Information Queen”, Emma Brownbill, a number of us have been in possession of the minutes of the so-called “Gender Governance Group” (or G3) from 2003 to the present. This is a group consisting of clinicians mostly working in the east midlands and north of England, as well as Scotland and Northern Ireland, who are working in the field of gender dysphoria. They’ve been meeting twice a year for the last eight years, and I imagine many trans people might wish we could be a fly on the wall in these meetings.

Well now, thanks to the wonders of the Freedom of Information Act, we can be! The whole set of minutes are vast, full of administrivia, and take a long time to read. Here, for your delectation, I have presented an excerpt. Zoe O’Connell and Emma Brownbill herself have also blogged on this, and we timed our releases to occur simultaneously. Their entries are here and here.

In general, the minutes present a bunch of people who seem to be generally well meaning, but are disturbingly ill-informed about the range of transgender identities. Their desire to maintain paternalistic style control over trans people is quite apparent, but they do seem to want to do the right thing (even if I sometimes profoundly disagree with what the right thing is – many of them seem to still be in the “prevent transition unless it’s absolutely necessary” mindset).

More recently, they seem to be on the receiving end of a trans community with patients who enter the services with high expectations and with a good understanding of their rights in law. This appears to be causing some considerable flailing amongst the G3 clinicians, and I do sense they’re getting rattled. Anyway, on with the show. It starts somewhat slowly, but do stick with it – some of this stuff is really quite shocking:

April 2004

“Local issues discussed including patients being referred from other clinics and if the assessment has to start from the beginning and if so does the patient have to go through the Real Life Experience again.”

This is the “bad old days”. This question isn’t answered, but it’s apparent from something that is said later on that the answer is quite often, “yes”.

Pickings are quite thin at first. The group is in its infancy and the meetings seem short and preoccupied with admin issues. Fast forward to:

November 2005

[Dr Kevan Wylie, specialist in gender identity disorder working at Sheffield Gender Identity Clinic] had received an email from the [Royal College of Psychiatrists] about an application to a Member of Parliament asking if they could be noted as “no gender” and wanted to know if it was a recognised condition. Kevan had discussed it at a previous meeting but no one had heard of it before and said he would bring it to the G3 meeting.

Tim Terry [vaginoplasty surgeon working at Leicester] said there was a condition called Scoptic Syndrome where they don’t want to be either sex but want to lose the penis and testes.

This is appalling. I transitioned in this month, by coincidence, so I was doing a lot of searching around online for transgender medical resources. Genderqueer and non-binary gender issues were not as prominent as they are now, but there was stuff there, and I came across it quickly. For a specialist clinician working in the area not to be aware of non-binary people is bad enough. For the body supposedly writing a UK Standards of Care document (more on this shortly) to not know of the existence of non-binary people is utterly scandalous. Sadly, this non-binary blindness and resistance to anything other than “traditional binary transition” seems to persist onwards.

By the way, “Scoptic Syndrome” appears to be something akin to dyslexia! edit: It’s a typo – see comments.

For myself, I am aware of a number of cases locally to me who can’t get referred to a gender clinic because they have non-binary identities. It seems that the old advice that you have to lie to clinicians to get treated is still valid for non-binary people. There are a few who are clueful, and we mostly know who they are. Otherwise, beware.

March 2006

[The Royal College of Psychiatrists (the people who had never heard of gender neutral people 4 months earlier, remember?) had circulated their final draft of their Standards of Care document for comment.

You read it right – despite them already apparently realising they don’t actually have much of a clue about the range of transgender identities that exist, they’re trying to put together a document that describes the care pathway in the UK. This terrifies me.

Kevan said that due to NHS waiting times Sheffield would not be intending to provide support to the prisons.

Yeah, whatever. Prisoners are expendable and stuff anyway, right? Just ask the Daily Mail. Serves them right for stealing a loaf of bread and breaking a window pane, or something.

November 2006

Kevan Wylie reported that Helen Barker, Student Doctor carried out a survey, with a small select group and asked about how they felt about complying with the ‘Real Life Experience’. It was found that overall patients felt it was very important.

Of course, patients are going to tell the people who can STOP THEIR TRANSITION AT ANY TIME the complete truth, and not what they want to hear, or anything.

Many patients had raised the issue that they had not been advised fully regarding [scrotal] hair removal prior to their [vaginoplasty] surgery.

This should be explained – if you don’t get that done, you risk vaginal hairballs. These are not funny – they can result in a permanent infection and severe surgical complications. What does “not advised fully” mean anyway? Is it the same as “not told”?

November 2007

Leeds expressed concern over surgery due to Leicester being closed to new referrals. Leicester expressed views on that they were not aware of this…

Riiiight. Left hand, meet right hand. This isn’t the only time this happens, as we shall see.

October 2008

[Northampton’s] main problem is patients who come into the service who are already taking hormones bought off the internet. This raises the issue of whether to stop the patient taking them. If this is the case it does depend on how long they have been on them and the individual case. The patient would be told if they are buying hormones it is against medical advice. [Dr Deenesh Khoosal] told the group a patient parted from their service as a way forward could not be reached as they were receiving injections from the internet.

It was noted that Nottingham would start a patient from the “start” even if they had been in the private sector, whereas Leeds will continue a patient on hormones following assessment if they are able to provide evidence that they are meeting criteria for hormone treatment. etc. Nottingham added that they would not take a patient off hormones.

This is serious. Around half of trans people are on hormones before our first appointment at a clinic, for various reasons. Being made to come off them is brutal. Discharging people because they refuse to is disgraceful.

March 2009 – This is … well

[Dr Deenesh Khoosal] spoke to the group about the issue of unintentionally creating ‘she-men’: patients who have breasys and are on hormones but don’t have final surgery as they don’t want to go any further. These patients continue to live full time as female but with male genitalia. Many of the services present at the meeting had examples of this happening.

This is the level of understanding of gender issues of some of the people treating us. Not only do they seem oblivious to non-binary identities, but they have apparently appointed themselves the genital police. If somebody is non-operative, that is no business of their gender specialist, and does not make them a “she man” or a “he woman” or any other transphobic slur.

October 2009

Orchidectomy [castration]
The Leeds service had reported that they have seen an increase in patients requesting for this. […] the team was wary about patients who only want orchidectomy.

Again, the obsession and fear about trans women keeping our penises. What is wrong with these people? They’re supposed to be helping us.

The Chief Executive for the Department of Health has recently written to every lead reminding them of their responsibilities legally with regards to trans care.

April 2010

Kevan is of the opinion that we as professionals are not gatekeepers unless there are mental health problems or for monetary making reasons.

Or if you want to keep your penis, or dare to take hormones that we didn’t prescribe, or (continued, pp. 94-106)

Entry into GIC
Leeds are recommending for a recent (within 12 months) mental health, together with evidence of physical examinations, plus full bloods.

Nottingham accepts primary care referrals and then asks GPs to carry out physical examinations

As has recently come to light, “physical examinations” means “GP inspects genitals”. The only person who inspected mine was my surgeon. There’s really no reason to insist on this. It’s degrading and unnecessary.

October 2010

York
Vast increase in size of university population, resulting in demanding youngsters being referred. Waiting list is currently four and a half years, most students only at Uni for three years. This means the service users are arriving very unhappy and then going to London for treatment.

The clinician working at York actually seems very upset about this – she’s getting almost no support from the local NHS. A waiting list of four and a half years though. Four. And. A. Half. Years.

Dr Beaini wanted clarification for a patient who has got a GRC already and they have been gender dysphoric for 25 years. Now they have asked for phalloplasty, do they need to seek second opinion or not?

Been in Leeds Gender Clinic for a while and been treated. 20-25 years gender reassignment, done mastectomy etc.

[…]

GRC is not an access to surgery. Need a one to one assessment with the patient. Readiness and robustness is a must. The way they are presenting, they are not robust enough

Yes, here is someone who has been transitioned for two decades. They’ve had mastectomy, they are legally male. They are presumably living their life, but they won’t be referred for surgery because their gender-presentation is “chaotic”. I think that at 2 decades, they might have proven that they’re serious about transition, no?

Equality Bill(SIC – it was actually the Equality Act by this point)
Glasgow would like to know how gender services are going to adapt to the changes. The bill is now allowing that anyone with gender issues are covered by the same legal as discrimination [That was almost English]. Will this have an impact on the services? The easy answer is we are covered by WPATH and standards of care. We are a medical health.

Glasgow currently have a patient who has highly intellectualised the gender issues, he is biological male and in between somewhere. No evidenced based to treat it, but knows he(SIC) rights and how can he be treated.

Equality bill only mentions the male to female or female to male.

So much wrong with this. They seem actually hurt that trans people have legal rights – surely our lives belong to them! HOW DARE a patient “intellectualise” their gender issues. Note also the continued cluelessness about genderqueer issues – “in between somewhere”.

March 2011

North East
A group of young people under 18 created a voice and demanded a service.

My god! They’re at the gate with boiling oil. These people are revolting!

Leicester
Surgery is cheaper on private than it is on the NHS.

I tried to tell my PCT this back in 2007, and they refused to believe me.

Amal reported that surgeons stopped taking mastectomy referrals and no-one told Leeds – they heard from their patients.

Again, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

October 2011

Leeds have struggled recently with GIRES putting pressure on them regarding hormones and real life experience. There is need to clarify RLE for future. Leeds clarified that they have two stages of RLE, the stage before hormone and assessment 6 months, RLE 2 years before surgery.

That’s right – they make people undergo social transition for 6 months with no medical support. They’re then flabbergasted when people self medicate, and increasingly arrive demanding to be treated with a modicum of human dignity. GIRES are a trans activism and research organisation. Leeds seem almost upset that their “turf” is being intruded upon by trans groups.

[On the new WPATH SoC]
RLE, eligibility and readiness – been completely removed from the SoC […] Amal gave an example of a patient from Leeds going to the GMC.

Leeds also pointed out that the DoH leaflet, doesn’t reflect what they do. When they didn’t do what it said in the leaflet, they got harassing emails which wasn’t very pleasant.

This is almost comedy gold – WPATH, the organisation responsible for publishing the global standards of care document, has moved on and realised that the way we have been treated in the past has been inappropriate. The department of health seems to have certain expectations too. Here we see clinicians realising the world is moving on without them, and desperately trying to hang on to the past.

[On the Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s recent document looking at trans healthcare in the UK]
Sheffield, Leeds or Nottingham confirmed that they haven’t been contacted for any information. The teams are not happy with this document.

Note the bemusement. It’s almost as if government departments and equality bodies are talking to trans people (I know they are – we keep in touch regularly), without honouring the unwritten rule that we belong to the medical professionals who treat us.

As I said coming in, these people seem to be generally well meaning, but the way they talk about us to each other suggests a way of looking at us that ignores our humanity and is incompatible with our equalities and rights aspirations.

These people are dinosaurs, and they haven’t realised that the comet they can see is heading straight for them.

Aggressive Secular Workplace Discrimination?

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There seems to be a growing view amongst some in various religious communities that asking them to comply with equalities legislation in the exercise of their job or public service, or asking that they not impose their religion on others, constitutes some form of discrimination.

I view this as absurd. It is absolutely not the purpose of anti-discrimination legislation to protect the right of groups to themselves engage in discrimination. This much is self-evident; anti discrimination legislation which tried to accommodate this would be an absurdity and constitute an unworkable collection of cascading self-contradiction. Just imagine:

You can’t discriminate against the gays unless you find them really, really icky, and really want to.

Because for some reason, this always seems to come back to some sort of obsession with homosexuality. Personally, I think thinking about gay sex as often as some of these people seem to is really unhealthy, and I say that as a homosexual person, but I digress.

There’s a new report out. It’s called Clearing the Ground and it’s published by “Christians in Parliament”, who are apparently “an official All-Party Parliamentary Group”. The report is described as a, “preliminary report into the freedom of Christians in the UK”, and is the result of the committee being “tasked with considering the question: Are Christians marginalised in the UK?”

Anyway, flicking through, as one does, one can find the following gem:

The Department of Health’s practical guide on religion and belief offers the following guidance:

“Members of some religions … are expected to preach and to try to convert other people. In a workplace environment this can cause many problems, as non-religious people and those from other religions or beliefs could feel harassed and intimidated by this behaviour… To avoid misunderstandings and complaints on this issue, it should be made clear to everyone from the first day of training and/or employment, and regularly restated, that such behaviour, notwithstanding religious beliefs, could be construed as harassment under the disciplinary and grievance procedures.”

Dr Richard Scott gave evidence to the inquiry which suggests that the implementation of this guidance is not always applied with consistency, and sometimes with greater restriction on religious belief than envisioned or permitted under the law. There is also a lack of logic in the guidance because someone who is prevented in the workplace from manifesting their belief, either through prayer or witnessing, may consider themselves harassed on account of their beliefs.

Let’s examine this. To my mind, the DoH’s guidance seems eminently sensible. If you’re working together in some sort of workplace, where your religion is incidental to the task at hand, asking your co-workers if they want to “talk about Jesus” or making a show of praying is likely to make people uncomfortable, and make them feel like you’re pushing your religion on them. In an entirely hypothetical situation where someone who is repeatedly singled out for being asked if they want to talk about Jesus, and happen to be the only out gay person in the office (I’m sure this never happens), they might reasonably feel harassed, and would likely consider taking the issue up with HR.

However, the response seems to be saying that this guideline doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pray overtly or engage in unwanted proselytisation in the workplace at all. It’s clear that myself and Dr Richard Scott are seeing this, apparently simple, guidance and coming to two completely different conclusions. Given that Dr Scott got into trouble with the GMC for proselytising to a vulnerable patient, this is perhaps not entirely surprising. Let’s look at what Dr Scott says again:

There is also a lack of logic in the guidance because someone who is prevented in the workplace from manifesting their belief, either through prayer or witnessing, may consider themselves harassed on account of their beliefs.

This looks like a clear case of wanting equalities law to treat religion as a special case, where it has carte-blanche to do unto others as it would not wish to be done unto itself.

Do these people simply not understand that equalities law applies to everybody? I’ll make this as simple as I can:

  • I’m a gay woman (protected by equalities law).
  • In private, I sometimes have sexyladytimes with my partners
  • Note this is in private
  • If I tell my co-workers in detail about my sexyladytimes, that is inappropriate, and I would expect disciplinary action for it.
  • If I go round asking random women in my working environment if they want sexyladytimes with me, that is sexual harassment and I would expect to be subject to disciplinary action, and possibly arrested.

If I don’t get to force homosexuality on you, you don’t get to force religion on me. I have to wonder if people who think like Dr Scott really don’t understand this, or whether they understand it entirely, and are just raging hypocrites.

Hunting Trans People For Sport, Profit, Charity and Teh Lulz

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My phone apparently knows who I am

A few things happened to me this week which, together, encouraged me to write this post. First is a little toy app I downloaded for my iPhone. It goes and looks at tagged images on your FaceBook and then tries to identify people in them if you point the camera at them. It works surprisingly well – the image on the right is the result of holding the phone up and telling it to use the front facing camera. The image follows me around in real-time.

The second was a revolting advertising campaign by Irish bookies, Paddy Power. They have created an advert which invites people to “spot the stallions from the mares” at the Cheltenham Ladies’ Day, where “stallions” refers to transgender women in the crowd. I won’t go into why this is problematic – Paris Lees has written an excellent analysis at Pink News and I would urge you to read it. She goes straight to the crux of the matter:

The problem with “spot the trans lady” though is that, for one person in the game, it’s really not that fun. Ask any trans woman. Most of us, at some stage, have faced the humiliation of strangers playing it on us – Paris Lees

It has also transpired that in an apparent collusion with the Beaumont Society, who are doing well with own goals at the moment, they’ve arranged for numerous transgender women to be planted in the crowd for Paddy Power’s punters to spot. Hilarious laddish fun, especially for those who happen not to be aware of this “game” and are unwittingly dragged into it. If they’re lucky, all they’ll face is humiliation, but these things can turn nasty very quickly.

The third is the unveiling of a high tech advert by charity, Plan UK, which shows a video to people standing at a bus stop at Oxford Street, but only if it determines that they are women. It does this by using biometrics – distance between the eyes, jawbone shape, nose size and shape, etc.. Essentially it’s looking for the absence of what testosterone does to a skull.

Plan claim it is “90% accurate” at guessing the “gender” (they mean sex) of the person standing in front of it. I suspect their tests were using mostly, or exclusively, cis people. Given the stated biometrics are those which can often give trans people difficulty, and which many trans women endure harrowing surgery to rectify, I can imagine the accuracy of the guess is significantly below 90% for trans people.

In other words, this advertising gimmick doubles up in function as a trans person outing device.

Quite apart from the transgender angle, I can’t imagine what Plan UK were thinking. Really, the scene in Minority Report where the protagonist walks through a mall and is recognised by electronic adverts which call to him by name and try to sell him things was, I suspect, penned as a cautionary tale and not an aspirational one.

Imagine if when this technology becomes widespread – a world in which billboard adverts guess the gender of the person looking at them and then try to target ads based on that guess. While this may sound like an advertiser’s dream (I note that gender seems to be the key determinant when targeting ads online – I’m quite sick of sites that know I’m female trying to sell me diets), it’s pretty much a nightmare to trans people, who rely on relative anonymity in crowds to live a tolerable life in a world which is really quite a hostile place to us.

These ads will misgender cis people too, but for trans people, their constant misgendering will serve to confirm the suspicions of the sort of people who still stare at me even now, after six years of oestrogen HRT (at least they mostly just stare now – it wasn’t always limited to that).

This and the Paddy Power stunt seem to be confirming that when it comes to advertising, no idea is too bad, nor too vulgar, nor too invasive of privacy, nor too unpleasant to vulnerable minorities to run. Trans people are an obvious target – a society as neurotic about gender as ours finds us hilarious, possibly as a way of coming to terms with just how much it feels disgust at existence and what we represent. If we can’t hide in plain sight in the safety of a crowd, then we’re easy prey for those who would abuse and assault us.

Putting all this together suddenly caused a light to go on in my head. Technology isn’t inherently good or evil; its what you use it for that matters. It seemed obvious though that we were only a small step away from smartphone apps which didn’t just recognise your friends; they would soon be able to guess the sex of total strangers, based on the same sort of technology that Plan are using. Furthermore, given the obvious public appetite (so well demonstrated by Paddy Powers) for humiliating transgender people by outing us in public, such technology would soon be used to bully people suspected of being transgender.

And then a second light came on – what if I wasn’t just worried about the future? In trepidation, I had a look in the app store. Yes, a “gender scanner” app already exists, and apparently there’s one for Android too. I’ve tested it out on myself, and what it said is perhaps less important than the possibility that it will be used to bully people suspected of the terrible crime of Being Trans in Public.

Along with Paris, I’ve been the subject of “games” of “spot the tranny”. I’ve been photographed on trains by groups of older kids who seem to find the presence of a trans person hilarious. It was pretty humiliating. I fear that the immorality of advertisers and the relentless march of face-recognition technology are only going to make life harder for us, perhaps in ways we can’t fully anticipate yet.

Is it House-Trained? Does it Bite? Has it had The Surgery?

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Yesterday, my dear friend, Paris Lees of Trans Media Watch appeared on Breakfast TV, prior to Trans Media Watch making a submission to the Leveson Inquiry. Now since Paris runs a WordPress blog, she’s able to see what sort of search terms people are using to find her, and yesterday lunchtime she tweeted this:

“paris lees before he was a woman,” “is paris lees post op” & “paris lees on the game” – just a few of the Google searches done on me today.

As an aside, this is a WordPress blog too, so if you got here by googling about my genitals, I’ll know and will be daydreaming about doing unpleasant things that you won’t enjoy, even if you are kinky.

Anyway, this got me thinking about how many cis people think very differently about etiquette around the subject of trans people, our bodies and our identities, than someone embedded in the trans community tends to. I appreciate that I probably used to before I consciously identified as transgender too, but that was a very long time ago and I can’t really remember it very well. As a result, when this difference is thrust visibly into my path, it can cause a moment of cognitive dissonance.

See, I’m a trans woman, and I have many trans people as friends, as well as many people who also have trans people as friends. Generally these people observe a sort of etiquette around bodies and identities that I would regard as “polite and healthy”. I’m not attempting to formalise this in any way, but roughly it’s like this:

  • You don’t ask someone about their genitals.

  • You don’t ask someone what their old name was.

  • You don’t volunteer the old name of someone else.

  • Or yourself.

Obviously there can be exceptions, and they usually involve people who know each other very well, and well understood and/or negotiated boundaries.

Lots of cis people (and actually some trans people) don’t seem to follow this etiquette, however. I generally regard this as “rude and unhealthy”, but it does, alas, seem to be common.

Lots of people know my old name. Sometimes they use it. This makes me feel violated..

Lots of people who I don’t know very well ask me about my genitals. This makes me feel violated.

People have asked me what the old name, or surgical status of one of my friends is. This makes me feel awkward, like I’m being ask to violate someone else.

People have revealed the old name of a mutually known trans person, or if they’re trans, have revealed their own old name without asking if it’s OK to do that. This feels like a violation of one or both of us.

The last two perhaps bear some explanation. I know a lot of trans people. Some I know the old names of (mainly because I knew them pre-transition), most I do not. Some I know the genital surgical status of, some I do not. What seems to come as a surprise to many cis people is that I don’t want to know what the old name or surgical status of a random trans person is.

With surgical status, it’s usually just a case of it being not relevant; it’s something I don’t care about (unless we’re about to have sex). That said, I’m usually happy to discuss surgery with other trans people and sometimes, cis people, on my own terms.

When it comes to old names, it goes beyond me not caring – I actively do not want to know.

Many cis people seem to find this attitude odd. Even people who have a morbid curiosity about trans people seem to mentally respect the fact that someone else might be indifferent. What seems harder to grasp is the idea that being told someone else’s old name is something that leaves me feeling violated.

When someone reveals their old name to me, I appreciate that’s their prerogative, but I’d really rather not know and my first reaction is, “pass the brain bleach!” Actively forgetting something is quite difficult, in a not Losing The Game kind of way. Sometimes people have had their old name blurted out by their parents or something, and that’s really awkward. For the avoidance of doubt, you generally shouldn’t do this.

Imagine if you and I were good friends, and we were sitting down in a cafe chatting, and we’d got to dessert. I’m eating a lovely steaming chocolate fudge cake. As I take a mouthful of runny chocolatey gooey goodness, you suddenly and in a high level of detail, describe your previous bowel movement, complete with telling me about how it had bits of undigested sunflower seeds poking out and everything.

Two things would happen. One is that I’d probably not finish my dessert. The second is that I would decline our next meal date.

I appreciate that I wrote a LiveJournal transition blog, and that it was quite popular, and in it I revealed my old name a few times. I’m sorry about that – I didn’t realise how one can come to feel about this, and I can only apologise. In my defence, most people reading it at the point where I did reveal that info already knew it. For anyone seeking out my transition blog, be aware that it does that (I’m not going to retroactively censor it, but if I ever transfer it somewhere else it might get edited a bit).

Anyway, the take home message here is, please don’t casually toss around surgical status and old names, because these things are likely to upset people, and make them feel violated, and hurt. If you continue to do so with the knowledge that you’re probably hurting people, that’s your choice, but I probably don’t want to know you.

Phew, that was heavier than I intended. To lighten the mood, I’ll finish with an anecdote that this called to mind, about how trans women can develop a very odd attitude towards genital surgery ourselves (those who’ve sat in on a bunch of drunk post-op trans women talking about surgery will appreciate this). Last year, I bumped into my own erstwhile surgeon at a meeting in London. The person with whom he was chatting made to introduce us:

Third party: Do you know Sarah?
Me, interrupting: Yes, extremely intimately, although I was asleep at the time.
Surgeon: It’s OK, I’ve just about forgiven you for that.

Few things make me go bright red and giggly, but that did.

UniLad, Rape Culture and Regrets

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Online magazine, UniLad, which describes itself as “A place for university lads to share friendly banter. Not to be taken too seriously.” on its Facebook page, seems to have got itself into a bit of a pickle.

In advice (or, as the magazine seems to prefer, “banter”) for “lads” hoping to land a date, UniLad recently explained:

If the girl […] won’t ‘spread for your head’, think about this mathematical statistic: 85% of rape cases go unreported. That seems to be fairly good odds.

As one might imagine, quite a lot of people were very upset about this, and it got the online magazine (temporarily?) shut down. The Facebook page, however, remains. The “banter” has continued there, only it’s turned into a fight between those condemning the endorsement of rape culture and “lads”, many of whom are reacting negatively to the sort of exposure they’re getting.

And by “reacting negatively”, I mean “retreating into extreme misogyny, up to and including threatening to rape and kill their critics” (seriously!)

Here’s a particularly egregious example: Someone called “James Bedford”, in a comment thread, told a women:

If i came across you i wouldn’t hesitate in raping you, I would have to kill you first though.. so you didnt struggle.

Nasty. Very nasty.

This got me thinking back to when I was at university, as a sexually frustrated, hormonally confused, 20 year old. I’m in an “interesting” place here because at that point, to all outward appearances I was male. I wasn’t a “lad” – indeed, I’d not long escaped a schooling where those who were fully signed up to what’s now recognised as “lad culture” made my life a living hell. That doesn’t mean I didn’t engage in objectifying and misogynistic behaviour though, because I did. I guess I had some of the traits of what is often described as a “nice guy“. The thing is, “nice guys” aren’t actually all that nice – they tend to approach friendships with women with an ulterior motive, and then become angry when those women become tired of the clumsy and inappropriate pressure to have sex with them, and move on.

I appreciate that I was young and emotionally immature, and in the 18 years since I’ve grown considerably as a person (and, perhaps, also been afforded the opportunity to experience misogyny rather more directly than most 20 year old “men” ever will). I don’t regret that I had a whole lot of growing up to do; what I do regret, 18 years later is knowing that in gaining the life experience I now have, I have hurt people.

People come and people go, but what I’ve come to learn is that the losses that tend to carry on pricking my conscience forever are the ones where I wronged someone, and quite often that wronging took the form of misogyny or objectification. I’m not just talking about friendships ruined because I tried to push them into being something they weren’t; there were more casual encounters too where I behaved like a dick towards someone. I remember several, and I regret them all.

We all leave footprints as we go through life, and it’s inevitable that some of the places where we tread are places where we leave damage. Living with ourselves as we look back and survey that damage is part of being an adult. I do know, however, that when I look back at my footprints, none of them involve me threatening to murder and rape people.

Those on the UniLad Facebook page threatening women with sexual and other violence, dismissing our humanity and even threatening to kill us; they will have to live with themselves 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now. Some of them will look back at what they said and did to women who didn’t deserve it, in the name of “banter”, and have to imagine it happening to their own future teenage daughters. Misogyny and rape culture don’t just demean women; they demean all of humanity.