This past year, 2015, was marked by an unprecedented amount of attention paid to transgender issues.
Hollywood coming-out stories have taken center stage at a time when many of us would rather discuss workplace discrimination, gender equality, and access to transgender healthcare. However, in the midst of this era of increased transgender awareness is also a reactionary backlash — transphobia.
When we think of transphobes we often envision caricatures of conservative tea party evangelists spouting hateful and misogynistic rhetoric, yet transphobia knows no party lines. Just listen to the likes of outspoken liberal, Dan Savage. Or “liberal” groups like Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFS) and the white men’s club that is the HRC. Transphobia is also not exclusive to the cisgender world, it prevails among trans folks as well, in much the same way that internalized sexism manifests itself among women in general.
I am a trans woman, and I don’t like other trans women. I am transphobic, and so are you.
Internalized oppression is the involuntary internalization of discriminatory societal values among members of those groups who are being discriminated against. It is often unintentional—we all want what is best for ourselves and our communities, but internalized oppression undermines our better intentions through divisive socialization. Intended to promote homogeneity among diverse populations, it exalts a small elite class by which everyone else is measured. Its aim, to divide and conquer, causes internal strife and conflict underlined by currents of self-hate. In this way, transphobia among transgender women is a symptom of a greater misogynist ether.
Internalized transphobia divides us against one another and teaches us to hate ourselves and each other by proxy. When we judge other trans women on cisgender passing privilege, social attractiveness, sexual identity, or choice of gender presentation, we are comparing them to an unrealistic ideal of cis-womanhood. Then through brutal competition, we sacrifice each other in an effort to find validation through the invalidation of others. This behaviour, which keeps us from having actionable solidarity and community, is incentivized by our desire to be accepted by the cis-hetero mainstream.
Caitlyn Jenner’s 2015 “man in a dress” comment in Time Magazine isn’t a faux pas; it’s pandering to a fear of deviation. You must never, ever, make cis people uncomfortable.
“I’m not like those ‘other’ radical trans people. I’m one of you. Normal.” Jenner being a trans woman doesn’t mean she can’t be transphobic—it gives her transphobia more reach and effect.
It's not easy to surrender our privilege. For a woman like Caitlyn Jenner, a white, affluent public figure and self-proclaimed Republican, she stands to lose a lot by not saving face before her conservative community. It’s even harder to voice feelings which antagonize the community on whose acceptance we depend for our livelihoods and well-being.
Whether it is whiteness, class, education, aesthetic, or ableist privilege; we all possess privilege in varying degrees. Privilege is survival; and the more of it we can get, the better our chances of surviving. As trans women in western society, we learn to tow the line not because it is ideal, but because we are forced to balance the freedom to be ourselves without sacrificing our careers, communities, and happiness.
When I began transitioning in early 2009, I had convinced myself that my transition was going to be different from that of other trans women —, I too didn’t want to be another “man in a dress.” I fell prey to an obsession with neo-vagina; I’d never be complete unless I could surgically alter my genitalia. Of course life had other ideas, and so did my budget. Over time the decision to not pursue vaginoplasty had less to do with my budget and more to do with personal preference.
About a year after starting Hormone Replacement Therapy, a privilege unto itself, men would flirt with me in straight bars, women wouldn’t think twice about me touching up my makeup in the ladies’ room, and I became all too familiar with the experience of inappropriate ass-grabbing and cat calls. For better or for worse, I was starting to experience cis-passing privilege, at which point it became apparent to me that my previous desire for sex reassignment surgery was rooted more in a desire for approval rather than personal conviction.
During this time I found myself at odds with factions within the trans community who criticized me for opting to not seek sex reassignment surgery. All too often I would hear people say, “you’re not a real woman until you have a vagina.” On the other hand, in my own desire to maintain my new found privilege as a cis-passing female, I found myself disassociating from the trans community, a move largely motivated by my own desire to be less trans and more mainstream.
If I suspected somebody was a trans woman, I would avoid eye contact, but not without secretly judging them from a distance. However much it shames me to admit, I had become very critical of gender non-conformity; I wanted to see others conform to the same trans normative restrictions that I did.
When visualizing internalized transphobia, it looks like a pyramid with passing privilege sitting at the top. Like a hungry kid at an all-you-can-eat buffet, I was ready to push my way to that intangible peek at the expense of everybody else. In my zeal to be a “real woman”, I was once prepared to do anything and everything to pass as cisgender—banking my identity not on self acceptance, but on being accepted by everybody else. At that time I felt the need to shed any trace of “unlady-like” behavioral and physical attributes to achieve cis-hetero invisibility.
The thing with my passing privilege is that it hung from a thin rope. Where people around me would treat me as a cisgender woman, this privilege stopped as soon as I opened my mouth. My voice was still deep enough to garner a knowing look at the very least, if not an insult or two. After a few unsuccessful dabblings in DIY voice feminization, I simply gave up and learned to keep my mouth shut. Suddenly I found myself acting meek and demure, against my better wishes fulfilling a feminine stereotype. Like Ariel, I looked human enough to fit in, but I never really could be part of that world, not without sacrificing my voice. People would talk to me on the street—I would look back at them and simply nod for fear of saying anything that would give me away.
Sometimes my reluctance to verbally acknowledge passersby even earned me my fair share of “fuck you, bitch!” moments. I had spent the whole of my childhood in the closet, locked in by trauma I had experienced for being gender non-conforming. Coming out put me face to face with new fears: being assaulted, being murdered. Cis-passing privilege felt safe; it became my new closet.
As a person of color, I liken transphobia to other forms of prejudice like racism, misogyny, and religious supremacy; a product of generations of socialization. We have all been socialized with the prejudices of our ancestors, and/or colonizers, as is the case for other people of color such as myself whose communities were coercively socialized as part of a colonial experience that haunts us today. As a Native American woman, and a Two Spirit, I know of this lingering memory first-hand.
Prejudice is a disease which we’ve all inherited—accepting this fact allows us to treat it and mitigate its impact on future generations. Having prejudices, just like being afraid, does not make us bad people; however, acting on those prejudices only perpetuates the cycle of violence and shame that hurts us all.
I am still a baritone tenor, though I’m not giving up on vocal feminization down the line. I still desire to achieve total cis passing privilege, regardless of whether or not I ever do so 100%. However: I know that being a woman starts with my own acceptance of my body and my voice. I was always a woman, no external validation required. Being a woman, for me, is about living my life like the women whom I have loved and admired, cis and trans alike: strong role models who taught me that womanhood is about strength and resilience.
I will always be transphobic and prejudicial; such thinking was imprinted in the darkest depths of my psyche from a young age. Being transphobic, however, and acting out transphobia are very different things. I am making a commitment to keep myself accountable to the values of equality and respect that I choose to uphold. If we all make such a choice, whether we like each other or not, we can have access to an infinite power that can make all our lives better. All this, however, will never happen if we don’t step outside of our closets and stop hating ourselves.
We may never end transphobia, but we can accept it, combat it, and keep it from ending us.