Trans People and Basic Human Respect

There’s something that’s been puzzling me. I’ve been thinking about cisgender people who get upset about transgender people. (“Cisgender,” for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, is the opposite of “transgender”; it means someone whose gender identity corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth.) Some cis people object to the new vocabulary many trans people are advocating for or are simply making use of—changes in names, pronouns, and so on. Others object to the very existence of transgender people: they think gender is solely and entirely determined by the genitals we were born with, and that any other perception of it is just nonsense.

Here’s what’s puzzling me: Why do these people care?

Let’s assume, purely for the sake of disproving the assumption, that trans people are somehow mistaken—that they “really” are the gender they were assigned at birth based on their genitals, and it’s silly for them to think otherwise. I obviously don’t think that—I think it’s a horrible opinion, deeply offensive, and out of touch with well-documented reality. But assuming that this opinion is true will help me demonstrate just how wrong it is. So for the sake of argument, let’s assume it’s true.

So what? How could it possibly affect you? What business is it of yours? If someone else is identifying with a gender that you personally think is “wrong,” how does it harm you in any way?

*****

The Humanist magazine cover
Thus begins my latest Fierce Humanism column for The Humanist magazine, Trans People and Basic Human Respect. To read more, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

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Trans People and Basic Human Respect
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11 thoughts on “Trans People and Basic Human Respect

  1. 1

    I think you’re arguing rationally against what’s fundamentally an emotional problem, so you may be using the wrong tool for the job.

    Think of a dichotomy like alive vs. not-alive: living beings move on their own, they have faces, they talk, they react when you say their name, that sort of thing. Not-living things like rocks and sticks tend to have asymmetric shapes, and just lie there until something moves them.
    If you’ve seen a dog or cat be freaked out by a crab — a thing that looks like a nonliving rock that suddenly moves on its own like a living thing — you know what I’m talking about. Or think of a corpse: something that looks just like a living person, but doesn’t move, like a rock. In a way, that’s a category error, something that doesn’t fall neatly into a predefined pigeonhole.

    I once read a paper that pointed out that a lot of the dietary restrictions in the Bible are like that: land animals are supposed to have legs and tails and preferably fur, while sea life is supposed to have fins and scales. So something like a crab or shrimp, with legs but no fins, is an abomination that shouldn’t even exist.

    I can understand transphobia as lying along the same lines: men are supposed to have a penis, be aggressive, wear pants, be breadwinners, do the penetration during sex. Women are supposed to have a vagina, be meek, wear dresses, take care of the children, be penetrated during sex. And so a man with a vagina, a man who wears a dress, a woman who pegs a man (or even a man who sucks cock) comes across as a category error.

    I’m guessing that there’s some neurological reason for this. Presumably our ancestors find it easier to cope with life if they just put everything into categories like person/not-person, food/poison, boss/subordinate, ally/enemy, and so on. And we’re still dealing with that today.

    None of which makes transphobia okay, obviously. I’m just trying to answer your “Why do these people care?”.

  2. 2

    A rather large set of people like things the way they are used to them from some formative period, and anything else is outside their comfort zone and pisses them off. Some people are absolutely deranged when it comes to being exposed to (confronted by, in their perspective) anything outside their comfort zone. Trans* persons generally fall quite outside experience, and therefore the comfort zones, of a lot of people, on a lot of points or levels or whatever you want to call it.

    A stupid example is the batshit reaction to the early popularity of rock n roll. Or the violent reactions from people towards someone of unexpected ethnicity moving into their neighborhood. Why should they care? It’s changing their little world somehow, and challenging the illusions of control they have over it. Or that the rules that they were forced to live by are now violated by some other person or group.

    And i think arensb above is pointing to some slightly more specific mechanisms in their post above. And you have addressed these even more specifically in your article. But with everything that can be problematic, I think we have founded a lot of culture and institutions off the wrong behaviors, or manifestations and interpretations of behaviors. And even the smarter and nicer humans on this planet sometime simply choose to stop thinking and act like assholes because it is just easier or more amusing.
    </rambling off>

  3. 3

    The only thing about ‘cisgender’ as a term that bugs me is I don’t know how it’s pronounced – I’ve only seen it online and have never heard it.

    I admit to uncertainy when dealing with a (possible) transgender person, but I chalk it up to unfamiliarity. I suppose there’s one small advantage to having never discussed the matter with my parents as a child: as an adult, I could develop my own opinion, which followed my view of gay people – different from myself, but not ‘evil,’ ‘sick,’ or ‘wrong.’
    (I wonder if reading Mercedes Lackey’s “Last Herald-Mage” series might’ve helped…)

  4. 5

    I remember it used to bother me because I’ve always found the entire concept of gender, outside of the purely sexual/reproductive aspects, to be vaguely (and sometimes acutely) oppressive (common-English sense, if you must) and unpleasant, and as far as I could tell it was made up by moralists and advertisers to control, constrict, and divide people. Trans people’s insistence on gender as a thing distinct from sex seemed like another way of reifying it. It took me a while to realize that, yes, even people who have ever had a critical thought about gender messages in their lives mostly didn’t experience it the way I did, and I’ve become more open, though I still don’t appreciate it when people who have (quite reasonably) insisted that society’s understanding of identities expand to accommodate their experiences turn around and ignore mine, variously assuring me, with equal confidence, that my feelings show I’m “a man who’s sick of patriarchy,” “a trans woman,” or “just cis privilege, SHUT UP.” >.>

  5. 6

    The only problem that I have is when someone gets offended when you don’t refer to them by their preferred pronoun. I agree that it’s impolite to refer to someone as a he if you know that they want to be referred to as a she. But honestly, until you’ve spoken with someone you can’t really assume what they prefer to be called. I’m just saying it’s off putting that some people get defensive when others don’t follow their rules of grammar, when they may be new or unfamiliar.

    It’s also honestly difficult to have a conversation with someone who identifies as a different sex then you think of them as and not slip up on occasion. Just because someone else thinks of themselves as having a different gender, doesn’t necessarily mean that I can think of them as having a different gender. Perhaps that just requires more suspension of disbelief then I’m capable of. So that leaves me either being very careful when I speak, so as not to offend, or sometimes using the wrong pronoun with people, which in either case makes for an uncomfortable situation.

  6. 7

    I like this and agree about 90%. My one hesitation is when people are asking for non-standard pronouns. I don’t mean asking for pronouns appropriate to their desired gender. That’s fine and not really that hard. It does require a mental cache flush, but not much more so than remembering a new nickname, or a new address.

    But I do have a minor issue with Xe/Xem/Xyr and other invented pronouns. I once read a blog article by linguist who discussed how languages in general were much more conservative of grammar then of vocabulary. New vocabulary gets made up every day, but grammer only changes very slowly. He had a bunch of math to show this. He also showed that the mutation rate of pronouns were much closer to grammar then to vocabulary. If that is the case then there might really be some architecture in our brain that resists new pronouns. I definitely find that invented pronouns that I encounter in science fiction impact my ease of reading comprehension.

    But on the other hand, I have never been able to find that blog post again. I wish I could cite it but I can’t. So I really can’t discuss this with as much backing as I would like.

  7. 8

    I think you’re arguing rationally against what’s fundamentally an emotional problem, so you may be using the wrong tool for the job.

    arensb @ #1: Sorry, but I strongly disagree with the idea that it won’t work to oppose irrational ideas with rational arguments. That idea gets used all the time against atheists who debate believers about religion — and yet these debates have a clear effect.

  8. 9

    The only problem that I have is when someone gets offended when you don’t refer to them by their preferred pronoun. I agree that it’s impolite to refer to someone as a he if you know that they want to be referred to as a she. But honestly, until you’ve spoken with someone you can’t really assume what they prefer to be called. I’m just saying it’s off putting that some people get defensive when others don’t follow their rules of grammar, when they may be new or unfamiliar.

    John Crown @ #6: Compare and contrast: (a) Your feelings of being irritated now and then when trans people get offended over being unintentionally misgendered; (b) trans people’s feelings of being dehumanized, demoralized, disempowered, patronized, treated as if they have no right to self-determination and generally marginalized and made invisible over being misgendered, intentionally or unintentionally, hundreds of times a day, every day. Which do you think is more important?

    Yes, it’s sometimes hard. Social justice is hard. Deal with it.

    My one hesitation is when people are asking for non-standard pronouns. I don’t mean asking for pronouns appropriate to their desired gender. That’s fine and not really that hard. It does require a mental cache flush, but not much more so than remembering a new nickname, or a new address.

    But I do have a minor issue with Xe/Xem/Xyr and other invented pronouns. I once read a blog article by linguist who discussed how languages in general were much more conservative of grammar then of vocabulary. New vocabulary gets made up every day, but grammer only changes very slowly. He had a bunch of math to show this. He also showed that the mutation rate of pronouns were much closer to grammar then to vocabulary. If that is the case then there might really be some architecture in our brain that resists new pronouns. I definitely find that invented pronouns that I encounter in science fiction impact my ease of reading comprehension.

    DysgraphicProgrammer @ #7: Compare and contrast: (a) Your feelings of being irritated now and then at having to remember invented pronouns, and having the ease of your reading comprehension occasionally impacted; (b) trans people’s feelings of being dehumanized, demoralized, disempowered, patronized, treated as if they have no right to self-determination and generally marginalized and made invisible over being misgendered, intentionally or unintentionally, hundreds of times a day, every day. Which do you think is more important?

    Yes, it’s sometimes hard. Social justice is hard. Deal with it.

  9. 10

    I read the article in the magazine and I was sort of shocked an overjoyed to see someone talking about trans related issues in that venue–I guess things really are changing! Thanks for writing about this Greta, it was one of those hopeful moments where you feel less like a foreigner in your own land.

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