A sidebar on what it means to be transgender

 The Crossdreamer Sidebars blog  has been my blog for more in depth discussions related to writings on this, my main blog. I have ignored if for too long. I am resurrecting it with a post on what it means to be transgender.

Over and over again I have found that gender variant people get lost in discussions about what it means to be trans, because there are so many different ways of defining the terms. Indeed, there are even trans people who try to control the discourse by making the defininition of the term trans as narrow as possible.

I will continue to defend the original understanding of trans,  the one becoming dominant in the 1990's. According to this understanding transgender is an umbrella term for all kinds of gender variance.

Transgender is therefore not a term that refers only to those who desire to transition or who have transitioned from one gender to another gende.  It is not limited to those who used to be called transsexuals, and it does not require that you experience gender dysphoria.

More about my understanding of the word transgender over at Crossdreamer Sidebars.

PS: The sidebar blog has also gotten its own domain name. This has, apparently, a big effect on search engine rankings.

Photo: Piksel

Why words like queer and trans make perfect sense

Yes, umbrella terms like queer and transgender make perfect sense, but maybe not for the reasons many think.

You have probably heard the questions: “Being gay is about sexuality and being trans is about gender identity, so why do the two belong to the same queer community?"

Or: “Trans men and women suffer from gender dysphoria, while drag queens and ‘crossdressers"‘ are just ‘performing’,” so why should being trans be a matter of gender expression instead of identity only?”

Setting the false premise of  “all crossdressers are just performing” aside, these questions are based on a fundamental misunderstanding, namely that membership in the queer and trans communities need to be based on some kind of easy definable common “essence”. 

In the case of “queer” some would argue that that would be sexual orientation, I suppose, and in the case of "transgender," gender identity or gender dysphoria.

I am not denying that there may be biological components to the development of queer and trans identities. In fact, I think it is hard to explain the existence of queer and trans people without such components, given the severe social conditioning found in societies where the cis/het (cisgender and heterosexual) ideal is the norm. Why would anyone chose to be queer or trans, given the kind of harassment we see?

 Yet, I do not think we – or science – have come to a point where such factors can be used to define social groups. Moreover, such litmus tests, if possible, would without doubt be used to invalidate some trans people, which is not a good thing.

In spite of this lack of reliable "DNA tests" for transness and queerness the existing LGBTQ+ and transgender communities represent meaningful alliances. Broad terms like queer and trans make sense at the moment we move from some kind of "objective" idea of what people essentially are over to the social scene. 

What is crossdreaming?

What is crossdreaming? A crossdreamer is someone who, to a larger or smaller extent, is driven towards imagining and expressing themselves as another gender.

The narratives about what makes gender variant and transgender people who they are, have often been colored by the thinking of transphobic people. These negative  narratives are also retold because queer and trans people have to respond to such invalidating theories and rhetoric. 

But what if we for once leave the bigots behind and talk about crossdreaming from an independent and positive standpoint?

As I see it gender variance normally reflects some kind of mismatch between a person's assigned gender and experienced gender.  This is often referred to as gender incongruence.

But we have to keep in mind that such incongruence comes in different colors and intensities. Some end up identifying completely with "the other gender" (relative to the one assigned to them by society at birth), while others simple feel the need to express sides of themselves that others try to deny them, because this is not what "real boys" and "real girls" should feel or do. 

More than one third of non-transgender people have had crossgender dreams and fantasies

Some people dream about being the other gender. The fact that transgender people do so, are increasingly becoming accepted, but a recent Israeli study indicates that more than one third of non-transgender  people have dreamed about belonging to "the other side" too. 

It becomes harder to separate  transgender people from non-transgender (cisgender) people if cisgender people are crossdreaming, but if we think of gender as a complex continuum rather than a strict binary, it starts to make sense. The Israeli studies tell us that the boundary between cis and trans is very fuzzy, indeed.

One in three people have had erotic crossdreaming fantasies

In my recent presentation of Justin J. Lehmiller's  comprehensive study of sexual desire in the book Tell Me What You Want, I noted that one third of his respondents report that they have had erotic crossdreamer fantasies. In other words: They have imagined themselves as having the body of the opposite sex in their sexual fantasies.

Given that the great majority of his respondents identify with their assigned gender, this could mean that at least one third of Americans have been crossdreaming. Since there are many who have non-erotic crossdreamer fantasies, the percentage may be higher.

He writes:

For instance, about one-quarter of men and women had fantasised about cross-dressing, and nearly a third had fantasised about trading bodies with someone of the other sex. In addition, about one in four men and one in six women had fantasised about having sex with a cross-dresser, and even more (about one in three men and one in four women) had fantasised about sex with a transsexual partner. [My emphasis]

The Problem with Arousal

Guest writer Joanna Santos argues that it is time we liberate ourselves from  models that reduce gender variance to sexual arousal.

Trans people are liberating themselves from the
stifling theories of the past. (Photo: moodboard)

By Joanna Santos

I have lived all my life with the knowledge that something was different about me. By the age of 4 or 5 years old, although aware that I was a boy, I had an interest in playing with dolls and trying on my mother’s shoes. But quickly enough I learned to suppress those desires because the messages I received were that I was not to indulge in these activities.

Since then I have come full circle and after a long period of reflection and angst (during which time I kept an almost daily blog), I have come to return to the state where I began my life. I have returned to being as true as I can to a nature that was always there but within the confines of the reality that I now live as an ageing adult.

After having read every book and every article on the subject of gender dysphoria I could get my hands on, I finally had to concede that there was not going to be a conclusive answer regarding the way I was made and why I was drawn to being a female. I had to finally accept without question that it made up part of my natural wiring and nothing was going to change that.

My gender expression need not be tied to my natal sex. No matter what society expects of you, it’s best to adhere to an expression that fits your comfort level and your self-image. This lesson was the hardest to learn because I came from an era where there was little latitude or permissiveness on that front. One was a male or one was a female and that was that.

Things have changed considerably since then.

We are now on the cusp of a revolution which I am still young enough to be able to witness first hand. Yes the same old arguments exist among the academics who will argue about Blanchard’s two typologies of transwomen and which one is more genuine but for me that is now entirely irrelevant because the true question is: “in which form do you feel most comfortable to live out your life?”

Young People Move from the Gender Binary to Believing in Continuum

Young people are increasingly believing
in a gender spectrum
Photo: Maruy75

There is a shift in attitude towards gender among younger people, at least in the "Western" part of the world. This has implications for crossdreamers and transgender people.

Fusion just published results from its so-called Massive Millennial Poll, which asked 1000 Americans between the age of 18 and 34 about various issues.

When asked about their understanding of gender, 50 percent replied that they believe that gender is a spectrum, and that some people fall outside conventional categories. 46 percent said that there are only two genders, male and female.

57 percent of female assigned respondents believed in a gender spectrum, reflecting --perhaps -- that society is more forgiving of gender bending among women than among men.

Tumblr reflects shift towards spectrum

Figure from the Massive Millennial Poll.
Click on image to enlarge.

My wife Sally and I are currently blogging at  tumblr, a social site dominated by the young "millenials". (66 percent of all visitors are under the age of 35, while 39 percent are under 25 years-old.)

We are mostly blogging as news curators for transgender and genderqueer issues. This brings us in direct contact with young people struggling with their gender identity and/or sexuality. At the moment some 4000 people are subscribing to our two blogs.

Our observations underpin what Fusion is saying. Among those who are interested in transgender issues (and I am using transgender as an umbrella term for gender variance here), a large proportion support the idea of a gender continuum. This also apply to many of those who are clearly transsexual.

We can see this trend in the response we get on our blog posts. Those that go viral are most often those that help readers develop concepts that make it possible to understand and communicate identities outside the strict male/female binary.

Here are a few examples: