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weird roller coaster emotions and also just jamming Thinking Thoughts into here because I'm still not like worked out about it I guess.
Jules Gill-Peterson wrote a substack newsletter about the word "cis" and its uses and where it's not useful any more, and it hit on a lot of stuff I've been thinking about for a while. I don't remember if it was from reading her book or thinking about Les Feinberg's work around the use of the word "trans" and how for hir, it stretches outside of people it usually counts. Like yes, the broader like non-binary and genderqueer folks which is how I usually use it, but also "cis" gender nonconforming folks, which I've always kind of said myself when I speak of the politics of how I see trans-ness but of course in the actuality that isn't how it works when I speak of "trans" people because there's the oppositional use of cis inherent in how we talk about it. And like that's a whole mess that's complicated by the fact that, much like other genders (esp. womanhood) we can't actually draw strict boundaries around "trans" and determine who is "cis" or "trans" in any meaningful way.
I've been thinking about other ways to talk about the ways we experience gender that don't involve gender itself exactly--about failed girlhood as a possible site of solidarity for trans people of all genders and cis women (and I guess also failed boyhood as well though I haven't interrogated that all that seriously.) And now thinking about if we had two genders that were just "dysphoric" and "not dysphoric" and I'm sure that's not perfect and we can have lots of discourses about it but I'm interested in those spaces because frankly we already work with that as our binary between cis and trans. Like if you're trans there's assumed to be some kind of dysphoria, be it social or bodily, but that's so not true and therefore isn't like a coherent way of drawing boundaries as cis and trans. And also: cis people can and do experience dysphoria.
What I like about it is the way it lets us be in flux--you can go back and forth between them and I like that for me it encourages experimentation. Like oh, I'm dysphoric? Hm why is that? Do I need a haircut? (I always need a haircut, that's ALWAYS what it is when i'm like "oh no I don't like my body" the whole pandemic was like "god I don't like my body at all" and I thought it was a weight thing but no it was the hair.) And yes sometimes getting to a non-dysphoric state might require medical intervention but I don't think it necessarily has to be pathologized (of course then this also requires we dismantle capitalism but y'know.)
It's not perfect, neither is failed girlhood--again, that one doesn't like Escape Gender exactly but I do think about girlhood as a particular social and historical construct that has existed before gender was created by John Money--but these are the kinds of things I'm thinking about as ways of finding solidarities. Rather than saying "womanhood is defined by these things" which is what even intersectional feminists do (only they've switched to framing it as "socialization" instead of biology which is like. No that doesn't work even among cis women because race and class deeply impact how you're treated, and also how well you can pass certain feminine benchmarks/how well you can "fake" it (no one makes it.) But it's something I've been chewing on for like two years now, almost three, and I gotta stop just saying things on twitter and start practicing getting them out there so. This is me getting something out there. Different ways of "gender" we might imagine and practice.
Jules Gill-Peterson wrote a substack newsletter about the word "cis" and its uses and where it's not useful any more, and it hit on a lot of stuff I've been thinking about for a while. I don't remember if it was from reading her book or thinking about Les Feinberg's work around the use of the word "trans" and how for hir, it stretches outside of people it usually counts. Like yes, the broader like non-binary and genderqueer folks which is how I usually use it, but also "cis" gender nonconforming folks, which I've always kind of said myself when I speak of the politics of how I see trans-ness but of course in the actuality that isn't how it works when I speak of "trans" people because there's the oppositional use of cis inherent in how we talk about it. And like that's a whole mess that's complicated by the fact that, much like other genders (esp. womanhood) we can't actually draw strict boundaries around "trans" and determine who is "cis" or "trans" in any meaningful way.
I've been thinking about other ways to talk about the ways we experience gender that don't involve gender itself exactly--about failed girlhood as a possible site of solidarity for trans people of all genders and cis women (and I guess also failed boyhood as well though I haven't interrogated that all that seriously.) And now thinking about if we had two genders that were just "dysphoric" and "not dysphoric" and I'm sure that's not perfect and we can have lots of discourses about it but I'm interested in those spaces because frankly we already work with that as our binary between cis and trans. Like if you're trans there's assumed to be some kind of dysphoria, be it social or bodily, but that's so not true and therefore isn't like a coherent way of drawing boundaries as cis and trans. And also: cis people can and do experience dysphoria.
What I like about it is the way it lets us be in flux--you can go back and forth between them and I like that for me it encourages experimentation. Like oh, I'm dysphoric? Hm why is that? Do I need a haircut? (I always need a haircut, that's ALWAYS what it is when i'm like "oh no I don't like my body" the whole pandemic was like "god I don't like my body at all" and I thought it was a weight thing but no it was the hair.) And yes sometimes getting to a non-dysphoric state might require medical intervention but I don't think it necessarily has to be pathologized (of course then this also requires we dismantle capitalism but y'know.)
It's not perfect, neither is failed girlhood--again, that one doesn't like Escape Gender exactly but I do think about girlhood as a particular social and historical construct that has existed before gender was created by John Money--but these are the kinds of things I'm thinking about as ways of finding solidarities. Rather than saying "womanhood is defined by these things" which is what even intersectional feminists do (only they've switched to framing it as "socialization" instead of biology which is like. No that doesn't work even among cis women because race and class deeply impact how you're treated, and also how well you can pass certain feminine benchmarks/how well you can "fake" it (no one makes it.) But it's something I've been chewing on for like two years now, almost three, and I gotta stop just saying things on twitter and start practicing getting them out there so. This is me getting something out there. Different ways of "gender" we might imagine and practice.
