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What is a trans woman, really?
“Scooby-Doo” offers a lesson about the riddle of gender identity.
The key word in this revelation is “really,” the adverb that means “what something is in actual fact, as opposed to what it might have been appearing, or pretending, to be.”
I’m willing to accept the fact that Mr. Withers was not who he had been pretending to be. But in other instances, “really” has (as the “Scooby-Doo” theme song goes) “some work to do now.” Is Clark Kent “really” Superman? Is Bob Dylan “really” Robert Zimmerman? Was Mark Twain “really” Samuel Clemens?
Is a butterfly “really” a caterpillar?
These questions matter to me, as a transgender woman, because the Trump administration’s attacks on us are, in some ways, founded on the supposition that women like me are “really” men. Whenever I hear, for instance, the simplistic edict that there should be “no men in women’s sports,” my first instinct is to agree. Because transgender women are not “really” men. We are women. We may have different histories than other women, but then, every woman has her own history.
Donald Trump’s election has released a tide of vitriol against transgender people (and women in particular; most of our nemeses seem oblivious to the existence of trans men). The silence of our alleged allies this last month has been stunning to me, and some of our allies have even volunteered to throw us under the bus in hopes of rebranding themselves as mainstream. Does Gavin Newsom — who came out against trans women in sports last week — really think that the MAGA base will embrace him now? Or is it possible that conservatives will see him as “really” a liberal? Hmm, let’s think.
This last week, a House subcommittee hearing on arms control went off the rails when its chair, Rep. Keith Self, (R-Texas) introduced Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Delaware) as “Mr. McBride.” Rep. Bill Keating, the ranking Democrat, asked, “Mr. Chairman, have you no decency?” Rather than addressing Congresswoman McBride by her proper title, Self adjourned the hearing.
Presumably, calling the congresswoman from Delaware “Mister” was more important to Self than arms control, international security or American support for Europe, which had been the issues the committee had been scheduled to address.
At one time, the phrase used to describe trans women like me was “a woman trapped in a man’s body.” There were all sorts of issues with that formulation, but in its simplicity, it made a clean case: Trans women were women in spirit and soul and sensibility (and, many would argue, brain structure and function); they suffered from a medical condition, like multiple sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease, a condition that anyone might be born with — even Republicans! — and which could be treated by medical intervention, leaving the woman post-transition as a woman very much like other women, with the exception of her remarkable history.
The current blowback against trans women holds the opposite view — that people like me are “really” men, and no matter what sorts of surgical interventions take place, nothing can alter the fundamental assignment of sex at birth. That’s what’s behind the oddly phrased executive order declaring sex immutable and fixed at conception. “God doesn’t make mistakes,” is a phrase often aimed at people like me, as if to accuse me of being the gender equivalent of old man Withers.
It is worth observing that many of the people scolding me about God not making mistakes are wearing glasses. Or hearing aids. Or have pacemakers. So far as I know, no one accuses someone wearing glasses or hearing aids of fraudulence, or sees the existence of someone saved by a heart-monitoring implant as an affront to divine intentions.
The challenge for trans people, and our allies, is that many of our antagonists cannot imagine what it might be like to be wired the way we are. I still remember when I came out, 25 years ago, telling a friend that I’d had a lifelong sense of myself as female — that this impulse had dominated my waking life for 40 years — and her response was to dismissively shrug and say, “Well, I can’t imagine that,” as if her inability to imagine the life of someone like me was my problem rather than hers.
Our problem is that “No men in women’s sports” or “There are only two sexes” make great bumper stickers. In such simple phrases they seem to capture an inarguable truth. “Common sense” is what the president calls it. But just because arguments against trans people’s right to exist are easy to make, that does not make them any less wrong. What is difficult is that understanding how folks like me experience the world takes time and thoughtfulness. Not to mention decency.
The greatest obstacle to trans equality is not Donald Trump or even Elon Musk — whose inability to love his own transgender child may well be part of what has driven him to fight what he calls the “woke mind virus.” Whenever I hear Musk berating trans people, my first thought is to have pity: This is a man, above all, with a broken heart, a man hurting because he wrongly thinks that something valuable — a son — has been taken from him.
No, none of these are the greatest obstacles for acceptance. The greatest obstacle for us is a lack of imagination.
By which I mean, only a person without imagination could think that Superman is “really” Clark Kent. Only a person without imagination could think that a butterfly is “really” a caterpillar. Or that a trans woman is “really” a man.
Without imagination, it is easy to believe in things that are simple, and superficial, and wrong.
With it, we can begin to understand the lives of those who are different from ourselves — and respond to their struggles with compassion, and kindness and grace.
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