That's A Really GOOD Question, Michael

My friend, Michael Brown, in Phoenix, posed the question on Facebook as to why may trans-gender women lead off introductions with a statement about their surgical status.

While there were some respondents who wondered why a trans-man would ask such a question, I think this is a valid question that deserves an answer. Michael is not the only one I hear this from, he is just the one brave enough to ask it in this forum.

Before I began my response, I looked at my own electronic shadow and do not think I have ever done this on line, and only do so in conversation or when speaking if there is a strategic advantage to be gained or an educational point to be made. My surgical status, and the status of my plumbing in general, are among the many challenges I have faced in my life, some of which I have overcome, some have overcome me, some are works in progress, and some yet await their turn in the queue.

That said, IMHO,it is amazing that more trans-women are NOT like this. I believe this is due to the long history of pathologization of trans people.

From where I sit, we have been affected by a non-transgender, psycho-medical perspective that has morphed through many unhealthy stages to get to a place today where we are still considered aberrations and still looked at a mentally unstable. I present the basic phases as I see them in a rough order of historic appearance:
1. “You people do not exist.”
2. “It is a choice. These are just homosexual men masquerading as women to make their homosexuality moreacceptqble. ”
3. “Transgender people are crazy.” After all who in their right mind would cut off something as important as a penis, “especially since women want one of their own.” “Isn’t that what feminism and lesbianism are all about?”
4. “Female to Male transgender people do not exist.” In 2009, this has morphed to, “transmen are very rare and hardly matter.” (This approach is used to reduce the difficulty that the existence of transmen poses to the anti-trans argument in #2 above. The existence of transmen also causes problems with #5, and especially troubles the autogynephilia theory described below.)
5. “A true trans-woman only desires hetero-stereotypical female roles—the ultra-femme fashionista, barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen.” This idea is male dominated, “after all, if a transwoman was a feminist or lesbian, she would want a penis and therefore there would be no need for the transwoman to chop it off” (see #2), in fact a non-femme transwoman would not be a transwoman at all. (And yes I know transwomen can’t get pregnant, but under this theory they are supposed to want to)
6. “All transwomen must want surgery.” This again is an anatomically oriented approach. It is STILL based on the presence or absence of the phallic god. It defines woman as the absence of male parts.
7. There are currently several versions of the classist assertion that one must have completed surgery to be a true woman of transgender experience (Yes, there are many who claim that after surgery they are no longer transsexual or transgender, but are true women of transgender/transsexual experience). This is in reality an economic and classist extension of #6, defining the acceptability of transwomen based on who much surgical intervention they have achieved and sometimes even by which surgeon/combination of surgeons.
8. Finally we are still socialized to believe that true women have all the correct plumbing.

There is one more view, to which I choose not to assign a number because it is really stupidity gone to seed and fertilized with androcentrist hubris. This view is the incredibly poorly researched and analyzed, but widely published (in spite of it’s highly controversial basis) autogynephilia model . For those unfamiliar with it, autogynephilia means that one is aroused by the image of oneself as a woman. This theory holds that only those born with a penis can have these feelings. In pre-supposing, without any attempt at validation of this pre-supposition, that women do not have any sexual arousal when they see themselves in the mirror. In order for this to be true women would have to be validated only as sperm receptacles and have no interest in sexual activity. Only men an have fun with sex, women hate it but submit out of duty to their masters. It also ignores the Female to Male transsexual (see #3 above) (that is, unless FTMs change their gender because they are rebellion against their masters, which is an idea that has never been postulated.) While this argument is intuitively easy to discredit, it’s proponents hold to it with religious fervor. Women spend a lot of time and money on enhancing their sex appeal because they like what they see, and they like the effect it has on men; maybe because women like sex as much as men. Anyone who has heard women talk about their sex lives will know this, and the clothing industry makes zillions and bazillions of dollars of that very concept.

ALL OF THIS PIFFLE is all over the internet, it mingles in with, and frequently obscures, the facts. And it has a great deal of influence on the self-image and self-identity of a group of people already groping in the darkness for validation.