Being human
Marisa Johnson shares her thoughts on inclusion
I am really deeply disturbed by the arguments adduced by Lois A Chaber (Letters, 16 March) and Heather Brunskell-Evans (‘Gender and identity’, 2 March), and many others, it seems, warning of the dangers of allowing trans-women into women’s only spaces and of accepting the possibility that some young children may already question their gender identity.
The essence of prejudice is the generalisation of a characteristic or behaviour from one person or a few individuals to a whole group that may share something in common. We need look no further than to the campaigns of hate towards Muslim migrants, on the grounds that some who have committed indiscriminate acts of violence were Muslim, migrants or both.
I cannot deny that a man may disguise himself as a trans-woman to behave in a predatory way, though I have not yet found any proven examples of this. Does the possibility of this happening make every trans-woman a threat to other women? Would the possibility of a man disguising himself in full Islamic dress make it necessary for every woman choosing to wear such clothes to undergo some verification test before being able to gain access to a women’s refuge or other women-only space? Is, in fact, every man on the planet to be treated with suspicion because of the crimes that some undoubtedly commit? What is the evidence that a trans-woman is more of a threat to other women than men at large, or indeed other women themselves?
These arguments are strongly reminiscent for me of the prejudice enshrined in the now infamous Clause 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 to ban the ‘promotion of homosexuality in schools’, often justified by the danger posed by paedophiles to children. There is no hypothetical ‘homosexual lifestyle’, and there are no transgender ideas or terms, only people with their own experience and stories.
As for children’s awareness of their own gender identity, I cannot speak for everyone, but this I can say: when I finally picked up the courage to ask my then seventeen-year-old deeply distressed child ‘Do you sometimes wish you were born a boy?’ the answer came without hesitation: ‘All my life, mum’. He had known, but there were no words or contexts for him to make sense of or express this knowledge. And the onset of puberty had unleashed a tsunami of emotional disturbance, which expressed itself in severe forms of self-harm.
Looking back at those dark, dark years, how I wish I had had the insight to notice and understand the clues that, with hindsight, were so clearly there to be seen, how I wish I had had guidance in understanding how to respond and support, and access to medical treatment to delay his puberty until clarity was reached as to the direction it needed to take. How much suffering he, and we, could have been spared.
I do not doubt that some people may query their gender and later accept their biological status. I have no doubt that some who transition may later come to regret this. Is this sufficient to deny support for transition for those, like my son, who find true and stable identity in a gender that is different from that which we thought he had been born with? Many marriages break up – does this mean nobody should embark, in good faith, on married life?
As to the ‘cis’ label, resented by many, I am quite content to apply it myself. To talk simply about women and trans-women makes ‘women’ the default, the normality from which the trans- label emphasises the departure. Some of us have experienced only alignment in our sense of gender identity with our given bodies from birth. To describe this as ‘cis’ recognises that it is but one route to the experience of being a woman. It validates both routes, and opens the way to celebrating the many rich and diverse ways of expressing what it means to be a woman and, indeed, beyond all gender expression, a human being.
Comments
I am grateful for the wise and compassionate light you shed on this area of human experience, Marisa.
By AnniqueS on 29th March 2018 - 18:47
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