Trans as a Noun: The Systemic Exclusion of Transgender Women

When reading through “’Night to his Day’: The Social construction of Gender” by Judith Lorber, I was struck by some very choice language. When she referred to transvestites (an outdated term meant to describe transgender people who don’t undergo bottom surgery) she described them as “Males who live as women.” Yikes. It would, however, be disingenuous to say that it surprised me. It was written in the 90s, after all. But even in the modern day, the language around transgender women is increasingly problematic.  

At some point, every transgender girl has been asked the following: “Well if you started as a boy, and now you’re a girl, are you a transgender man or woman?” Ignoring how obviously absurd this question is, it shows the thought process of our society. Transgender women are not men. All but the most conservative people accept this as a fact. However, it would be disingenuous to say that most Americans believe that Transgender women are women. We fall into a third category, viewed as men who become women, men that are women, and thus they get us conflated with drag queens and cis people don’t even know whether us women should be called women. This is reflected in some shockingly recent medical designations, either being misgendered completely (as transvestite men) or being labeled as men who become women (transsexual men-to-women.) 

 

 

 

 An example of the transphobic language in "Night to His Day".

This mindset is prevalent through even the highest levels of academia. While I’m sure many of the cis people reading this selected the gender on their roommate form without a second thought, I was shocked by my options. Down the list dropped and I saw the following: Male, Female, Nonbinary, Transgender Man, Transgender Women. Here, transgender is not an adjective, it is mutually exclusive with Female. One could argue that the reason for this is for our own good, identifying as trans so we don’t get paired with uncomfortable cis people. Unfortunately, there is no box to check on the roommate form that says “I am transphobic.” The real reason is simple: cisgender individuals see us as a different category. This is backed up by how it’s been matched; of all 5 of the trans women I know so far on campus, only one has a cis female roommate. Out of the myriad trans men I know on campus, I don’t know of one who was paired with a cis man. Separate rooms for ‘separate’ genders. 

 

 Picture of the roommate form.

For further evidence of my point, one only needs look at the all-too-common phrase: “You’ll never understand what it’s like to be a cis woman.” Often sprouted by a well-meaning individual, they’ll say I have no idea how it feels to have to present a certain way to please society, or what it's like to be hypersexualized by men. One time, somebody even told me I wouldn’t know what it was like to fear sexual assault. Obviously, I have experienced all these things, so then why do they assume I haven’t? Because they’re applying the scripts for men to us, the scripts that would make all their statements true. They’re still viewing us as different, as a separate category, and to accept shared experiences would create cognitive dissonance with that notion. For this reason, most people who say this phrase don’t even realize how offensive it is until it leaves their mouth. Our way of speaking about gender simply encourages these assumptions. 

 

An infuriated trans woman speaks out. (@femme_unbothered on insta)

In the end, I do not think this misgendering comes from a malicious place. Phrases like ‘biological male’ or ‘man who became a woman’ are still common to this day, despite how problematic they are. But that is why it’s systemic. When somebody asks which one is a trans man and which is a trans woman, it comes from a genuine place of curiosity. When they list transgender as a separate category on the housing list, they probably didn’t think twice about it, or may have even thought they were being inclusive. When cis women tell trans women that we don’t know what it’s like, that is a genuine belief that they hold, not an attack on trans women. It is instead how we talk about trans women that creates these situations, and our insistence on using trans as a noun and not an adjective.