Olympic Discrimination on the Part of the US

 

There have been 13,215 Olympic medals awarded to women. Not a single one was won by a trans woman.

 

That did not stop the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee from changing its rules this week to ban trans women from competing against other women, supposedly in the name of ensuring that "women have a fair and safe competition environment consistent with Executive Order 14201." That executive order is Trump's vile, misgendering "No Men in Women's Sports" proclamation.

 

Saying trans women make cis women unsafe and they must be segregated out for their protection is exactly the same as saying that bathrooms and teams and housing must be racially segregated for white women's protection. That was the lie by which racist Jim Crow laws were justified. The idea that trans women threaten cis women is just as evil and just as false.

 

Trans women are not at all overrepresented in women's sports, as bigots would have you believe. They are instead vastly underrepresented. The percentage of college students who identify as trans or nonbinary today is about 5%. The percentage of college athletes who are transfeminine is 0.002%. That means there are over 99% fewer transfeminine people competing in college sports than you would see if they were represented proportionally.

 

The problem of trans people is sport is not about unfairness to cis people. It is one of extreme discrimination against transfeminine people.

 

Reconsidering Mother's Day

 

As a gestational parent, I am among many who have ambivalent feelings about Mother's Day.

The issue with this holiday is that it compounds so many things that need to be considered separately. So let's deconstruct Mother's Day!

First: the history. The contemporary Mother's Day holiday was actually established to celebrate feminist activism--specifically, women's advocacy of peace over war, and the movement for votes for women, which would give these peace advocates a political voice. It arose out of the volunteer work of Victorian women. The Victorians invented the idea of "separate spheres," where (white) men would work outside the home for pay, and (white) women be confined in the home, to raise children and do domestic labor without pay. Victorian feminists framed their activism as an extension of their vaunted maternal duties, and hence as right and proper. Antifeminists called their activism improper, unwomanly, and disordered. So the idea of making a holiday to celebrate mothers' volunteer labor was in fact quite political. It was feminist.

But within a few decades of its founding in 1907, the radicalism had been drained from Mother's Day. It was commercialized, and became a day for giving mothers floral arrangements, jewelry, restaurant meals, and other gifts. By the 1950s, it was a sentimental holiday celebrating stay-at-home motherhood--now something feminists were critiquing.

This remains the case today, but unlike the Victorian era or 1950s, we are not living in an era of separate-spheres binary gender arrangements. Heterosexuality is no longer compulsory. Fathers are now expected to participate in child care. The fact that women in mother/father coparenting couples still do a disproportionate amount of the domestic labor is something that many women have been tearing their hair over during the pandemic. And some parents are trans and/or nonbinary.

So let's deconstruct what gets celebrated on Mother's Day into its component parts.

There's being a gestational parent. Pregnancy is hard work that gets little accommodation in the U.S., and that's not fair. Giving birth remains dangerous, most especially for marginalized parents. In my home state, Black individuals giving birth are 5 times as likely to die as Anglo white individuals. Latine gestators are 3 times are likely to die giving birth than Anglo white individuals. Pregnant trans men and nonbinary individuals in my state are treated with disdain and incomprehension by medical care providers, which most certainly also increases their risk, although nobody has funded a study of this. 

But we should not just focus on the danger of dying as a result of giving birth. Gestational parents make physical sacrifices when they endure pregnancy and labor. As the phrase goes in the world of sport, we "give up the body." Pelvises can separate, spines can be injured, sacroiliac joints are harmed--and these injuries often result in chronic pain, for years or for life. People endure genital tears, or major surgical wounds, and their healing can be complicated. Stress incontinence can be a lifelong issue. 

But an ideology has developed in the contemporary U.S. that to demand recognition and accommodation of the work, exhaustion, pain, nausea, temporary disabilities, and permanent disabilities associated with pregnancy and delivery is a sign of being a bad employee who does not deserve respect, good pay, or promotion. Pregnancy and delivery are treated as private choices which must not impinge on employee duties. Parental leave is treated as a vacation, not as an entitlement to paid sick leave from employers.

In this context, it is important that we have an annual reminder that we should be honoring the risks and pain endured by gestational parents to bring new lives into the world (and not just with cards, but with laws ensuring accommodations). The problem is that some of those who are making sacrifices that go unaccommodated are not mothers. Gestational parents who are not women go largely unrecognized by the medical establishment and by government agencies. And by honoring gestational sacrifice under the rubric of "Mother's Day," celebrants validate and participate in this exclusion. Gestators who are men or nonbinary wind up either having our gender identities denied by people sending us "Mother's Day" cards, or get no recognition of what we have done at all.

Another problem is how honoring the work and the sacrifices of those who bear children gets conflated with so many other things in Mother's Day.

For example, there's domestic labor. In the 1950s reconception of Mother's Day, mothers are framed as "homemakers," and on this one day a year, father and the children cook the meals, do the grocery shopping, and wash the dishes, to give Mama one day of out 365 as a vacation day. That's an eyeroller of a number of vacation days for Mother. Now consider today, when the majority of mothers have paid jobs. Unlike their white middle-class counterparts in the 1950s, white middle-class fathers married to women today do a substantial amount of childcare today, changing diapers and giving kids their baths. But the wives of these men today remain responsible for the lion's share of other domestic chores, like washing and folding laundry, or cleaning the bathroom.

The unwillingness of cis men married to women in the U.S. today to step up and do more manifested during the pandemic in many women becoming unemployed, not because their workplaces shut down, but because schools did, and their husbands simply would not engage in childcare during work hours, or do more chores, even though, with entire families at home for months on end, the amount of dishes and mess went way up. Husbands and employers conceiving of childcare and domestic chores as optional for men and mandatory for women put great pressure on women whose husbands had jobs that paid enough that the family could survive for a time on just his income to leave the workforce and become fulltime housewives. Many were very unhappy about being pushed into a patriarchal family arrangement by husbands who would not step up and share the burden of increased domestic duties.

These gender politics deserve to be seen. And the value of doing domestic labor should be honored. But if we honor them under the rubric of "Mother's Day," we wind up naturalizing and supporting an unfair division of labor by binary gender, rather than critiquing this arrangement.

There are also people who are neither mothers nor women who have suffered greatly from this equation of mothering with doing the domestic work. For example, a primary caregiver and domestic laborer may be nonbinary. Or they could be a "standard" cisgender, endosex father who is a single parent. About 1 in 5 single parents today is a man. 

Single parenting is always a struggle. During the pandemic, it was a terrible position to be in, as schools and childcare shut down, yet single parents had to work to support their children. And in this case, it was single fathers who were in a particularly poor position, because their status gets treated as incomprehensible by many employers, who refuse to make any accommodation at all for a man's parenting responsibilities. 

Again, by honoring the performance of parenting and domestic labor under the rubric of "Mother's Day," we participate in the exclusion and nonrecognition of people like nonbinary parents and single dads.

So: the celebration of "Mother's Day" is really a celebration of three different things. One is the traditional meaning of the holiday, as a day to honor women's volunteering and feminist activism. The second is to show respect for the sacrifices made by gestators. And the third is to recognize the performance of childcare and domestic labor--the value of that unceasing work that receives neither pay nor employer deference.

My solution to this would be to get rid of Mother's Day, or that silly holiday, Father's Day, invented just because men were pouty about women getting a special day with no men's parallel, and consumer capitalists being in favor of more holidays and more spending.

I'd replace these holidays with a greater number of more specific ones. I'd have a Childbearer's Day that seeks greater social recognition of the labor performed and sacrifices made by gestators--especially recognition in the form of employer accommodations and paid leave. I'd have a Caregivers' Day, to recognize the labor of childrearing, and not act as if bringing children into the world marks the end of the sacrifices required to raise them. And I'd have a Domestic Labor Day, where we all march to call for the recognition of this work, and for it to be performed equitably. None of these holidays would be gendered, so that parents of all genders who gestate, raise children, and do domestic labor would be honored. And then I'd have one gendered holiday, to restore the original intent of the Victorian founders of "Mother's Day," which was to celebrate women's activism. I was thinking International Women's Day might serve, but it is evolving into another trite Mother's Day-style holiday of posting pictures of flowers. There's a Women's Equality Day that celebrates the day the 19th Amendment gave women in the U.S. the vote, but that is kind of narrow, and makes it seem like the need for feminism ended in 1920. So I suppose it's best to just be straightforward, and call it Feminism Day.

Instead of one holiday, I present you with four! Deconstruction is festive.

Who Belongs in Women's Spaces, Again? Women's College Edition

This weekend, the NY Times cover story was on trans men at women's colleges.  I found the article very frustrating, first of all due to the title, "When Women Become Men at Wellesley."  Dear NY Times: trans men are coming out at college, which is different from cis women "becoming" trans men.  Your title is as off-base as one reading, "When Straight Women Turn Into Lesbians at Wellesley."

The subtitle of the article is "Can women's colleges survive the transgender movement?" The answer to this hyperbolic question is obviously yes.  The reporting in the article itself is much less inflammatory, so let's just re-title it in our heads to match the actual content--something like "Women's Colleges Struggle with the Place of Trans Students"--and consider that content.

I understand why trans men wind up in women's colleges. If you're a young person who is assigned female at birth, and you are struggling a lot with gender issues, a women's college might seem a good place to go.  One student in the article, Jesse, says "he chose to attend Wellesley because being female never felt right to him.  'I figured if I was any kind of woman, I'd find it there.'" It's actually quite common for people struggling with trans identities to enter institutions highly centered around the sex they were assigned at birth--for example, many trans women report joining the military or entering highly masculine fields such as firefighting to see if those institutions can reconcile them to living in the gender expected for someone of their birth-assigned sex.  Of course, the result, for many, is to realize they do not identify with that gender at all.  And so it's right and good that students who realize they are trans come out.

But once a trans man or masculine-of-center genderqueer person comes out at a women's college, they have to face the fact that they are a man or masculine-of-center person in a woman's space.  Personally, what I would do at that point is start making arrangements to transfer to another college, because I support the existence of women's colleges in a patriarchal society, and the whole point of them is that they are for women--and I am not a woman.  That said, I don't believe that transmasculine students should be required to uproot themselves and transfer out.  Leaving a college can be emotionally difficult and have financial repercussions, and a transitioning student has a lot on their plate to deal with. I believe that an ethic of care demands a struggling transmasculine student be permitted to stay, and be treated with respect as a man or genderqueer person.

But there is a big difference between accommodating struggling transmasculine students and having trans guys make women's colleges all about them.  And that's exactly what I'd call it when trans men keep insisting that when these colleges call themselves "women's colleges" without adding "plus some transmasculine people" they are doing evil.  That's exactly what I'd call it when trans guys demand that students should stop calling their classmates "sisters" and start calling them "siblings."  I absolutely agree that it undermines one's identity as a man to be referred to as a sister, and I'd hate it too--which is exactly why I would not stay at a women's college.  To stay, and then insist that your needs as a man outweigh the needs of everyone else who chose to go to a women's college . . . that's hubris.

I've certainly met my share of trans men with hubris.  When someone transitions from female to male, they face hurdles in the form of cissexism and negotiating legal and often medical challenges--but they also gain male privilege.  All trans people are aware of the challenges they are facing.  But many trans men seem little aware of the male privilege they are gaining.  That's normal, in the sense that most people are unaware of most of their privileges--but it's ironic when you encounter it in someone who talks about patriarchy and cis privilege, as I have.  Just like a cis man, a trans guy can be oblivious to his own privilege, taking over conversations about sexism in a circle of cis women, or transmansplaining cissexism to a trans woman.  You see, when someone who is being respected in his male identity talks, whether he is cis or trans, people listen more attentively than they do when a woman talks.  That's basic patriarchy, and I've certainly experienced the difference in how my statements are taken more seriously as a result of transitioning to male status.  If you're expecting it and looking for it, as a man, you can see it some of the time and catch yourself.  (I'm sure it happens often without my recognizing it.)  But I've met my share of trans men who conflate their new male privilege and the greater deference they are granted with their gaining confidence and coming into their own as they transition.  They presume people pay such attention to what they say now because they have fascinating things to contribute.  And at a women's college, where young men are a novelty, this effect of attention centering on a man is exacerbated.  (Some of the ways this manifests in the article are pretty creepy, in terms of cis women proving they can be "tranny-chasers" too, but trans men like Jesse report loving having become popular and having people "clamoring" to date them.)

Personally, were I a woman at a women's college, I'd be upset at trans men telling me not to presume my dorm or class was a women's space.  My accepting of transmasculine students would not contradict the fact that they are sojourners who chose to enter a rare territory designed for women.  I guess I'm just fascinated, given the uproar that many cis feminists made when trans women tried to participate in women's events like the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, specifically so that they could be with other women, that when trans men plant their flag and actually say "stop calling this a women's space," the opposition is so minimal.

Which brings me to the topic of transfeminine students in this article--a brief bit near the end of the piece.  I find it very disappointing that an article about women's colleges should give trans women such little attention, while devoting masses of space to transmasculine people.  Look: fundamentally, trans women belong at women's colleges, and trans men don't.  But there's little to report, given that no trans woman has ever attended Wellesley, as far as anyone knows.  (If one did, she did it utterly in the closet, and at great personal risk.  Such things have happened before, however--Anita Hemmings, a woman of African descent, passed as white and graduated from Vassar in 1897, though she was outed in the last weeks of her exemplary college career and kicked out, lucky to have a diploma mailed to her afterwards.)

What really disturbs me is that much of what the article conveys on the topic of trans women entering Wellesley is the opinion of some trans guy.  He says that trans men and genderqueer people who were assigned female at birth belong at Wellesley--but that trans women should have to face barriers to admission, and be treated with suspicion.  No trans woman should be admitted, he declares, unless she can prove she's started medical transition or has changed her name legally (steps very difficult for someone of a typical age to be applying to college to have taken, requiring parental support for the transition and financial resources).  Why this disparity? To keep Wellesley a safe space for women, of course! If she hasn't had medical and/or legal interventions, a trans woman might not really be a woman, he claims. Taking the difficult steps of coming out and applying to Wellesley as a woman aren't enough proof of her commitment! Maybe her identity is fluid and she'll identify as a man again . . .  But hey, aren't genderfluidity and lack of interest in medical interventions treated as fine in transmasculine people?  Yes, says the trans dude. "Trans men are a different case; we were raised female, we know what it's like to be treated as females and we have been discriminated against as females.  We get what life has been like for women."

This argument is appalling on so many levels. First, it is exactly the reasoning used by "gender crits" and Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists to "prove" that gender transition is an impossibility: that gender socialization is rigidly binary, inescapably tied to birth-assigned sex, and sex assigned at birth is thus immutable. The thing is, the TERFs are at least logically consistent in saying that this means not only that trans women are "really" eternally men, but trans men "really" eternally women.  It's transphobic logic--yet it's being voiced here by a trans gender person.  How is this possible?  Enter transmisogyny: the trans Wellesley student applies it only against trans women, while ignoring the implications of the argument for trans men like himself.

Underlying the ability of this trans man to assert a transmisogynistic logic while refusing to see how it applies to trans men is that hubris again.  Look, he basically says, a trans woman on campus might make cis women feel uncomfortable in what's supposed to be a women's safe space!  But apparently it never occurs to this student that a cis woman seeing him in her dorm at night might feel unsafe.  He presumes (a) that women can always tell if a given man is cis or trans at a glance,  (b) that everybody agrees trans men are always "safe" in a way cis men are not, and (c) that if a woman did feel unsafe seeing him in her dorm, her reaction would simply be wrong, as he is Mr. Perfect Nonthreatening Male of Female Experience, and can tell her what she should feel.

For a trans man to believe that trans women pose a threat to female safe space, while transmasculine people should be allowed free access to women's spaces--that demonstrates a combination of patriarchal egotism, lack of awareness of one's own male privilege, and transmisogyny that I deplore.

I do believe that trans men in women's colleges should be treated with respect, but I look forward to the day when a report on trans students in women's colleges will center transfeminine people and decenter transmasculine ones.