 Hmm. (A thought.)
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Sep. 16th, 2010 @ 06:49 pm 
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So, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) sqbr mentioned ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png) tenwomen and I went and looked at the profile and I saw this statement:
"The Challenge: produce 10 creative works (via writing, fanart, vidding, or any other medium) in which the central main or narrative character identifies as female."
Which, there's a whole 'nother post in the underlying stuff behind the thing of this comm, which I'm not going to get into right now (and no, I don't feel it really applies to me, because I've written *lots* of stories about female characters - a background in femslash will do that - and also, my current primary fic project is primarily about Lightning Farron and Oerba Yun Fang, and... yeah, what was that about strong female characters?), but there's one thing that jumps out at me in that statement.
Which is "identifies as female".
That phrase is starting to bug me in a lot of contexts, because... why can't that be "is female"? It's like it's the new PC way to say that, except that it drives me nuts, because the implication is that there's a difference, that someone who "identifies as female" is distinct from someone who "is female".
(Argh, I just hit the boundary: female has ceased to look like a word to me, I feel like I'm not even spelling it right now.)
Anyway, my point is: jack that noise, seriously. It's a woman's prerogative to be a damn woman, and it's starting to seem like a kind of chickenshit PC way of othering trans women to me. It's like it's saying, "well, real women identify as female too, obviously, but if we say "is female" then we're not including the trans women, who identify as female but obviously aren't, so let's say it like this!"
I should hope that it goes without saying that I'm not saying everyone who uses this phrase is being secretly transphobic, in much the same way that not everyone who uses the phrase "whirling dervish" is being hideously racist. But it's starting to make me twitch really quite a lot.
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| From: | sqbr |
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September 16th, 2010 11:52 am (UTC) |
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I tend to see it as a way of explicitly rejecting all the definitions of "is female" which don't include trans women. Because while it should go without saying that "women" includes them by definition, in many contexts it doesn't, and I imagine trans women would rather be able to tell immediately that they're welcome than having to ask "So, when you say "women", do you include me?"
It also help remove ambiguity with fictional characters with complicated genders that get treated inconsistently in the text (I say having played a bunch of Mass Effect today, which has an alien race whose gender is like that)
I didn't use the phrase in my poll, since I think that in the context of a poll on my journal it's clear that trans women are included. And I think that when I've been unsure that I can make that assumption I've said "female(*)... (*)where "female" includes anyone who identifies as female." or something similar. But I don't think that everyone using "identifies as female" as a synonym of "female" is coming from a bad place.
All that said, I don't know how actual trans women feel about it.
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| From: | sami |
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September 16th, 2010 12:20 pm (UTC) |
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I don't think everyone who uses it is coming from a bad place either, at all! I just, thing.
Science fiction digression:
In my current gaming group I play a member of a species with three sexes. You come up against the limitations of language quite hard, quite quickly. And also certain preconceptions, when trying to explain that the members of one of the sexes tend never to leave our home planets, but it's not because they're oppressed, really it isn't, it's because they are in fact *in charge of everything*.
They're *allowed* to leave, just very few of them want to. Whereas the other two sexes are more numerous, in any case, are less inclined to be "hearth and home" types by biological imperative, and also, like to leave the home worlds because on the home worlds, adventure and excitement aren't really on offer, because the home worlds are run very well and extremely safely by, effectively, everyone's mothers.
It works out. When we want adventure, we travel. There's another species we're on friendly terms with who like us signing on as crew to their ships, even, where adventure is very much on offer because concepts like "restraint" and "caution" are kind of alien to them (which is a major part of why they like us joining them on their ships; my character's job with her previous crew was essentially to say: "No, because the ship will explode," as and when appropriate), so life with them is extremely exciting.
And then when we need to take a break to let our nerves recover, we go home.
What sqbr said. I think "identifies as female" comes from the same place as "for self-identified women", which is a shorthand I've seen used for "women only, but unlike Some People we're not interested in policing gender boundaries".
Here via network. Again agreeing with sqbr. Mostly there is a pretty long history of exclusion of trans women (and inclusion of trans men) from female-only spaces or from being defined as "women", so words like "female-identified" or otherwise explicit inclusion is necessary because, in most places, the default is exclusion. Plus, it's not like "female-identified" doesn't also include cis women. It just makes it clear what the criteria is for "female."
| From: | axelrod |
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September 16th, 2010 08:52 pm (UTC) |
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otoh, the phrase "identifies as" in reference to trans people may serve to remind some that gender and biological sex are identities and not two little boxes one of which MDs fit us in at birth and which we will stay in for the rest of our life. But otoh, like you say, there is the implication that identifying as something is different from actually being it.
Personally, it's harder for me to say "I'm third gender" than "I identify as third gender", but that's just me.
Here via axelrod. I have a slightly different take on this, as I'm a trans-friendly medical provider (hospital RN). In "normal" society, people have the option of presenting as...well, whatever gender they want to present as! With me, sometimes they don't get that option. One doesn't get to hide a lot from their nurse. So let's say someone with a penis & testicles presents to me with some sort of illness, but this person self-identifies as female. In my health assessment, I cannot (legally, ethically cannot) refer to this person as "female" because I did not observe the female genitalia. But if I know that patient identifies as female, I can use all the appropriate pronouns, ensure the oncoming nurse knows what's up, make sure the care technicians understand they need to use the right pronouns, chart my assessment appropriately (I still need to assess the penis if it's there, but under the psychosocial portion of the assessment I can indicate the patient identifies as female), etc. Knowing how someone self-identifies is massively important for me to make patients comfortable & provide appropriate all-around care. So, this may be completely off-topic because you might've been referring to fandom only, but hey. Here's an only marginally related perspective. Yey!
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| From: | shanaqui |
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September 16th, 2010 11:44 pm (UTC) |
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Here via network. When I remember -- because it's a part of my speech I'm trying to attend to -- I say "I identify as female" instead of "I am female". I am physically female, but I also choose to identify as female. If "choose" is the right word. What I'm trying to say is that it hasn't been that easy for me: I like that I can say "I identify as female" and bring the hint of awareness that I could identify otherwise. Because I could (and might still, I suppose).
And, actually, everyone could. Even if they haven't had to think about it. Everyone identifies with a certain gender (or doesn't identify with any gender). Gender is always an identity, I think.
If they'd said, "is female or identifies as female", I would think this post much more applicable, and I'm sure that I've seen that phrasing in other places, and would wholly agree, there.
Edited (Because I hit post instead of preview at one point.) 2010-09-16 11:46 pm (UTC)
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