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Decades of research have brought us to the conclusion that it is largely brain development in-utero that determines gender - in other words we are born into our gender.
The crux of that understanding hinged on accepting the very clear scientific evidence that gender was inextricably tied to our brains and that the differences were unchangeable after birth.
In short, it was found that each gender had a particular "map" of sorts that informed it of how it should be constructed. Men, and transmen, had brains that showed the same structures for this kind of mapping. Women and transwomen likewise.
The experience of having a mismatch between this mapping and your actual body shape is known as gender dysphoria.
As a feminist, this idea made me really uncomfortable. For decades I had been raised on the idea that we have entirely interchangeable brains.
It really sucks for activists when their arguments dissolve in a puff of scientific smoke, but I am a scientist first, and an equality activist second, so my brain didn't hurt so much the day after I woke up from this particular hangover.
As usual, in nature, the argument is rather more complex. If we learn anything at all this time from pondering the Kinsey report (other than that humans are a really creatively horny species), it is that human beings are extremely diverse.
Somewhere on that spectrum of diversity is a person like you...and one like Caitlyn Jenner. Both of you have valid gender expressions, and both of you are normal human beings.
That thing you did when you looked at Caitlyn, and checked out her legs and arms and, uhm, crotch to see if anything looked...suspicious? (Admit it. You so did that.)
That’s Cissexism.
To understand Cissexism you first need to know the words Cisgendered.
Cisgendered means that you were given a gender at birth that is congruent with your perception of yourself. My girlfriend explains it as "Your software matches your wetware".
Cissesixm is the idea that Cisgendered people are inherently more ”real” than trans people. It’s basically a really special form of sexism reserved JUST for transpeople!
Even if you think you are open minded and you don’t discriminate based on gender, you may want to rethink your position again.
If you checked out Caitlyn’s photos to see whether she still looked like a guy...you were being cissexist, because what she looks like doesn’t make her more or less of a woman. I’m going to swing that by you again.
What she looks like doesn’t make her more or less of a woman.
We need to let go of policing gender and trying to define for anyone but ourselves what gender means or should mean.
I've reached a place in my life where I don't fight for us to wipe clean the slate of gender constructs anymore.
I fight for the right for anyone to claim whatever gender construct they choose for themselves - because to me that is true equality.
That is honouring the bell-curve. That is accepting that we are both a product of nature AND nurture. Accepting that some men have vaginas and some women have penises is really of no consequence to anyone who genuinely wants to destroy the gender binary.
If feminists are looking for strong allies in the gender wars, look no further than Trans people.
Who hates the patriarchy more than a transman who is told that being male is a privilege no woman is allowed to obtain, or that any boy wanting to be a woman is obviously mentally ill?
Whether you are looking at Laverne Cox, Lana Wachowski, Chaz Bono, Aydian Dowling or Caitlyn Jenner, please try to remember:
Being trans isn’t a fashion statement.
It isn’t a performance art.
It isn’t a political statement.
It’s not an attempt to gain opposite gender privilege.
It’s about getting what all of the rest of us Cisgendered schmucks take for granted - having your phenotypical carpet match your neurological drapes.
