If I met you on the street and asked you what gender I was, you’d look at me funny and say, “Duh, you’re female.” I’d agree, because I’m what certain people call cisgender. Which means that I feel—I have always felt—that my identity is accurately reflected by the gender assigned to me at birth. Cisgender is the opposite of transgender.
It’s a useful word in the sex-positive community, where people work to be sensitive about transgender issues. Even so, language about gender is still politically perilous. This Saturday, sex educator Midori is throwing a sex/play party called “Bang 4 the Buck.” It’s a charity event for the AIDS/LifeCycle program. This is the sixth annual Bang, and it’s always a popular affair. However, if you’re a man, there will be no Banging for you: It’s a women-only party.
What’s the perilous part? Deciding who can attend. What makes someone a woman? How can I determine your gender just by looking at you? To put it bluntly, when you throw a women-only sex party, how can you be trans-friendly while protecting attendees from the inevitable cisgender man who wants in?
This isn’t a new dilemma. Historically, the lesbian community hasn’t always been welcoming to transgender women. Women’s sex parties I attended in the 1990s discouraged anyone but cisgender women by stating “women-born women only.” A creative phrase coined by the Seattle leather-dyke community was the “dick-in-a-drawer rule”: You must be able to slam your dick in a drawer and walk away to attend women-only events. As one dyke expressed it: “No way is some guy just gonna put on a dress and say, ‘Oh, I’m a woman now.'”
That’s the community where my sex activism began, but things have changed. I think cisgender women—including me—have gained a broader understanding of transgender women. I don’t support attendance polices based on genital configuration, and I’m not alone. In an attempt to compromise, some organizers say that anyone with an F (for female) on their ID can attend.
But while that works for transwomen who’ve legally changed genders, opponents say it excludes people who self-identify as female but choose not to change their ID. Due to ambiguous phrasing, members of the trans community mistakenly thought Midori was enforcing the “F on your ID” rule for the Bang party, and protests were made online. Midori’s official stance: “Anyone who is female-identified is welcome at Bang 4 the Buck. An F on your identification is not necessary—we understand the obstacles around this.”
I asked gender activist Kate Bornstein her opinion of women-only parties. She replied: “How to handle opportunistic cisgender men? I haven’t got a clue. But there’s nothing morally or ethically wrong with being gender exclusionary for the purpose of self-perceived safety. It all boils down to ‘don’t be mean.'” 
I think that this demonstrates that what we call political correctness (a term which has been so used and abused in the UK it’s almost lost it’s meaning) is an evolving idea and requires re-evaluation and nuanced thinking at all times. I think that’s a good thing, so long as we are patient and believe that people don’t usually intend to offend or exclude people.
There must be a reason why some people want to organise an event to attract cisgender women, though I can’t imagine that they would all have a tremendous degree in common. Gender is massively important but it is only one aspect of our identities.
I think in this case what they have in common in that they want to have sex with other women without men around. If that’s what you want, then gender IS going to be a big deal.
Duh. Of course. Sorry something got lost in translation with me there!
Thank you so very much for your column this week. As a Transgender Woman no matter what I do, how feminine I dress, or how ladylike I try to be no one allows me to be my own person yet my own woman. Everyone is trying to say “Oh sweety you women don’t do (this) or women don’t do (that) or you don’t want to be too feminine.” What is too feminine anyway? I just prefer to be a Femme-Femme Girly-Girl that’s me and if no one likes it then they can megabyte me! Plus I get the jerks, et. al. who will point fingers, laugh at me, shout at me “Hey that’s a man in a dress.” and things of these caliber hurt me but I try to shrug it off as Ignorance of those whom do not wish to learn. Please forgive my rather elegant writings as I feel a lady should write, speak, and act elegantly yet people force me to call out their stupidity and make me shout even though I’d rather talk soft, lie when I’d rather tell the truth, and tolerate stupidity when I’d rather tell the moronic imbicels to go find some education. Anyhew thanks for your column it is inspiring and I’m keeping a copy on my clipboard
Funny how gender seems so cut-and-dry and simplistic for those who don’t have any issues regarding gender.
I was born intersexed. I have breasts and a beard. I doubt they’d let me into a women only party. But I wouldn’t feel comfortable in a men only party (which is what I’d probably pass as). They sure as shit don’t have parties just for people like me.
What does it mean to be a woman? Or to identify as female? Or male? I don’t really know. I’ve always sort of been stuck in-between. I like the space in-between male and female, but there’s a loneliness to it.
Working as an x-ray tech at a hospital, I had to x-ray an injured woman’s hip. This procedure involves looking very closely at the patient’s exposed groin area. This woman happened to have a cock and balls. I really don’t see how a man can legally choose to put “F” on his medical record because he identifies that way.
Can I decide I’d like to be called African American because I listen to rap music?
Are there actually “opportunistic cisgender men” who would put on on a dress to take advantage of women-only space? Going to all this trouble and alienating women with trans experience/histories just to prevent an imagined threat that has never actually existed seems sort of ridiculous.
@6 Here’s a story from the Times about a guy who fell through the ceiling of the Lusty Lady peep show downtown in an attempt to sneak into the dancer’s dressing room.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/lo…
And you’re wondering if there are straight men who will put on a dress just to try to get into all-woman sex parties? Are you kidding me?
I guess I’m naive, but I would have thought that a group of people – lesbians – who’d gone through all the soul-searching to figure out that they are, in fact, lesbians, might have some sympathy for another group of people – transfolk – who’d gone through all the painful soul-searching to figure out that their parts don’t add up to their souls.
At the same time, it seems like transfolk might have some sympathy for the threat of sexual violence that lesbians deal with on a regular basis. “All she needs is a good fuck,” the leering cisgender men on the street mutter after dark, to say nothing of the constant sexualization of lesbians in popular culture for straight men’s gratification.
We all have a right to feel safe, but I can see why negotiating that in this context is tough.
@8
right, i get that people think this threat exists. it’s a huge pop culture trope (how many movies and sitcom episodes have revolved around such a thing? instant laughs ensue) i’ve just never heard of an actual, documented, real-life instance of a cisgendered male-identified man attempting to impersonate a woman in order to participate in (not just spy on) womens-only space.
So you’re saying their fears about men trying to crash their party are ridiculous unless they can “document” them to be real by some yardstick you decide? Because you’ve “never heard of” that happening. How cool for you to be such a fucking expert on what women should feel about their privacy and safety. “Just spied-upon”? Like that wouldn’t be enough?
@9: Yes, you are naive. I used to be naive in the same exact way. You WOULD think that a group of people that have been marginalized/discriminated against would always have sympathy for other persons who’ve experienced similar. However, this would mean there’s no such thing as an out lesbian who is also a racist. Unfortunately, my personal experience strongly suggests otherwise. Less likely to be racist, perhaps? No idea really, but unfortunately, racist homosexuals definitely exist.
@11 Amen!
Smitty:
Gender is more complex than you realize.
There are females with XY chromosomes and males with XX. Females with penises and males with vaginas. There are always exceptions.
Just because you lack knowledge or experience in this matter, doesn’t change reality.
I’m sorry but biologically there are two genders male and female, how someone emotionally chooses to identify is another matter and quite frankly I’m sick of having trans issues shoved at me as they are my problem to deal with.
You want to change your gender to female fine do it, but you can’t have it both ways saying you are female and then not changing your id status or genitalia to match.
@inara223:
Biologically, there are two frequently occurring sexes, male and female, along with a host of intersex conditions. Some of these are caused by chromosomal abnormalities – X, XXY, XYY, and XXX are the usual suspects, although some individuals have four or more sex chromosomes – while others are the product of endocrinal imbalances or insensitivities. Finally, it’s possible for male and female embryos to merge in utero, resulting in an individual who has XX chromosomes in some cells and XY chromosomes in others.
A lot more people than you might think are intersexed – by some estimates, about 1% of the population. The bottom line is, biological sex is a lot less cut and dry than some people like to imagine. (And that’s just in humans – a number of fish can switch sexes, sometimes several times, and slime molds have at least eight distinct sexes.)
“Gender” is a whole ‘nother ball of wax. It refers to the roles conventionally assigned by one’s biological sex, and nobody can quite agree what qualifies as a separate gender, or how many genders there are, or whether gender can be voluntarily chosen or only imposed from the outside, and so forth. (Judith Butler wrote the seminal work on the subject of gender, “Gender Trouble”; if you have the time, it’s definitely worth a read. Butler does begin from the faulty premise of total cultural determinism, and her prose tends toward the aggressively abstruse, but her work is extremely thought-provoking and a classic in its field.)
Personally, although my lived experience is doubtless profoundly shaped by the way that others perceive my gender, I don’t really think of myself in terms of gender. Being female just isn’t a major locus of my identity, at least as far as I’m consciously aware.
Anyone else read the words cis- and transgender and flash back to chemistry class?
Interesting article and topic.
@16– Totally! I loved the article for its content and all also, but as an organic chem nerd I felt like I was laughing at a private joke the whole time. I actually kind of like that they use cis and trans in this context; for some reason the idea of such geometric chemical terminology applied to something as convoluted as gender sort of makes me smile inside.
All that stuff chromosomes is immaterial to this. To the casual observer, either you’re a man or you’re a woman. If you are legally identified as a man and everyone who sees you thinks you are a man then you’re being selfish and childish to expect every woman who sees you to know that you just feel inside like you’re something else and instantly treat you like that.
If you don’t think gender is a big deal, then don’t go to one-gender-only events. Experience your gender any way you want but be respectful of women who are women and go to a pangender sex event instead.
Hey #11 are these women a bunch of wimps? You act as if a big bad “cisgendered” man gets into their women only shindig then all hell is going to break loose. C’mon, some dude starts hitting on the ladies or acting the fool you tell them to leave and/or call the cops. Personally, I think he’d be playing with his life what with all that female rage circulating at the event. No thank you.
@KennedyStation:
All that stuff [about] chromosomes is immaterial to this.
I brought up the question of sexual biology in response to inara223’s assertion that “biologically there are two genders male and female.” My point was that her statement was wrong on two counts: (a) gender is not biological, but social; and (b) biologically, there are more than two sexes. I hardly think a discussion of intersex conditions (which affect 1% of the population) is irrelevant to transgender issues.
If you don’t think gender is a big deal, then don’t go to one-gender-only events. Experience your gender any way you want but be respectful of women who are women and go to a pangender sex event instead.
Um, but I am a woman. A woman with breasts and a vagina and two shiny X chromosomes, even. I assure you, when I said that I didn’t think of myself in terms of gender, that wasn’t a line from a straight dude trying to gain access to women-only events. It was merely a reflection of how I, a biological woman, feel about my gender.
(My apologies if you weren’t replying to me — but it kind of seemed like you were, and I think you misread my intentions a little, so I just wanted to clear that up.)
@ 7:
Haven’t you ever seen the Tom Hanks TV show Bosom Buddies?
@13:
Isn’t this really just a good reason to come up with a third or fourth gender pronoun?
Also, aren’t there plenty of trans people born with typical sex chromosomes?
Cisgendered? You have got to be kidding me. I am fully supportive of raising awareness of gender/sexuality/etc. issues, but I fucking hate a false cognate. Transgendered people aren’t called “trans” because they identify as the “opposite” gender as the one they were born as, but because they have traversed the space between male and female and come out somewhere on the other side of wherever they started. They have TRANS-itioned. If you go back to the Latin, then yes, “trans” means across, and that’s where both the chemistry and the general-use terms have come from, but to throw “cis” in there is artificial and incorrect. I am not cis-gendered, I am just non-transgendered, because the gender I was born as fits fine with how I want to be perceived, so I’ve stuck with it.
Furthermore, I would think that the LGBTQXYZ community more than most would try to stay away from such black and white terms as cis and trans. Cis means on the same side. Trans means on the opposite side. If there’s anything we should have learned over the 30 years or so that this topic has been out in the open, it’s that things are rarely, if ever, that straightforward when it comes to gender and sexuality.
We’re not in HERstory land here, but it’s still pretty bad.
Mistress,
Thank You for again broadening my horizons regarding the world I currently find myself in.
I will strive to make good use of the information and, not be mean as much as possible
(until someone asks for it in just the right way).
Exclamation Marc
It’s not hypocritical for a group that has been excluded from certain things to sometimes exclude others so they can have their own thing for a bit.
This isn’t like lesbians trying to deny voting rights to trans people; it’s just a sex party.
It has generally been my experience that if people are inappropriate or creepy at play parties, DMs will educate and/or remove them quite efficiently. Even at a pansexual party, if a guy (or gal for that matter) is gawking, harassing, etc., he or she will be removed. So this hetero guy in a dress goes to an all-female play party, is super polite and acts convincingly female enough that no doorperson or DM throws him out. I have a hard time imagining the frat-boy jackass who could pull that off and, if he could, well, what harm has he actually done? I do think as a community we sometimes spend a lot of time worrying about “what ifs” that in real life would sort themselves out pretty easily.
@26 It’s not a matter of whether or not he’s “inappropriate”. He’s a man. It’s a women-only party. They don’t want him there, period. The harm-done is the part where a man decides he doesn’t have to respect these women saying “No, we don’t want you here.”
@27 But what’s the diference between a (bio) man who self-identifies as a woman 24/7, and one who does it for one evening so that he can get his rocks off fantasizing about all the sex he’s seen?
If said frat boy can convincingly pull this off, the difference, at least as experienced by the women attending, is zero.
Thus, either female-ness is verified by visual inspection or similar intrusive nonsense, or it’s going to be an all-nude party, or participants will just have to deal with the fact that some attendees may or may not be as female as they purport to be.
As long as they don’t disrupt the event itself, I don’t see that as a problem.
The difference is: how you feel shows in what you do.
If you really *don’t* identify as a woman and at least live that way every day (even if you don’t have surgery and change your ID) then you are going to be there thinking *and acting* as a man. They DON’T want that. They say so very clearly.
It is deeply disturbing to me that some people think it’s okay to cross women’s clearly stated and completely reasonable boundaries – as long as you don’t get caught. It’s not the getting caught part that makes it morally wrong. It’s the doing of it.
Besides: he wouldn’t be able to do it. He would act like a man, it would be very obvious, he would get caught, he would raise a fuss, he would ruin the event and upset people – all just because he couldn’t stand the idea that him and his dick couldn’t go somewhere he wanted to go. Entitlement mentality much?
Just let the women have their damn party!
This is reason #86 why political correctness makes me puke.
A simple solution is what I call the “ie” maneuver. You use a term, and then “‘ie’ it” into a more specific definition.
For example, “women only, ie…….”.
At that point, by what basis are some exclusions “ok” while others are not? I think either you invite everyone or you exclude on whatever reasons you like. There are no intelligible “good vs bad” exclusions.
If you’re trans, why would you want to go to a dyke-separatist shindig anyway? Those ladies are bitches.
@31:
Come on now. These ladies are not starting an all-dyke community complete with its own schools, stores, fire department, etc. OK, maybe a few of them would like to do this, but really, the rest of them just want to have a bio-dyke-only sex party. That’s it. Just a sex party.
Calling them “dyke separatists” for this is like calling guys who have a guy-only poker game “male separatists.”
Calling them “bitches” for this is plain petty. Some of them probably are bitches, just like some guys who play in guy-only poker games are bitches, but don’t let a couple of bitches in the mix poison you against the rest; who simply want to get all sexed up with a specific type of person(s).
@27 I do actually get what you mean, and would be equally annoyed by dumbassery. I guess my somewhat pragmatist approach is based on the likelihood of an occurrence rather than the wrongness of it. Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but I am literally not sure I’ve ever experienced or heard of other scene folks having to deal with a straight man trying to pretend to be trans to get into a party where he isn’t wanted. Not saying it couldn’t happen, or hasn’t happened, or won’t ever happen. Just that the odds of it happening seem low enough to make it more trouble to worry about and try and craft rules to prevent than simply having him handily removed if and when he materializes.
Matisse has a blog and has followed up on this topic. I’d like to comment on something explained there. Here is an excerpt from an interview of Kate Bornstein.
Kate Bornstein: “You can’t say ‘women only’ or even ‘trans women excluded’ because then you’d be defining another person’s gender for them and expecting them to accept your definition.”
No, I would not be defining anything for anyone. I’m not telling anyone what they must think, or how they should define anything. I’m merely using words in the way that I choose to use them. If other people choose to alter their definitions based on an example of how I express myself, I’m not responsible for their decision, they are.
“If other people choose to alter their definitions based on an example of how I express myself, I’m not responsible for their decision, they are.”
Which “other people” are you talking about? Trans people or non-trans people?
If the former, aren’t they actually refusing to alter their definitions? If the latter, didn’t they typically already agree with your definition?
@33 Aside from all the other more important issues here, many would say throwing a great party is all about the planning. One really wrong individual could derail the mood and atmosphere of the thing for a lot of the would-be participants. (And in case this even needs saying anymore, not all men are wrong, but those that would crash an event clearly not intended for them are.) It’s easier to wonder why anyone would go to the trouble to worry about such a thing when it is NOT your event. If it’s something into which you’ve invested a lot of your own time and energy, you’re more likely to try to think up some fail-safes. If it’s EVER happened or even COULD happen, you don’t want it happening at YOUR party.
@32. Point conceded. I’m a little wary and defensive anytime I see ‘Women Only’ or ‘womyn-born-women only’ in reference to any kind of gathering.
I understand setting limitations for a sex party. On the other hand, I saw that description on the website for a cafe the other day. A *cafe*. In downtown Chicago.
CISGENDER?????????? WTF?!?!?!!?!
yada yada yada yada, a womans only party mean woman only. Vay-Jays…only. Post-op transexuals can go, the rest can’t. anyone else butthurt about it, throw your own party!!!!
I can get a boob job and then claim I’m a transgender lesbian and be knee high in pussy… what’s the problem?
If you look online (particularly FetLife conversations about the Bang-assuming they haven’t been changed), Midori DID in fact use the F on ID standard when they first advertised. Although I appreciate the peaceful acknowledgement of an issue that has been historically transphobic, REWRITING history is not an appropriate peace treaty. Midori was wrong, she realized that, then changed her mind.
And it’s not just about chosing whether or not to legally change your gender, it’s about ACCESS to that bureacracy. Not only does it take a lot of time and energy, but you have to be able to afford all the changes that could have an effet on your job, school and so many institutions afraid of identity theft.
Thank you for educating the masses about the term cisgender. I don’t thank you for attempting to cover up Midori’s initial ignorance/exercise of privilege for the sake of advertising. I am a cisgender woman who won’t be supporting the Bang this year because of all the disrespect to trans women and men (allowing men and thereby threatening a women-only space while disregarding their maleness). I hope next year we can start on a better foot.
Oh right, Fetlife! How could Matisse ignore such a font of useful and TOTALLY factual information. Fetlife! Ri-ight.
Hahahahahahahaha…
There was an interesting situation in Vancouver, Canada a few years ago where a M2F transgendered female was told she couldn’t counsel women on the rape crisis line because that job was for women who were born as women only (but she was welcome to volunteer in another capacity.
Tranny sued the volunteer-run rape-relief shelter successfully for $10 000 for “hurt feelings (overturned on appeal).
That caused a two-years long shit-storm in X-tra West (gay newspaper) over who was right, the two camps basically being:
1) It is illegal to discriminate based on gender
2) On the backs of raped women is a really shitty place to do your therapy.
It was an interesting debate.
An “interesting” response: http://globalcomment.com/2010/i-disagree…
Forgot the link: http://globalcomment.com/2010/i-disagree…
Doot – you do know that “tranny” is as offensive a term for trans people as any epithet you can think of for any other marginalized group, right? And even if a trans person you know says it’s ok, you still shouldn’t apply it to other people without their permission. That is, unless you like to hurt people deliberately.
I am Chimeric (someone who was originally male and female fraternal twins and one absorbed the other, thus I am XX and XY and thus both genders by genetic definition)
I am Bisexual but primarilly attracted to women. I like boys physically but find on a personality level most rub me wrong once relationships and sex come into play.
Currently married to a Female-to-Male trans person. Most amazing person I have ever met.
The best way to include trans people and exclude men faking is pretty simple. There are huge differences between men and trans-women. Hormones do a lot for your body, as do laser or electrolosis.
An overwhelmingly large number of Trans-women are completely disgusted by their penis for one thing, very few want anything to do with it. This is amplified by hormones as well. I was perfectly fine with mine, but hormones have changed that a great deal. It takes a lot more work to get aroused, usually will not stay very hard, and the sensation completely changes. Whereas I was more than fine with mine before, most of the time trying to use it for sex feels really weird for me now.
It is unlikely many Trans-women who go to any of these parties will even want anyone near their dangly bits. Some dude in a dress looking to put it everywhere is a dead giveaway.
Next is body shape and tissue growth. Hormones tend to feminize the body a great deal. Soften skin, hourglass the waist, and breast growth. Most trans-girls I know who are on hormones will have at least an A-cup or B-cup with 6 months to a year.
There is also personality and manner of dress to concider. Big difference between some guy looking for an IN versus someone who lives their life in society as a woman.
I dunno if this is an American thing. I have never had any trouble meeting and hooking up with Lesbians here in Canada.