Plumbing is Plumbing

[kokopelle]

This blog entry is a little politically incorrect, but gender politics, along with sexual orientation, often are.

The other night my lovely wife had a dream in which she was recalled to the Navy. She was asked to share personnel quarters with a transgendered guy. She refused and he was moved to male quarters. He ended up suing my wife and the Navy for discriminating against him. Her position was that he may think of himself as a woman, but he still looked like a guy and that wasn't cool with her.

I related to her my experience with women's sweat lodges. My ex-wife used to go to women's only sweat lodges. The rule was that only people with the right plumbing could attend. While it was geared towards the comfort level and life references of the participants, the organizers did not work with any cues to sexual orientation. This means that gay guys could not attend but gay women could. The gay guys, especially effeminate ones, could perhaps relate to the feminine experience and have no sexual interest in the other participants. In theory the especially masculine women may not as much relate to the feminine experience and have sexual interest in the other participants. In these theoretical cases it didn't matter because the guy's plumbing was wrong and the gal's plumbing was right.

This puzzled me, but my wife's dream sheds some light on this apparent unfairness. Plumbing is plumbing. A person with the wrong equipment, no matter how much they identify with the feminine side of life, is not appreciated when people react to visual cues.

What do you think? I'm just a guy theorizing this stuff and I could still be miles off.

Comments

[pipisafoat]

honestly there is so much here that I cannot even respond to all of it right now, but I'll just drop a few 101 nuggets now. Am open to continued discussion on this and related topics, but replies are likely to be delayed, because these subjects take a lot of spoons for me. (And I am trying very hard not to yell or sound angry when I type this, so apologies if I come across as such. It is frustrating and exhausting to combat the same things repeatedly and not see any real social change on any sort of large scale.)

Transgender guy/dude/male/man/boy: a person who is a male but probably has some physical attributes of a female. Possibly he has breasts. Maybe he's taken care of those or has yet to develop them, but he probably has a vagina and accoutrements. Definitely he has a social history of being seen as and/or referred to as a female person.
What you are describing in this dream is a transgender woman/lady/girl: a person who is a female but probably has some physical attributes of a male, like the "plumbing" you mentioned. [which, to be honest, is weird; most people (trans* or not) don't disclose the state of their genitals to just anybody, and you can't assume genitalia from any other clue, and why is anyone looking at someone's private personal genitalia without their permission, and really how many people (again, trans* or not) invite genitalia-viewing without either a medical or a physically intimate relationship, and how would your wife (or anyone in a similar situation without either of the aforementioned relationships with the woman in question) know what this woman's genitalia look like without looking uninvited, being invited to look, or being told?]
You can't determine genitalia by looking at things other than genitalia. Cis or trans*, it can't be done.

Very few gay guys, even effeminate ones, have had "the feminine experience" or can even properly relate to it. (many of those who have were being read socially as a woman at the time, perhaps meaning that they could be referred to as transgender men.) Please don't conflate sexual orientation with the experience of societally-induced gender. Even when a gay man is called a woman, though it is demeaning and horrid, he still is not a woman, he still is not being treated as a woman, and he still is not having the "feminine experience."

In theory the especially masculine women may not as much relate to the feminine experience and have sexual interest in the other participants.
Please don't conflate gender performance with sexual orientation. There are "masculine" women who are straight just as surely as there are "feminine" women who are straight.

[kokopelle]

Good answers! I don't disagree with a thing you said. I lack the references to really understand the issues here and you've done a wonderful job widening my view. Thank you for your patience.

[pipisafoat]

More:

In theory the especially masculine women may not as much relate to the feminine experience
Any person who exists outside of gender norms in any way - trans* folk, genderqueer folk, masculine women, feminine men - gets this pressure to conform to society's expectations. Not to compare different types of discrimination or try to rank anything, but in my experience, masculine women get a double dose - discrimination for being outside of gender norms and discrimination for being female or perceived as female.

Unless you meant something different by the feminine experience.

But really, either way, every person's experience is different. Different cultures attach different meanings to gender, to gender performance. Some people get an earful for having children too early, too late, too few, too many, none at all, with the wrong guy, with no guy, with too many guys. For choosing not to have children, to have children themselves, to adopt other children. For having a job, the wrong job, too many jobs, not enough jobs, not enough hours at the job(s), too few hours, not enough money, too much money. And maybe some of these issues are thrown more at women or more loudly or obviously, but they're issues for all people. All ages, all genders, all sexualities, all cultures. It's a human experience to be judged by someone else, to be found wanting.

[kokopelle]

Agreed, agreed, agreed and agreed. You've done well fully exploring the reference angle. Deep bows to my insightful friend. I myself stand outside of society's expectations, but keep that to myself for the most part. The sad thing is that the "society expectation" part is an artifact, a supposed norm that does no really exist.

[pipisafoat]

I'm not insightful; I live this bullshit every day of my life.

[kokopelle]

Darnnit gal, you've got the references from that every day bullshit. This give you insight. Own it.