Beyond appearances: gendered rationality and the transgendered
Presented at the International Congress on Cross Dressing and Gender Issues, 23-26 Feb 1995, Northridge CA.
Published as: Gilbert, Michael A. 1997. “Beyond Appearances: Gendered Rationality And The Transgendered.” in Bullough, Bonnie, and Bullough, Vern. 1997. Gender Blending. Buffalo: Prometheus.
Introduction: Issues in Gendered Rationality
For some time now my research interests have been centred in the areas of argumentation and rationality. I am concerned to explore ways in which people may disagree more effectively, and, especially, with a greater possibility of ending in agreement. Part of this research has brought me to examine different ways in which men and women think, reason, communicate and argue. This, combined with my long time connection to cross-dressing, led me naturally to wonder about the relationship between the diverse ways in which men and women reason and communicate and how the transgendered do so. Is it possible for a person to be socialized or learn the socialization patterns of an opposite gender? Alternatively, can one intentionally adopt a rationality that is different from that which one might be expected to develop at birth? These are the questions that motivate my talk today.
But, I have problems, and before I begin I will tell them to you. My first problem is that I am not a social scientist, but a philosopher. As a result, I not only have no research, but do not even know how to go about it. The observations I will offer come in no small part from personal observation, and are highly unscientific, but not, I hope, merely because of that, without merit. The second problem I have is that the term ’transgendered’ covers a very wide group of individuals ranging from the occasional heterosexual cross-dresser at one extreme to the born-knowing-it transsexual at the other. To try and generalize about the thinking patterns of such diverse sub-groups is impossible. Still, there is little science and no philosophy without generalization, so I will try not to let the mere impossibility of the task slow me down.
I will begin by briefly discussing the very important book In A Different Voice published by Carol Gilligan in 1982. This book’s prime motivation was an investigation of the generally accepted idea that the moral development of females was different and not as sophisticated and advanced as their male counterparts of the same age. This conclusion was reached by first presenting young men and women with a moral problem, and then observing how they reasoned from problem to solution. Pre-teen males would begin to use rules and principles that could be applied to all persons in the situation or, for that matter, similar situations. Females would have difficulty doing so, and would be deeply concerned with details of context, consequence, and situation. The former, male, approach, dubbed by Gilligan the “ethics of justice,” was deemed by researchers to be more mature than the mode of thought used by women. This latter mode, called by Gilligan the “ethics of care”, focused on connectivity, responsibility and personal relationship. As a result, the conclusion of the women’s reasoning was only as generalizable as the contextual parameters permitted.
The reasoning patterns (one might better say ’values’) preferred by women, according to Gilligan and her followers, mean that women are far more focused on their attachments to others, their place in the web of human relationships, and their connectedness to the people with whom they interact. In play, for example, while boys will argue furiously over rules and decisions, girls tend to avoid dispute, and change to a different game rather than alienate one of the players. This fits in with the psychoanalytic view that boys, but not girls, must go through a separation from their mothers in order to find their own independence. Gilligan writes:
From the different dynamics of separation and attachment in their gender identity formation through the divergence of identity and intimacy that marks their experience in adolescent years, male and female voices typically speak of the importance of different truths, the former of the role of separation as it defines and empowers the self, the latter of the ongoing process of attachment that creates and sustains human community (p. 156).
Where women are concerned with the needs of specific individuals, men, on the other hand, are more concerned with rules and a sense of fairness that is founded on people being accorded the same treatment. Where women’s first priority is to remain connected and involved with those with whom she interacts, men are more concerned with their place in a hierarchy of power and control.
It is important to understand just how far-reaching Gilligan’s hypothesis is. It concerns nothing less than the different ways in which individuals view and organize the world. It shapes and colours one’s entire world vision and permeates all of one’s relationships. What one literally “sees” in a situation is determined as much by one’s moral and psychological point of view as it is by one’s geographical location. And, this learning to see, to identify what is important in a situation begins at a very young age. Research into dispute techniques in pre-school children shows that there are marked differences in approaches to play conflict before the age of four (Sheldon, 1993). Since we can already identify this behaviour at four, we know that one begins accumulating the values one goes through life with at a very early age.
If Gilligan is correct, (and she doesn’t have to be 100% dead on,) then there are differences between men and women at the basic cognitive level. That is, the way in which information is processed and evaluated is different between the two gender groups, and one result of this difference may well be a frequent lack of understanding across the divergent perspectives, as well as an undervaluation of the female perspective by the dominant male perspective. Indeed, historically the female outlook has been systematically devalued and derogated by, for example, being described as morally immature. For our purposes, though, the crucial fact is that differences in the cognitive processing of situations and problems begins quite early in a child’s development.
A similar situation exists in the realm of communication. Gilligan’s conclusions about, if you will, thinking are mirrored by Deborah Tannen’s conclusions about speaking. People, we will not be surprised to learn, who think a certain way also speak in ways that illustrate and support those forms of thought. Some communicative differences between the sexes are stylistic but still reflect the cognitive differences. One classic example is the different ways in which words like ’yeah’ or ’uh huh’ are used in conversation. For women, the words serve as an indicator that one is following the conversation, is still there, connected to the speaker as in, “Yeah, I follow you.” For men, the terms signal agreement with the statements uttered by the speaker as in, “Yeah, I agree with you.” The import is simply that for women the most important thing in a conversation is to be along with the speaker, not to be assessing whether the speaker is right or wrong. For men, the rightness and wrongness is crucial; agreement and disagreement are ultimately what matters, not the story itself.
The very object of conversation is different, according to Tannen, for men and women. “For most women,” she writes, “the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.” While, “For most men, talk is primarily a means to preserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order” (1990, p. 77).
It should be no surprise that these questions of rationality as expressed in evaluative and communicative practice mirror classic suppositions about gender differences. If we think of the traditional culturally-conditioned differences such as women are more gentle, nurturing, family-oriented, and so on, then we might expect rationality to fit the mold as well. These differences do not come merely from mimicking mummy, but from learning to be mummy, to embrace her modes of thought as well as behaviour. Even to the extent that language patterns and intonations can be imitated, they do not necessarily represent an underlying female structure which gives rise to them naturally. One might well adopt the speech patterns of the opposite gender such as the questioning intonation women add at the end of many declarative sentences, or the tendency to interrupt and dominate a conversation common to many men. But, and this is the nub of my concern, what can be done about adopting the underlying rationality, the substructure of thinking, examining, relating, feeling and communicating that is absorbed, developed, and inculcated from birth?
Generalizations about people are at best tricky, and at their worst they are nothing but disastrous apologetics for stereotypes. And this is nowhere more problematic then when discussing gender, as we gathered here today know better than most. Gilligan has been criticized both within and without the feminist community for generalizing from her particular sample to women at large. The girls and women she interviewed for her study were all white, middle class and educated. The characteristics she describes may, therefore, only apply to socioeconomic groups with a similar profile. Not only that, but cultural factors enter as well. Within North American society there are distinct groups with quite different characteristics. A Chicano woman in LA grows up in an extraordinarily different environment than a white Radcliffe educated woman from Connecticut. Not only will their experiences and outlooks be different, but, to a very large extent all of the social influences on them will be dramatically different. Even when exposed to public modes of socialization such as television, rock videos and popular magazines, their identification capabilities and their assessments of their own ability to fit the model will differ. ( This point will be important later. ) Other examples offered in opposition to Gilligan’s generalizations include, for example, the way African-American females and males differ. (Kerber, et al, 1986)
There are other considerations that are also relevant to this discussion, and that bear upon questions of identity even within a cultural group. These have occurred primarily within the feminist community and concern issues of essentialism. Are there ’essential’ characteristics that define being a woman or by virtue of which one is a woman, or are they all (or practically all) culturally acquired? If the essentialists are correct, (and Gilligan is considered an essentialist,) then one can only be a woman if one has the essential characteristics. If one does not have them, then these characteristics cannot be acquired through socialization or learning. However, even if the essentialist is correct, it does not mean that only nature determines gender. No one denies that the essential characteristics are still and always going to be heavily influenced by social constraints; even, by the way, if there are major hormonal factors-but that’s another discussion.
There is also a style of essentialism that might be called sociological essentialism. By this I mean that the essential conditioning that is required to be a woman with a classical outlook, and to have the perspectives, values and reactions a woman has require that one has gone through a certain process of acculturation. That, too, can be an understanding of essentialism. I believe that Raymond falls into this category, and that many others subscribe to it to various degrees. (Vide, Nicholson, 1994.)
As a result of such considerations one must be careful in drawing broad generalizations from Gilligan’s work. Naturally, the same holds true of Tannen’s work. Indeed, when it comes to cultural diversity we expect linguistic conventions to be different. So both authors’ conclusions must be used guardedly. On the other hand, the group Gilligan does identify and study fits many, though certainly not all, members of at least this transgendered community. Moreover, her conclusions may allow us to consider that, regardless of group, we can reasonably expect to find gender differentiation with respect to rationality in ways described by Gilligan, though not necessarily with the same characteristics they have identified. Similarly with Tannen: communicative styles will differ according to gender within a given group even if we cannot say how without detailed study. Questions of, for example, directness, volubility and turn-taking need to be examined for each group in question.
The issue of generalization does not only impact within gender groups, but within the transgendered as well. At the very beginning of my talk I mentioned the vast divergences that exist among the almost arbitrary collective known as the transgendered. Some of the T* community (to use the internet expression) have identified strongly as female (or, conversely, male) virtually from birth. Others have come to it in early adolescence, and still others even late in life. For some the identification amounts to a clear certitude that one simply is of the opposite to assigned gender, while for others it is a question of garnering pleasure, sexual or psychological, through simple crossdressing. To generalize about such a diverse group is not merely impossible, it is beside the point. There is nothing true of them all, so why generalize?
The reason for doing so, and forgive me as I use male to female as the exemplar, is that there is a commonality. That commonality, that common ground, is an attraction to the feminine. It is a drive, a desire, a need to be associated with, included in, connected to the female spirit, psyche or anima. Certainly, it is vastly different as it ranges over the T* continuum. So different that some at the ends do not recognize any differentiation between the masculine and the feminine. At one end the infrequent cross-dresser may have no sense of femininity, and might perceive himself as strictly male with a peculiar hobby. Such persons can even be aggressively masculine in a compensatory way. At the other end are birth-identified males who are completely and wholly women without any significant sense of masculinity. And, yet, the drive, no matter whether the smallest spark of the most overwhelming compulsion, is there in both groups.
Transgenderism and Gendered Rationality
A great deal of the discussion about transgenderism focuses on questions of socialization. Even if we suppose that gender differentiation is primarily social, we still need to ask, to what degree can one join a social group in which one was not born? The answer given by some commentators (Greer, Raymond) is that it is impossible. That one must, first, have the biological base, and second, the thorough and unrelenting conditioning that works to govern every aspect of one’s life, thought, and emotions. Of course, the more we know about genetics and the vast number of aberrations and variations nature produces, the less stable becomes that once secure biological base (vide, Money, 1993.) But this just means that the cultural conditioning becomes more important in drawing a sharp line between male and female; it must, indeed, become essential.
When we think about socialization we think of the differences and the separation. Some even go as far as Maltz and Borker (1982) and describe the two genders as every bit as distinct as two separate cultural groups. But there are aspects of acculturation that are being ignored here. Yes, it is likely the case that for many people the gender socialization process is largely univocal, which is to say that boys receive male socialization and girls receive female socialization. However, I want to claim that no socialization is ever wholly univocal, and, moreover, that this is even more so in a modern technological society with a heavily electronic culture. Let me explain what I mean by this.
It has always been the case that boy children will have been exposed to the rules and procedures of female socialization by observing the young girls who live, play and go to school with them. Even though socialization is as directed as it is, so that virtually the first thing we learn is which instruction set is designed for us, there is still exposure to the alternate stream. But in our modern age there is vastly more than there was in earlier times. Watching television, youngsters from a very early age gain instruction in role behaviour and demeanour. While there will surely be a great deal of selective attention with regard to observing the “proper” role, there is still a great deal of exposure to the opposite role. As a result, there is more social information coming in at a very impressionable age then ever before.
Remember please that I am not concerned here nor am I suggesting, causative agency. Rather, the question is, to what degree can a birth-assigned male expect to enter the female socialization milieu in later life. What I am suggesting is that the bifurcation of socialization by gender is not nearly so dichotomous as one might think. Moreover, the availability of cross-gender information is certainly there, in fact it is everywhere, and it may be very easy to absorb if one has the correct self-identification. An individual who, possibly at a very young age, cross identifies and is attracted to the information could begin absorption very early on. In other words, if there is some disposition, no matter how minimal, to absorb the alternate socialization information, then that information is certainly there and readily available. A strongly identified cross-gendered person could virtually train in alternate social practices through the medium of film and television.
Let us take a hypothetical example. Consider a transsexual who has awareness of cross-gender identification at a very young age. This individual might well pay more attention to the female directed messages in mass media than to the male directed instructions. The situation is perfect. In the playroom or schoolyard one might observe cross gender clues, but one must be careful not to become too involved, not to forget that failure to maintain the birth-assigned role will lead to censure. On television there is no such difficulty. Sitting passively and staring into the tube one can identify with whichever characters seem right. And that information will be absorbed, processed and retained.
Later in life, as one slowly comes to realize that there are more gender choices and options than were first announced, this training can be brought to the fore. Where previously it either lay dormant or was kept hidden, now it can be nurtured and cherished. Now what would have brought censure from peers and adults is either encouraged or, at least, perceived as within the realm of the acceptable. For the transsexual there comes a time when the roots of feminine socialization can form the basis for the flowering of a fuller female personality and rationality.
The degree of absorption of an alternate socialization will differ markedly from individual to individual. The later in life one becomes aware of a cross-gender identification the more difficult will be the absorption of the desired socialization. In addition, the actual availability of cross-gender socialization in the form of playmates, electronic media, and so on will all play a major role in determining the internal availability of the alternate social role. So where one lives, the milieu in which one exists will all make a difference. Nonetheless, there is no reason to believe that the female conditioning cannot have some sort of impact upon which one might draw later in life.
With the transvestite, as opposed to the transsexual, we can expect the situation to be somewhat different, though we must be careful here. Many transsexuals first identified as transvestites, and did so quite young. One who envies girls their clothes, watches wistfully (if secretly) as they play games, will, perforce, take in some if not all of the values cherished by the envied group. Indeed, one of the very attractions to a young person might be the way in which games are played, conversations conducted, and/or social groups run. Yet these are just key points in social conditioning. Consequently, an awareness of them, of the differences, of the simple fact that there are differences, may be a foundational factor in the construction of a later cross-gender identity.
On the other hand, a fetishist transvestite beginning at early puberty may not have spent a great deal of time absorbing alternate socialization, or might have begun quite late in life. The classical over made up and tartily dressed transvestite who offers no overt feminine behaviour that is not caricature, may well have missed out on the time when it was possible to naturally absorb social mores and methods. Such a person might focus almost exclusively on clothing and not be at all concerned with psychological verisimilitude or value the alternate gender mode of thought or process. (Neil Cargile, recently written up in The New Yorker, would seem to be such an individual, vide, Berendt, 1995.)
The answer, then, to what might be expected is “almost anything.” However, we can say that the earlier cross-gender identification or, at least, sympathy, began, the greater is the likelihood that the alternate rationality was able to insert itself. The factors that would then influence this are diverse and might include the degree of self-recognition as cross-gendered, availability of support groups, and, I expect, a sense of self rich enough to encompass the awareness of alternate ways of thinking, feeling and being. In other words, and I think this is very important, one must have, learn, or acquire the insight that being a woman goes beyond appearances and includes the ways in which one relates to others, speaks, thinks, and, in short, lives.
I want briefly to compare these theoretical considerations to my own personal experience in interacting with other transgendered individuals.
Today the first mode of contact with other T*’s for many individuals is computer communication either intentionally or (as in my case) by accident one discovers the electronic community. From the early days of CompuServe Citizen’s Band channel A 13, to the present when there are numerous regional and national BBS’s as well as the Internet lists, newsgroups and forums, electronic communication has been the single greatest force in opening lines of communication. That it seems that the closet door is opening a bit is in no small part due to this phenomenon, and the consequent awareness among the T* that they are not alone.
However, to get back to our topic, in examining the communications one comes across on the Internet, one finds a broad diversity of exhibited rationality. Some correspondents seem to be almost wholly feminine in their style of argument and communication, while others, though they sign their missives with a femme name, seem decidedly masculine. One can identify the pickiness, aggression, and lack of concern for person as opposed to position that is classically male. Moreover, many responses to postings are highly analytical, and show little desire to examine more contextual or personal issues. This is especially true when anger enters the arena. In so-called flame wars, (exchanges of angry email,) individuals with names that are extraordinarily soft and sweet exhibit the kind of intolerance and positional certitude archtypical of a patriarchal stereotype.
There is, on the other hand, a great deal of support, especially as evidenced in a willingness to expose and share emotions, that is certainly not typical of mainstream males. There is an openness, an awareness of pain, and a sense of connection, that one simply does not find except between the most intimate of male friends. More, the amount of time devoted to the discussion of family, children and relationships is disproportionate for a male group. In fact, when anger is not a factor in the communications, there is evidence of a great deal of concern for others that fits well with the notion of relationship maintenance as being paramount.
Attendance at club meetings and other events provides further glimpses into the T* community and the degree to which it is more than externally feminized (or masculinized as the case may be.) Here as well there is a range from those who seem to think they have acquired the sought after character once the makeup is on, to those for whom the external is only one component, perhaps not even an important one. (Jan Morris, for example, writes that she never cared much about clothing until she transitioned.)
Before I move on to the next section, it is important that I reiterate one basic point. There are birth-designated women who have identified as women all their lives and who do not meet some or all of the classical or traditional criteria for female personality characteristics. They may be aggressive, argumentative, solution-providing, hierarchical, power conscious and extremely status aware. (There are, after all, female lawyers.) In other words, the characteristics that define femininity may be just as much absent in a given woman as in a given transvestite. We must be wary of the broad brush.
Implications for The Transgendered
If the goal of a T* individual is to come closer to or join the chosen gender, then it is important to comprehend what that goal entails. The adoption of a cross-gender life or role, permanently or temporarily, can be a mimic or an existence. To make it an existence one must aim to incorporate the into one’s life the rationality of the chosen gender as well as the accoutrement.
Learning gendered rationality is not a simple undertaking. This is especially true of the MtF crossover. For the FtM the literature on “How To Think” is vast and most certainly slanted to the male model practically to the exclusion of the female. (See for example, Gilbert 1994, 1995.) All texts on critical thinking and argumentation tout the highly analytical mode of reasoning comfortable to most males (and quite a few females, especially academics.) It is also important to realize that some people seem to be able to switch from one mode to another. (This can come in very handy, for example, for a woman who works in a high-powered or male-dominated environment but still wants to maintain contact with her more natural or basal modes and responses.)
For a male who wants to learn the female approach to communication and rationality the best resource is fiction. Certainly there are some writings extolling and amplifying the nature and texture of female perspectives. These include the texts mentioned above, as well as others. (See for example, Ruddick and Lakoff.) But, these few exceptions aside, the main source for how women think, feel, and communicate is fiction. The reason is simply that for generations women were excluded from academic writing, and women’s concerns were excluded from the academic purview. The only outlet for the expression of ideas and feelings was fiction. In fact, if you read contemporary feminist authors you will see vastly more references to fiction in their works than in the works of their male academic contemporaries.
Reading a range of books and seeing a diversity of films can provide one with a kind of insight that might otherwise be difficult to find. Films like Waiting and Enchanted April, which are about women being women are great resources. One can also learn a great deal about being a woman from Virginia Woolf, Marge Piercy, Margaret Laurence, and (even) Danielle Steele.
This is not to denigrate the extremely important works by contemporary female scholars writing on femininity and gender differences, (and, mutatis mutandis, male scholars writing on masculinity.) Deborah Tannen’s book is a major source of information for the transsexual whether trying to learn or trying to pass.
It is also, and as always, imperative to avoid stereotypes. This means, at the least, that one must read a range of books. There is nothing wrong with reading romances and sagas, but one should also pay attention to the lives of women as described by authors such as Marge Piercy and Anne Beattie, women whose lives are more ordinary, more routinized, more oppressed, than in glamorous romance novels.
Further, we shouldn’t think that being a woman means never disagreeing, never contesting, never asking for evidence. This is just not true. Similarly, being a man does not mean always being belligerent, aggressive and disagreeable. That too is just not true. Just as a typical woman sometimes wears full makeup, a fancy dress and heels, and sometimes does not, so a typical woman is sometimes empathic and compassionate, and sometimes analytic and withholding. It is the circumstances that dictate behaviour, not only the gender. If we realize this we will be no more tempted to confuse a real female personality with a simpering county nurse than a real female persona with an overly made up tart.
Professionals in the field of gender dysphoria would be well advised to consider modes of thought as one of the panoply of treatment programmes they advise. Certainly many, if not most, transsexuals have a sense of womanhood (and manhood for FtMs,) that includes ways of perceiving the world. Nonetheless, the readings recommended tend to foster the attitude that gender is far more than appearance or even feeling.
I want to be very careful here. I said above that for some T* persons, the awareness of cross-gender identification comes at a very early age. When considering the biography of Jan Morris or Leslie Feinberg’s novel, one sees people whose acculturation was heavily cross-gendered. Many others have realized early on that being a woman (or a man) is not a question of making life better, but of making it right, making it fit. Many cross-gendered persons become committed to feminism and causes of liberation. Many have a very rich sense of what womanhood is. But there are some who would be female without understanding that it requires an ethos, a perspective, a conceptual framework. To be female (or to be male) involves an entire way of viewing the world, of relating to people, of thinking, of communicating. That difference must be taken seriously.
I would also, as long as I’m being hog wild normative here, urge the informal counselors we all rely on so much, the friends, the frequent posters to forums and groups, the activists in organizations, the opinion leaders in clubs to be sensitive to and aware of these issues. They are difficult issues. But they are important issues.
As an individual, as a heterosexual cross-dresser who is not transsexual, I have often thought that the goal of my journey, the outcome of my own queerness, must be some sort of integration, some sort of coming together in a pan-gendered whole that will combine the best of both worlds. I have yet to come anywhere near that goal, and I am not even vaguely sure it is within reach or that I really understand it. But that integration, that combination of the male and female into a blended pan-gendered whole is nonetheless my goal. Wish me luck.
Bibliography
- Berendt, John. 1995. “High-Heel Neil” The New Yorker. 16 January, 1995, p. 38.
- Feinberg, Leslie. 1993. Stone Butch Blues. Ithaca: Firebrand Books.
- Gilbert, Michael A. 1995. “Feminism, Argumentation And Coalescence.” Informal Logic. XVII.
- Gilbert, Michael A. 1995. “Arguments and Arguers”. Teaching Philosophy.
- Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In A Different Voice. Cambridge: Harvard U.P.
- Greer, Germaine. 1989. “Why Sex-Change Is a Lie: On Why Men Can Never Become Women.” The Independent Magazine, 22 July 1989, p. 16.
- Kerber, Linda K., Greeno, Catherine G. & Maccoby, Eleanor E., Luria, Zella, Stack, Carol B., and Gilligan, Carol. 1986. “On In a Different Voice: An Interdisciplinary Forum.” Signs. 11:21:304-333.
- Lakoff, Robin T. 1990. Talking Power: The Politics of Language. Basic Books, NY.
- Maltz, Daniel & Borker, Ruth. 1982. “A Cultural Approach to Male-Female Communication.” In Gumperz, John (ed.). Language & Social Identity. pp. 196-216. Combridge: Cambridge U.P.
- Money, John. 1993. The Adam principle : genes, genitals, hormones, & gender: selected readings in sexology. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.
- Morris, Jan. 1974. Conundrum. New York: HBJ.
- Nicholson, Linda. 1994. “Interpeting Gender”. Signs, 20:1:79-105.
- Raymond, Janice. 1979. The Transsexual Empire. Boston: Beacon Press.
- Ruddick, Sara. 1989. Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace. New York: Ballantine Books.
- Sheldon, Amy. 1993. “Pickle Fights: Gendered Talk in Preschool Disputes.” in Tannen, Deborah, ed. 1993. Gender and Conversational Interaction. pp. 83-109. Oxford: Oxford University press.
- Tannen, Deborah. 1990. You Just Don’t Understand.New York: Ballantine Books.
- Tannen, Deborah, ed. 1993. Gender and Conversational Interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Michael “Miqqi Alicia” Gilbert, Department of Philosophy,
York University, Toronto, Canada. Gilbert@Yorku.ca.
Last revised May 1996.
