Are FtM's under-represented in the transgender community?

Hi Guys!

I'm involved with some often heated arguments with a quite transphobic 2nd wave feminist who calls Transgender a 'men's movement' and a lot of rather nasty stuff amid the comments of what I consider a rather fine blog.

When I asked her how FtM's fit in with her notions that transgender is a 'men's movement' she said:

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That should be obvious.....

They are not the dominant thinkers, movers and shakers in the movement.
From what I have read, you never hear from the FTM and you don't hear much in the way of ideology coming from them.

Who do you hear about but Stanton(?) one rarely ever hears about Bob the FTM.

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Quote from here: http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4923

Well that has me thinking. I wanted to ask you guys what you think about this. Are Female to Male men underrepresented amongst the thinkers, commentators, advocates and activists in the transgender community? If so why is that? If not why do many think that it is so?

As far as I can tell, and from all the statistics I've found, FTM and MTF transexuals exist at a roughly 50:50 ratio. But withing the MTF 'grouping' there is a large number of crosdressers, transvestites ect who are part of the transgender cominity, wheras in the FTM comunity there are comparativly verry few (not non, but a few).

And so of the transgendere comunity as a hole, FTMs are in quite the minority. (as per the whole 'men in skirts are crosdresers, women in trousers is normal' thing sociaty has going on at the moment)


... that's not helpful, is it.

I see a lot of very active FtM trans rights workers.

My viewpoint is biased, though. I seek them out, often to the exclusion of MtF writers and activists.

Which actually proves an interesting point of failure in your "friend's" logic, Batty - if you don't bother to research something you won't know it's there. I'm willing to be she's never bothered to look up Jamison Green or Raven Caldera, to read their work.

There's some good stuff countering the anti-trans feminist rhetoric in Patrick Califia's book Sex Changes - might be worth a glance to gain some extra ammunition!

I also know of plenty of FTMs who are activists - people such as Stephen Whittle OBE, Lewis Turner, Mark Rees, Jamison Green etc, not to mention those of us who organise things on a much more local level to improve the everyday lives of trans men and women.

Dave

Is it possible that a ftm does not stand out as much due to the more drab appearance of genetic males in general? Does this make it easier to pass and less obivious for the ftm in the general public?

I find I pass because I just go out there and do it.
As for representation I wish there was more but we do have a great group out there as of now. Some times I feel lonely were I live because I think I am the only one here.

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Originally Posted by O2B Barbara

Is it possible that a ftm does not stand out as much due to the more drab appearance of genetic males in general? Does this make it easier to pass and less obivious for the ftm in the general public?

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Generally, trans guys aren't seen by the general public as trans - we either pass, or we're seen as women (unlike MtF's who either pass or are seen as transgendered). (There are obviously exceptions; this is just overall). So I'm sure there's something to this idea.

Thanks for the responses and I'm interested in hearing more on the subject. For starters I'm starting to look up the names you've all given.

I am thinking of quoting some of the responses in this discussion because I think it's most respectful to you guys to use your own words rather than just speaking for you. Unless there are objections? I'd leave off names though and the name/address of this forum to respect peoples privacy of course.

*Points to Prof. Stephen Whittle (OBE)?*

http://www.pfc.org.uk/node/55
http://www.law.mmu.ac.uk/staff/profile.php?id=404


You'll note he's President-Elect of WPATH (formerly WBIGDA) & Vice-President of Press For Change (the primary UK trans political grouping). :)

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Originally Posted by mistunderstood

I find I pass because I just go out there and do it.
As for representation I wish there was more but we do have a great group out there as of now. Some times I feel lonely were I live because I think I am the only one here.

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I know how you feel with the lonliness of being the only trans man here. I deal with it myself. I have only ever met two trans people in person and they were both MTF.

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Originally Posted by battybattybats

I'm involved with some often heated arguments with a quite transphobic 2nd wave feminist who calls Transgender a 'men's movement' and a lot of rather nasty stuff amid the comments of what I consider a rather fine blog.

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On the bright side, essentialist second-wavers of this ilk are the dinosaurs of the feminist movement. You'll find plenty of them at places like the Michigan Womyn's Music forums, but precious few of them are given much credence in the queer community, in my experience.

Oh, and Pam's is great! One of my favorite blogs, really.

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Originally Posted by battybattybats

Well that has me thinking. I wanted to ask you guys what you think about this. Are Female to Male men underrepresented amongst the thinkers, commentators, advocates and activists in the transgender community? If so why is that? If not why do many think that it is so?

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Actually, I think this is entirely backwards. I can think of more prominent trans male activists and theorists than trans females. There are definitely LGBT orgs that have trans males in prominent positions. Trans males (and other masculine female-bodied people) also had tremendous impact on the development of queer theory.

I've never been to Camp Trans (the trans festival that nominally exists to protest the trans-discriminatory policies of MWMF), but from what I've heard the leadership is more trans male than trans female (or at least, it has been in the past). There are numerous influential trans male authors who have written serious books (not just rather superficial autobiographies, like so many women have written). The most serious minded of the major trans conferences has had trans males in positions of power in years past. The lead attorney for Lambda Legal for trans issues nationwide is a trans male. And so on.

So I'd be inclined to ask "where are the women" moreso than "where are the men" when it comes to leadership roles. There are some females who are more famous - but for what?

Stanton is well known because she had a lot of political power before she came out, and because she had a disasterous coming out. As a result, she's appeared on lots of talk shows (mostly of the type that like sensationalizing anything unusual). Of course, she's out of work now, and a lot of trans females can't stand her because of some stupid things she said in the wake of the failed ENDA efforts last fall.

Donna Rose (and a few other female authors like her) is well known because she wrote an autobiography that sold well. And because people like Larry King want to interview her. He is less interested in interviewing someone that wrote a scholarly book on gender theory - that's harder to market to his demographics as a sensational story. Though he did have one of the guys from Transgeneration on a few years ago.

Anyway, my point is that there may be more females that have gotten their 15 minutes of fame (as defined by being asked to be interviewed on TV by someone completely clueless about trans issue), but I think there are actually more males in positions of responsibility (within activist and queer circles, at least).

I'm arguably contributing to this phenomena. I'm majoring in nursing (and also planning to finish up my psych degree), whereas there is a trans male at my university who is majoring in philosophy and women's studies. Which of us do you think is going to publish serious papers on gender theory? Who might someday be among the leaders of some LGBT activist org? (OTOH, which of us is more likely to publish a research article on some aspect of women's health?) But he's happy and fulfilled going down his path, and I'm very happy with mine. I'm trying to get more involved as a lobbyist on nursing issues and lesbian issues, but I'm never going to publish an influential book on gender identity. And so it goes.

All IMO, of course.

I just went to the link and read the whole thing, WOW! It only took about an hour and a half to read it all. The only conclusion that I can come to about Persephone is that it's much like talking to my ex-father-in-law about religion or politics. He's right, every one else is wrong, and there's no room for logic or proof in those beliefs of his, or her's for that matter. I did find the arguement about "HBS" people as opposed to "garden variety" TG people to be interesting also. That seems to be another area where opinion is more important than facts, logic and evidence notwithstanding. Or should I say, lack of evidence. It's interesting to see how easily some people can sidestep a logical question and turn it into an agenda.
I've got to give you credit Batty, you always stuck to the logical part of the discussion and didn't play into the illogical answers given to the basic questions you asked.
P.S. I also found it interesting that Persiphone could so easily discount the entire FTM movement as irrelevent to the discussion.

Ok great post :) For me what I'm finding is that here there are few FTM's around. It does get lonely but I just get out there and do it. Yep we are seen as dykes butches and such like so I have found myself telling peeps I'm trans and then worrying afterwards. It's easier with peeps I don't know. I'm rambling sorry :sad: xx Felix :hugs::hugs:

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Originally Posted by AmberTG

I just went to the link and read the whole thing, WOW! It only took about an hour and a half to read it all.

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Wow! You sread the whole thing in one sitting! That must have been hard to endure. I would have thrown my pc out the window in fury before I was halfway through!

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I did find the arguement about "HBS" people as opposed to "garden variety" TG people to be interesting also.

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I support their desire to define themselves and it could be that they may be a specific branch of the intersex phenomena that may be unrelated directly and causilly to say crosdressers. However they seem to find it really important to define what non HBS transexuals and what crossdressers are to validate themselves and that rather invalidates their right not to be defined by others.

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I've got to give you credit Batty, you always stuck to the logical part of the discussion and didn't play into the illogical answers given to the basic questions you asked.

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Thankyou very much! I must say it took a lot of self restraint! Eventually she proved unable to be civil and got banned. From what I've heard a lot of transgender blogs and GLBT blogs recently have had to deal with her and similar folk spouting their anti-trans views.

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P.S. I also found it interesting that Persiphone could so easily discount the entire FTM movement as irrelevent to the discussion.

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Indeed. I think she was forced to to be able to maintain her simplistic argument. The frightening thing for me was that she was able to do so! Either as a tactic in which case she was being deliberatly false or far worse actually internally able to dismiss FtM people in her thinking!

:hugs: For everyone but especially for all the FtM guys!

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Originally Posted by battybattybats

I support their desire to define themselves and it could be that they may be a specific branch of the intersex phenomena that may be unrelated directly and causilly to say crosdressers. However they seem to find it really important to define what non HBS transexuals and what crossdressers are to validate themselves and that rather invalidates their right not to be defined by others.

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I don't have the time to read that whole long thread, but that's okay. I've held plenty of conversations with so-called feminists of that ilk in my day, and I'm also familiar with the arguments of the "HBS" movement.

First off, there is no such thing as a "non-HBS transsexual". There is no distinguishable characteristic that makes one transsexual "HBS" and another "non-HBS" - other than perhaps a need for validation at the expense of other people, and an overriding need to obtain social approval by differencing yourself from labels like "TG" and "TS".

I know women that claim the HBS label. Not many - most people I know think the whole movement is rather silly. But some. They don't have a greater claim to being intersexed than me (unlike most of them, I've actually been diagnosed by an endocrinologist as intersexed). They weren't more obviously gender variant as a child or a teenager. While I was never able to function sexually or romantically as a man, many of them went off and fathered multiple children. I've also been more successful at completely assimilating into life as a woman than many of the "HBS" women I know. None of that matters, because the only diagnostic characteristic of being HBS is saying that you are (and preferably being intolerant towards non surgical track TG women).

I don't claim to be HBS, because while I think some of the existing terminology could use some refining, I don't think we need even more new terms. I'm okay with saying I suffered from gender dysphoria. I'm okay with describing myself as a trans female, on those vary rare occasions when I need to differentiate myself from other females.

I also don't claim the label intersexed, because I think being diagnosed as an adult as having a condition that alters how hormones affect your body isn't the same as having your genitals surgically altered at birth, or having indeterminate genitalia.

I think the research into the neurology and neuroendocrinology of trans people is very interesting, and I think it will eventually be proven that trans females and trans males are neurologically intersexed. But as someone that has actually read a lot of the core research papers in this area, it's NOT yet absolutely proven that we are neurologically intersexed. Also, one of the MTF research subjects that provided the initial support for this theory was someone that lived as a woman without ever taking estrogen - so any attempt to use these studies to differentiate trans females who take hormones and have surgery from TG women who feel compelled to live as women but who don't feel the need for medical interventions is inherently flawed.

Anyway, I'm not sure who annoys me more. Intersexed women who try to use some physiological anomaly as justification for why they really are women when they transition, unlike those trans freaks. Or trans women who try to coopt the intersexed label so they can make the same claim (with respect to those other trans freaks). All that really matters for all of us is the freedom to live as the gender we identify with, and the freedom to present as we please.

I do tend to distinguish between people whose gender identity differs from their birth sex from people who say they are just happy dressing or role-playing as a different gender. Really, that's just taking people at their word for what their real gender is. But some people in the latter group eventually decide they are really in the former, and I have no way of proving that the etiology is different, so I'm not going to throw someone under the bus based on this distinction.

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Originally Posted by battybattybats

Indeed. I think she was forced to to be able to maintain her simplistic argument. The frightening thing for me was that she was able to do so! Either as a tactic in which case she was being deliberatly false or far worse actually internally able to dismiss FtM people in her thinking!

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It's both a deliberate tactic and a reflection of her internal blind spots, IMO.

The reality is that such people generally don't respect the gender identities of either trans males or trans females. They are okay with trans males remaining in women's communities, even after the point where they are legally male (and unmistakably male in appearance). They are not okay with trans females being in women's communities, even after the point where they are socially and visually indistinguishable. Why is that? Because to them, birth determines everything (despite their obsession with calling things "socially constructed").

I've actually encountered such women who have previously dated and had sex with post-op trans females without realizing it - and then later, become furious when someone told them "X was born male." So furious that they were still ranting about it years later. Now, I have mixed feeling about someone having a long-term relationship with someone without telling them about their past. But the mere fact that they couldn't tell the woman they were dating and having sex with was (from their closed-minded POV) a "man" should put the lie to this bigotry. If you can date her without her seeming like a man to you, if she's lived this way for many years, WTF makes her a "man"? Her genetics? The shape of her birth genitals? Her early childhood? If you were sexually attracted to her before someone told you here genitals were shaped differently at birth, how does that knowledge actually make her less sexually attractive now? These people are the worst essentialists of all.

One zealot actually used to brag online about how she'd dumped someone because her vagina didn't seem quite right to her. Turns out the woman she'd dumped was 4'10", and very slim and petite!! How many 4'10" trans females have you met? How much natural variation is there amongst female vulvas and vaginas? (Hint: A LOT!) What are the odds this person dumped a nice cissexual woman because of her overwhelming bigotry?

Anyway, the reason she ignores trans males is that she doesn't want to openly call them "women pretending to be men" (because that'll upset too many of her allies), and because she doesn't really mind associating with them (because she just views them as quirky masculine women). She probably just smiles patronizingly whenever any trans male is identified as male to her, and immediately dismisses it. If anything, she probably blames men (and trans females) for brainwashing strong females into thinking they have to be men to be strong (which of course totally misreads the motives of trans males - but I've seen the claim made).

She also doesn't care if trans males infiltrate "men's spaces". She just cares about trans females and other TG women being in women's spaces.

I do want to specifically comment on one other thing she said:

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Since women are all around, they do not realize that the women's community has a culture or I should say "had a culture." Gay men have always hated the solidarity of women. Queer ideology, inspired by male standpoints, has always attempted to dissolve the lesbian identity - basically because male discourse does not like women.

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This strikes me as terribly ironic. I know women (of the cis variety) who identify as queer, but not lesbian, despite sexually preferring women. Why? Because second-wave feminists drove butch/femme culture out of lesbian culture in the seventies. It's not men that destroyed the unity of the lesbian community. It's intolerant second-wavers just like this woman!

The nice thing is that I've only really encountered this flavor of second-wave "feminist" essentialism online - because you'll be ostracized from a lot of women's communities these days if you start spouting off this sort of intolerant drivel, so in real life meetings they've mostly learned to keep it to themselves (or stick to little enclaves of intolerance).

Sorry if I've wandered too far off topic...

Sorry for my late response.
Thanks for sharing your views Kehleyr.

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Also, one of the MTF research subjects that provided the initial support for this theory was someone that lived as a woman without ever taking estrogen - so any attempt to use these studies to differentiate trans females who take hormones and have surgery from TG women who feel compelled to live as women but who don't feel the need for medical interventions is inherently flawed.

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Can you give me some more info and/or a referance for this? As it'd be both interesting and make good amunition.

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Originally Posted by Cai

Generally, trans guys aren't seen by the general public as trans - we either pass, or we're seen as women (unlike MtF's who either pass or are seen as transgendered). (There are obviously exceptions; this is just overall). So I'm sure there's something to this idea.

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This is exactly what I was thinking.

My beleif and understanding is that there are more "motivators" for M to F CDing than F to M. As a consiquence, M2Fs naturally would be more numerous than F2Ms. TSs appear to make up the greater portion of F2Ms, while TS is only a small part of the M2F CD community----And TS is said to be more common in Bio Males(as the female brain config is the 'default")

Fetishisim is more a bio-male thing and the ability to be 'humiliated" (as in SM related CD) by wearing clothing of the opposite sex is easier for bio men than bio women. Much of the Thrill seeking/(social)taboo tripping aspects of CD also don't work --or work as well for bio females.

"Escapisim" type CD would seem to work for Bio Females as well as Bio Males. This may be the only CD type that may ocurr in equal numbers in F2M and M2F.

My conclusions, mind you this is only a personal opinion,based on observations, Is that
1. M2F CDers, over all, DO outnumber F2Ms.

2.There are more "reasons" or motivations for M2F CDing, several that biofemales cannot relate to or wont work with biofemales.

3.Most F2M CDers are likely TS types and lesbians. the rest may be the equivalent of M2F "escapist" types who CD to get away from ther personal selves/gender for a while.