Response to Feministing's "Enough with 'I date women and trans men'"

**trigger warning throughout piece for non-graphic discussion of sexual violence and trauma**

Upon reading Jos's piece, "Enough with 'I date women and trans men'" on Feministing, my lover Debbie and I spent the better part of an hour working through what we loved about it and what we found problematic about it. While as a whole, the piece had excellent points - I highlight some of them below - it was also inadvertently delegitimizing to deep sexual traumas that course through the histories of many of our bodies. 

"“I date women and trans men” is the definition of cissexism. It’s basing your frame for sexuality on the gender coercively assigned to a person by their doctor at birth, not on that person’s actual identity" (emphasis in original). Yes. Yes it is, definitely. And I feel just about as strongly as a cis person can about the horrific nature of the gendering and sexing of children at birth, about the fact that the question "is it a boy or a girl?" is the first act of gender violence committed upon each person whose parents are asked the question. 

I also vehemently agree with the notion that saying "women" in the above context (and in most contexts) - excluding trans women from the definition of "womanhood" - is a further erasure of a group of queers that mainstream LGB groups and organizations (they rarely genuinely include the "T") generally systematically ignore. In a similar way that specifying "trans men" - instead of simply saying "men" - undermines trans guys' identities as men, excluding trans women from an overall definition of "women" is an extremely cissexist 'oversight.' Given this, though, I do recognize - of course! - that there are many, many, many trans individuals who firmly identify as genderqueer, whose identities are fluid, and/or who consistently identify as having a trans history and thus, are self-defined "trans women" and "trans men," rather than simply "women" and "men." I do not mean to erase these folks from my discourse: rather, I hope that I am simply respecting the identities of those who do want to be categorized simply as "women" or "men." 

Thus, so far, I agree with the broad strokes and firm points of the piece. Here's the part that I - and particularly my lover, who asked me to write this response - have a great deal of difficulty with and disagree with strongly: "I get why a lot of female assigned folks exist in this frame for reasons that aren’t overtly about undermining trans identities. There’s a ton of gender based trauma out there, and I understand that folks associate this with cis men, and not with trans men. But that’s not a reality-based approach to gender. A lot of that trauma gets easily linked to genitals, but this isn’t about bodies, it’s about patriarchy." 

Yes, there is a lot of gender-based trauma out there, perpetrated by all kinds of individuals and bodies against all kinds of individuals and bodies. And I completely respect why someone (particularly trans folks, for the reasons cited above) would take vehemently disagree with and take great offense to anyone - even a survivor of gender based trauma - saying that they "date women and trans men."

However, there is a very strong danger in dismissing as cissexist a trauma response that rejects body parts that can be triggering to that individual. The statement that this reaction is "not a reality-based approach to gender" is precisely one of the arguments that has oppressed - and continues to oppress! - trans, intersex, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, butch women, femme men (the list goes on...) people. Surely, if we fight for the freedom - and we have and we do! - to identify and control our own genders and bodies, regardless of dominant mainstream assumptions, we must also have the freedom to determine whose bodies we make love to or simply fuck.

There are very strong reasons that trauma gets linked so easily to genitals, and yes! Yes, it is about patriarchy, but it is also about bodies. Patriarchy is precisely about who controls whose bodies, who has power over whose bodies. Patriarchy is the colonization of "deviant" bodies, bodies of color, queer bodies, bodies that have an abundance of fat and stretch marks, bodies that are in any way "different," bodies that are systematically denied the autonomy that institutionally belongs to moneyed white cismen.

So yes. Yes, it is about patriarchy. AND bodies. And - thus - genitals. The piece states that it's "not OK to process your sexual trauma in a delegitimizing way through the bodies of folks who've often faced tons of trauma at the intersection of gender and sexuality." (This quote, in the original piece, was in bold print, which, incidentally, is a mild form of internet-based aggression and can help transform an already powerful statement into a triggering one for someone who is processing trauma.) 

In general, I strongly agree with statements that defend the bodies of already traumatized people and criticize the privileging of some peoples' trauma over others. The above statement does just that, so I have a difficult time dismissing it per se. But my lover - herself a genderqueer butch woman of color and a survivor of extreme sexual trauma - put the emphasis on what Jos did not choose to put in bold print. While we both agree that uncritical statements like the one in the picture above and that which was the focus of Jos's piece indicate very cissexist attitudes through extreme cis privilege. However, regarding trauma, Debbie highlights - and Jos rightfully acknowledges - the fact that there are many people who, due to trauma, are not able to sleep with cis men, but can sleep with trans men. Jos says these folks should "recognize that they sleep with men, and [work] to question why they're OK with sleeping with trans men and not cis men." This makes a lot of sense, and Debbie and I think it would be wonderful if everyone had access to processing their trauma to get to a point where they can confidently say: "these are my boundaries because of this trauma [or erotic preference], so while I deeply respect your identity and your womanhood (or manhood, or [insert identity here], depending on whom one is talking to), it would trigger me to sleep with anyone who has been coercively assigned as male"

However, this assumes that everyone has access to processing their trauma in a safe and radically queer manner. Most people simply do not. 

Speaking of radical queer spaces, I just want to put it out there - also at Debbie's request - that mainstream white LGB groups and organizations often shy away from discussing violence within our own communities. When do we hear about women raping people? When do we hear about trans individuals perpetrating sexual violence against other queers (or non queer folks)? These are conversations that the mainstream doesn't want to have for many reasons, one of which is their desperate pleas for assimilation: "we don't have an agenda - we are just like you [read: white, middle-upper class, and apolitical]." Another conversation they refuse to engage is how many of us fuck who we fuck and make love to whom we make love to as a direct result of  sexual trauma. It's not popular to talk about, and it certainly isn't the case for many if not most queers, but I would posit that it is very common in queer communities. (Sexual trauma is also, of course, common in straight communities, and I would suggest that many straight ciswomen who are with cismen their whole lives and who have [or don't have] histories of sexual violence are often [at least from what I've overwhelmingly heard from almost every straight ciswoman I know] unsatisfied in bed, and that whole topic is just dripping with patriarchal violence and oppression as well.)

Sexual trauma and body privilege need to be processed and discussed together, considering that sexual trauma is largely - if not entirely - about the non-consensual assertion of power and control of one body over another. I agree very deeply with Jos that "our desires are political", but I simply do not believe that it furthers the overall goal of queer liberation to sacrifice an individual's emotional healing from trauma (emphasis in original). 

Telling someone how they should or should not process their trauma is another form of control and exertion of power over someone's body. Again, I firmly agree that we should not perpetuate traumas by passing them on - even inadvertently with privileged language - to other folks via delegitimizing their experiences, traumas, bodies, and identities. However, I also firmly believe that centralizing emotional justice is a crucial aspect of any move towards queer liberation, if for no other reason than that it helps dismantle racism and classism and other oppressions by placing lived experience over so-called (by white middle-upper class people) "expertise", and it deconstructs heteropatriarchy and cissexism simply by emphasizing so strongly the power of dignity and emotions. Keeping these concepts centrally in mind while writing about trauma is thus, I believe, also crucial towards advancing queer liberation, and I humbly submit this response in the hope that, even when it's extremely difficult, we will remember to value and respect each others' traumas as much as we ask each other to value and respect our identities.

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*** I love the picture I included above. (AMAB means assigned-male-at-birth.) It's such an excellent commentary, and as I hope I made clear above, I do agree that uncritical statements of this kind indicate very cissexist attitudes through extreme cis privilege. However, I don't believe that this gives us license to police each others' desires and certainly not each others' triggers.
*** By the way, I'm not claiming that all of the folks who say "I date women and trans men" do so for trauma-related reasons. The trauma-related aspects of this post are simply what my lover and I took most objection to, and thus were the foci of this piece.