squigglefish

Yesterday, there were some posts made regarding the relationship between regarding subversism, genderqueer and trans. In reading these, I was reminded of my growing thoughts on similar matters, and one major obstacle that seems to repeatedly be ran into in any such discussion.
Anarchafemme's post in particular posited that there was privilege in being able to identify with a binary gender. This however seemed to upset the usually more stoic GallingGalla, who responded by detailing how the apparent mismatch between binary gender and physical sex. This, of course, was not exclusive with Anarchafemme's point, and so ze then listed explicitly some of the aspects of binary-identified privilege. Queen Emily then followed up with the rather true point that trans and cis binary genders cannot however be directly compared, with trans identities often being treated in an entirely different way, perhaps even viewed by cis people similarly to non-binary genders.

Some of the disagreements here, in my opinion, came from the language that the participants have been forced to use. This is a problem I have seen elsewhere in discussions regarding gender matters, and so this is what I'd like to talk about.

You see, whilst it is all very nice talking about gender, as a term it encompasses too much to be useful. To a certain extent, this is something the trans and feminist community is already working on. We now also have the fairly common ideas of gender presentation, how one presents oneself within society, and gender identity, an internal sense of gendering and sex, and finally gender role, how we behave with respect to society.
However these may not even be enough, especially when you consider that closely related term, sex. People tend to think of sex just in terms of genitalia and maybe breasts. But in everyday life, the most other people see of our 'sex' are the so-called 'secondary' sexual characteristics. Should these really be tied to genitalia? Given the number of trans spectrum people who manage what some might call 'compromises' regarding the mismatch of these, and similarly regarding cis people, I do not think that it would be fair to say that these have to be linked. Similarly there is the concept of 'hormonal sex', what blend of hormones work best for the individual.

With these three aspects to sex, we really need to consider there to be three aspects to 'subconscious sex'. And with body shape now freed from genitalia, can we really consider gender presentation a single category? Gender presentation tends to wrap together both the clothes one wears, and the body language one uses, yet it is only society that expects them to match. Gender role similarly breaks down into all the various genderings of actions we can undertake within society, which also closely interplays with sexuality.
But what about the person within, how they feel about all these things gender and sex? The concept of a 'gender identity' is perhaps similarly too crude, sweeping together various aspects which can each point in a different direction. For each of the aspects to gender and sex, we can consider there to be a related intrinsic inclination.

With separating out gender, sex and gender inclinations and sex inclinations, we can now look at how these combine together once more, or combine only to find internal dissonance, to then cause society to observe a discord between elements. This discord can be directly observed from the outside in the case of aspects that manifest in a highly visible manner, or it can be an internal strife felt by someone. However both of these form part of the privilege afforded to those without this observed discord. As well as people being privileged in terms of being safe from direct discrimination, there must also be an aspect of feeling welcomed, that you can identify with those around you, that your identity will be respected, that others share that identity.

Where it gets interesting is when someone can be at the foul end of one of these privileges, and yet also have a set of other privileges, which relate to what was previously considered the same concept – gender or sex. These privileges are hard to name, since they come from the intersection of aspects of gender and sex. One can have privilege in terms of physical appearance, yet lack it in terms of voice (and indeed the intersection here would also tear down the previously held former privilege). Body language or societal role can equally affect matters. And hence you can both have what could be called a 'binary gender' privilege and yet internally have nothing of the sort and feel phased by questionnaires and matters of understanding company. Or you could externally have no such binary gender privilege, yet within identify with a binary and be able to find safe spaces.
Within all these privilege sets, there is a common ground, or rather a common absence of privilege (or highly related privileges) that trans people all share and that cis people are privileged over. A fair chunk of this lies internally, in the inability to generally feel comfortable and accounted for within a group, and with respect to the internal sense of dissonance with external gender and sex aspects. This extends into aspects of personal history and all that encompasses, and probably also the idea of others knowing, bringing up without consent, private details of one's life (possibly in a less than well-meaning manner).

Where matters get more complicated and less generalised is with respect to cis appearance and cis interactions, but in general for trans spectrum people, although a cis appearance might be possible for the individual, it comes with the knowledge that the other side is privileged. For a trans spectrum person, interacting as if cis is not a safe inner shell, even though it can be extremely comfortable for some. However there are those who appropriate their way into the genderqueer identity. Although within the trans community this has a specific meaning, the wider world generally views it as being intrinsically associated with subversism and aspects of playing with gender without being trans - without having or wanting the shared common ground discussed above. It is this sort of crowd, those that 'play at being genderqueer' in order to be edgy and different (and, for some, 'feminist' no doubt) without the trans association that have caused the conflict between some aspects of the trans community and those who are genuinely genderqueer. For those who are trans, who find genderqueer the most suitable identity, there does not exist that safe shell of cis appearance and interactions that the cis subversists who 'play at genderqueer' get to retreat to – this is a false, 'policial genderqueer', much like the political lesbianism that drakyn reminds us of. This is something we need to realise and address, so that when we fight against subversism, we do not also harm our own, those who identify as genderqueer.