By Chris Ihidero
So Bruce Jenner burst unto the scene a few weeks ago via the cover of Vanity Fair and summarily declared that he’s now a woman and should henceforth be referred to as Caitlyn. Famous for being step-father to the Kardashians, poor Bruce had suffered the indignity of being a woman trapped in a man’s body for too long and, thank God for science and a lot of money, he ditched the former and embraced the woman within. Hormone therapy, some surgery and Bruce did indeed become a woman. Breasts became apparent upon his/her chest. His/her features became more feminine; thinner voice and longer hair in tow. What was left was a vagina.
But can one not born with a vagina claim to be a woman?
Transgender women are challenging everything that women have fought for in a patriarchal world for decades now. They are insisting that the world has to re-determine what it means to be a woman and many feminists aren’t finding them funny.
What makes a woman a woman: A pair of boobs? A Vagina? Uterus?
The person formally known as Bruce and now referred to as Caitlyn currently has a pair of boobs. There’s no vagina yet and a uterus is very unlikely to come any day soon but s(h)e insists she’s now a woman. Feminists are insisting she and transgender women like her need to take a chill pill!
Writing an opinion piece in the New York Times, Elinor Burkett says many women she knows feel insulted by the language transgenders use in describing themselves and their whole claim to womanhood:
‘Their truth is not my truth. Their female identities are not my female identity. They haven’t traveled through the world as women and been shaped by all that this entails. They haven’t suffered through business meetings with men talking to their breasts or woken up after sex terrified they’d forgotten to take their birth control pills the day before. They haven’t had to cope with the onset of their periods in the middle of a crowded subway, the humiliation of discovering that their male work partners’ cheques were far larger than theirs, or the fear of being too weak to ward off rapists.’
That somewhat sums up my MA literary criticism class. Neocolonialism rears its pretty head once again. ‘Othering’ is an interesting concept and what is going on in that opinion piece is nothing more than a contest for space: women are not about to give up the spaces they have forcefully wrenched from the firm grip of men and patriarchal societies just because some men want to now live as women. Sisterhood isn’t a limitless concept, no? Besides, ‘sisterhood’ is soon going to have to make way for ‘siblinghood’ since all sistas are not the same.
And vaginas have an important role to play in this duel.
As the transgender movement becomes more mainstream, these clashes will be unavoidable. Trans women activists will demand to share in the spaces currently occupied by woman and redefine what it means to be a woman. This ‘bad’ habit of calling their genitals vagina has already led some women to be labeled as ‘trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERF), because vagina is an ‘exclusionary and harmful term’.
The 3.5 billion citizens of the world who currently posses vaginas shall now enter into a duel with the transgender women who want their own vaginas and if we are unable to provide them with their vaginas, the term vagina shall then have to be replaced with ‘front hole’ or ‘internal genitalia’, which, one assumes, will then give credence to whatever hole can be dug between the legs of transgender women?
Ultimately, this is a battle for spaces. Transgender women currently exist on the periphery of womanhood and are seeking for a space in the centre. They will make advancements towards the centre, inch by inch, and who can say how much space they will eventually occupy? Feminists made the same arguments, many of which a patriarchal world thought ridiculous at first, and see where we are today. The world is a better place because women occupy better spaces where they have been able to make worthy contributions to humanity.
What is it the Chinese saying again? May we live in interesting times!
