Transgender Butch

What makes a girl a girl a girl, and a boy a boy? Is it the gifts they ask for during holidays or is it what they play at recess? In Intro to Women's Studies at Spelman College, one of the first lessons learned was the difference between sex and gender. Sex is determined at birth while gender is a social behavior that is learned, aka feminine traits and masculine traits. Before this course I had seen portrayals of transexuals on Law and Order and a 20/20 specials. I sympathized for theadolescents or youths who knew that they were in the wrong body. In Transgender Butch: FTM Body Wars and Masculine Continuum, readers are introduced to Fredd, a genetically born female who at the early age of nine was filmed by BBC because she identified herself as a boy. Different sex professionals ignored Fredd's feelings and dismissed him as an extreme tomboy.

However, it was in the next section of the reading that I became surpised in the shift of tone and subject matter. Feminism is a belief that has a plethera of different dynamics. One of them being Butch Females and Female Transgendered Males. I was surprised to find such a divide between transexuals and butch lesbians. It made me think about the modern mainstream American culture's desire to place everything in a finite category. On page 552, the author poses the question, "'Why, in this age of gender transivity, when many queers and feminists have agreed that gender is a social construct, is transexuality a widespread phenomenon? Why has there been little discussion of the of the shared experiences of masculine lesbians and FTMs?'"

This leads me to my critique. Feminism is supposed to be about the alleviation of oppression for everyone including women. What do labels do? The important thing is for people to remember the individual. No two experiences are alike, and comparing and contrasting tomboys, butch lesbians, and FTM's are irrelevant. In life transgendered people have to deal with border wars, mentioned on page 556. These are the potential social barriers such as which restroom is correct. Over analyzing who is a true feminist or a real woman is pointless and does not help accomplish the goals of feminism it just separates.