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A Pharmacy For Womyn- Just In Time For Michfest!

By Fannie

A women's pharmacy in Vancouver has a woman-born-woman policy that excludes transgender women. Many bloggers have been writing about this, so I will link to Questioning Transphobia, which provides a fairly comprehensive roundup of summaries and reactions around the web.

I, of course, oppose this pharmacy's exclusion of transwomen just as I oppose Michfest's similar "womyn-born-womyn" policy. Given that transgender women (and men?) experience sexism and misogyny and, on top of that, experience the additional burden of pervasive transphobia, I think that transgender people are among the most oppressed in our society. It is a given that conservative members of society would malign and reject transgender people, but I find it more unfortunate when liberals, radicals, and progressives do as well.

That being said, I find it disconcerting when anything short of full acceptance of trans issues is not up for debate and/or is automatically thought to be "anti-trans" or "transphobic." I feel the same way about lesbian/gay rights and women's rights. I know that those opposed to LGBT rights often lodge the complaint that "the gay community" just calls people bigots but never addresses their arguments, and it is one that I agree with at times. Too often, people in debate are too quick to label any divergent opinion as racist, sexist, homophobic, transpobic, Christophobic, or any other variation of 'phobic. Anti-gays do this too when they call the mere advocacy for LGBT equality "anti-family" and "anti-Christian." The shoe sometimes, but not always, fits.

Yet, nothing shuts down a conversation faster than preemptively cutting out opposing views that do not express the appropriate degree of like-mindedness. Like this, for instance, from the Questioning Transphobia website:

"If you?re going to comment about how trans women?s health needs are from outer space, I?ll either delete the comment or replace it with pictures of pandas (taking a page from Queen Emily). If you really believe trans women?s needs are so strange as to require special training beyond 'treat them with the same dignity you accord cis women, and don?t deny their womanhood' then you need to do some research."

I know that piles of abuse are heaped onto transgender people and I agree that blogs should moderate blatant abusers. I also respect a blogger's decision to moderate their blog how they see fit.

Yet, I do believe that most health care providers do actually require special training to care for transgender patients in a culturally competent manner. There is a general dearth of research when it comes to the provision of care to LGBT people, but the available research shows that many providers do, actually, fail at treating transgender people with "the same dignity [they] accord cis women" and, therefore, that providers do require "special training" in order to provide dignified care. It's not a matter of whether providers should provide dignified care, of course they should, it's a matter of if most providers are capable of doing so given that ours is a generally hostile world to transgender people.

For instance, research demonstrates that, within the healthcare system, "widespread ignorance, insensitivity and discrimination [towards transgender people] appears to be the norm." Furthermore, "the lack of provider training" often leads to providers who refuse to treat transgender patients, who are unwilling to address patients by their preferred pronouns, and who "lack the knowledge to adequately treat many of the routine health care needs of [transgender people] when such treatment is related to issues of hormone use, gynecological care, HIV prevention counseling, or other concerns related to gender or sexuality."

I'm not excusing this scenario or trying to "inform" transgender people of what their lived experience is like; but it is a sad, unfortunate reality that our healthcare system is not particularly friendly to transgender people. Nor is it me who, by suggesting that doctors need cultural competency training, who is suggesting that the needs of transgender people are "so strange." Rather, I am saying that it is providers and health care bureaucrats who think that the needs of transgender people are "so strange" that they cannot possibly meet them. What I am saying is that special training is what is required to eradicate that misconception.

That's why I personally think that this is a discussion worth having, if only to better inform those who do not understand the barriers that transgender people face in accessing healthcare.

Furthermore, I do not know the pharmacy's actual motives for excluding transwomen, but I do know that the exclusion has the consequence of implicitly telling the excluded women that they are not Real Women. Both radical feminism and the rightwing conservative movement share that unfortunate history of doing that to transgender women women.

Those of you who regularly read my blog probably know that I'm not a big fan of those who make themselves the deciders of all that is and is not Authentic. Given our tenuous grasp as to what sex/gender really are, what it means to be woman or man, and the observable fact that sex/gender exists along a gradation, I am extremely uncomfortable with other people "informing" us both as to who does and does not constitutes Real Women and Real Men.

When I went to Michfest for the first and only time last summer, I was seeking to experience what it was like to live in a "woman-only" society for a few days and to escape from the usual array of mainstream-yet-male-dominated music festivals. After the festival, I articulated that I leaned toward inclusion of transgender women but that I had questions about the value of retaining "woman-born-woman" space. I didn't value "woman-born-woman" space because I hated transgender women or because I was "transphobic," but because I wondered whether people who had lived with male privilege for potentially long periods of their lives would create a different environment at Michfest. And if so, I wondered if that was an environment worth "preserving."

Sometimes, people need the space to reach conclusions about questions like that and I am grateful that I had the time to do so without being knee-jerk labeled transphobic. I can see how that would have been a real barrier to keeping an open mind about the issue. Now, for instance, I think that it is only through those who have lived as both "male" and "female" in society that those of us who haven't can know the true extent of gender privilege. For feminist movements that have built themselves upon making male privilege visible, I think that the "different" environment that the presence of transwomen create only enhance our understandings of these privileges.

Furthermore, if preserving "woman-born-woman" space is an institution's prerogative, it is profoundly hypocritical to accept transgender men into that space. Both Michfest and this pharmacy do. I wonder what is preserved when bearded transgender men are walking around a "womyn-born-womyn-only" space. To accept a transgender man into "woman-born-woman" space is to deny that he is a real man.

Given the degree to which male privilege continues to prevail, I continue to strongly value woman-only spaces. Yet, I also think we need to take a more inclusive view as to what constitutes a woman. It is a denial of human dignity for some people to imply (or explicitly say) that transgender women are not Real Women and that transgender men are not Real Men.

Full post as published by Fannie's Room on August 18, 2009 (boomark / email).