Greer's Syndrome - One for DSM VI?

[steepholm]

This ought to be a proper post, festooned with links, but I'm too lazy to do that; and also, I've not really thought the subject through to the extent that I'd like to present this as some kind of finished position, rather than (what it is) an invitation to others' thoughts. Suffice it to say, I could produce the links if I were arsed - but then, so could Professor Google.

Anyway, I was thinking about the primacy given by some self-described radical feminists to chromosomes when it comes to determining sex. For example, Gia Milinovich defines sex wholly in chromosomal terms, and Germaine Greer (an early adopter) does much the same in The Whole Woman. I was reminded of this habit most recently while listening to Midweek (17:40) the other day, where I heard Libby Purves quote the old feminist slogan "biology is destiny" [shurely some mistake? Ed.] to put actor Ed Zephyr in their place and remind them that "in chromosome terms there are male and there are female and you can't quite get round that".

Zephyr responded by pointing out that there are many variations even on that basis. And that is a good answer, as far as it goes - intersex erasure is a real problem. (For that matter I've never had my chromosomes tested - have you, dear reader?) But it left me wondering why it is that in many people's minds chromosomes trump gender identity; trump socialisation; trump hormones; trump phenotype. Only chromosomes, it seems, really count as "scientific". Is it because the only way to find out someone's chromosomal make-up is by looking down a microscope? How phallocentric!

While we're at it, why must there be one answer, one sure-fire, all-or-nothing test? Doesn't that speak to a far more brittle insecurity, to say nothing of an empathetic and intellectual sclerosis? I think so; and propose the name Greer's Syndrome for the condition, after its most eminent sufferer.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

There is something interesting and disturbing about the idea that our respective/overlapping cultural expectations test chromosomes when there's a phenotypically based surmise of aberration or a next-gen concern about aberration. Science and evidence, yay, but it starts with gut-level reaction some of the time. (Mine have been tested as part of checking whether the embryo I was carrying at the time were likely to inherit any of a raft of difficult issues from its father's side. I mean, we knew as of the tests that the embryo was XX as well, but at week thirteen in utero, embryos don't have gender, IMO.)

ETA perhaps I should clarify given the context that the difficult issues have to do with severely debilitating mental illness and muscular dystrophy from a regional habit of inbreeding, and we wanted to know what we were getting into.

[steepholm]

Thank you for sharing that. Chromosomes certainly have their uses, but dog-wagging tails are not always helpful.

[lilliburlero]

I've come to regard blog posts like Millinovich's as wholly disingenuous exercises in special pleading: starting from the proposition that they should be allowed to call trans women men sorry, 'chromosomally male', without getting any protest or backlash for it and they just don't bloody care how many people they insult, patronise and belittle on the way. And of course transmasculine identities don't exist except as 'females who would like a penis so they can engage in sex without consequence' (whaaaaat? I can't even), and dysphoria is conflated with people's vague bodyswap musings, and colloquial phrases like 'no problem with' to signify cis people's basic alignment with gender assigned at birth are obtusely misread to mean that to say someone is cis is to suggest that they accept every bit of sexist bullshit ever, including century-old anti-suffrage propaganda, and all the bloody rest of it. I know I'm in the choir preaching to the pulpit here, but all the intellectual dishonesty makes me so angry. Not yet angry enough to call someone a 'fucking bigot' on Twitter, but that's only because I'm a coward; it's pretty much how I feel. And edited to add: it never seems to occur to them that the anger might stem from a sense of betrayal--that trans people for fairly obvious reasons tend to be feminists as well, and it hurts far more to hear self-declared feminists say this stuff than it does to hear it from conservative anti-feminists.

[steepholm]

Amen to all that. (No pulpit here - a pit-head preacher at most!)