Trans women are real women: a critical realist intersectional response to Pilgrim

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I explain why I disagree with David Pilgrim’s claim that critical realists should deny any ‘natal male’ claim to womanhood. Specifically, Pilgrim and I have different definitions of the transitive and intransitive dimensions of reality. In my version – which I believe is in the spirit of the Bhaskarian version – the transitive dimension embraces everything that is currently being affected by human praxis. This allows for an intersectional view of gender in which it is perfectly possible for the same human, in different contexts, to be an ontological woman (e.g. for the purposes of their everyday life), an ontological trans woman (for the purposes of a transgender support group); and an ontological person with a prostate gland, some might say a man (e.g. for the purposes of a medical examination). In the same way, it is perfectly possible for a room to contain 17 people for the purposes of setting out tea cups, but 18 people for the purposes of providing lecture hand-outs. For the purposes of everyday life, and even, I argue, for the fight against sexism, trans women have the same claim to being women as cis women.

KEYWORDS:

• Transgender
• trans woman
• intersectional
• intransitive/transitive
• concrete universal/concrete singular
• mind/body

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jason Summersell actively advocated for the rights of LGBTQI in Zimbabwe in the early 1990s. He edited the anthology ‘Sahwira: Being Gay and Lesbian in Zimbabwe’ and his interviews with members of the lesbian community were included in the volume ‘Unspoken Facts’ by Marc Epprecht. He has served as the secretary of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ). For several years, he volunteered as a GALZ peer counsellor, during which time one of his roles was co-ordinator of their transgender drop in centre.

Notes

1 I am transgender, queer and, by some classifications, mildy intersex. Whilst I am not a trans woman, I feel justified to contribute to this discussion because we are all universal, ontological human beings, for whom it is true that no-one is free or can flourish until everyone is free and can flourish (Bhaskar 2002, 142). This means that my motivation to support trans women, whilst based on my desire to see them flourish, is also for the sake of my own wellbeing – not least because I literally suffer when I see them suffer, but also because the mechanisms of oppression that harm them, are the same mechanisms that harm me. Unlike many feminists and social activists who think that the only people who can speak out for oppressed people are the oppressed people themselves – I think that everyone has a responsibility to speak out against abusive situations. To stay quiet when others are abused, is to be complicit in their abuse. I understand why some activists maintain that only the abused must speak for themselves: it is because they have moved from a true premise (that abused people have been, and are, silenced and not given a voice); to a false conclusion (that therefore only the abused must speak for themselves).

2 Rather than defining the intransitive dimension as ontological and the transitive dimension as epistemological, we should define these terms in the same way that we define them in grammatical contexts. An intransitive verb, unlike a transitive verb, does not have a direct object receiving the action. For example, we can say ‘she arrived’ and this makes sense, but we cannot say ‘she opened’ – as the statement begs the question ‘opened what?’. As such, the subject of an intransitive verb is not in relationship with anything else. Similarly, in critical realism, the intransitive dimension of reality is what ‘is’ when ‘it’ not in relationship with a knower. However, the transitive dimension is what ‘is’ when ‘it’ is in relationship with the knower. It is this transitive connectedness, which implies totality, that closes the epistemological circle and explains why reality is potentially intelligible to us (Bhaskar 1993, 273).

3 As New (2001) explains, men also suffer from sexism, but differently from the way that women suffer, whilst also benefitting from sexism.