Thursday, March 24, 2011

Time for something infammatory?

I'm thinking about going to Michigan.  Thus a post about gender and sex yet again.  A recent note, about transphobia and being female-assigned-at-birth (FAAB) made me think, and I guess that I'm onto that thought process again.

So, there are necessary spaces for transwomen to be together, and to share their unique experiences. Then there are women/womyn/womon's spaces in which ALL womyn-identified people should be welcome.  Then there are women and trans events, which honour the FAAB history of many members of the community, while specifically excluding MAAB-still-male-identifying people.  I think it's important to include those folks who ID as genderqueer, and, frankly, those are often my partners, so it matters to me, but I know others who feel strongly that that's not right either.

For me, in that list, the space that's missing, though, is a FAAB-still-female-identifying space.  I'm not saying that's "women's space", but there's a unique experience to be found in having grown up as female, and having lived my life as female, and sometimes I want to share time with others who have chosen that same path. 

It's not "the right path".  It doesn't make me a "real woman".  It's more like I might like to spend time in the company of other femmes, or geeks, or other abuse survivors, or other Estonians, or anything else that makes up a part of who I am.