In the last couple of days I’ve watched two documentaries: the first a relatively recent one, “Being Me”, about transgender young people.
I found it powerful and moving, showing the sadness and pain but also the clarity and importance of having support for the journey.
One young person, asked what her life would be like if she was forced to live it as a man, said: “Sad, bleak, and short. Very short.”
A doctor working in the transgender clinic at a children’s hospital talked about the comprehensive assessment process, and the importance of taking young people seriously. She said that the risk of self-harm and suicide [from forcing gender 
conformity] is very high, compared with the risk of later regret [from a change of mind] which is low.
My second viewing experience was “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” (or at least the trailer for it) about feminism in the 1960s.
The question arising for me is about the changes, shifts, and developments in feminism since the 1960s. No doubt volumes could be written on this subject but, for the record and for me, an important aspect is increasing sophistication in seeing dimensions of structural power as intersecting – particularly those of sexuality, gender, and race.
While I was in the process of writing this post, I also came across this article on transmisogyny, about the intersection of sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. In the 1960s, we didn’t even have language for transmisogyny or transphobia. Sexism and homophobia were only just being named.
Feminism of the 1960s was prone to fragmentation around sexuality and race. Perhaps current feminism still is (and rightly so while some continue to feel excluded). But the concept of intersectionality at least provides a way forward. If we can build and reach the vision. Our thinking would, of course, need to encompass trans people who are male, and other aspects of cis-gender and cis-sexual privilege.
Written By Joan Beckwith, PhD
What would feminism (circa 1960) make of a transgender documentary (circa 2014)? was originally published @ 2020 Social Justice and has been syndicated with permission.
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An article of possible interested: “Multiplicity and Victimization: What part of ‘No!’ don’t you understand? Vs. What part of you doesn’t understand ‘No!’?”
” … FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF MULTIPLE PERSONALITY
Who are we? Margo Rivera in an article entitled “Linking the Psychological and the Social: Feminism, Poststructuralism, and Multiple Personality” speaks to this question.
Poststructuralist philosophy points to the similarities between individuals who elaborate multiple personality as an outcome of child abuse and others who, although they do not use the radical dissociative defenses individuals with multiple personality do, also construct their identities in a field of power relations, both personal and political, in multiple and contradictory ways. This perspective can aid us in seeing multiple personality more clearly and consistently, not as a strange and exotic phenomenon, a clinical oddity, but one of the many manifestations of alternative forms of consciousness that are on a continuum of the personal human responses both to our immediate, intimate environment that effects (sic) our growth and development and also to the wider social and historical context which has a no less powerful, although often less obvious, impact on determining who we become as persons.
Integrating psychological understandings of multiple personality with social and political ones is helpful in a number of ways, philosophically, clinically, and practically. That maxim of feminist praxis, the personal is political, can be an effective principle in therapy of individuals with multiple personality (Rivera, 1989, p.29).
Rivera views women as victims more so than men, since many identified people with multiple personalities are women. …”
“… GENDER, DISSOCIATION, AND POWER DIFFERENTIALS
Women are socialized to take their anger out on themselves – witness the incidence of eating disorders, depression problems, violence that women experience, and similar problems. Men are socialized to act on their anger and do so regularly. I will discuss both more later in this article. The point that I am trying to make is that we are all victims of our socialization. It is pointless to look for blame: besides, we do not know which came first – the chicken or the egg (Still, people must be held accountable for their behavior). People are more open to therapeutic intervention when they feel the family therapist is more interested in helping them to become healthier individuals, than in “finger pointing.”
The power differentials that exist in society and the family also exist within us all. A person with multiple personalities is a microcosm in which much can be learned and applied to the rest of us (Rivera, 1989). Dissociation is a normal defense mechanism that we all use. The problem for people with dissociative disorders and multiple personalities is that they have built barriers in between their personalities. The more trauma and greater the severity of the trauma, the greater the number of personalities formed and/or the thicker the dissociative barriers between the “parts” or personalities become. Dissociation can be conceptualized as lying on a continuum from normal to pathological (Braun, 1988). The degree of multiplicity experienced by individuals also lies on a continuum: some of us have experienced small traumas, while others have experienced horrendous traumas. The degree of dysfunction is determined by the amount and quality of the internal communication and the degree in which the different personalities or “parts” of themselves cooperate (Kluft, 1988). Good communication and cooperation are necessary for families or families within to be healthy. “Normal” multiples (“normal” people) have an “executive personality” or “part” of them that evaluates the family within’s different wants, needs, views, and then determines what consistent course of action needs to be taken. A person with true multiple personalities doesn’t have a consistent executive personality because given a particular context, one personality may have more power than another personality in different context. This power differential is dependent upon the context: the situation, the players involved, and so on. This is true in a family (or any group). If family therapy is useful for families, then why not use it to help people with true multiple personalities and, most importantly, why not use it to help “normal” multiples with their families within? …”
2 articles of possible interested:
1 “Multiplicity and Victimization: What part of ‘No!’ don’t you understand? Vs. What part of you doesn’t understand ‘No!’?” see snippets, below:
” … FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF MULTIPLE PERSONALITY
Who are we? Margo Rivera in an article entitled “Linking the Psychological and the Social: Feminism, Poststructuralism, and Multiple Personality” speaks to this question.
Poststructuralist philosophy points to the similarities between individuals who elaborate multiple personality as an outcome of child abuse and others who, although they do not use the radical dissociative defenses individuals with multiple personality do, also construct their identities in a field of power relations, both personal and political, in multiple and contradictory ways. This perspective can aid us in seeing multiple personality more clearly and consistently, not as a strange and exotic phenomenon, a clinical oddity, but one of the many manifestations of alternative forms of consciousness that are on a continuum of the personal human responses both to our immediate, intimate environment that effects (sic) our growth and development and also to the wider social and historical context which has a no less powerful, although often less obvious, impact on determining who we become as persons.
Integrating psychological understandings of multiple personality with social and political ones is helpful in a number of ways, philosophically, clinically, and practically. That maxim of feminist praxis, the personal is political, can be an effective principle in therapy of individuals with multiple personality (Rivera, 1989, p.29).
Rivera views women as victims more so than men, since many identified people with multiple personalities are women. …”
“… GENDER, DISSOCIATION, AND POWER DIFFERENTIALS
Women are socialized to take their anger out on themselves – witness the incidence of eating disorders, depression problems, violence that women experience, and similar problems. Men are socialized to act on their anger and do so regularly. I will discuss both more later in this article. The point that I am trying to make is that we are all victims of our socialization. It is pointless to look for blame: besides, we do not know which came first – the chicken or the egg (Still, people must be held accountable for their behavior). People are more open to therapeutic intervention when they feel the family therapist is more interested in helping them to become healthier individuals, than in “finger pointing.”
The power differentials that exist in society and the family also exist within us all. A person with multiple personalities is a microcosm in which much can be learned and applied to the rest of us (Rivera, 1989). Dissociation is a normal defense mechanism that we all use. The problem for people with dissociative disorders and multiple personalities is that they have built barriers in between their personalities. The more trauma and greater the severity of the trauma, the greater the number of personalities formed and/or the thicker the dissociative barriers between the “parts” or personalities become. Dissociation can be conceptualized as lying on a continuum from normal to pathological (Braun, 1988). The degree of multiplicity experienced by individuals also lies on a continuum: some of us have experienced small traumas, while others have experienced horrendous traumas. The degree of dysfunction is determined by the amount and quality of the internal communication and the degree in which the different personalities or “parts” of themselves cooperate (Kluft, 1988). Good communication and cooperation are necessary for families or families within to be healthy. “Normal” multiples (“normal” people) have an “executive personality” or “part” of them that evaluates the family within’s different wants, needs, views, and then determines what consistent course of action needs to be taken. A person with true multiple personalities doesn’t have a consistent executive personality because given a particular context, one personality may have more power than another personality in different context. This power differential is dependent upon the context: the situation, the players involved, and so on. This is true in a family (or any group). If family therapy is useful for families, then why not use it to help people with true multiple personalities and, most importantly, why not use it to help “normal” multiples with their families within? …”
2 – A Case of Concurrent Multiple Personality Disorder and Transsexualism by Pearl G. Swartz, M. ED. in the Journal of DISSOCIATION (Vol. 1, No. 2; June 1988) https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/1351/Diss_1_2_9_OCR_rev.pdf?sequence=4
Also available, 10 volumes of this journal: DISSOCIATION: https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/1129
Thanks, Patricia D. McClendon, for the article, and additional links, which extend the idea of evolving ideas. Poststructuralist thinking has helped to break down some of the old dichotomies (normal/abnormal, for example) and that seems like progess to me. The 1960s were a very ‘definite’ time (in Australian society at least) but in ways that were probably a very poor fit to many people’s lived realities. Child abuse was commonplace but mostly un-named, and connections with the effects on individuals were not drawn out. Dissociation, and denial, were effectively social realities…Joan Beckwith.