Chloie Jonsson; Reebok CrossFit; Transgender Rights; Transphobia... and a Partridge in a pear tree

In March 2014, Chloie Jonsson, a transgender personal trainer, filed a $2.5 million suit against Rebox CrossFit because she was barred from competing in the women's division for the upcoming CrossFit games. The company's counsel responded to her application stating that:

“...We have simply ruled that based upon [Jonnson] being born as a male, she will need to compete in the Men’s Division. The fundamental, ineluctable fact is that a male competitor who has a sex reassignment procedure still has a genetic makeup that confers a physical and physiological advantage over women.”

Here, we see that CrossFit's counsel is saying that Jonsson's alleged X and Y chromosomes makes her a man-- no matter the interventions she sought out and went through-- no matter who she is today, she will only be “corrected” by anyone who “really knows” what defines “men and women”. The interesting thing is how we, as human beings, define “man and woman” in many contradictory ways, yet CrossFit tried to choose what they felt was most concrete about being a man in an attempt to marginalize Jonsson. Those with some background in genetics and biology know that there is not just one biological thing that universally defines what it means to be a man or woman or transperson. I am guessing they never head of people with more than two chromosomes, either-- it's termed “Mosaicism” in genetics and I would think that would be something CrossFit would concern themselves with seeing as they are so set on universally determining who is male and female in these competitions. Although the company's counsel goes on to claim that:

“Our decision has nothing to do with ‘ignorance’ or being bigots — it has to do with a very real understanding of the human genome, of fundamental biology, that you are either intentionally ignoring or missed in high school.”

It actually is based on their collective ignorance of transphobia. They said they would “create another category for transpeople if more transpeople started turning out to compete”. What's wrong here? Why is essentializing Chloie's gender at birth overshadowing the complexity of who she is today?

There is a genetic essentiality in the company's reply; here we see them claim to know of a “hidden reality or truth” of sex in the genes. In defining a “man” as “one possessing an X and Y chromosome, they are thus claiming to prevent a genetic male from infiltrating a female space. It is as if they are saying, “We are just letting the world-- and you-- know that you are actually a man.” CrossFit felt that it was revealing Jonsson's “true sex to himself as an immoral, unnatural and confused man."

This seemingly precultural, "natural attitude" about sex pervades CrossFit's counsel; it is as if someone who is born into and maintains a certain sex, is privileged in some way to judge the sex and gender presentation of someone who is not born into either category. This attitude also claims that whatever sex we are born into is fixed as either male of female. Such a binary view of sex and gender fails to take into account the actual complexities of sex and sex determination.

The “natural attitude” mentioned above was campaigned by Harold Garfinkel, a renowned sociologist and ethnomethodologist. In claiming that there is some natural attitude about what bodies should look like and how we learn what “strangeness” looks like when compared to this seemingly inherent sense of “naturalness”. In saying that something is unnatural, a person is claiming that the subject is not real, but fake. The “real men and women” in the counsel at CrossFit denied the narrative of Chloie Jonsson and given her one that they feel to be a better fit. She can never be a “real” woman: only a fake one.  She can only be a man dressed up as a woman, according to CrossFit's counsel. The ironic thing is their ignorance on the difference between a “cross-dresser” and a transwoman, despite their claim to be quite learned on said topic.

In an essay titled, Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion, Dr Talia- Mae Bettcher confronts this supposed heteronormative right to abuse and the sense of “moral indignation toward transpeople”. She, as a transwoman, asks us to search ourselves, in light of a person's right to self-determination, and answer whether we truly can continue to oppress and sexualize transpeople through exposure and identity reinforcement. I mean, think about it-- this “natural attitude” has furthered sexist; transphobic; structurally violent; gender-based oppression against transwomen, and thus furthering the oppression of all women.

Because CrossFit has not been able to see Chloie Jonsson as she really is; they more than likely will serve as an example of what happens when you focus on marginalizing people because they are different. CrossFit's counsel has let its ignorance on transphobia, sexism and transgender people overshadow the basic fact: Chloie Jonsson is just a woman who wants to compete in the CrossFit games. She was a boy who grew up to be a woman-- it happens-- get over it.

They are missing the fact that she is an amazing athlete and trainer who has furthered the CrossFit cult following. They are missing the fact that she is not a man.

Race as a Social Construct

Virgina Racial Integrity Laws

What would you say if someone were to tell you there was no such thing as biological race?  Historically, for most people, such a comment is one that lacks common sense and respect.  Is this not how we know who we are?  Is this not how we define ourselves?  Race, as we collectively understand it, is something rigid and fixed at birth here in the United States.  This rigidity is based on the assumed biologically isolated origin of each “main race” category.

Interestingly, The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines race in several ways:

“…a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock; a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics;  an actually or potentially interbreeding group within a species; also :  a taxonomic category (as a subspecies) representing such a group:  breed:  a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits…”

The point here is the way race is determined to be pure-- and that is by pure breeding.  Recent archaeological studies have made it irrefutably clear that humans have not been subjected to the controlled breeding necessary to classify discrete “races”.   So, in effect, because there are no biologically pure groups of an entire race, there aren’t any direct ways to link certain characteristics to just one group of people—the Human Genome project proved this to be true as well:  Pure race just doesn’t exist.  If we can accept that there is no pure race, then we must accept Merriam-Webster’s social definition of race as being how humans are classified.   In his provoking essay, “The Illogic of American Race Categories”, Paul R. Spickard, PhD, ushers us toward a direction that we often dare not go:  To question head-on how is race defined in the U.S.  He observed that, “In most people's minds ... race is a fundamental organizing principle of human affairs…” so here, Spickard is calling in to question our ability to assert who we are without something as hegemonic as race defined by U.S. law.  I say this because we are not born knowing what race we are; we are not born feeling our “blackness” or “Japaneseness”; we are cultured and assimilated into our respective “races”.   This fact is what makes race a social construct—the notion that we can be divided into such categories is a social construct.  

Thus, race exists and then, it does not—it is an ongoing and contradictory process that we knowingly and unknowingly maintain. 

To further explain; historically speaking, many religious, political, social, and legal institutions have constructed race.  In 2004, I went to see an exhibit at LACMA that featured La Castas (The Castes) paintings.  The Spanish Castas paintings are proof regarding the epistemology of “race” and “racial intermixing”.  At the surface level, they are some of the earliest depictions of racial relations and their families in a colonial society; but what they really spoke to was a European audience regarding the “degenerate hybrids” that resulted and their place in society.  Four main categories were claimed to exist: Espanol, Criollo, Negro and Indio. The sixteen resulting “mixes” (Mulatto, Torna atras…etc) were defined as impure and tiered in morality, ability and nobility based on the type of “racial mixing”.  This system “showed” how Indians could effectively become “white” by mixing with Spanish blood (read: assimilation and termination of their own culture) and how mixing with “blacks” would take them toward racial regression because they were associated with slavery.  Defining race in such a way was critical to “whites” remaining in a position to enforce their social dominance.   The social dominance manifested as law that enforced what was already claimed to be in existence. 

Here in the United States today, the law- writ large- echoes this racialization very closely in how it defines race.  The way race is socially (read:  legally) constructed in America is synonymous with the term “boundary”.  The judges, lawyers, legislators, police officers and other officials all act to construct race.  They create, enforce and maintain policy that shapes physical appearances; that disenfranchises and impoverishes "nonwhites".  By legally constructing “race” and racialization; The United States has a direct way to maintain racial scaffolding and prevent us from seeing this and facing it head on. 

However, not all racial ideologies are destructive—there are those ideologies formed in response to the racial status quo.  Asian-Americans, African-Americans all are sociopolitical ethnic groups formed in response to a common shared experience and this can foster a sense of trust and support—a movement that fights for social justice within their communities.  

Virginia Racial Integrity Act 
Edith Wilson and the Pocahontas Clause 
A Summary: The History of Eugenics 
NikolaTesla's View on Eugenics 
Virginia Apology for Eugenics 

Tansgender Studies vs. Transgender Phenomena

There are two main differences in the “study of Transgender Phenomena” versus “Transgender Studies”: one of reflexivity and one embodying a politics of resistance.  Transgender Studies is reflexive in that it allows for a singular analysis and understanding of embodied human consciousness.  It places the transperson as a true and essential authority on how “disruptives in normatives of body; gender; and desire can be interwoven” (Stryker, 8).   It is an academic and socio-political response to the discourse and institutions that act upon transpeople.  Trans Studies seeks to explain the soma, or body of knowledge, as a culturally intelligible construct and the techne, or ways of creating knowledge, in regards to identity, embodiment, literature, art, and representation of the trans experience.  In restructuring the paradigm for education regarding trans phenomena, transpeople are now the objects who perform research instead of being the subject on which theory and research are based.  As a result, historical content that was once masked by unethical scholarship is now being revealed and utilized in the construction of spaces and dialogue which address the socio-political irresponsibility of poor research and its implications.

The second way in which Transgender Studies differs from the Study of Transgender Phenomena is that of embodying an explicit politics of resistance to oppression of transpeople.  In this explicit politics, axes of differences in self-expression of identity are explored instead of accepting binary, rigid and unnatural choice systems.  Historically, the study of Transgender Phenomena has been deceitfully hidden behind self-assumed privilege and erudition which seeks to marginalize, regulate and dehumanize the transperson in political, social and medical policies as well as dialogue.  This, according to Stryker by-way- of Foccault, is the “insurrection of subjugated knowledges” (Stryker, 12) in that transpeople, as well as non-trans people, are revealing and constructing non-pathologized historic and progressive accounts through ethical scholarship.  Trans Studies centers proper trans scholarship; trans-identified scholars, and the lives of transpeople as the subject of examination.  Such construction of spaces and dialogue does justice to transgender identities, does not reintroduce trauma to the transcommunity writ large and therefore is critical to social advancement thereof.

To further explain, a concrete example of what Trans Studies is not, is necessary.  The text, Transsexual Phenomenon, by Harry Benjamin, M.D, attempts to begin discussing the transperson in a “nonoffensive” manner, but ultimately fails to do so because its grounding ideas are that the transperson’s body and mind are diseased (Benjamin, 6); a site of cross-gender pathology.  Benjamin specifically states that “a transsexual’s problems are intertwined with those of transvestites and homosexuals in that they are caught in the “wrong body”, attracted to the same sex, and enjoy cross-dressing (Benjamin, 9).  Benjamin goes on to insidiously outline his religious, social, medical and political stance on the views and treatment of transpeople.  This text is a summation of his attempts at understanding his interests based on his own “knowledge” and biases: It is as if he picked his views straight out of R. Kipling’s White Man’s Burden.  The common thread throughout each of the chapters in the Transsexual Phenomena is this:  Transsexuals, Transvestites and Homosexuals, as well as other “deviants”, must be classified according to their degree of defiance of “gender tradition and orthodoxy… gender variant deformities… because they are disturbed, doubtful and confused and in the throes of a moral collapse (Benjamin, 9)”.  Here, it is clear that Benjamin has a derogatory viewpoint and a clearly outlined goal of the advancement of non-transpeople in scholarship and other communities.  In his using heteronormative language, pathologized treatment of transpeople, and limited ability to research and interpret the lives of transpeople in ways other than in relation to himself, Benjamin is completely outside the appropriate parameters for writing about “trans___” people.  A not-so-recent publication of helpful guidelines laid out by Jacob C. Hale succinctly state what writing about trans___” should really entail.   The Transexxual Phenomenon is rife with defamatory terms; unchecked sense of privilege; gross misrepresentation of transpeople’s lives.   Benjamin only focused on what supported his theories and not what would support the lives of his patients; and a general lack of focus on what “trans___” was telling him about himself as a person. 

Such arrogant perception, as illustrated by Maria Lugones in her text World-traveling and Loving Perception, is the concept of perceiving others are for oneself and to proceed to arrogate their substance to oneself (Lugones, 78); or in Benjamin’s case, the failure of being able to view transpeople outside of his own hegemonic "white-male- patriarchal- capitalist-heteronormative-Judaeo-Christian" lens.   Lugones points out how we as a society continually learn and teach others to perceive others arrogantly as if they have no say in how those in power seek to mold their lives by failing to recognize how they self-identify (Lugones, 78).  To only view someone as an extension of oneself is to relegate a person to a one-dimensional existence:  the view of “me and how I view things based on my life” and thereby deny the possibility of a multi-dimensional personhood for anyone but oneself.  Take for example, how Benjamin’s text supports yet another problematic issue for transpeople:  The Wrong Body Model, in all its binary glory.  In the essay Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Rethinking Trans Oppression and Resistance by Talia Bettcher, Ph.D, she presents the wrong-body outline as having two versions.  “In the weak version, one is born with the medical condition of transsexuality and then, through genital reconstruction surgery, becomes a woman or a man in proper alignment with an innate gender identity.  In the strong version, one’s real sex is determined by gender identity (Bettcher, 383)”.  It is not difficult to see how any such “arrogant perception” used in constructing a model for referring to “trans___” in today’s world, in the presence of a contemporary understanding of gender, is unacceptable. 

Studying the works of self-proclaimed “tran___ism” authors and the like is pivotal to Trans Studies because these works reflect the sentiments of some in positions of power; the ethnomethodology regarding socio-political discourse; and the institutions that act upon transpeople as society members.  Furthermore, studying the works that govern the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association in their treatments of transpeople; as well as seeking to untangle how society has been taught to understand human nature is what lays at the core of forming a viable and proper resistance movement that can positively affect the trans community.

 (If you are interested in the references for this analysis; please email me as the list is lengthy.)