Women born what?

OK, this is getting more absurd all the time. On Wednesday, trans activist Jamie Lee Hamilton attempted to get a prescription filled at Lu's: A Pharmacy for Women. She was refused service. Caryn Duncan, executive director of the Vancouver Women's Health Collective, which operates the pharmacy and sets its policy, keeps digging the hole deeper. She continues to spout the "women born women" line, although apparently she has now mixed this with "women born female." She keeps saying that Lu's and the WHC are providing services to "women," even though she leaves many women out of her definition.

Let's try to cut through the ridiculous rhetoric. No one is born a woman. There are no women born women, nor even womyn born womyn. When we're born, we're babies, as was noted by one of the Feminija activists who protested Lu's policy in a rally last Sunday. Most of us are sexed male or female, depending on how our genitals look to the obstetrician, or midwife, I suppose. The decision might be even more arbitrary, and possibly temporary, for intersex people with ambiguous genitalia.

Rather than the physiologically impossible "women born women," it would be much more accurate to use the phrase I use, women born female-bodied. In general, female-bodied children are reared as girls. But even Duncan should know, even if she denies it, that there are women born male-bodied, as well as women born indeterminately-sexed.

The female-bodied become women during puberty and during a long process of socialization and education. The male-bodied whose brains are female (to put it a bit simplistically) and the indeterminately-sexed with female brains usually become women later in life, sometimes much later. It is a difficult path, and those who walk it go through a similar process to girls going through puberty, but usually without the support of the surrounding society and often in the face of its hostility. In the end, we are all women. We just got here by different paths. I never had the experience of growing up a girl, but among girls, such experience varies widely. Girls are hardly all alike. My own experience growing up a sissy, an outcast, and a pretty boy gave me my own baggage to deal with, not necessarily that different than if I'd grown up a girl.

Duncan speaks about Lu's and the WHC focusing on reproductive health. By that logic, they should be refusing service to any woman without a uterus or even who has never given birth. Trans women who are post-op have genitalia similar to those of women with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, who were "born women." How can Lu's feel it cannot serve our needs? Even if I were inclined to give the WHC the benefit of the doubt, Duncan's statement that Lu's will serve trans men shows their true colours. It's called transphobia, plain and simple. By their policy, they are saying that trans women are not women but that trans men are, thus insulting all trans people in one fell swoop.

If the policy weren't so hurtful, it would be laughable. And Duncan has the nerve to say that she feels personally intimidated by pressure from activists. Too damn bad. We're supposed to be nice to bigots because their feelings might get hurt?

There has been an update to the story that seems hopeful at least. On Thursday, Hamilton, Raigen D'Angelo, and Sadie Kuehn met for two hours with representatives of Lu's pharmacy. and all participants agreed to another meeting. At this point, Hamilton will not file a complaint with the College of Pharmacists of British Columbia. Talking is good. I just hope it leads to some enlightenment.

(Thanks to The Georgia Straight for continuing to follow this story.)