The Jenner-Cox Shift And Its Consequences

A Suggested Revision to Repeal the Common Era's Post

I have been toying with the idea of re-starting my substack, but also very hesitant to do so for any number of reasons. But when my comment on this long and fascinating post by Repeal the Common Era (hereafter RCE) on their eponymous substack grew to over a thousand words—and, more importantly, made a point that I really thought ought to be added to the conversation in some more accessible way—I decided to restart it at least long enough to post this.

So yes, this is a reply to this post:

The Jenner Shift And Its Consequences

—And it will make more sense if you read that first.

It’s a great essay, which isn’t to say I agree with all of it.¹ There's a lot both to agree with and to disagree with. But in this comment essay I am going to focus on one particular point that is, I think, aligned with RCE’s point, but is an amendment to it, one which, I think, doesn’t detract from RCE’s overall point (it is, in parliamentary terms, a friendly amendment), but which is, I think, still a substantial alteration to it.

Oh, and just to establish my point of view (since that is all the rage in these standpoint epistemology-ridden days): I would call myself, politically, moderate pro-trans, one who finds some truth both in trans activist and gender critical writings; I believe Blanchard is on to something and that his categories apply to some cases, but am uncertain whether they apply to all or only a subset of trans women; I am an autogynehpile, which is to say I have what Julia Serano would call “female embodiment fantasies” as a core part of my sexual thinking, but I am not a trans women, since I think of “transition” as something you do, not something you are, and I haven’t done it and don’t plan to; and Yorick I. N. Penn is, of course, a Penn name, not the name I use in my Teller life, about which I will (nominatively determinatively) remain silent. If I end up restarting this substack for real, I’ll expound on this, but that will do for now.

On to the main matter.

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I think the Jenner shift had a second component which was equally important as Caitlyn Jenner, such that I would suggest renaming the Jenner shift as the Jenner-Cox shift. This is not only because it was Laverne Cox who was on the cover of Time with the "transgender tipping point" headline (perhaps the last moment where Time magazine was truly influential in the way it routinely was in the 20th century). But because of a very key moment: the moment when Laverne Cox (along with Carmen Carrera) went on Katie Couric's show and called out Couric for asking them if they'd had what today we'd call gender reassignment surgery (which at the time, I think, was still referred to as sex change surgery). Cox said, basically, it was no one's business what was in anyone else's pants and she was rude to ask. I think that (and the fall-out from it) established a new standard of etiquette which might have been extant in trans circles before, but which then penetrated to the blue tribe in the U.S. more broadly.

Laverne Cox (center) and Carmen Carrera on Katie Couric's show in January, 2014.

But this simple intervention carried a lot more cultural baggage, and had a lot more cultural weight, then just a change of etiquette.

Prior to the Jenner-Cox shift, a key part of the public's notion of transsexuality was that it *culminated* in a sex change: that "bottom surgery" was the sex change (and, for those who thought so (which wasn't everyone, although it was considered impolite to talk about it if you didn't think so), actually enough to change sex). And transsexuality was seen as teleological: it had other steps (hormones, cross-dressing, living as the alternate sex for a period of time, etc), but that was what finished it. Perhaps some trans women didn't get there for health reasons, but they all wanted to; that was what it meant to be transsexual.

After the Jenner-Cox shift, the "gender reassignment surgery", or "bottom surgery" (as it was then renamed), was no longer the goal. It became one of the things one might do to align one's apparent sex with one's gender identity, but no more or less important than facial feminization surgery. And some trans women never wanted it at all, and that was completely valid too. This was a key part of the Jenner-Cox shift: reconceptualizing what trans was (and in the process going from 'transsexual' to 'transgender' as the expansion of that term).

Further, it was key in opening up the narrow and exclusive category of transsexual into the broader, reconceptualized category of transgender. After all, bottom surgery (or whatever you want to call it) is a big deal. Not something done lightly. Not something everyone can do. So the idea that that was the terminus of transition served a gatekeeping function: it kept people out unless they were really serious (or at least willing to dodge questions about why they weren't).

It also made the issue of "trans women in women's spaces" far more pressing: if you have bottom surgery, you are much more likely to pass (in the obvious way) and less likely to rape (in the obvious way), so that your presence in women's spaces was less threatening (and those who hadn't got there yet were sort of swept up in the "on the way' umbrella); but if you don't have it and never plan to, then you are (from the point of view of the gender critical) just a penis in the women's room and a threat.

It allowed self-identification to be a goal: if what it *meant* to be trans was to get surgery, then *obviously* surgeons would have to be involved, and you could also postpone full inclusion for "pre-op" (remember when that was *the* standard term for trans women without bottom surgery? The teleology is in the very name!), since they would presumably get to it when they could afford to/get the medical clearance/whatever. But if it was just one possible choice, then why involve doctors? The key moment became the moment when you *said* you were trans.

It made what many people saw as the assault on their ordinary ideas of sex much more threatening and stark. A transsexual who had had bottom surgery might not make large gametes, but for heaven's sake she has a vagina, right, and she looks like a woman, and there aren't that many of them anyway. But once that becomes optional, then people are saying that people with penises—not temporarily, until they get around to dealing with them, but permanently and without any intention of changing that fact—were women! It became much more in your face, not only in terms of women's spaces, but in terms of the way people categorized the world.

This was particularly true once the idea we couldn't ask became normalized. Prior to the Jenner-Cox shift, I suspect most people, when asked what a man or woman was, would have said a person with a penis or a vagina, respectively; and that transsexuals, at least post-op transsexuals, were close enough to the latter not to bother with. After bottom surgery was no longer a criteria—after you couldn't even ask about it, for chirssakes—then obviously what a man and woman was was being redefined substantially (and questions like “what is a woman?”, which granted are often asked as a gotcha not a sincere question, became actually inescapable, howevermuch trans activists wished it wasn’t). After all, what Cox’s claim to Couric—”you don’t ask what’s in a stranger’s pants for anyone else”—fails to recognize is that before the Jenner-Cox shift no one needed to. Men had penises; women had vaginas; as soon as you know a person’s name or pronouns or saw how they were dressed you knew what was between their legs. (The few cases of pre-op transsexuals, again, were easy to gloss over since they were presumably headed somewhere they hadn’t arrived yet (being “pre”)). Couric asked because Cox and Carrera might have literally been the first people she’d ever spoken with for whom she hadn’t known what was between their legs!

It made accusations of trans people just being perverts seem more credible—since if trans women were literally *getting rid of their penises*, then it was hard to sell people on the idea that they were doing it for sexual kicks (what were they going to do, beat off their imaginary dicks?), whereas if they were still intact and always planning to remain so, the idea of them as just perverts wanting to spy on/be seen as/rape women gained, among a lot of people, a certain credibility.

In sum, it made the issue of what-is-in-your-pants unimportant—you couldn't even ask about it! But for most people—including most trans people!—being a man or a woman was anything but unimportant. Which meant things had been redefined.

So I think what RCE calls the “Jenner shift” was, in fact, the “Jenner-Cox shift”. (I also would date it as not 2015, but as a process that occurred over, roughly, Obama’s second term: not yet begun by his reelection but definitely completed by Trump’s first election, and hard to pin down more narrowly than that.) And not just because Laverne Cox also played a key role. But because she symbolized, and effected, a change in manners, which was simultaneously a change in (claimed) ontology, and which changed both who counted as trans and what it meant, and changed the world forever.

I don’t know if I am going to actually restart my substack or if this is a one-off, but if you liked this essay and want me to write more, go ahead and click that button and it will make it more likely that I will (and you’ll be notified when I do!)

1. Obviously it’s an essay not a scholarly tome, so there are a lot of simplifications that I wouldn't make (particularly since, under my Teller name, I have a Ph.D. in a somewhat-relevant field), so in addition to everything else, I want to add caveats all over the place.