And this is the diagram I'll mostly be talking about. (Image from femonade.)
As usual, this is aimed primarily at people around middle age who have heard of trans issues but don't know a lot about them and don't have the time to bite deep into research & discourse. There will also be a good deal less cussing today. Maybe not any! As a final caveat, I'll be supplying some examples from my personal life, adding to the pile of reasons I keep a crowbar separation between this blog and my professional life. Let's get started!
First, I'll be summarizing the above-linked femonade essay; second, I'll provide a common language explanation of the Cotton Ceiling, accompanied by examples of what it is and also what it is not, and close for the day. Next time, I'll get to critiquing femonade, and finally I'll put it all together in a big ol' Not So Different (of the cross-cultural variety, not the hero/villain variety).
Summarizing Femonade
FactCheckMe (FCM) opens her essay with an email conversation about the Cotton Ceiling which is as meandering as it is misleading, insofar as both parties clearly have an agenda. They both dance around plain language in order that they don't give up the game, rather than using plain language because, let's be honest, it's hard to have a good-faith conversation when both sides think they're "just doing what's right" and the other is "out to get them." So if that (or something like it) is your first exposure to the Cotton Ceiling, then I absolutely understand your confusion.
FCM then frames her discussion in terms of birth control and pregnancy in order to bring clarity to the discussion, and I would say helpfully so, before presenting the diagram embedded above. She then notes a few salient features of said diagram, asks a few poignant questions, and then declares them unanswerable before pronouncing victory by reducing the opposing viewpoint to absurdity.
I'll get into the critique later, but I want to say up front that this is a well-structured essay: FCM makes a charitable effort to meet trans women halfway, raises pertinent questions, and forms a coherent argument. It doesn't work, but it's helpful to the dialogue because it makes empirical claims and proceeds by starting from the opposition's viewpoint and trying to reconcile it with her own. Failing to do so, she then claims that the opposing viewpoint is absurd, which is a solid Intro to Logic move. It just so happens that her essay is also shot through with misconceptions and missteps that fatally flaw her argument.
The Cotton Ceiling, For Realsies -
and Why It's Discriminatory
FCM's "redacted trans" starts out with her definition well enough, referring to Drew DeVeaux and briefly describing the phenomenon. I explained in Transphobia Busting #2 that the Cotton Ceiling is not about getting into cis women's panties, it's about us trans women being discriminated against because of assumptions about what's in our panties. But thinking it's the former is an easy mistake to make!
The Cotton Ceiling, a bit less briefly, refers to when trans women are romantically discriminated against just for being trans, in a way that overrides or erases every other detail about us that could matter in a romantic context. The Cotton Ceiling is at work when someone's whole entire reason for not dating someone is their transness - when transness is an instant deal-breaker in someone's mind. The Cotton Ceiling is discrimination because it rests on the transphobic idea that trans people are inherently and indelibly undateable because of our transness; this in turn rests on the transphobic idea that trans bodies are less valid and valuable than cis bodies.
If you find yourself scratching your head and saying, "Wait, but trans bodies just aren't as valid or valuable as cis bodies," then you've somehow gotten a transphobic idea stuck in your head. The claim that trans bodies are less valid and valuable than cis bodies is not a discoverable fact, it is a chosen value - you just might not remember ever choosing it for yourself. It's been driven into the public mind every time a piece of media treats a trans person as a novelty and little else, every time a TV show uses a man in a dress as a sight gag accompanied by the laugh track, every time a movie depicts a woman's past as a "man" as damaging to her womanhood, every time Aerosmith's Dude (Looks Like a Lady) is the soundtrack for a joke that treats transness as inherently silly. What is "valid" is a matter of social convention, and what is "valuable" is a matter of personal choice; but popular English-language media in the last seventy years or so has skewed the representation of trans people (when we're even represented at all) to such an extent that a lot of people take that deliberate representation as "default" and don't bother to question it.
To then let that unquestioned media representation form your baseline for how trans people "ought" to be treated is, therefore, letting transphobia win without a fight. To fight back, you don't have to date a trans person - all you have to do is not let transness be a dealbreaker. There are all kinds of things that can - and usually should - be dealbreakers when deciding to date someone: creepiness, lack of physical attraction, social ineptitude, irresponsibility, incompatible personality, clashing personal habits, the list goes on and on. You don't have to bring transness into it, because transness isn't a bad thing.
I'm wary of making comparisons between trans folks and any other marginalized group, because I'm white and I've seen a lot of white trans folks get "how dare you'ed" when they try it. I'm not interested in competing at the Oppression Olympics, I know that transness is incommensurable with any other marginalized status (all of which are incommensurable with each other). So I'll leave the comparisons as an (optional) exercise for the reader, and simply say this: if something is bad to say to any other marginalized group, then how is it magically OK to say something of the same form when trans people are the target? The idea that other groups don't deserve hatred, but trans people do, is clearly and obviously bigotry when you spell it out as such. To then say that trans people can't compare our "discrimination" to the Real And True Discrimination experienced by other groups - to demonize us for trying to "cash in" on others' struggles as though ours are imaginary - is to both erase our marginalization and blame us for trying to defend ourselves at one stroke. It's textbook oppression.
The Cotton Ceiling, For Realsies -
Some Illustrative Examples
Now that I've explained what the Cotton Ceiling is, I want to spend a few words on what it is not, lest you worry I paint with too broad a brush. Quite simply, the Cotton Ceiling is not at work any time a trans person is shot down for any reason besides their transness. I wish I could tell you that us trans folks are all shining unicorns who all know how to take No for an answer, but... well, the sad reality is that we're lowly humans like the rest of you, and we're just as capable of being scumbags as anyone. But if a trans person ever accuses you of transphobia when really they were just being a jerk to the waiter or had, like, really really bad teeth or whatever - please, allow me to be the first to tell you they were wrong to say that.
Turning down one single trans person is not always transphobic. It's only transphobic when you rule out all trans people as a category, when you think trans people are uniquely and universally undateable. Even if you never actually date a trans person, you're not necessarily transphobic as long as you're open to the idea that there might be a trans person who you'd want to date. They might have to be real special, sure; but like, you're special, and anyone would have to be real special to date you. Amirite?
More specifically, if you're on a date with a trans person and find out what's in their pants (whether verbally or firsthand), and you then decide to break it off, that's not transphobic either. Rejection is a bitter pill, and I've been on the receiving end of both men and women who cuss me out & around the block for turning them down (but I've dated more women than men, so women are kinda overrepresented in my sample). Point is, yelling at people for rejecting you is bad, and absolutely anyone might do it, and they're always a jerk for doing so. If you find out a trans person has "a part you don't like," then that's no worse than turning down a cis person with the same part - and if you find out a trans person has "a part you like, but not one you like specifically," then that's no worse than turning down a cis person for the same reason. I've been face to face (so to speak) with quite a few genitals, and some are downright pleasant while others... are not so much. Trans people have the same variation. In that way, we're like everyone else.
The problem, in all these cases, is making assumptions about trans people, just because they're trans people. Making assumptions about anyone, because of this or that group they happen to belong to, is always problematic. Reality is complicated, and the things we think go together, don't always go together. But if you're making your decision on an individual basis, based on that individual's observed characteristics, and it's not their transness alone that's driving your rejection, then you're certainly in the clear. And really, that's all that (reasonable) people want when dating - to be treated as individuals and understood for who we are, not assumed to be someone we're not.
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