Statements transphobic idiots make #1: "You should make do with what you're given, if you're REALLY interested in fighting the gender binary."

This particular attack generally comes from people with a view to deconstruct gender, i.e. socially mandate it out of existence. It's not so much an argument against transsexuality as it is against transition (with the implication that such methods can't "work" or have no effect, as if I needed a vagina or breasts to be a woman...)

Your first incorrect assumption here is that I want to fight the gender binary. On the contrary, I suspect that the "gender binary" is very much natural and I know it does not in any way offend my sensibilities. I would say that most everyone I've ever met is either a self-identified man or a self-identified woman, and that is totally cool if it works for them. As for myself, I'm a self-identified woman. No, I've no interest in fighting the gender binary. I've interest in fighting the obligations one is born with toward the gender binary. If you are born male you are obligated to be a man in the binary, while females are obligated to be women. Everyone is obligated to identify as one or the other, at least. The fact that most people DO identify within those fairly narrow ranges is wholly incidental; one should be free to identify anywhere along the masculine-feminine spectrum, or outside of it, if they feel such a label accurately describes them, regardless of birth sex or anything. It isn't acceptable to have as a goal "dismantling the identity of another person"; that is a violation of their rights to self-determination. Liberating people, on the other hand, to freely choose their identities and their expressions of them, is a profoundly noble thing.

Your second incorrect assumption is that for whatever reason transition (usually medical transition) is by nature an appeal to normativity. This often comes from people who honestly believe that being a trans woman who is "feminine" is somehow more "normative" than being a feminine man or a masculine woman, and more importantly, that being "normative" is necessarily bad. First--trust me, I know this--being trans is not suddenly conforming to gendered stereotypes, especially not in a world that stubbornly continues to conflate birth sex and everything else relating to one's gender/presentation. I still catch tons of shit for being a trans woman, and NOBODY, EVER, has said to me "Well at least you transitioned, 'cause if you'd been a feminine man, whoa, that would have been rough." My life is not suddenly simple now that people no longer usually mistake me for a man--I still have to deal with the cultural baggage that comes with my now-perceived womanhood, much of which I would reject wholesale, were that an option, in addition to all the shit shovelled on me for being trans. Second--there's nothing wrong with being typical or "normative". In many ways I am a typical woman--that doesn't mean I suddenly can't be an activist or that I'm suddenly kowtowing to "the Man". Look at it this way--there is no reason whatsoever to be ashamed of being white. Being white is not bad. Being oppressive and wielding your white privilege against people of color is bad. Likewise, I am in many ways a "typical" woman, and I'm fine with that--if I were ranting about how I'm so much better at being a woman than butch lesbians, that would be bad.

Many people back this up with bullshit like "I don't really agree with any cosmetic surgery, though, so I'm not transphobic. You just shouldn't be ashamed of your body, because it's what's inside that counts." I want you to picket the burn victims' unit in your local hospital with signs that say "No skin transplants for burn victims; BE PROUD OF YOUR BODY". Now, I don't think a burn victim ought to be compelled to get skin grafts. But if they want them then they should be available. Skin grafts generally serve no physiological purpose--your skin WORKS, scarred though it may be. Skin grafts are a psychological/social thing done for the comfort of the individual--just like transition. I'm the same person now, mid-transition, as I was before I started, and I will be the same person when I'm "done" (though perhaps happier, when I no longer catch hell over the information on my driver's license). Transition is making me happier, nothing else, because I can finally say I love every part of my body, and it all feels right (or is getting there). You don't have to like it, but here's the thing--to refuse to actually support my right to alter my body as I am comfortable doing is simply giving ammunition to those who WOULD out-and-out stop me. I don't ask that you change the way you FEEL, merely the way you ACT. If you are really committed to personal freedoms you have a duty to BEHAVE in a supportive manner, which includes not saying stupid shit like "Cosmetic surgery is perpetuating a dangerous materialist streak in our culture." Instead realize that people who undergo cosmetic procedures (whether they be surgical or hormonal, in any case) MAY indeed do it to conform to someone else's beauty standards--but some of us do it for ourselves, and in the end--neither you nore anyone else should get a say in what I do with my body.