Yes, thank you. I especially liked this bit:
What it does mean is that we think rejecting sex as a way of thinking about ourselves would be a terrible error. And that we urgently want to be able to discuss this, in a respectful way, with those who disagree.
Ironic - and sad. I do see the benefit of safe spaces, even though I vehemently oppose people who want to turn the whole world into one. Perhaps it just means it’s impossible to make a space that’s safe for everyone at once, since some people will inevitably trigger others while talking about their problems.
When I’ve become immersed in these discussions, I’ve wished the following, hopefully for reasons more constructive and contributive than self-aggrandizing and clueless:
a) That feminist women would say to transgender women “Okay, we accept you as women if by ‘women’ we agree that we’re talking about one’s own identity, how one perceives one’s self. We’ve always said that biology isn’t destiny, that one’s way of being in the world should not be determined by one’s organs, one’s biology. We don’t necessarily accept you as female. There should be a word that refers to one’s morphology, and not how one identifies and not how others perceive you. We think we have things in common with other people who lactate, menstruate, ovulate, potentially become pregnant as a consequence of sex with male people, people who develop breasts roughly between 4th grade and 9th grade, people who don’t have the magical revered penis, people whose spoken and singing voice tends to be in the treble clef. There are variances and fluctuations but we could make you a list and tell you that the overwhelming majority of us can tick off a ‘yes’ to everything on this list, right down to XX chromosomes. Please don’t tell us that you are us in every conceivable way. Or that we don’t get to organize as us and ever exclude you for the ways in which you differ”.
b) That transgender activists would say to feminist women “The experience of being born female cisgender girl or woman is not the only experience relevant to understanding patriarchy. Your best leaders and theorists often gave lip service to how patriarchy is destructive to the lives of all people and benefits no one, but you too often act like you’ve got a monopoly on the experience of being oppressed. You, of all people, should welcome those who would be viewed on a body-essentialist basis as being ‘men’ but who say ‘hell no, that isn’t me’. You should want to know about our experiences as people viewed and perceived as boys and men and who wanted no part of it, because it was utterly alienating. You should listen to us as colleagues who have something to contribute. But having said that, yeah, you started it. You questioned the ‘biology is destiny’ thing. We will read feminist theory. We will not ignore what your movement people have said. But seriously, you have to make room for us, either inside or outside of the movement you call you own. You do NOT get to silence us!”
This the part that stood out to me and really expresses how I feel:
Can you explain why it’s so important that women say this to transwomen?
What is left unsaid in your post is what men are expected to do. People like me feel like this discourse is unfairly concentrated on controlling, punishing, and imposing upon the female half of the species, while very little demands are being made of males. It’s almost as if this imbalance fits within a long tradition of treating women as objects which cater to men; radical feminists understand this well because we see this tradition as responsible for our marginalized status and actively push against it.
So ironically, by focusing this only feminist women, you make it harder for women to go there with you. It is men that are killing transwomen and cracking viscous jokes online about them. Feminists largely are not.
It still has not been explained why it’s insufficient for a transwoman to be seen as a transwoman. What this implies is that there is something wrong with being a male who identifies as a woman, and that “woman” is a better thing to be. But objectively speaking, It’s not a better thing to be; in my eyes, it’s simply it’s a different thing to be. It’s a difference worth respecting with the language we use.
To whatever extent there are commonalities between them, I don’t see why this necessitates calling transwomen “women”.
So this is what Is being screeched at women already, and we see how well that is going.
Let me make sure I understand this. You want women to meekly give the word “woman” over to males who identify as women. In exchange for that largess, you wish to see transwomen give women an unsolicited lecture on patriarchy and feminism that is completely centered on males males males, blame women for “starting it” (as if women are all Judith Butler clones…before or not, women are not a homogenous hive-minded entity called “we”), and then demand that they be centered in women’s movements.
@AHunter3, all I’m seeing is mansplaining rubbish in what you just posted. I’m glad you posted it though. If this is how transwomen as a whole see things, it’s no wonder we are in a culture war. Women are in a fight against the very essence of male entitlement.
FEMINIST women. FEMINIST women.
You’re right that I didnt’ say what feminist men should say. The next time I’m in an auditorium filled to the brim with feminist men, I’ll give serious consideration to what I would want to say to them.
Okay, so your focus is on what feminist women should say. Okay.
…but yeah, I’m neither a feminist woman nor a transgender woman, so admittedly whatever I think either group should be saying to each other isn’t particularly cogent. To you, or perhaps to anybody.
Very interesting interview with Dr Alexander Korte about the great increase in adolescent dysphoria patients and what could be behind it:
Your viewpoint is very relevant, though. If you are sympathetic to the trans movement, then you are speaking as an ally. And as an ally, you have just kind of sorta expressed the opinion that feminist women don’t understand feminism as well as a subset of males do. You seem to believe feminists are not only wrong in their beliefs about the importance of material reality but that there is also hypocrisy involved somehow. These opinions are too meaty for me to ignore or discount as irrelevant in this discussion. It explains a lot of the antagonism.
I’m all about shining a light on your opinion. Let’s dissect it and contemplate it’s implications. It should be given a fair hearing. Because at least it’s honest. I can deal with an honest opinion, even if it’s one I strenuously disagree with.
Update on Barbie Kardashian. She is now in the women’s section of Limerick prison (capacity 28 beds). AFAIK that makes her the second self-proclaimed transwomen living there; the other one is in jail on ten counts of sexual assault and one count of cruelty against a child. (The majority of women in prison are serving short sentences for less serious offences.) Neither have had any hormone therapy or surgery and it’s doubtful whether Barbie Kardashian is really trans. But there’s no problems with self-id…
It’s particularly sad because Ireland has such a shitty track record in treatment of women: the Magdalen laundries, the symphysiotomy scandal, the cervical smear scandal, and of course the women denied abortions, a few even left to die as a result. Now that Ireland has become much more liberal and things are supposed to be changing, women’s rights still come last.
I think much of the confusion lies in this statement.
The whole reason so many feminists are calling themselves “Gender critical” is this. The point of gender criticality is to examine the problems people are facing with this sort of thing. When a man or boy says “I want no part of this” in regards to their gender, what they are usually talking about is that they reject masculinity, not maleness. It’s a rejection of gender, not sex. (Some men/boys legitimately have dysphoria regarding their physical form, but that’s not the usual thing.)
In that regard, the man rejecting masculinity is absolutely aligned with second wave feminism and gender criticality. That IS gender criticality, actually. Feminism is about rejecting the constraints of gender. “Gender” as we currently use the term is a social construct, sets of stereotypes and social roles that we assign to people according to their sex. Feminists said “no, we should not do this. As a woman, I should not be constrained by the expectations of gender roles and gender stereotypes.” The logical extension of that is that men should not be constrained by those gender roles and stereotypes, either - in fact, it is necessary for feminism to succeed for women that at some point the same process also succeeds for men.
But at no point did feminists ever say “I should not be considered a woman.” It was never the point to deny that women have vaginas and ovaries; the point was that having vaginas and ovaries should not dictate how you dressed, or what jobs you were allowed to do, or whether you should be permitted to get a bank loan without your spouse’s permission. Feminists never said they weren’t WOMEN. They just opposed stereotyping, alienation, and discrimination, and observed, entirely correctly, that while this affects men and women, it affects women more. Because they’re women.
This new thing - and it really is new, this has happened just in the last 5-10 years - of saying that women are not women and men are not men - I mean, what the hell is the point of this? When @ahunter3 says he does not want to be restricted by stereotypes of what men are expected be and do, I think any intelligent person has to applaud that. It is in the direction of liberty and decency to support breaking free of the chains of gender. But what is the point of then pretending that we are not sexed?
In fact, doesn’t that defeat the purpose?
When I state I am a man, what am I saying? Let’s get back to definitions. On one hand, I am a man in the primary sense of that definition: an adult male. I’m a man because of my chromosomes and how they caused me to physically develop. But the word “man” is also loaded with gender connotations. Even without looking at a dictionary I can think of 9 noun meanings for “man”:
Isn’t kind of the problem that we’ve allowed definitions 2-9 to pollute the discussion? Especially #2 and #4. Why does a man have to be masculine? Isn’t that stupid? Especially when the definitions of masculine change over time anyway; hair length, for instance, where men can have long hair, and then it goes totally out of fashion, and then it’s back, back and forth. Wasn’t it stupid for men to essentially not be allowed to wear their hair long in the 1950s when 20-30 years later it was fine?
What the gender critical feminist is saying is that conflating the primary definition with stereotypes is dangerous. It’s what restricts human liberty and makes people’s lives worse. The gender critical feminist says “Some people are female and some are male. Your body is what determines that. That’s all there is to it, and it should not determine how you live your life in any way that isn’t immediately relevant to that physical reality.” Isn’t that progressive? I certainly think so.
But now people are saying sex isn’t a real thing, I guess. It’s… I mean, it’s nuts. I really don’t get the point of redefining “man” and “woman” to meaninglessness, which is absolutely, unquestionably what “a woman is anyone who identified as a woman” is. It’s nonsense, and there’s no getting around that.
Every social ill we have regarding sex and gender is solved if we simply accept the reality of sex and reject the limitations of gender.
What TRAs want to to is reject the existence of sex and accept gender stereotypes as reality. It’s utterly bananas, and the most regressive idea to come down the pike in a long time.
If that logic works then by the same logic since I am sympathetic to the feminist movement (which I am; I identify as a feminist or, if you are among those who consider that male people cannot identify as feminists, as a nomenclaturally problematic participant in the struggle against patriarchal oppression, and I was a women’s studies major in college)…since I am sympathetic to the feminist movement I should be considered an ally of feminists also.
And I’m not pleased with the rhetoric on either side.
Totally, and I agree with the rest of what you’re saying here.
Communication is strategic, especially political communication. I am trying to establish a beachhead of sorts, a shared concept of maleness that doesn’t embrace masculinity, an identity that currently does not exist (or get articulated clearly enough for young people to glom onto it easily), and when one is trying to explain a concept it helps to begin wtih concepts they are already familiar with.
The two that are closest are feminism and gender-variant LGBTQIA. Of the two you’d think I’d find an easier home within feminist discourse.
Can you explain how this solves the problem of widespread brutality, oppression, discrimination, dehumanization, etc., of trans people? Or of women, for that matter?
(Interesting how women are kind of an afterthought there.)
Why are women the world’s largest oppressed group? Sex discrimination. Gender stereotypes.
Why are trans people subjected to discrimination? Because of gender stereotypes.
Why are they brutalized more than people who abide by gender stereotypes? Because of gender stereotypes.
Why are they so often in situations of vulnerability? Gender stereotyping.
If you didn’t have gender stereotyping, then if a man - by which I mean, you know, a male human being - wanted to be called Julie and wanted to wear a skirt and makeup, others wouldn’t have a problem with that.
They’re not an afterthought at all, but I’m happy to explore this if you’re being serious here rather than making an offhand swipe or something.
I don’t really have a problem with any of this, and aside from some of the language choices, doesn’t appear to disagree with any of my points in the thread. Gender stereotypes are certainly bad, as is sex (and gender) discrimination. I do think acceptance of the existence of trans people (among many other points of progress) is necessary to get past these negative things.
Everyone accepts they exist. No one is saying these people are figments of anyone’s imagination. Whether a man can become a woman is a matter of debate and definition, but can we get past this myth that anyone’s saying they don’t exist? That is not the issue.
Trans hatred and trans denial absolutely exist. No, I won’t pretend that these things are not very widespread in our society.
It seems like really there are two different things here: acceptance of transgender people and acceptance that transgender people are the gender they identify as. They can be treated independently. Acceptance of transgender people is not conditional on acceptance of them as equivalent to the gender they identify with. Society in general is very bad at acceptance of any kind of non-conformity anyway. For example, if I showed up to work in lederhosen, I would likely get teased by my co-workers. And things like bullying, racism, sexism, etc. have been pervasive in society since societies were created. Transwomen do not need to be accepted as women in order to be treated with respect. Trans hatred and trans denial can be addressed without having to accept that TWAW. It really seems to me that transgender people are a unique gender rather than equivalent to traditional men or women.