It seems a long time ago now, but last summer there was another angry debate within feminism relating to the topic of trans women within the movement. A conference was booked for Conway Hall in London called Radfem2012, and the event was restricted to “women born women and living as women” and which was to include the notoriously anti-trans radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys. After a furious row, the venue agreed that the conditions breached their own Equality policies and cancelled the booking.
I was reminded of this when reading the most fascinating and profound comment on the Moore/Burchill saga I’ve seen yet, by Rupert Read on the Talking Philosophy blog. Read is the only writer I’ve seen this week (of course I may have missed some) to discuss the theoretical issues between some schools of feminism and trans women. I don’t agree with a lot of it, but that is by the by. What came out of his blog is that there are genuine (though arguable) reasons why some feminists might be reluctant to fully accept trans women, especially when it comes to women-only spaces and events.
I’m not going to get into that theoretical debate – it is not really my fight. But I am interested in one particular difference between the row over Radfem2012 and this week’s events. The former was about a practical, real world issue of access and participation – who was and was not permitted to attend a conference and why? This week has been different. While it brought up all sorts of related issues, such as violence against trans people and social persecution, at heart the debate has been intangible, almost esoteric. It ultimately comes down to one specific question – who chooses and controls the language with which we talk to and about trans people? The argument wasn’t about freedom to occupy women-only spaces. It wasn’t about whether trans women were being allowed to identify as women. It certainly wasn’t about whether they were allowed to identify as feminists. The only real argument was about the assumed right of Moore and Burchill to use words and language that was considered offensive by trans people and their allies.
Moore believed/believes she has the right to choose whichever terms and words she likes to refer to trans people, and to place them in a broader narrative as a stereotype or a punchline. She was told, initially politely and then less so, that her language was considered offensive and oppressive by trans people. Her response to that was to up the ante, to become more offensive and oppressive in her choice of words to make her point.
Burchill picked it up from there and went nuclear.
The impression I get is that Moore and Burchill, by virtue of being cisgendered women and feminists, considered that they have control over the narrative used to talk about trans people. This is where points about privilege become crucial to the debate. Who gets to control the language?
My own belief is that yes, women have the right to discuss, debate and decide who is a woman – is it down to biology, psychology, identity or some combination? Feminists must have the right to discuss and debate the place of trans women within their movement (and of course there is an obvious paradox there, whether the debate includes trans women to begin with.) But I also think trans people have the right to assert what language is acceptable or offensive to describe their experience and existence.
Just as women are perfectly entitled to say they don’t want to be called ladies, girls or bitches, trans people are perfectly entitled to say that they don’t want to be called transsexuals, trannies or dicks in chicks’ clothing. Someone who ignores that and expects to get away with it without challenge or criticism is, I think, abusing their privilege and power.
The upper classes do not get to decide whether the word “pleb” is offensive or not. The rest of us do. White people do not get to decide whether words like “nigger” or “Paki” are offensive or not in any given context. The first step towards liberty and autonomy for any individual or group is defining and describing our own experience – it is the first and best way of owning our existence.
In just one of the many awful articles printed by establishment journalists this week attempting to defend Moore and Burchill with a false flag of free speech, Tom Peck concluded by quoting Stephen Fry on the freedom to give offence. ‘I am offended by that’. Well so fucking what? It is true that “I am offended by that” is not a trump card or a guillotine for a debate. We are all free to cause offence and to accept the consequences, which is that those we wilfully offend might hate us for it and offend us back. What we are not free to do is reply “well, you shouldn’t be offended by that.” That is never our call. The free speech that allows one person to call another tranny, yid or poof is the precise same free speech that allows the offended party to call you a fucking bigot. If you offend thousands of people at once, don’t complain if thousands of people call you a fucking bigot in return.
I wrote the other day about privilege and power. There can be no greater expression of privilege than believing one can act without consequence. It is the privilege of a misogynist in a patriarchy, the privilege of a racist in a racist society, the privilege of the homophobe in a homophobic society and the privilege of the transphobe in a transphobic society. What I have found most revealing, and most depressing about this week’s events, is how many influential journalists are still willing to defend the right to abuse, insult and offend trans people when they would never, ever say similar about overt racism or homophobia, and when it is often the precise same people who complain loudest about misogynistic language when it occurs.
What this tells us I think is that while we have gone a long way in recognizing racism, sexism and homophobia for what they are, and making some notable (though still early) steps towards their elimination, huge swathes of our liberal media establishment remain at best broadly indifferent and at worst actively hostile to the rights of trans people. That is a deeply depressing realisation.
Morning, Ally
To me, this is incredibly simple* and the key is the headline of Suzanne Moore’s article, “I don’t care if you were born a woman or became one.”
Now it’s fair guess that Moore herself will never get it before her dying day but it’s possible, just possible, that her daughter’s daughter might one day summon the humanity to write “I don’t care if you are a woman or not” and then lay her pen down.
And that’s it. Judge people on the quality of their arguments, their command of facts, the depth and breadth of their compassion and nothing more. No need to consult a philosopher for the latest theory on intersectional oppression – just treat folks with equitable decency.
Funnily enough, I’ve been quite heartened by the whole affair, seeing Integrity Feminists (honourable mention to Blackpudlian Wildcat kizbot) standing up vociferously to say “We don’t want any part of the bigoted essentialist crap.” Maybe it’s not a huge turning point but, as I say, look out for the granddaughters of the current crop.
* Yeah, yeah, as a white cis male, I would say that.
Norman! Hello! Well said, that’s all, thanks for dropping by.
What this tells us I think is that while we have gone a long way in recognizing racism, sexism and homophobia for what they are, and making some notable (though still early) steps towards their elimination, huge swathes of our liberal media establishment remain at best broadly indifferent and at worst actively hostile to the rights of trans people.
Yes, that’s about it really. Trans people are still regarded as fair game.
Frankly, this is business as usual for those three (Burchill, Bindel, Moore) – they’ve become acclimatised to getting away with saying whatever they want about whoever they want and playing the gender card if anyone calls them or their vitriol. In future, they’ll just stick to spewing hate at men that are still men, and get away with it.
Norman’s right. The issue over whether trans women can be badfems or not is a debate between two groups of people who think it’s legitimate to hate men over whether trans women are women or men. If they’re women, you shouldn’t hate them. If they’re men, you can. They all assume it’s right to hate men.
Ally: “There can be no greater expression of privilege than believing one can act without consequence.”
Yes. And that’s a privilege that, in our society, overwhelmingly applies to women, partly thanks to old fashioned “patriarchal” attitudes and partly thanks to feminism, from reproductive rights to criminal justice and the family court system, to the expression of hate speech. I don’t remember anybody in the mainstream media citing freedom of speech in Ron Atkinson’s defence when he said what he did about Marcel Desailly. I think that’s partly because black people are a larger and more visible and better politically organised minority than trans people, but also because Ron Atkinson is a man and therefore held responsible for his words and actions.
It does amuse me how much the Guardian group clutches its pearls whenever Jeremy Clarkson says something mildly offensive for effect, but is happy to give Julie Burchill, who’s never been anything other than a shitstirrer and will stir shit from any political point of view for cash, a regular column.
Fogg:
In just one of the many awful articles printed by establishment journalists this week attempting to defend Moore and Burchill with a false flag of free speech […]
From Moore’s latest column:
Indeed, I feel increasingly freakish because I believe in freedom, which is easier to say than to achieve and makes me wonder if I am even of “the left” any more.
It starts with a statement like this, and ends with writing for the Spectator about how howwid ‘The Left’ all are, based on whatever dinner party the author attended last week.
This ain’t over. And it won’t end well.
Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Unless you accept this fundamental fact, you are maintaining transphobic attitudes no matter how much you might try to pretend you’re addressing knotty theoretical debates and “just asking questions”. In fact (believe it or not) it’s possible to address these theoretical issues without being transphobic. Trans people have been doing it for literally decades.
Oh, and one other thing before this high horse I’m astride is carted off to Tesco.
I don’t buy the relevance of power and privilege in this case. Do these parameters exist? Yes. Are they relevant? I’m not convinced. I’m absolutely convinced the Moore/Burchill attack was beyond the pale but I reached this conclusion without having to portray trans people as hapless victims or a ruthless lobbying machine. (Of course, neither stereotype is true)
Because the logic of this power-distinction is flawed. Attacking someone for something beyond their control is wrong regardless of social status. It would be repugnant to mock David Cameron for losing a child, regardless of his position and ancestry.
The only distinction worth a damn in attacking a person or group is whether you’re attacking them for what they did or who they are. On that criterion, Burchill and Moore were plainly out of order. The only role played by power in all of this is the delusion that “I’m working class” or “I was born female” are cartes blanches to plucky-underdog status whenever you’re called on your prejudice. This is EDL-logic of the most laughable kind.
I agree with you up to a point, but I do think that the initial hostility of radical feminists to transsexual women has a lot to do with power – their own perception of themselves as being oppressed as women being challenged by the existence of other, differently (more?) oppressed categories, hence the desperate waving around of ‘working class!’ credentials, to reassert themselves as the put-upon rather than the putter-on. It is the Achilles’ Heel of all equality movements that there is a sizeable contingency in each that thinks their movement only has validity or will gain traction if it commands the status of ‘most oppressed’, and this tries to deny or erase the oppression of other groups within and/or without, especially when it is them or those like them who are doing the oppressing of these other groups (what has been mockingly called ‘Oppression Olympics’ by the commentariat). Intersecting networks of power and privilege (and people’s perceptions of themselves within this network, and the validation they get from that perception) are key to understanding this debate – however, your appeal to common bloody decency is certainly the key to resolving it.
Hi lelepaletute
Yeah, the term “Oppression Olympics” is wickedly mordant but I don’t use it myself owing to likely misinterpretation as meaning that oppression doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter. It exists and it matters…it’s just that it doesn’t magically strengthen a weak argument. [More’s the pity, or I could excuse my many transgressions with my bog-standard-comp education, my back-streets-of Wolverhampton origins and the debilitating blight of pogonophobia]
As you say, trans people disrupt the internally constructed hierarchies of a few women furious to find themselves outflanked on their own continuum of merit. But there’s something even basic here I think – trans folk completely disrupt, by their very existence, a Manichean world of good XX and bad XY. It must be really irksome, just when you’ve got the world conveniently segregated into black hats and white hats, to see a bunch of people turning up in stripey hats. The trick, of course, is to see the people and not obsess about the hats. I don’t anyway. My hat’s brown. And raised in your direction.
Hi Ally,
I read Rupert Read’s article, and I thought it missed a lot of the point, as well as setting up a straw man of anatomical-essentialist transwomen who only see post-op transwomen as having become ‘real’ women (of whom there are of course some, but it is a vanishingly small voice in trans discourse, which is in the main hugely open-minded and supportive of self-identification regardless of physical attributes, as only makes sense really). I did my MA thesis on the very subject of the feminist movement’s hostility to trans women, theorising what its causes might be, and my overall conclusion is that it hinges on ‘hierarchies of victimhood’ – as you pointed at in one of your posts on the subject, the same exclusion was initially applied by mainstream feminism to women of colour, and then to homosexual women, because the intrusion of these other categories of oppression into feminist discourse forced mainstream (white, middle-class, educated) feminists to acknowledge their own priviliege, and disrupted the main discourse of early feminism, that of women being a uniquely oppressed class. Feminism has, gradually, opened its borders to allow for these intersections of experience; it is only a matter of time before transwomen too are given space within the mainstream of the movement. Screeds like Burchill’s and Moore’s and Bindels (and Greer’s, but everyone seems to have forgotten about her) are the dying cries of a radical rump, no different to the fearful cries of ‘lavender menace’ when lesbians began to demand their unique experiences be heard within feminism.
As one of the commenters on Read’s article noted, the only category each person fundamentally belongs to is ‘ME’. From there we form alliances with those with whom we share interests and oppressions; feminist cis women cannot afford to exclude the alliance of transwomen, and transwomen cannot afford to allow their unique experiences and oppressions as such to be subsumed within the experiences and oppressions of the larger group of ‘women’. All identities and experiences must be acknowledged and respected and included, or no real progress will be made.
Hi Lela! So nice to have so many old friends dropping by.
FWIW I broadly agree with you I think. As I said in the blog, there was a lot in RR’s piece that I didn’t agree with – my biggest problem was that I think he simplified the complexities around various trans experiences to such an extent that it became something of a strawman.
But I was glad to read something that genuinely attempted to get into the
bones of the issues. Something I’ve found depressing about this saga is how many commentators have so been proudly anti-intellectual – Ooh, we don’t want to have to think about what all this means, we just want to come out with our kneejerk prejudices without examining them too closely.
They’re not “knee-jerk” responses, it’s just we’ve dealt with these attacks for so long that we know exactly how to respond to them. It’s not anti-intellectualism to refuse to engage with strawman arguments or arguments in bad faith – like, for example, the disgusting equation of trans people with BID sufferers, which comes up again and again and again and is just a way of calling trans people self-mutilators without using Moore’s language. If you think Read’s article was in any way valid then you are carrying ’round some deeply ingrained transphobic attitudes that you need to root out, especially if you want to keep commenting on trans issues.
Hyosho, can I ask what you mean by “valid”?
I don’t think Read was correct, in some key respects, but I’m deeply uncomfortable with the suggestion that arguments like those put forward by Read cannot be put forward, just as I’d be uncomfortable with the suggestion that they cannot be rebutted or rejected. Something can be a valid argument without being indisputably correct, IMO.
By the way, you may have got the wrong end of the stick – the “anti-intellectualism” I was referring to has come strictly from those supporting Moore et al, and coming out with stuff like “oh, all these buzzwords and concepts like “intersectionality” and “privilege” are so academic and difficult, let’s not talk about that, let’s just stick to a nice simple essentialist liberal feminism that everyone can understand.”
A prime example is here, – a piece which is so bad it is quite literally laughable.
oh, and just to add, I think it is perfectly legitimate to decline to engage with people making arguments that are considered to be strawmen or in bad faith. Nobody is demanding that you do. Equally, I think it is legitimate to engage with them and disagree, if one feels the urge.
Read’s entire argument is invalid because it hinges on the assumption of a division that does not exist: that there are women and there are trans women and that the debate is over where to draw the line. You yourself (I’m sure inadvertently) make constant references to “women and trans women”, which is begging the question. No-one is saying Read is not allowed to put forward those arguments, but we will continue to dismiss them as lazy, and based on uncritically cissexist assumptions. There are plenty of far more interesting discussions to be had about feminism today than the inherently transphobic one of “how do we decide who the real women are”.
You yourself (I’m sure inadvertently) make constant references to “women and trans women”
if I have done that I apologise, it is certainly inadvertent, but can’t actually see any instances of it. I’m quite clear in my own mind that there is no distinction between women and trans women although there is a distinction between cis women and trans women. If ever that does not come across in my writing, I’m genuinely sorry.
Where I mean women I say women.
Where I mean cis women I say cis women
Where I mean trans women I say trans women.
Most of the time the distinction between cis and trans women is completely irrelevant but occasionally we need to differentiate for the purposes of meaningful discussion.
On your broader point, I wish we would never need to even mention people’s cis or trans status. But when someone comes along and raises the distinction, particularly in a derogatory way I don’t see any way of pulling them up on it or engaging in the debate without acknowledging the point of debate.
I guess what needs to happen is for ‘cis women’ to be a term which gains usage when discussions of this kind are on the table; in the same way as when issues of race and feminism are under discussion, it is the done thing to refer (as appropriate) to black women, white women, third world women etc – this has yet to happen in discussions of trans identities and feminism – ‘woman’ the overall category is presumed to belong to cis women and used for these purposes, trans being used as a differentiator – it’s equivalent to how it would be if ‘women’ was used to intend ‘white women’, and ‘black women’ used as a differentiator. It’s sort of the inverse of the problem where ‘man’ and ‘mankind’ are used and presumed to refer to women too, in spite of the obvious elision and erasure this creates.
The difficulty here is finding a ‘label’ for cis women that they are happy with – as the trans community is well aware from its own experience, labels imposed from outside on unwilling subjects can cause huge problems, and a lot of cis women dislike the term, because it doesn’t reflect how they see themselves (as a woman, no qualifier). This is privilege in action, but it is one I find at least partially understandable, because as I say, ‘cis’ has been imposed from outside of the group. However, labels generated for cis women internally have been problematic, often reinforcing the idea of trans women as ‘other than women proper’ – the egregious ‘womyn-born-womyn’ of Michigan Fest hardliners being just one example.
This is a combined failure of developing language and ideas, and on the individual level it is often difficult to tell which (or how much of each) is at play.
Hello again lelapatetute
Maybe it’s just me, but I find the label “cis-” really quite liberating. I first encountered it a year or two back and, having studied some chemistry, recognised its origins immediately. It bothers me not one jot that the social coinage originated outwith my demographic. So what? Neither was it a problem when the term heterosexual was applied from without.
So, why do I find these labels liberating? What, precisely, do they liberate me from? I guess it’s the deterministic sense that my orientation was somehow inevitable – that being the big, butch, woman-fancying bloke that I am today was the only path available. The terms cis- and hetero- subtly remind me of roads not taken, just as it’s helpful to know that I was (sort-of female) for the first few days after conception or that my ancestors (if you go back far enough) were from Africa and, presumably, black.
We’re each the result of tiny mutations and subtle inflections of ancestral choice, and recognising this helps up to respect people whose histories are different.
Well said, Ally. I am finding it very upsetting to see this being dragged into a free speech debate by columnists with a very big platform.
Since coming on CIF some years ago, my interests were always more to do with mental health and welfare reform and I have to confess that I have not engaged with a lot of the feminist threads. My experience of women with views akin to Julie Bindel etc at uni in the 70s rather turned me off the feminist cause. To my shame, I had assumed that things were much better for the trans community these days, but clearly I was wrong. I’ve been following and chatting a number of trans folk on twitter and I feel ashamed at the actions of Moore, Burchill etc.
And as for Moore’s column today, words fail me.
“My own belief is that yes, women have the right to discuss, debate and decide who is a woman”
But that is precisely the problem. We are not allowed to discuss, debate or decide.
It has apparently been decided. Anyone who dares to question that decision is, effectively, lynched.
And the people who are upset by this reluctance to discuss or debate are not going to stop being upset.
So… this thing goes on and on and on. Forever.
Oh, and one last thing. The comparison with words like “pleb”, “nigger” or “paki” is invalid; these are instances of one elite group defining “another” group.
Whereas the “trans” issues is precisely centred on the fact that some women do not want to call trans women “women”.
If you want an analogy, it’d be more like some white people not wanting to call other people “white”.
I think there is a fundamental problem with the idea that only cis women get to be the gatekeepers of womanhood overall (‘who is a woman?’) and that trans women have to wait quietly on the sidelines until told they can be members of the club. By their very nature (‘trans women’) they are already IN that club and as entitled to police the borders; there have been trans women long efore there was a unified identity of trans woman, and centuries before surgery, in every known culture, either openly or in secret. It would be as bizarre as cis women getting together and deciding whether Klinefelter or Turner syndrome women.should be ‘allowed’ into the club ‘women’.
The experiences of trans women and cis women are hugely different, both between and within the groups. So too the experiences of straight women and gay women and asexual women, young women and old women, rich and poor women, black and white women, mothers and childless women (by choice or necessity), women from religious backgrounds and women raised as atheists. The idea that there is one unifying experience of womanhood that makes all cis women more like each other than any of them could ever be like any trans woman is a nonsense. The idea that my experience and understanding of my womanhood is more like that of an 83-year-old observant Muslim mother of 12 in rural Pakistan than it is like a trans woman who, like me, is white, urban, western, childless, mid-20s, and atheist, is nonsense, and speaks to a smug biological essentialism which the feminist movement has, thankfully, largely outgrown and which the trans movement never had the privilege of subscribing to in the first place.
We can invent a whole group of trans white people, for people who don’t fit exactly into the white-born-white group. Then the white-born-white can get together and discuss whether other shades of white should have the same rights as them. There’s no way that could possibly go wrong.
Also, this rubbish about ‘lynching’ is really starting to get to me. Some people told Moore off on Twitter and BTL on her article. Apparently, some people were threatening and abusive on Twitter (although I never saw these tweets) and I think Moore should, if she felt she had reason to take these threats seriously, report the culprits to the relevant authorities.
But being told you are wrong or have done wrong, even having people demand that you apologise (by people with, obviously, no actual power to compel you to do so) is not effective ‘lynching’, and more that the people who booed George Osborne at the Olympics were ‘lynching’ him (and given trans women and trans men have plenty of times been subjected to actual lynching for the crime of existing, a very poor choice of hyperbole). It is the right of response that the internet (gods bless it) has provided the rest of us against those with a public platform.
One thing I have learned is that at least some feminists seem to need to define one as male or at least not female prior to a load of ill considered abuse. The funny bit was the sudden retreat into “working class”, one so rarely hears about class these days. I think Olympics gets the nature of event overall. I expect men of all sorts to get in the neck as no doubt social class will be popped back into the closet till the next spat. Such a nuisance class isn’t it ? Far too few physical badges.
“Also, this rubbish about ‘lynching’ is really starting to get to me. Some people told Moore off on Twitter and BTL on her article. Apparently, some people were threatening and abusive on Twitter”
From what I understand (having seen bits of the twitter exchange archived elsewhere), it was hardly the act of a bullying “mob” vs Suzanne Moore anyway. Unless that archive I saw was very selectively edited/cropped*, it was essentially a conversation between no more than three people. And the first person to suggest that Moore’s comment was offensive was a fellow “cis” woman. It was hardly the act of a “mob” of aggressive transwomen.
*which might be the case. I don’t use twitter myself, but I saw something purporting to be an accurate record of the whole spat, recorded on someone else’s blog. Can’t remember the link now.
Hi Mary,
I don’t think it is true that women are not allowed to discuss, debate and decide on these issues. There have been extensive debates going back 30 or 40 years on these topics. Indeed we are having that precise conversation here.
Going back to the original Suzanne Moore Twitter exchanges, it wasn’t her critics that closed down the debate or refused to discuss the issue. The original correspondent was, quite clearly, inviting polite discussion and debate, and it was Suzanne who said (I paraphrase, but only slightly) “I’ll use whatever words I want to and if you don’t like it, fuck off”
Who exactly is closing down debate there?
The other point is that I wasn’t drawing an analogy between pleb, nigger etc and “woman” but to the overtly prejudicial words like “trannies” or references to “lopping your dicks off.”
I repeat, there has been close to zero discussion about the actual issues of gender identity and alignment over the past week. The debate has entirely been about use of language. It is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
“lopping your dicks off.” the vulgar but not actually wrong
>>We are not allowed to discuss, debate or decide. … Anyone who dares to question that decision is, effectively, lynched.
I think you can discuss, debate and decide that as much as you like, but it’s probably best to do it somewhere a little more private than in major newspapers and on the internet? Even if you disagree with the idea that trans women are as fully women as cis women and that trans men are as fully men as cis men, please understand that I (and many others) really, really do believe it. Just as I believe that black people are just as human as white people, or that women are just as human as men. Therefore, when someone says, “Oh hey, let’s decide whether trans women are really women or not!”, I don’t think that’s an interesting point for discussion. I think that’s horrible and prejudiced and a precursor for and a justification of violence against trans people.
So to some extent, yeah, it’s probably fair to say that I want to stifle debate on that topic. I don’t think it’s a valid point for debate any more than, “Gays: spreading AIDS?” “Jews: do they control the media?” or “Lesbians: do they just need a really deep dicking?”, and if I see any of those topics discussed in public, then yes I’m going to be pretty appalled and disgusted, and I’ll probably say so. That’s not “lynching”, it’s defining the terms of civilised debate in a way that respects people’s rights not to have their humanity and agency challenged.
And trans people are really hurt by the belief that they’re “not really” men or women. The “trans panic” defence – the idea that it’s understandable for a man to kill a trans woman who “tricked” him into being attracted to a man – has been accepted in murder trials. So the use of a “effectively lynched” in this context isn’t going to gain you much sympathy.
So, like I said then… we are not allowed to discuss, debate or decide.
The decision has already been made.
For me, one of the most bizarre aspects of this whole business is the way that people saying “That is an offensive thing to say and it is wrong of you to say it” is being characterised as an attack on free speech, when in fact it is people EXERCISING their right to free speech.
No one is preventing you or anyone else from debating this. You may not like the responses you get, but I can’t see how they add up to your “not being allowed” to debate anything. Or am I missing something?
It is for me. Just like the decisions that homosexuality shouldn’t be illegal, that discriminating against people based on their race is bad, and that women should be paid the same as men for equal work. I can’t see that as a bad thing.
Do you really think all those things should also be up for debate, or just the existence of trans people? I’m asking that genuinely, not to be arsey. For me, those are all settled questions, and I’m not interested in getting into discussions wherein people explore the “two sides” of whether women are “really” less intelligent than men. Do you think all of those things should be “up for debate” in national newspapers and that it’s a “lynching” if people disagree vociferously?
“But that is precisely the problem. We are not allowed to discuss, debate or decide.”
Exactly right. Why should anyone be allowed oot decide someone else’s gender for them? It’s totalitarian. Of course it’s unacceptable.
“If you want an analogy, it’d be more like some white people not wanting to call other people “white”.
This is exactly analogous. There are historical examples of this in US history, with various groups of eastern and southern European immigrants only gradually working their way into whiteness. In fact the frits group this happened to were the Irish, who are genetically damned near indistinguishable from the Englsih majority who considered them non-white.
The analogy is exact.
marykmac, the irony in your question is precisely that those questions do get debated. A lot. It may be frustrating, it may be asinine, but yes, they do get debated.
The number of times feminists have to seriously consider the question of whether women are “less intelligent than men”, and there’s no public lynching or humiliation of the people asking the question. Much like that Harvard dude, whatever his name was. Nobody asked for him to resign, and he came out saying that women are less intelligent.
I’m not interested in the questions per se, but more in the reasons why we ask them. Or not ask them.
@MaryTracy – And the fact that there was RadFem 2012, an entire conference planned, organised and publicised before anyone challenged the idea that trans women ought to be included in “women-only” space (and lots of cis women prepared to defend the idea that the “women-only” space should exclude trans women), shows that the femaleness of trans women is also still regularly debated.
I didn’t actually say that nobody debated those questions:: I said they were settled for me. That means that I do not want to engage in debate about those questions, and where I see them given legitimacy and a platform in places which have a claim or a duty to respect equality, I will protest that. So there’s no irony here: I am treating the so-called question about trans people’s gender status the same way that I’m treating all those other questions that I believe are borne out of privilege and ignorance. (And strictly, Larry Summers said that women were less good at maths, not that women were less intelligent, and whilst there were plenty of people prepared to defend him – as there are people defending Suzanne Moore and Julie Burchill – there was a huge outcry. I wouldn’t have heard of him if there hadn’t been, because I don’t regularly follow the sayings and doings or Harvard presidents!)
It is not in my power to stop you debating that question if you want to: all I can do is say that you can’t debate it with me and and that if you debate it publically I will object publically. But you still haven’t given any reason why you think it’s worth debating.
“Much like that Harvard dude, whatever his name was. Nobody asked for him to resign, and he came out saying that women are less intelligent. ”
You mean the Harvard guy who said there were more extremes at either ends of genius and stupid for men, and thus more at highly-specialized domains in maths because of this? He was fired last I heard, and that doesn’t mean a thing about the average intelligence of people.
It just means instead of being able to roll a dice going from 1-10, you roll one from -1 to 12. The average will be the same.
Some would say this is a biological tendency. I would say it’s a socialized one, at least partly:
Men are rewarded more for impressing others, doing feats, inventing stuff. Part of this: They become more attractive as mates to many. And men who don’t do better than average, might be tempted to just call it quits. Or just don’t get as much help when they lag behind others than women who do.
See, not biological.
@Schala
Partly biological, too. You have the mechanism right – men get rewarded for impressing others, and other men learn from their example. That reinforces the difference. The next question is why men do it more, and women do it less. Just coincidence, or do the sexes come with different priorities in the first place?
“@Schala
Partly biological, too. You have the mechanism right – men get rewarded for impressing others, and other men learn from their example. That reinforces the difference. The next question is why men do it more, and women do it less. Just coincidence, or do the sexes come with different priorities in the first place?”
Because men need to prove themselves to earn respect and mating opportunities. Women can get mating opportunities without needing to earn respect (they can, but it’s a trivial bonus for mating).
This will go regardless of genital configuration, attraction, usage of contraceptives. We are “wired” to want sex usually (except asexuals), wether or not it results in offspring.
If you know that being passive will only result in “nothing” and you know you could act differently to cause the result to change, you are likely to change your behavior. Hence men will even agree to be cannon fodder (conscription) to prove their worthyness. Women are considered valuable due to reproduction at the base, hence have nothing to prove (besides being attractive physically, like men also have to – the threshold for “attractive” is generally low, not magazine-pretty, just homely is good). They just pick.
Now wether this drive for male worthyness needing to be proven is biological in origin or not, it can be tempered with.
It can be augmented artificially (the US dating marketplace, where men are expected to do every step), or made equitable (Sweden, where women can make the first move sometimes).
Given the drive for feminism towards equality, one would think they would want it made equitable. But since they got the upper hand to start with, it seems they won’t even try to change the status quo.
But that is precisely the problem. We are not allowed to discuss, debate or decide.
It has apparently been decided. Anyone who dares to question that decision is, effectively, lynched.
I won’t bother quibble about your exaggerative use of the phrase “lynched”…
I think you’re right that certain issues aren’t even allowed to be discussed in certain areas online (I find that on CiF for example, if you even politely question received wisdom on certain issues you’ll be either shouted down, accused of being a “nazi” or a “tory” or a paid troll, or just deleted altogether).
But I don’t think Moore/Burchill this is really a good example of that scenario. AFAIK, initially someone quite politely suggested that Moore’s comment about Brazilian transexuals was potentially offensive. Whether they had a point or not, Moore could have just clarified her meaning, or apologized if necessary. But instead it seems like she spat her dummy and descended into profanity (“fuck them, they think they can chop their dicks off and call themselves more feminist than me”). THAT is the kind of stuff that has caused the metaphorical lynching.
Likewise, Burchill wasn’t “lynched” for discussing or debating or questioning issues. She was “lynched” for just being mindlessly, needlessly and deliberately offensive. And I say this as some one who’s a big advocate of free speech and questioning various polite taboos- Burchill’s piece was just ridiculous. Ad hom attacks on “bed wetters with bad wigs” and “dicks in chicks clothing” are why she was lynched, not for discussing and debating.
I actually believe that Moore was “lynched” before she descended into profanity. I cannot prove it, of course, it’s just my personal belief.
And of course, Burchill’s piece was offensive, the point was precisely to offend, and she did.
My point is this: if we are not allowed to ask questions and debate, because it’s all been “decided”, then we are effectively suppressing feelings that will explode like this. It’s a virtual pressure cooker.
It’d be much more effective to allow for rational debate, without making accusations that to have the debate in the first place makes people “nasty horrible human beings”.
@MaryTracy
I actually believe that Moore was “lynched” before she descended into profanity. I cannot prove it, of course, it’s just my personal belief.
To be honest I’m not proficient at Twitter enough to say for sure (I don’t use it, and viewing it just seems to be a big jumble of snippets of intertwined conversations, plus I understand people can retroactively delete tweets anyway which distorts the overall impression). I was just going by the time line presented on blogs such as this one:
http://storify.com/stavvers/suzanne-moore-s-transphobic-meltdown
or this one:
http://storify.com/leftytgirl/suzanne-moore-timeline-of-trans-misogynistic-twitt
(although I’m aware they may also have ommitted things to suit their purpose). From those blogs alone, it seems like one or two Twitterers (hardly a mob) called her out on the Brazilian Transexual analogy (which personally I don’t think was a particularly heinous thing to say in the first place), but they weren’t particularly viscious about it. She could have defused the whole thing with a simple clarification, without even having to apologize. But instead, she seemingly got a bit aggressive/defensive, and things escalated from there, as far as I can tell.
IMO, the critics of Moore were oversensitive in the first place (perhaps misunderstanding the point of her analogy), but it didn’t really get particularly nasty until Moore escalated it.
As for your other points – I think I largely agree (I just don’t think the Moore situation was a good example). Maybe my view on how people respond to certain issues is slightly jaundiced because I discuss the primarily on the Guardian’s website, which isn’t necessarily the most reflective sample of humankind. But over there, it certainly seems like people seem almost emotionally devoted to certain tenets, and if you question such tenets, people respond in really over-the-top ways.
Hi again Ally, I think that’s precisely it though – debates about language ARE discussion about the actual issues of gender identity. The primary way in which trans women are excluded from their own gender identity is through the prejudicial use of language, which shapes attitudes, which then are translated into active exclusion. I think it’s disingenuous to pretend that they’re separate issues.
Lelapaletute, I would love to read your thesis!
I’ll happily send it to you if you can give me a contact address! 🙂
display name + yahoo.co.uk Academic resources for trans issues are still depressingly scarce, and your topic sounds particularly interesting. Thank you!
Hit that nail any more firmly on the head, Ally, and it’s likely to end up back in 1973 with Philip Glenister shouting at it. Thanks for this.
Just one comment:
“The only real argument was about the assumed right of Moore and Burchill to use words and language that was considered offensive by trans people and their allies.”
– I don’t think you need to see yourself particularly as an “ally” of trans people to have been offended, especially by Burchill’s words. In fact, if there’s one silver lining to this, it’s that it’s made unaware people like me considerably more cognizant of the prejudice faced by trans people.
“I don’t think you need to see yourself particularly as an “ally” of trans people to have been offended”
Absolutely! It’s not about forming a side and thinking up slogans, it’s just about knowing how to be a little bit sensitive and just generally polite.
Ally, you write
“What I have found most revealing, and most depressing about this week’s events, is how many influential journalists are still willing to defend the right to abuse, insult and offend trans people when they would never, ever say similar about overt racism or homophobia, and when it is often the precise same people who complain loudest about misogynistic language when it occurs.”
Replace the word “trans” with “ginger” and I think you have your answer.
Being ginger is not like being trans. Maybe you’re just comparing the way people can be callus, but comparing those experiences is stupid.
[…] which doesn’t start it with the kind of hyperbole that has characterised this issue, such as Ally Fogg’s – “I think it is the most vile, hate-filled, bigoted rant I have ever read in either Guardian […]
[…] Norman Hadley, left as a comment in yet another blog post about the Suzanne Moore and Julie Burchill […]
I agree generally that the marginalised group in question get to set the terms and language – however, I think some cis people are using this argument to reject being called cis, suggesting that we’re imposing a label on them. Yet I think it’s different, as cis is not a slur or identity, but simply provides the language to differentiate on equal terms, and to reject it is to reject any means to discuss trans people in a semantically equal way, therefore is not just about cis people.
It was important to the gay rights movement to coin the word ‘heterosexual’ because before, there was simply ‘homosexual’ and ‘normal’ – marginalisation was inherent in the language as gay people were inherently the other, straight people, simply neutral, normal. ‘Heterosexual’ allowed people to discuss the two on equal terms. At the time, many straight people objected to this -why should there be a word for simply being normal? – but now it is accepted. ‘Cis’ is an attempt to do the same for trans people – there must be a word for it if trans people are to be considered equal and normal (albeit less numerous), and all others; natural woman, proper woman etc., suggest trans women are not proper or normal. Cis is the only word we have for making a distinction in conversations where one needs to be made, where both are equal and parallel.
“I think some cis people are using this argument to reject being called cis, suggesting that we’re imposing a label on them.”
Now that you mention it, that is going on too.
“Impose a label”? I’m a cis man. Calling me “cis” is like calling me “blue-eyed”. It’s a factual description, not imposing some label on me.
One of the interesting aspects of the somewhat arcane debates about the CofE and gay or women bishops is the reminder of the debates and language in the Republican and Early imperial era of the Roman Empire. Reflected in the literary languages of the time there were many terms for different forms of male and female. One general factor was the much greater influence of behaviour on the category and language. One result is that it is difficult to translate with surety into our current language use which is much more biological and “essentialist”. This suggests that discussion about what is a “man” of “woman” are new or rare nor are debates about what constitutes their “proper” roles. I suppose the novelties are our slowly growing understanding of genetics and sophisticated amd relatively safe
surgery and hormone therapies. And hopefully a very much greater respect for difference essential if billions of us are going to rub along together. Not at all helped by juvenile strops from people who I can only think just wished to stomp about to get noticed. I think it not unreasonable to expect better expression from professionals. Even if the views expressed are contentious. After all what seems absolutely “settled” now may seem hopelessly silly to the next generations and inexplicable in a century.
I should clarify that personally I have no issue with identifying as a cis woman – I do take issue with the phrase ‘gender aligned’, but that’s another story. I was simply postulating that for some cis women, particularly those who invest a great deal of their identity in their interpretation of femaleness, the term may be problematic. Not saying this is right or sustainable, and I agree the distinction should be made, but if the term should evolve from promptings within the cis community to something more generally accepted, that would be a good thing (in the same way that the medically imposed ‘transsexual’ has been slowly eroded almost into non-existence by trans people themselves into a plethora of identifications that have, over time, found a common home under the umbrella term of ‘trans’ for ease of discourse. Just because ‘cissexual’ is the linguistically appropriate counterpoint to ‘transsexual’ doesn’t mean that’s where the terminology has to end up; it’s allowed to evolve, and the people driving that evolution should be those it applies to.
However, for this to happen it is important that it be generally accepted that an equivalent terminology IS required, whatever it may end up being, and for the time being cis is quite fit for purpose. Anyone seeking to undermine the whole principle by critiquing this relatively inoffensive scientific term (c.f. Burchill) are being highly disingenuous.
I see what you mean, that some see cis as somehow detracting from simply ‘woman’, but I think, to use the analogy above, it’s merely a description, so to say a blue eyed woman is not lessen her status as a woman, but simply an additional detail.
If you designate someone as being trans you will inevitably bring the cis label onto yourself as its the default opposite position. The question thats not being asked in this debate is, is the trans prefix offensive? Who wants their humanity reduces to a sub set and seen as somehow lesser! Privilege somehow allows you to reduce my humanity to the subset ‘trans’… But when I do the same with ‘cis’ for you the cries of fowl and not fair and thats oppressive language rings out.
I really do not think Moore started out being transphobic its more about her own cis gendered privilege she will of never considered. However,, the moment she crossed the line with the “you can go and cut your dicks off” line she inevitably became transphobic. While Julie Burchill set her stall out back in 2001 as a transphobe: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2001/jan/20/weekend.julieburchill
In my opinion Burchill,Moore and Bindel have all come out badly from what’s happened over the last week or so. But rather than trying to see things from the position of the trans community much of the media has either closed ranks with them with cries of censorship or claims that Moore and Bindel in particular are the real victims here.Whilst others have seen it as opportunity to either score points,settle old scores or generally have a good laugh especially at the expense of trans women .
We know that the trans community is particularly vulnerable to hate crimes and discrimination.Yet to my knowledge there’s been little acknowledgement of that in the media since this spat kicked off.. The focus has clearly been elsewhere .But it has made me think about this issue more.For whilst i support the right of the trans community to be treated equally with everyone else there are still issues that need to be addressed. For instance should we assume that a ciswoman is transphobic if she states she’s uncomfortable sharing a womens toilet with trans women who still have male genitalia ? At what point do we draw the line here ? Just as is it right and fair to accuse someone of being islamaphobic if they question certain cultural.attitudes within muslim communities? Or is someone to be automatically branded as being homophobic if they object to gay men cruising for sex in public spaces ? .And what about being branded as a bigot if you try and talk about some of the negative impacts the immigration policies of New Labour had on some working class communities ?
Equality for all has to be the goal of anyone who is progressive in the way they think.And in my opinion people who are discriminated have a fundamental right to do whatever they need to do to get justice.And that applies as much to the trans community as anyone else.But people who are cis- and i’m not sure i like that word- do have a right to articulate their concerns without automatically being branded as transphobic. However Burchill et al have clearly crossed the line with the trans community so they deserve everything they’ve got.
I have to say, one of the most utterly baffling debates of the whole transphobic panoply is the bathroom thing; probably because I have never understood why we have gender-segregated public facilities in the first place, but also because, in the situation you posit, as women’s toilets are always entirely seperate cubicles *how would you know* what genitalia someone is sporting unless you were peering under the door? The unspoken implication is that cis women are inherently in danger of sexual violence from trans women with penises in the enclosed space of a public convenience, which is (a) ASTONISHINGLY OFFENSIVE, (b) utterly daft as, if someone of any gender and/or gender identity wants to inflict sexual violence on you in a public bathroom, all they have to do is follow you in.
So yeah, I’d say an irrational dread of penises qua penises in this instance is transphobic.
“So yeah, I’d say an irrational dread of penises qua penises in this instance is transphobic.”
Lelapaletute, That whole comment is solid and this last bit gets at something else – that there is a great deal more transphobia directed at trans women than trans men, and that this really comes down to misandry. The hatred from Burchill et al aimed at trans women is misandrist. Demonizing the penis is diagnostic of that condition.
Gingko, thanks for your reply, but I disagree actually – I think the main reason trans women cop more transphobic flack than trans men is that they are (as a group) more visible.
As has been proved by numerous cases in history, a trans man assigned female at birth (or, indeed, a cis woman) can, with relative ease, adopt masculine traits and dress and ‘pass’ as a man, albeit perhaps one less burly than average. Hormone therapies, especially if started early, are far more effective at developing the desired secondary sexual characteristics (build, voice etc) for trans men than for trans women. Whilst trans men’s surgical options are far behind trans women’s, this aspect only becomes an issue within intimate settings – lack of a penis will not be remarked on in the street. In this day and age (and culture), where the attitudes towards what dress and behaviours are ‘gender appropriate’ for people percieved as women are, whilst far from as liberal as one would wish, far more flexible than they are for those percieved as men, a trans man who is ‘rumbled’ as not having been assigned male at birth is as likely to cop flack for being percieved as a butch lesbian as he is for being a trans man. The radical feminist tendency to see transsexuals as being in the main trans women actually encourages this invisibility of trans men. But where trans men are percieved as such by bigots, there is just as much prejudice and abuse directed at them (as in the case of Brandon Teena).
Another factor is sexual anxiety (mainly, I believe, male sexual anxiety). A trans man, even if outed as such, does not present an obvious threat to a cissexual man’s sexual identity. Whereas ‘trans panic’ murders against trans women (the defense given in a lot of cases where a trans woman has been murdered by a sexual partner upon discovery that she is trans) are hugely common, and this is not about misandry, as it is usually enacted cis man-on-trans woman – the hatred is not directed at the trans woman for being a man, it is directed at her for being trans. Calling it misandry, to be honest, smacks of just the sort of essentialism that Burchill and Bindel are guilty of.
Personally, I think that trans women are caught in the cross-hairs of just about every prejudice there is, and therefore the aggression and contempt loaded upon them is considerable. If percieved as trans, they get all the sexist opprobrium that falls on men who are seen as failing to ‘be a man’ (also experienced by gay men, gentle men, passive men, asexual men etc). They also get the scorn poured on them by transphobes for being trans – ‘pretending’ to be a woman. If percieved as women, they are saddled with all the sexist/misogynist baggage all women labour under, with a potential side-order of the special contempt reserved for women who fail to conform to the sexist ‘feminine’ stereotype if their physicality and/or personal gender presentation is not that way inclined. If you add to that being from an ethnic minority, or a disadvantaged background, or a disability, or being a lesbian, I can’t imagine the difficulties that some trans women must go through just to be themselves. To have someone like Moore turn around and tell them that this hard-fought-for identity is a sham in any case, or by Bindel that you have assumed it for some dark purpose, must be infuriating and hurtful beyond measure.
Although I should say that in the very specific instance of Burchill and Moore (and Bindel) there may be an element of misandry in their transphobia. But I believe it is far from foundational.
“As has been proved by numerous cases in history, a trans man assigned female at birth (or, indeed, a cis woman) can, with relative ease, adopt masculine traits and dress and ‘pass’ as a man, albeit perhaps one less burly than average. Hormone therapies, especially if started early, are far more effective at developing the desired secondary sexual characteristics (build, voice etc) for trans men than for trans women. ”
This might be true, but I don’t think it’s the reason.
Trans women in Thailand, where it’s apparently awfully more common and confused with transgender and being gay males, are extremely visible. Yet considered by the people (only 15% of the population thinks they are women) to be deluded males for the most, even if most transition before puberty, thus lookins like cis women for the most.
Trans men are more or less unheard of in Thailand apparently. Everyone talks of “ladyboys”, but no one talks of trans men.
I think it’s because feminity in the male-assigned at birth is considered a taint, and grouped together (with bottom gay males being considered the same as drag queens, the same as trans women), while masculinity in the female-assigned is apparently ignored. I bet the rate for trans men is the same as here, 1/500 or so. Yet, the rate of ladyboys is considered 10-20% sometimes.
Mary Tracy:
You mean Larry Summers, who didn’t say that women were less intelligent than men, he said it’s possible women may be less likely to have the particular aptitudes for higher level maths (which is entirely possible, and anyone who thinks that means “women are less intelligent” is either not very intelligent themselves or, more likely, deliberately shitstirring) and was not only asked to resign but actually forced to? You really need to pick your examples better.
This debate is skirting over the point that language and behavioural rules are social. There can be only one standard for what particular words mean, and what ‘you can say’ as a decent person, and that standard ‘belongs to’ society as a whole. It is therefore a decision for society as a whole what the rules should be. The rules for acceptable speech are a potent political tool for suppressing ‘unacceptable’ opinions. That is why they are debated so fiercely.
The issue here is not strictly speaking freedom of speech. The ‘trans’ side is trying to establish the norm that e.g. trans women are fully women by definition, and anyone who says anything else is a nasty bigot. The ‘cis’ side is trying to establish the norm that e.g. trans women are women only partially, or by courtesy, and anybody who objects to sometimes being excluded from the group of women is being unreasonable. It is either one or the other. Both sides will be free to express themselves no matter who wins, but the winner will have the full backing of public opinion in any debate. In that sense Suzanne Moore is quite right that her opponents are trying to silence her. And her opponents are (deliberately?) misleading when they say that they are just exercising their right of reply.
It cannot be an automatic right that every group can decide for itself how society should describe it, no matter how much it helps them ‘owning their existence’. We may well decide that trans women are as much women as non-trans women are, and that the latter should refer to themselves as ‘cis’. It does not follow that we also have to replace ‘anti-abortion’ and ‘holocaust denier’ with ‘pro-life’ and ‘non-zionist historian’, or divide sexuality in two equal groups of ‘coprophilic’ and ‘coprophobic’, just because somebody wants us to.
Personally I would prefer allowing the views of both sides as legitimate opinions, and arguing the practical consequences case by case. Which would not prevent me from thinking that Julie Burchills article was both nasty and offensive. It may well be a good, altruistic principle that the majority should generally bow to the minority, but at most it can only be a guiding principle, not a right.
“The issue here is not strictly speaking freedom of speech. The ‘trans’ side is trying to establish the norm that e.g. trans women are fully women by definition, and anyone who says anything else is a nasty bigot. The ‘cis’ side is trying to establish the norm that e.g. trans women are women only partially, or by courtesy, and anybody who objects to sometimes being excluded from the group of women is being unreasonable. It is either one or the other. Both sides will be free to express themselves no matter who wins, but the winner will have the full backing of public opinion in any debate. In that sense Suzanne Moore is quite right that her opponents are trying to silence her. And her opponents are (deliberately?) misleading when they say that they are just exercising their right of reply.”
So group A is debating group B’s right to belong in the greater group C. Group B is debating group B’s right to belong in the greater group C. And group A is defacto accepted in the greater group C.
Can’t you see how this is unequal? Cis women aren’t getting their right to call themselves women, considered fully women no questions asked, called into question.
Cis women consider that womanhood is theirs and that they’re being friendly/courteous etc if they allow people they consider outsiders in. Just that consideration: that womanhood is theirs, should be in question. Not whatever the entry policy is.
It’s similar to a white woman considering they’re friendly and courteous if they don’t treat black women “that badly”, because other people treat them worse. So in comparison she’s more humane. Except she’s setting herself up as the decider of who merits humane treatment, and for what reason. She can only decide who merits humane treatment FROM HER (because that’s a personal question). Not from humanity.
Of course it is unequal that some groups live in a society that fits with their assumptions and way of thinking, and other groups do not. It is just unavoidable. There can be only one set of shared norms for society – by definition. They can not fit everybody equally well. If there is a small, dominant minority that imposes itself on the majority that is obviously wrong. On this point, however, there is a large, homogenous majority. Of course we should pay special attention to the problems of minorities, but even so it is hardly a glaring injustice that society tends to go for solutions that fit the majority better then the minority.
As an example, most communication in our society is in English, either written or spoken. It is obviously unequal that people who cannot see or cannot hear are unable to participate on equal terms with the rest of us. Still, the only solution I can see is to have all mass communication done one third in Braille, one third in sign language, and one third in English. That would make everybody equally disadvantaged, which is as close to equality as we are likely get. It would also reduce quality of life significantly for most of us, without improving things all that much for the deaf and blind.
The issue is not who merits humane treatment. Everybody does. The issue is who needs to make how much extra effort to adjust, when groups of people differ. It is not up to radical feminists or white women to decide that, but then it is not up to trans people or black women either. You are right that womanhood is not a club. It is not up to women alone to define it. I say the definition should belong to all of society, men and women, cis and trans, together. Which will clearly favour the majority opinion. What is your alternative?
” I say the definition should belong to all of society, men and women, cis and trans, together. Which will clearly favour the majority opinion. What is your alternative?”
I disagree that we should go with a “majority wins”.
We should go with a “the one who has the most to lose needs to be included”.
Your analogy about communication makes no sense. As you can translate all communications in multiple languages. There is no finite amount.
In a majority white group, the group who has the most to lose are black people. They’re less numerous, and they’re the ones usually getting a raw deal. The white majority cannot decide, just because there’s more of them, that’s it’s “okay” to treat black people badly, that they merit that out of some imagined inherent inferiority.
We can say the same for trans people. Treat them humanely, and the same as cis people. And if some cis people think it’s alright to think trans people are deluded morons who can just go die in a ditch, we can discount their opinion as “someone who has nothing to lose in this fight”. Wether society accords with their definition, or not, they lose nothing. Their own rights are not infringed. And no, they don’t have the right to live a life free of trans people’s existence, the same way trans people can’t mandate those assholes out of existence.
It is not true that only trans people have anything to lose in this discussion. They are in for much higher stakes, sure. On the other hand there are fewer of them, so whatever discomfort the majority gets will be felt much more widely. And turning your ideas about humanity (and your social interaction patterns) upside down does take some minimal effort. I am not saying that the majority should decide and hang everybody else, just that majority and minority alike must take some share of the burden. The overall decision should include all groups, not just one of them. If you are saying that we should accomodate whichever group ‘has most to lose’ and ignore the rest, you are just encouraging the victimhood olympics: “I am more disadvantaged than you, so I get to decide”.
The conflict between radical feminists and trans people is actually a good example. Both are small, marginalised groups in society. It is not obvious whether the distress of trans people at being excluded from radfem conferences is greater than the distress of radfems at being forced to include them. It is also not obvious why it is so important for trans people to participate in meetings with a tiny group who do not welcome them and whose ideology is implacably hostile. I have no particular sympathy for radical feminism. But don’t they actually treat men and trans people the same – dislike them, exclude them, and fantasize of a world without them? You could try to make a case for outlawing radical feminism as a hate group (though I would be strongly against that). But how can you justify that their treatment of men is OK while the exact same treatment applied to trans people is beyond the pale? Except by invoking a victimhood hierarchy?
“It is not obvious whether the distress of trans people at being excluded from radfem conferences is greater than the distress of radfems at being forced to include them.”
The problem is radfems don’t want trans women just excluded from their conferences. They want them excluded from female bathrooms, female locker rooms, Curves training centers, and any and all “women’s space” they designate.
I do think their treatment of men is appaling, but sex segregation is viewed as “normal” in this world. The problem comes from putting trans women in the category of men. And trans men in the category women (yes they sympathize with them often, if not treat them as deluded lesbians).
Read’s piece really bothered me and I can’t quite get through the emotion enough to be confident in leaving a considered enough comment on the original piece but I’d like to share a few thoughts here (which are by no means original in discussing cissexism and transmisogyny).
There was talk in the piece about periods, menopause and socialisation as a girl, in the context of what defines a woman. In the comments someone also mentioned pregnancy and breastfeeding. This is all about certain defining experiences (they seem to talk about the actual experience rather than just potential). I think the biological ones can safely be put to one side as I don’t think anyone can succesfully argue any of them are necessary or sufficient.
Socialisation is the tricky one if you’re going to go down this route at all, but how can individual prove their socialisation? I’ve heard accounts of trans people who pick up the socialisation of their actual gender identity and not the one they’re assigned at birth, despite the efforts of adults and other children in their lives. Some parents go to some lengths to avoid gendered socialisation of their children. I can’t see a strong argument coming out of this one either.
I think we benefit from unpacking our understanding of sex and gender – all the different facets. Biological sex itself is complex (physiological characteristics, chromosomes, hormones), then gender as we understand it socially is more than just identity, but also gender expression (which may relate to the gender roles in a particular culture). The identity part is at the heart of these debates but it’s so amorphous. If so many cis people (including me) find it so hard to “locate” this identity within ourselves, we are really going to struggle to empathise with trans people, and I think instead of policing gender we should feel humble in our lack of understanding.
On a more practical note, people interested in “borders” and “lines” between men and women might find this post (about the sport of Roller Derby) interesting: http://fitandfeminist.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/how-do-you-define-female-roller-derbys-debate-over-gender/
“There was talk in the piece about periods, menopause and socialisation as a girl, in the context of what defines a woman”
No I think it was about what is unique to a woman, rather than what defines her, as was my comment about pregnancy. But I think you need to explain more about this comment of yours for me to understand.
” I think the biological ones can safely be put to one side as I don’t think anyone can successfully argue any of them are necessary or sufficient.”
And by the way this post will be censored by Ally before long, in the same way but not for the same reason, that Ms Burchill’s was by the editor of the Observer.
Here’s some proof that Moore’s “escalating comments” may have been triggered by a lot of abuse on Twitter. http://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/tweeting-suzanne-moore-a-random-sample/
What a sack of man-hating bigotry that comment thread was.
a tweet of mine is on that gender trender list, and its not abusive. also, a tweet by someone else is there, which was talking too Moore about David Cameron.
Well I can count on you, QRG, to drop soem sweet reason into a conversation. How much abuse did the rest of them throw at you for that?
I have one word of caution ally: do you want trans people to become like the gays, having people arrested for ‘homophobic/transphobic hate speech’ simply for opening their mouths? you know how much I detest radical feminism, but I also detest victim identity politics. Be careful.
Ally, should we not be able to draw a distinction between the term you use- “control the language”- and simply accepting that the experience others claim is not ours to judge just because it is not our experience? This would really seem to be a clearer expression of what you seem to intend to say.
But that ushers in an area of clear conflict that clouds the whole issue you address. The transgender community demands that they be accepted (that is to say, EXPERIENCED) by natural-born females as “women”. It is one thing to tell people they should not expect other people not to experience as a slight an insult arising from the use of language over a perceived conflict. It is quite another to tell other people they MUST EXPERIENCE a group of people they may see as usurpers as unquestioned peers.
One of these is language. The other is not.
“The transgender community demands that they be accepted (that is to say, EXPERIENCED) by natural-born females as “women”.
That is not necessarily to say that. It can very well mean simply that they demand to be treated as women. There is a difference between opinion and behavior, and the ability to disconnect one from the other is the price a person pays to live in a diverse society.
It is neither here nor there if neo-Confederates refuse to see black people as anything other than natural slaves as long as they manage to treat them like fellow citizens.People’s opinions don’t deserve that much regard.
@Gingko You are so right. The issue should be how people are treated, not what people ‘are’. For a trans woman, the facts are not in dispute. Oversimplifying a bit, she is someone starting out with a male body and a female gender identity. Whether such a person is ‘really’ a man or a woman is pretty much a question of semantics. We can think what we like, but whatever the answer, we have accepted to treat her as a woman, to avoid causing unnecessary distress.
That said, we ought to accept that people who want trans women kept out of female spaces also have a right to their own feelings. They even have a right to argue their point in public. They are just not going to win the argument. We do not need to insist that radical feminists allow trans women in their conclaves, any more than Maoist-Leninists are obliged to invite George Osborne. And we do not need to shout ‘transphobe!’ (meaning ‘nasty bigoted flat-earther’) at anyone who feels queasy about sharing a loo with a trans woman, like Lelapaletute does above. Much better to say that we understand how she feels, but that she will unfortunately have to be polite and put up with it, seeing that even trans women need to pee, and someone who looks like (and is) a Brazilian transsexual can hardly be expected to use the mens’ room.
“That said, we ought to accept that people who want trans women kept out of female spaces also have a right to their own feelings. They even have a right to argue their point in public.”
Exactly. I don’t approve of prosecuting thought crimes and I insist on free speech. And that means that these people are in no position to object of they rest of us ignore their concerns and if the rest of us choose to call them bigots.
“And we do not need to shout ‘transphobe!’ (meaning ‘nasty bigoted flat-earther’) at anyone who feels queasy about sharing a loo with a trans woman, like Lelapaletute does above. Much better to say that we understand how she feels, but that she will unfortunately have to be polite and put up with it,”
We may not “need” to shout but OTOH if the truth hurts, oh well; and I will begin taking these toilet concerns more seriously when I see them come out as vociferously about women feeling entitled to use men’s restrooms because they decide the female facilities are inadequate or some such shit. Theier probeelm is their sense of entitlement blinds them to other peoples rights.
” Oversimplifying a bit, she is someone starting out with a male body and a female gender identity.”
That’s the thing there, female neurology means female body. Penis means nothing.
The seat of identity is in the brain, not the crotch. A man who got his penis torn off would still identify as male, wouldn’t he? So why would the penis of a trans woman matter if she identified as female since birth anyways?
@Gingko. Sure. Just like you presumably will be in no position to object if other people ignore your concerns, or if people like Julie Burchill choose to insult you or your friends. You really think this is the way forward? You must be very sure that you will never end up on the losing side.
“Just like you presumably will be in no position to object if other people ignore your concerns,”
Believe me, I know better than to expect a bigot like Burchill ot give a crap about my concerns. I consdier her a completely lost cause and the only reaosn to talk about her is to alert others to her and her kind.
” or if people like Julie Burchill choose to insult you or your friends.”
Their insults are to be taken for granted. You seem to think their is some point in expecting civilized behavior out of them.
” You really think this is the way forward?”
This implies that the conversation is with her. It is not. The conversation is with the public. That’s where change happnes or is stalled. trying to talk a Burchill around is beside the point and it’s a diversion. She is much more useful as a public embarrassment to a vile cause.
Just your language there, “natural-born females” is prejudicial.
Everyone is born naturally. Even cloning would be naturally. External artificial wombs would be naturally, given the source of the genetic materials being human.
” It is one thing to tell people they should not expect other people not to experience as a slight an insult arising from the use of language over a perceived conflict. It is quite another to tell other people they MUST EXPERIENCE a group of people they may see as usurpers as unquestioned peers.”
1) Why usurpers, what are they usurping? Oppression, victimhood, victim creds, attention from the population, romantic/sexual attention from men/women?
The word usually means “get something they should not get, unearned advantage, stolen advantage”. Even if that advantage is a claim of being the most oppressedededed (as cis middle class white women definitely are, of course).
2) Peers is something you define, not half the population. If you consider all men or all women, to be your peers, then you’re incredibly naive, or 5 years old. I consider videogamers to be my peers, I consider people who appreciate certain anime genres to be my peers. Not all women, not all trans women, not all cis women, not all white women, not all pansexual women.
As such, you don’t need to find that everyone is “like you” to accept they’re in a category you also happen to be in. There is no policing needed to be done. You won’t be “invaded” if you don’t do so.
Men aren’t policing manhood, and they’re not invaded. Even though feminism says it’s awesome to be male, and horrible to be female. What does it do to you to acknowledge people as being part of a group? Removes nothing from you. You can acknowledge bearded women, as long as they were born with a vagina, but not trans women, because penises are evil? Then you’re not recognizing a factual reality by denying their femaleness, but a constructed reality you’re making up as you go, to suit your prejudice. Such prejudice have been used against black women, Jewish women, lesbian women, and bisexual women. To justify their exclusion.
It’s nothing new to exclude trans women based on “not being a peer”.
“Just your language there, “natural-born females” is prejudicial.”
As well as simply inaccurate and misleading. “Natural-born” refers to anatomy. Why is anatomy more dispositive than neurology?
“Natural born” was the shortened version of what could have been a long exposition for something that need not be long save for those eager to find offense. I meant, of course, females who are genetically and anatomically female. Hence the use of the word ‘female” instead of the word which some have claimed has a more culturally derived meaning- “woman”.
Ginko, the price we pay to live in a diverse society appears, according to many who believe themselves to be part of an oppressed group, to include having members of the oppressor group forced upon them without their consent. If you can’t understand how they might feel this way you would be expressing an inherently very narrow perspective.
You say- “It is neither here nor there if neo-Confederates refuse to see black people as anything other than natural slaves as long as they manage to treat them like fellow citizens.People’s opinions don’t deserve that much regard.” But we’re not REALLY talking about an oppressor group being forced to accept people they deemed inferiors as equals. We’re talking about a self-perceived oppressed group- the black people being forced to accept the old Confederates now permanently dyed black as they come to demand their share of the promise of forty acres and a mule.
In a like vein, it is perhaps then also neither here nor there that ‘biological females’ opinions of complete strangers who have insisted on being treated like lovers, in as much as the demands of such diverse societies as Rome and every succeeding set of marauding conquerors seemed to demand their acceptance of the compliment, was so low. They should, I imagine, have understood the context of the cultures in which they found themselves and learned to enjoy it.
Shala, 1.- There clearly is a perceived gender capital to being a woman in the West. Per- http://transgenderexplored.com/common.htm there appear to be three times as many men seeking to become transsexual women as women seeking to become transsexual men. If it so awful to be a woman and so awesome to be a male we would otherwise have to wonder at the rationality of a choice to become, or remain, women.
I have felt this gender capital myself, and elsewhere have related that, as an eight-year-old I responded in the affirmative when my teacher asked (in a third grade classroom in Jackson, Mississippi in 1967) what boys wanted to be girls. You can imagine how that was received. I remember quite well what I was thinking at the time- that I liked what I saw as my mother’s role in the world as a nurturer, teacher,artist, and philosopher far more than I liked the role I saw my father playing- performer of earnest office drudgery. At about the same time I read the autobiography of Christine Jorgensen out of the library of my family, so I could see that there were other people in the world who could also look wanly over the fence of sexual roles and actually do something really (given the times) drastic about it.
I personally chose life as a fine artist in part because it has allowed me the kind of woman-like nurturing, teaching, philosophical role within my family and community I longed for as a child.
2.- Peers are something groups define for themselves regardless of how large they are. Try telling black men in prison and members of the Aryan Brotherhood in prison they are peers just because they are in prison together and the state criminal Justice system, or even the culturally diverse preponderance of the population, demands they see themselves that way.
““Natural born” was the shortened version of what could have been a long exposition for something that need not be long save for those eager to find offense. I meant, of course, females who are genetically and anatomically female. Hence the use of the word ‘female” instead of the word which some have claimed has a more culturally derived meaning- “woman”.”
Genetically is just as problematic. I’m genetically female because my neurology is genetic. I’m anatomically female because my anatomy is me, thus female. I have a penis, sure. But that’s an arbitrary distinction based on doctors deciding what length constitutes what (and cutting if its “too short”, yet longer than the clitoris-approved length). People with vaginas have internal-penises, and I have an external clitoris. It’s all perspectives (and I’m serious there, not pomo).
“Ginko, the price we pay to live in a diverse society appears, according to many who believe themselves to be part of an oppressed group, to include having members of the oppressor group forced upon them without their consent.”
Then maybe its delusion to view gender relations in an oppressor-oppressed paradigm.
That some women view themselves as oppressed and men as oppressor is their view of the world, not the reality therein.
“We’re talking about a self-perceived oppressed group- the black people being forced to accept the old Confederates now permanently dyed black as they come to demand their share of the promise of forty acres and a mule.”
We’re talking about aristocrats (women) being imposed a former working-class (men) into their ranks, and them being extremely reluctant to accept it. Because they don’t have the “refinement” of aristocrats, they are too “crude, dirty, violent and evil” (and that’s truly things put at the door of men by women). They “take space”, assert themselves, and have thick skin. Oh the horror, people who survived a hierarchy that actually hated them for not conforming to the rat race who want to actually bow out, and become “betters” like us. We must prevent this!
This is how it looks like to me.
“Shala, 1.- There clearly is a perceived gender capital to being a woman in the West. Per- http://transgenderexplored.com/common.htm there appear to be three times as many men seeking to become transsexual women as women seeking to become transsexual men. ”
Your link is dinosaurian. The rate is 1/500 or 0.2%, for both trans men and women. And we don’t count by surgery amounts. This is just backwards. I won’t have surgery. I consider it unnecessary. So I’m not trans? I’ve taken estrogen for 7 years. I’m known socially and legally under a female sounding name (Sara), but you’d have me say that I’m just “a man in a dress” and that pretending otherwise might offend certain people, and I should just find a hole to die in or something.
The trans men are simply ignored because they’re not interesting enough. No one seeks manhood. It’s seeking obligations and needing high ambition to be worth it (if you’re out for the money anyways). Womanhood is valued inherently (presumed birthing ability for women, vs needed-to-be-proven provider ability for men), and visually and warrants more kindness and gentleness on the part of pretty much everyone.
Hence people won’t care if more people want to be seen as men. They’ll allow more cannon fodder and necessary workers (ie working very dirty utilities for example). They won’t allow more aristocrats to prance around in pretty clothing and being valued for breathing though. Hence the essentialism to “protect” womanhood, and reveal the reason why the reverence is so strong, from conservators: the ability (presumed for all women, regardless of ability) to birth.
“I have felt this gender capital myself, and elsewhere have related that, as an eight-year-old I responded in the affirmative when my teacher asked (in a third grade classroom in Jackson, Mississippi in 1967) what boys wanted to be girls. You can imagine how that was received.”
Boys, then and now, are defined by “being able to do better than girls”, in part, because girls can birth, boys can do…stuff. They have to be able to do “stuff” better, or they think they’re “useless” as a gender. As such, a boy being told he would prefer being a girl will either think its true and hide it from his peers who would eat him alive for it. Or fight against it on grounds of being presumed lazy (ie wanting to have it made instead of working for it). It’s easy to go that feminine boys and men are also presumed deficient for this very reason. They’re presumed incompetent in “manly” qualities (like courage, perseverance, etc), and thus, failing at being males. They’re not “being females” according to conservators, they’re just “failed males”. Females are not failed unless they refuse voluntarily to bear children, again, for conservators.
“2.- Peers are something groups define for themselves regardless of how large they are.”
Peers are defined by people, individuals, not groups. Groups can be made of peers…or not. Student in high school certainly were not my peers. They were proud of being stupid for the most. That’s counter to living for me. Be stupid, but not proud of it.
“But we’re not REALLY talking about an oppressor group being forced to accept people they deemed inferiors as equals.”
Cis women with influential positions in the press are not the oppressor group vis-avis- trans women? They very clear are exactly that here.
That is the whole point here. Here we have very privileged women denying – based on claims of class and gender identity, all them invalid, as Ally points out – that they have privilege in order to oppress some other women. And by the way white feminists have form on this this particular tactic.
“what boys wanted to be girls. You can imagine how that was received..”
It’s interesting how that question is never turned around. That’s the power of iengrained narratives, I guess.
schala.
You seem rather easily to discount what others perceive as being not of the “real” world while you assign both feelings and motivations to someone who disagrees with you on SOME things. You say you are genetically female. I understand how that works, even if appearances would seem to say to the casual onlooker that you appear male. I can certainly understand why you would feel female and want to be accepted as a female.
I can also understand why SOME females might resist your desire to be accepted. It’s not that I believe such feelings are necessarily rational. Instead it is that human beings are animals, and people who forget that are being foolish to insist that all humans must be magnanimous and open-minded, generous and kind, or they don’t deserve to be treated like sapient beings.
There is plenty of a lack of magnanimity to go around in these comments.
I was a boy. I am a man. I know the roles and play them very well.
Peer groups define from within. That is a psychological fact. Their personalities are a product of emergent order, not individual choice.
” I understand how that works, even if appearances would seem to say to the casual onlooker that you appear male. ”
That’s not true, but this is neither here nor there.
The standards for defining how someone appears either male or female are generally pretty arbitrary. They are based on a certain average. Hence tall women, short men, hirsute women, hairless men, etc will confound people. But as soon as they learn of the “correct” genital morphology at birth, they seem to relax their requirement, if not appreciating the aesthetic of them (ie they consider butch women to be women, even if they would prefer women to be feminine-looking).
Yet they don’t extend this generosity to trans women, who could look EXACTLY the same. Because they view genitals (meaning genitals at birth at that) as supreme. An erroneous position to be sure.
Schala,
What you’re saying really tracks well with the mammalian psychology position I addressed above. As animals we have strong reactions to some things. Among those things is the sensation that we’re having an experience that is in any way “misleading”. This is especially true in the area of sex identification. Part of that is because, even though this does not apply to survivability in real civilized surroundings, we are evolutionarily primed to pick up often subtle signals and make accurate interpretations as to friend or foe, tribal member or stranger, and potential sexual partner. If those signals, or our interpretation, appear to have been confused one can experience a horror at what feels like the possibility of one’s own madness.
That much is instinct and evolution, so the general population has to be trained into an understanding that is intrinsic to the whole culture, and changing the culture takes time.
Ginkgo,
The “cis” women of who you speak are simply giving voice to what millions of other women not in the press are already thinking. To be frank they have done no service to that message by saying it as some bar-maid in the Bronx might have. To fail to give voice is to oppress far more than to influence into concession. Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union we used to hear how all the old Balkan hatreds that had led to the First World War had been put to rest. In the 90s we found out they had not. They had simply been suppressed. You can’t suppress hatred out of existence. Instead you have to have honest discussions of how people feel.
Some honest discussions will be expressed stupidly.
My guess as to the way questions were expressed in the 1960s Deep South about who wanted to be what sex probably assumed a LOT of women secretly wanted to be men.
“The “cis” women of who you speak are simply giving voice to what millions of other women not in the press are already thinking. ”
Well exactly. you have just said that million of other women are bigots too. I can’t know for sure but i don’t realy doubt it. We saw that kind of thing around Sharon Osbourne’s odious comments about some woman utilating her husband’s genitals – her audience of millions and millions of women wathcing at home didn’t complain a bit, apparently they just loved it.
“My guess as to the way questions were expressed in the 1960s Deep South about who wanted to be what sex probably assumed a LOT of women secretly wanted to be men.”
I don’t quite follow what you are trying to say with this, but I am quite sure you are not saying anything about gender identty in the South in the 1960’s because that certainly was not the controversy raging in that time in that place. If this is in response to some comment I made, which I cannot find now, then I am confused by what oyu appear to be trying to say.
A reference to the South in the 1960s in this context cannot be about gender identity, it can only be about millions and milions of white Southerners believing that racial segregation was an ordnance of natural law. By the way, the electoral map of this most recent election shows they may not have gotten over this yet, even 50 yeras later. Is this really who you want to liken all these presumably voiceless cis women out to? If it is, you are merely reinforcing a claim that their views in this matter are bigoted.
“To fail to give voice is to oppress far more than to influence into concession.”
If anyone is failing to give voce it is these woemn themsleves, then isn;t it? It’s not as though they need anyone else to give them a voice. They have thier own.
“You can’t suppress hatred out of existence.”
And this is not about siuppressing hatred. Hatred and all the rest of their feelings and the deepest workings of their souls are of no acount in this. Their conduct, overt acts, explicit speech acts – these are what matter. There is a clear diffenrence between legislating conduct and thought.
“Instead you have to have honest discussions of how people feel.”
Oh, we’re having that. Right here for instance. These feelings you are referring to are bigoted. Honest enough for you? And that doesn’t matter in the end. they can be as bigoted as they like, as long as they don’t try to affect even one other person’s life in any way based in that bigotry.
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