I was actually starting to build up a list of arguments that are frequently used as a bludgeon to question the authenticity of trans women (and it’s always trans women) when Julia Serano published her comprehensive review of all that bullshit.
The “trans women refuse to acknowledge any distinction” fallacy
People who make the trans-women-aren’t-women case will often insist that there is a distinction between cis women and trans women, yet trans women refuse to acknowledge this distinction. I find such claims endlessly frustrating. I have never once in my life heard a trans woman claim that our experiences are 100 percent identical to those of cis women. Indeed, the very fact that we in the trans community describe people as being “transgender” and “cisgender” points to an acknowledgement of potential differences!
The problem isn’t that we (i.e., trans women) refuse to acknowledge any differences, but rather that the trans-women-aren’t-women crowd refuses to acknowledge our many similarities.
This has come up a few (just a few) times in my work.
Read the other forms of “real woman” gobbledegook here.
-Shiv
That was a really instructive article by Serrano.
What motivates TERFs? Is it a sense of their identity being threatened, or are they concerned with other people’s sexuality, is it tribalism, or is it religious? I don’t understand where it comes from – there are so many angles of attack it’s hard to see what’s the one that’s really bothering them. Or is it a mix?
Ya I just ran into that over at the GCdebatesQT reddit a couple weeks ago. Also, the “why can’t cis women have their own spaces” thing that you wrote about before, where I pointed out that they can, at which point the true meaning of the question comes out (it’s not about whether they can have such spaces but about assuming that specific spaces are just for cis women, and/or should remain entirely so).
@ 1 Marcus Ranum
In my experience (and my “experience” is arguing with TERFs and trying to understand where the fuck they’re coming from, and therefore should be taken with a tablespoon of salt) it’s a form of extreme separatist feminism.
My theory — the theory that is mine — is that TERFs are to feminism as the Nation of Islam was to the civil rights movement.
During the civil rights movement, there was a school of thought that whites were so awful as to be irredeemable, and that it was best for black Americans to reject everything white, embrace everything black, and accept that white and black could never peaceably co-exist. Most famously, Cassius Clay rejected his “slave name”, took the African (black) name “Muhammad Ali”, and refused the draft on the grounds, basically, that whitey’s enemies were not his enemies.
I’ve come to perceive TERFs as having a similar separatist mindset. Patriarchy is so entrenched, the only hope for women is to reject all things male, and embrace all things female. Trans women happen to be born with penis, penis = male, therefore trans women must be rejected just as Ali rejected his “white” name. Nevermind these women don’t perceive themselves as men, nevermind these women don’t want to be men, nevermind these women aren’t perceived as men in day-to-day interactions — penis = male!, and that’s enough.
If you lurk on TERFy sites like “feministcurrent.com” as I have done, this is quite explicit. They refer to anyone who aspires to a society where gender is a choice as an “assimilationist”. The mindset is; 1) there must be a gender binary (because fuck men), 2) it must be assigned at birth (or to use their language “acknowledged”) (because it’s an article of faith “you can’t change your sex” (otherwise separatism would be unworkable)); 3) it’s us or them (“sisters!”).
It’s fucked, but like Nation of Islam, the blame ultimately lies with white cis male fuckers (like myself) who were such assholes we radicalised the marginalized.
Silentbob@#3:
Thanks for the explanation. The NOI/civil rights analogy works for me: people who should be allies but jumped to a wrong conclusion and can’t or won’t rethink it.
Macus Ranum @4
You can take the analogy further, just as there were ‘Uncle Tom’s’ in relation to civil rights the TERFs accuse any cis woman who doesn’t agree with them of – urgh sorry too little coffee yet so I’m not going to get the phrase right, but essentially of Stockholm syndrome or collaboration depending on the cis womans views, and therefore it is correct for them to disregard anythig such a woman says. Esentially if you don’t agree with them you have bought in to the patriachy for the benefits doing so brings to you.
@jazzlet
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/False_consciousness#Feminism_vs_radicalism