The other day I said something on Twitter that roused the ire of a mob of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) who proceeded to lecture me on how having two X chromosomes definitively makes you a female. I have no idea what I said to provoke them, but now one of them has announced that I am an MRA.
Yesterday, I found one of PZ Myers tweets disparaging women who simply want their own spaces.
What’s with all these TERFs nattering at me?
— PZ Myers (@pzmyers) April 3, 2015
He was embracing the transpolitical rhetoric meant to silence women. TERF stands for ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist.’ It’s a massive straw man. We are however setting boundaries and making safe spaces for women which we EXPECT to be honoured by biological males. PZ Myers has a scientific background and I got into a Twitter fight with another male claiming he was doing masters level biology. You can imagine my shock at finding that someone at that level of biology could possibly fuck up so badly.
PZ Myers saw my tweet that said XX is female. He immediately engaged in an MRA stunt and claimed that Androgen Insensitivity was somehow an argument to my statement that females have XX chromosomes and males are XY.
Or women with AIS? @BenSweaterVest @joyintorah18 @AdversAerialOne @barrielouise
— PZ Myers (@pzmyers) April 3, 2015
I made sure to point out we were NOT talking about intersex conditions or endocrinology. PZ shut up after his one lazy shot but it took his male friend Ben Blanchard a bit longer.
First let me point out that the litte tweet I chirped out was because the TERFs were flocking to me — I hadn’t barged into one of their conversations, or invited them to explain to me what makes for a real woman, but there they were, in my space. So she doesn’t get to complain about me violating boundaries.
Secondly, I do have a scientific background, and I don’t even know what it means to define “biological male” so absolutely. As I pointed out earlier, Nature published a good article on the scientific consensus on the biology of sex, and comes down soundly on the side of defining it as a spectrum. You want to pretend it’s black and white? Fine. You don’t get to claim scientific standing for your beliefs.
Thirdly, my comeback was brief because I see little point in arguing at length with bigots. She said having two X chromosomes made you female, an X and a Y makes you male, and that’s absolutely it. All I had to to was mention androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) to refute that.
Declaring intersex conditions and endocrinology, i.e., biology, as excluded from her definition is an attempt to ignore the evidence and declare victory by fiat. She is simply ignoring the problem.
So I’ll emphasize it again. You want to define sex by chromosomes. AIS women have the male chromosome set, but were raised as girls and women, look like women, are superficially indistinguishable from women. Do you deny them their womanhood? Would you insist that they must use the men’s restroom?
The comments there are more of the same.
Everybody knows what is a girl and what is a boy. These dudebros just love using their own bullshit patriarchal scientific and patriarchal establishments to beat women over the head and waste our time.
Never trust a statement that begins “Everybody knows…”. There is a continuum. The two extremes are the most heavily populated, and the range in between is thin, but that doesn’t invalidate its existence. The purpose of pointing that out is not to beat women over the head, but to tell them that they don’t get to beat the minority over the head.
We’re not saying we don’t support transpeople. We’re saying we want our women-only spaces respected and they’re not being respected.
I want lesbians to be able to say ‘I don’t like penis’ without a whole bunch of men in dresses screeching at them they’re ‘transphobes’ or ‘transmisogyny.’
How is it misogyny to not want to sleep with a man? They’re not actually women. That’s the point.
It is not misogyny to not want to sleep with a man. Acknowledging the status of trans woman is not a promise to have sex with them, just as me saying women are my equals is not at all synonymous with saying there is now an obligation to have sex. No one has to like the penis or like the vulva — it is a matter of personal preference. I think they’re both lovely organs, as are fingers and elbows and ears and noses*, but can sympathize fully with someone else not wanting to do anything intimate with any of them.
These people sound a heck of a lot like anti-gay activists — their arguments all reduce to “that’s icky” and trying to impose their personal preferences on everyone else.
*But not toes. Toes are stubby deformed digits, and feet are like hideously warped mutant bony hands. We ought to pass laws against foot fetishists, and people who walk around barefoot in my spaces ought to be shot.
My spouse would agree with you approximately 90 billion percent. The only good thing about feet is that they are as far away from eyes and noses as they can get and still be attached to the body.
Fuck TERF eliminationist dogma. Well said, PZ.
Do these people really think that the best way to battle oppression and aggression is to copy the behavior of the oppressors and aggressors?
The New Yorker addressed the issue of radical feminists rejecting transsexuals last year:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/woman-2
Yah, it’s sad that some feminists are so bigoted.
“… men in dresses…”
What year is this, again?
——
That certainly describes my feet.
I find the issue of “safe spaces for X” complex and a little confusing, not least because X is always ambiguous. X can be men, children, asians, scientists, tax collectors and whatever. The question is really why do you need this safe space? Safe space for abused women? No problem, they definitely need that. So what does it mean to “exclude men” from such a space? Why do so? Is the assumption that all men are going to abuse them some how or is it a concern about triggering a response? If its the first then that’s prejudice, if its the latter then having trans folk present isn’t a problem. Is that black and white enough? I doubt it and bet there are circumstances and corner cases I have no idea about. Having absolutists and bigots trying to set the agenda is a recipe for disaster amongst the “safe places”.
(1) They just want their own space (2) from trans women (3) who are really just men masquerading as women to trick cis lesbians into having sex with.
Call them out on (3) and they retreat back to (1) as if that was all they ever said. Until you stop criticizing them and they redouble back to (3).
She just wants to “[set] boundaries” on “male,” meaning people with XY chromosomes, including trans women.
It’s a strawman to say they’re trans exclusionary, even though they are literally excluding trans people.
*But not toes. Toes are stubby deformed digits, and feet are like hideously warped mutant bony hands. We ought to pass laws against foot fetishists, and people who walk around barefoot in my spaces ought to be shot.
Guess you won’t be visiting Japan after all, PZ.
*looks up from snuffling his whiskers around his wife’s toes*
WHUT?
*giggling recommences*
As far as I can tell, the motivating concept behind TERF is that trans women are men trying to force their way into women’s “spaces” as some kind of attack or threat – a belief that depends on a complete inability to empathize with or even listen to trans women, and a complete inability to acknowledge the fact that transwomen face massive hostility from the larger society, more than enough to completely dissuade any man who just wants to peep on women.
‘…it’s just that trans women ain’t women.’
@4 It makes me cheerful in a weird way. Feminism isn’t an echo chamber, it’s not “us versus them”, there are feminists who are ignorant idiots just like there are (lots of) atheists and Democrats and whatever other generally positive concepts you associate yourself to.
pz isn’t a an men’s rights activist as far a i know. i thought it was well know he considers himself to be a mgtow. [sarcasm/]
With regard to toes and feet: have you read Bujold’s book Falling Free, by chance? (Or Diplomatic Immunity?)
Bullshit. TERFs wrote “The Transsexual Empire”, which was basically “the Protocols of the Elders of Zion” for transpeople. It played a central role in changing the public perception of trans people from “weirdos with a psychological disorder” to “skeezy perverts who get off on being in the women’s bathroom”; the former was still transphobic, but at least it didn’t smear them as evil people who deserve to get attacked just for using the women’s room.
How can they not see that this vagina-worship is just a mirror image of patriarchy’s cult of the penis? There’s a lot more to sex than PIV, which means you don’t create a safe space just by banning dicks. If anything, you create a safe space for cis-female predators to act without suspicion.
“I made sure to point out we were NOT talking about intersex conditions or endocrinology.”
She only wants to talk about the subset of reality that conforms to her prejudices.
Cathy Brennan declared that “Citing RationalWiki as a reliable source is what MRAs do.” Nine months later, this still ranks as one of the most remarkable statements ever made about RationalWiki. I bet the MRAs were surprised too.
PZ above:
The answer is, yes they would insist. Intersex people are thrown under the bus by trans-exclusive radical feminists as well, because the intersex and transgender activist Dr Cary Gabriel Costello deliberately went seeking answers from a group of ‘gender critical’ feminists as to how they would have society treat intersex people, and their hard belief that there are only two possible types of human being (46/XX = vaginas = women and 46/XY = penises = men) would assign women with CAIS as being ‘men’, and likewise men with a condition such as CAH but a 46/XX karyotype would be assigned as women. And they also lacked understanding that there are many people who don’t fit those extreme cases (possessing only partially masculinised or feminised appearances contrary to the typical karyotypes).
She has also claimed that trans women are MRAs. I bet this was also news to both the MRAs and the trans women. Evidently the language she speaks is superficially English, but carries Crazy Moon Language chromosomes.
I wonder if she would be consistent and welcome trans men with XX chromosomes into her save spaces. For some reason I doubt it.
There are times when the similarities between the conspiracy-theory-riddled mindsets of MRAs on the one hand, and the TERFs on the other, is truly striking. Listening to TERFs arbitrarily declare that transwomen aren’t real women – and then go on to respond to persons who refer to evidence of such conditions as androgen insensitivity syndrome to demonstrate how a simple gender binary position is insufficient, with claims that this amounts to some conspiracy to force cis lesbians to have sex with what the TERFs define as men against their will (despite the fact that, as PZ says, recognising that someone’s gender identity is valid irrespective of their birth sex in no way obligates anyone to have sex with anyone else) – reminds me strongly of the weird conspiracy obsessions of MRAs and PUAs, with the obvious parallel being the obsession in some MRA quarters with the notion that transwomen might ‘con’ cis men into having sex with them, thus somehow undermining the masculinity or those men (because reasons), or the distinctly odd notion that placing some kind of limits upon the ability of men to proposition women at all times and in all circumstances will lead inexorably to the imminent extinction of our species.
Neither group seems able or willing to deal with the reality of their opponents’ positions at all, and far prefer to lash out incompetently at ridiculous strawman versions of those arguments, or to shadow box against byzantine conspiracy theories that have only ever existed (still less made anything approaching sense) in their own febrile imaginings.
So there you have it, TERFs of the world – you exist on roughly the same plain of intellectual honesty, ethical integrity, and rhetorical competence as the MRAs.
Errr… congratulations?
David Gerard,
Just a tip to drop the ableist ‘crazy’, since TERF ideology doesn’t necessarily involve mental illness in constructing repellant bigoted views; they firmly believe they are rationally justified in their views, which makes them rather scarier.
I’ve heard that description of being an MRA applied to me personally, especially seeing as on other grounds related to ignoring bigots on Twitter I am also regarded as a “fascist leader”.
Incidentally there is nothing stopping trans women from being MRAs — I’m aware of one long-standing critic of We Hunted the Mammoth who’s a trans woman and an ardent anti-feminist, supporter of the ‘Manosphere’. It’s altogether possible to be gender dysphoric, to transition and live as a woman, and to have internalised self-hating misogyny that leads you to be a rabid hater of feminists. It’s also kind of sad to reflect that self-loathing to the world, but it does happen.
Finally, I borked the acronym tag for CAH in my first post above — CAH is chronic adrenal hyperplasia. [Wiki]
Springfield, Missouri, just had an election that focussed on repealing gay rights. The antihumanity side made posters featuring that old idea that male sexual predators will pretend to be trans in order to get into women’s restrooms. Seriously, that was blazoned on billboards and fences around town – little girl saying “Keep my bathroom safe”.
So when I see this person using the same argument, I pretty much stop listening and start throwing. Well, I would if I was like that, but I want everyone to be safe everywhere.
What makes you thing they’re trying to battle oppression and aggression?
They’re not after a republic, they’re after the throne.
(So to speak).
Maybe that’s the point?
“Crazy” A) is a useful intensifier and B) in everyday usage is mostly divorced from connotations of literal mental illness (in a way that, for instance, “retarded” or “schizophrenic” aren’t). Is that just going to be ignored everywhere forever?
OK, that’s a bit uncalled for, I think.
When discussing people who go out of their way to out trans women, knowing this makes them fairly likely to be subject to violence?
It’s always frustrating to see people who, knowing every bit what it’s like to be a member of a oppressed or troubled demographic, in turn show an utter lack of empathy toward other demographics suffering similar plights. Like some highly religious African-Americans railing against gay marriage or people from poor backgrounds railing against welfare. It’s as though they have in their minds developed this mindset that since the world was unfair to them, the only fair thing is for it to be unfair to everyone else. “We had to struggle our way to where we are, so you have to struggle too. Don’t expect any hand-outs from us.” It’s a twisted outlook on life that I just can’t wrap my brain around.
@29 It’s a very human thing — you struggle to land a hit on those bullying you from above, so instead you pass the bullying on to someone below you. Breaking this cycle is a very important goal.
It’s not just anti-gay activists they sound like, but creationists as well. “What I half-remember from spending a week on the subject in my high school biology class makes me an expert on this biological subject!”
So let’s say that we adopt the TERF biological perspective with respect to bathrooms. XX go in the one with the little triangley silhouette person, and XY go in the one with the little non-triangley silhouette person. So…where do the people with trisomy conditions like Klinefelter’s (47,XXY) or triple X or XYY syndrome go? Do we need a separate Turner syndrome (45,X) bathroom? If I have a mosaic condition like 46,XX/XY or some chimerism, do I get to pick? Will they do the karyotyping right there while you do the tinkle dance, or will they have to install some kind of card reader?
It always galls me when people think that biology lends itself well to simple dichotomies and clean categorization, but could these folks at least have the self-awareness to know that if they haven’t seen their own karyotype, they don’t actually know what their chromosomes are?
What’s more shocking is how much faith they’re willing to put into a sign. A male predator is willing to dress up in drag, and in their minds, to undergo years of HRT and potentially surgeries and psychological counseling, all because he’d otherwise be cowed by the sign on the bathroom door that says “Women”? Do they think a predator who’s willing to go to all that trouble wouldn’t just sneak into the women’s restroom when no one’s looking? I accidentally went into a women’s restroom at a Burger King when I was a teenager and didn’t realize the mistake until well into using the facilities; I can attest from that experience that there’s not an alarm or an armed guard standing there to make sure that only women can use the toilets. Unless things have changed dramatically in the intervening fifteen years or so.
If they think that predators are such sticklers for the posted rules, why not just put a sign on the door that says “Do not assault anyone inside”? Or do they think that it’s like diplomatic immunity: “You can’t tell me to leave this restroom, I’m a woman, it says right here on my Evil Trans Union Card! I can stay in here and assault whomever I want, and there’s nothing you can do about it! Bwahahaha!”
TERFs apparently live in a D&D game with a novice DM, following all the rules on races and classes to the exact letter and throwing their hands up with an “I guess you’re right” when a player starts rules-lawyering.
This just jumped out at me from the New Yorker article Joel linked to:
“I will not call a male “she”; thirty-two years of suffering in this androcentric society, and of surviving, have earned me the title “woman”; one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain? No, in our mothers’ names and in our own, we must not call him sister.”
Replace references to gender with ‘gamer’ and this sounds *exactly* like a gamergate rant…
So, PZ, you’re a Toe-Exclusionary Radical Freethinker?
PZ Myers is a FERAL: Feet Exclusionary Radical Atheist Lecturer.
Apparently this TERF doesn’t know about SRY, and how XX males are possible if they happen to have SRY on one of those X chromosomes. What about XY females who have a Y chromosome without SRY? And what about Turner syndrome females? They aren’t XX. What about XXX females? What about XYY males? Our TERF not-friend needs to go back to Genetics 101.
There PZ goes again, advocating violence! I would disassociate myself from him, but a) I don’t think he’d care, or even notice, and b) don’t be silly.
Zeckenschwarm @ 20
Some TERFs do. Some will accept trans men or non-binary identified people so long as they were assigned female at birth. It’s erasing as fuck, but some people will take that acceptance without complaint.
Some do not. My very first introduction to the concept of TERFs was when one who was obsessed with trans men as “gender traitors” infiltrated an online community for trans* people on the masculine spectrum and began doxxing everyone she could.
Even among bigots, there’s variation in how that bigotry is applied.
I’ve gotten surprisingly little TERF attention on my current twitter account.
Honestly, I think the average creationist puts more effort into learning the relevant science than the average TERF does. Understanding is about the same, but at least creationists make more of an effort and aren’t driven by blind hatred(at least, not as consistently driven by it).
FFFFF: Foot-Fetish-Frowning Feminist Freethinker.
TERFs, you are NOT HELPING. Mainstream feminism is about equality and acceptance, and TERFs are striving to set up a matriarchy. TERF words and attitudes support MRAs by making it seem that MRAs have a valid point – that feminists hate men.
My spouse is transgender (male identifying as female). My brother’s child is also trans (female identifying as male). My spouse’s desperate attempt to appear cis, to deny who s/he is, led to several suicide attempts, and prison time. According to a 2011 study http://endtransdiscrimination.org/PDFs/NTDS_Report.pdf , this is common among transgender people. 41% attempt suicide. Many go to prison. Many are homeless. Many are assaulted, sometimes murdered. Many have trouble finding and keeping a job.
If TERFs choose to exclude a deeply troubled minority, who are arguably worse off than cis women, they are just as monstrously inhumane as MRAs. The trans people I know have felt that something was wrong with them as soon as they were aware of their assigned gender, around 4 or 5 years old. They grew up hiding that pain and confusion, instead of getting needed help, because they fear the type of rejection that TERFs (and MRAs) trumpet.
The fight between TERFs and trans people ha been going on for at least forty years. For example; Sandy Stone, a trans women, worked as a sound engineer for Olivia Records in the mid to late seventies. Olivia is a lesbian feminist collective and the women there were aware of Sandy Stone’s status as a trans woman.
Janice Raymond, author of The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male denounced Sandy Stone’s position within the colletive, making the argument that the patriarchy was busy making “she-males” to infiltrate women’s space and use their “male energy” to take over and destroy such paces. Olivia Records would not end their support of Sandy Stone. But after the release of The Transsexual Empire, some proto-TERFs threatened to boycott the shows of Olivia Records artists and the purchase of their records. It was at the point that Sandy Stone resigned. (But a few years later, Sandy Stone wrote the extremely influential essay The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.)
TERFs depend on treating tropes as if they are absolutely true and absolutely infallible. Hence the disbelief that a working biologist and a student working on a masters in biology could possibly tell them that they are wrong that sex is not as simple as XX=woman and XY=male.
The tropes goes even deeper, that “men in dresses” are waiting to get into women’s restroom in order to assault women. Never mind that if a man wants to assault women , there are much easier ways to go about this then dressing like a woman.
When talking about trans women, many TERFs love to point out how they are biological males wearing dresses, make-up and bad wigs. Never mind that many trans women, like many cis women, rarely wear dresses nor make-up. It is all about inciting that some clothing, appearance and manners are gendered and has always been. This also goes into actions. While many TERFs are quite aggressive in incising that trans women are really men, the act of denying this is seen as proof of “male aggression”.
PZ got a small taste of this. Imagine getting this everyday. My policy is to avoid TERFs IRL and to block them when I encounter them on line. But I still get this everyday because while TERFs are only the more extreme form of these ideas, many everyday people hold milder forms of these same ideas. You never know when this will be thrown at you and from whom.
Oh wow. That’s beautifully revealing. Minimizing the abuse trans women receive to “5 minutes of … [hassling]” and then trying to say maybe she enjoys it? That doesn’t just sound like a gamergate rant, that sounds like many of the dismissals of sexual harassment against women.
raefm, please do not refer to people as “trans (male identifying as female). I know you do not mean to do this but you are still saying that your spouse is still male. She is a trans woman.
(Please do not think I am yelling at you but I would be insulted being referred to as “transgender [male identifying as female].)
Rogue Scientist at #32, it should come as no surprise that except for a couple of trans women who are part of GG (Chobitcoin and CameraLady) who are even more vitriolic then the average GGer; GG is extremely transphobic.
Jacob Schmidt @ 42;
It does have cadences of those horribly callous and creepy ‘if you can’t stop it, you may as well just lie back and enjoy it/she said it was assault, but she probably just enjoyed the attention’ arguments you get from many rape and sexual harrassment apologists.
Isn’t it just – all too many TERFs are not seeking a more equitable or safer society; what they want is simply to shift the shoe to the other foot, and in pursuit of a desired martirachal culture that would be every bit as toxic and harmful as the current patriarchal one, they have no problem whatsoever throwing vulnerable groups like transpeople under the bus (and in the process give the MRAs undeserved ammunition, since those arsehats are always quick to try to tar all feminism with the TERF brush).
It’s despicable.
Jacob Schmidt, one of the strange realities of being openly trans. The first time I has harassed for being a women, I was fucking fuming. A little bit later, I was a little bit pleased that I was being seen as I wanted to be seen but I was still fucking fuming. And that slight bit of being pleased quickly disappears a it becomes your new reality.
Janine, you’re right. That mistake comes from my own pain and confusion. I am a cis woman who thought I married a cis man. To watch someone I love slowly destroying herself, rejecting my attempts to help because she loathed herself, has been years of hell. Being married to a trans woman was not what I signed up for, since I am a cis woman.
The only thing that makes it bearable is understanding that she could not have come out as trans in 1990; she had no choice but to attempt to pass as cis male. She also does love me and never meant to hurt me.
raefn
I hope it’s working out.
Have you been to the Lounge?
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2015/04/12/lounge-495/comment-page-1/
It can get strange but it’s usually safe.
Do you even OWN a fedora?
And here I thought an extremist like witchwind was a singular case of anti-social non-thinking. I must be living in a bubble. I didn’t realize it was an entire movement (as in bowel movement).
It’s time to turf out the TERFs.
For what it’s worth – and being as I’m male and barely understand trans…ness? you should take this with as many buckets of salt as you deem necessary – while I don’t necessarily agree with it, I do sort of understand why people become TERFs.
If you’re a woman and you’ve spent your entire life burdened by idiot men blinded by male privilege, and you go to the trouble of setting up a safe space specifically for women, you might bristle at the idea of an apparent man coming in claiming that he “identifies” as a woman so he knows ALL about your problems— if you’ve never actually MET a trans woman but you’re dimly aware of the concept, it sounds almost similar to the typical privileged male claim that owning a penis means they know more than you about your own experience that props up the entire anti-choice movement.
But then I have tried assuming transphobes were merely ignorant only for them to prove they were rigid proponents of dumb gender roles who hated trans people for breaking them. It wouldn’t surprise me if TERFs were actually just hateful.
Jake Harban
The people who are transwomen did not spend their entire lives as Men™, then suddenly decide they were really women.
The people who are transmen did not spend their entire lives as Women™ then suddenly decide they were really men.
It’s more complicated than lipstick and trousers.
I get it, raefn. I always have had sympathy for cis women who married what they thought were cis men and end up with something else completely. Many trans women at first try to convinced themselves that, yes, they are actually men and ty to live a stereotypical masculine life. And, as you must have seen, causes a lot of turmoil.
I know that this was something you did not ask. I am sure that before you found yourself in the middle of it, did not even imagine that this truly existed. I am also sure that you pnt a lot time wonder just what was real and what was a dsperate attempt to put up a front.
This is why I want our society to change enough so trans people can be open about it and transition while they are young. Trans issues affect not just trans people, it also affects family and friends. When a trans person tries to life in a gender they do not fit in, it brings up issues for other people. And, frankly for a cis person trying to understand, it can look like deception was used.
I do thank you, raefn, for taking my words as I hoped I presented them. It sounds like you both went through very trying times. And I hope you both are able to find a solution that works for both of you.
Good luck.
Jake Harban, by the time I was six, perhaps younger (Memory is a very tricky thing.) I already knew that I was not quite like the boys I was grouped with. But I also knew that it would not be a good idea to express that to most people because, despite what some people keep trying to deny, being a girl was something lesser then being a boy. And I was already teased and bullied enough as it was.
Many trans people try to hide it because they fear the reaction that people around them will have. And you you are, being yet an other little enforcer of that fear. Trust me, if I knew you IRL and I knew you said this, I would avoid you.
One quick note, chigau, it is “trans woman”, not “transwoman”. You do not normally make an adjective and a noun into one word. It is the same here.
Janine
Noted, with thans.
also
thanks
@David Gerard
oh hi!
Sounds like the stereotype of MRA=Atheist=Libertarian=Fedora etc.
Jake, I’m a trans woman who has spent much of my life burdened by cis people who are blinded by their privilege, and I bristle at the idea of a cis person claiming that they know ALL about my life… but that doesn’t seem to matter to TERFs because only their own experiences with gender based oppression seem to matter to them. To them, a trans person’s struggles with gender based oppression matters little. In fact, many TERFs will deny that this experience of oppression even exists or will blame the oppression upon the trans person themselves.
That’s one of the sad outcomes of intersecting oppression and privilege: a person’s experience with one form of privilege can lead them into prioritizing their own experiences with oppression above all others, because their privilege inadvertently blinds them to the fact that others experience prejudice and discrimination just as keenly as they do. Insight gained from one form of oppression does not make up for the blind spots generated by privilege along a different social axis.
One more thing. I didn’t identify as female until I was 17. So yeah, in many respects, I grew up experiencing a variant of male privilege. However, I socially/medically transitioned over 20 years ago. I’ve identified as female for even longer: for nearly 30 years, actually. I’m in my mid 40s. These experiences represent the bulk of my life.
To think that I don’t understand the sexism and misogyny that women experience is laughable. Furthermore, when you consider that sexist oppression was immediately obvious to me years ago because I could directly contrast my experiences after transition with my experiences before transition, it makes the notion of trans women not understanding sexism even more far fetched. However, that’s just the thing: cis people have little idea what it’s like to be transgender… and yet, their social power leaves them with the false belief that they are the true arbiters of trans people’s experiences.
Social power/privilege is a heady matter and can lead people into some the most inaccurate assumptions about others.
To elaborate on that, I believe the phrase “assigned male at birth” is generally accepted for expressing what raefm is trying to?
@Janine, #41
It took a decade, but yes. It was influential. Although she didn’t coin the word then (and, FWIW, Diana Courvant says the word was probably[certainly?] multiply coined) that essay really was an important early step towards articulating a foundational transfeminism.
I think I actually just linked to The Empire Strikes Back the other day. Hmmm. Where would that have been…
Ah, yes. When I was lecturing at others…. I should have remembered.
If anyone wants to read Sandy Stone’s essay, the link is just a couple paragraphs in to my lecturing-at-others post.
Translation: Let me exclude all the data that doesn’t confirm my preconceived notions.
You know what, dear TERFS, I’m pretty sure nobody is against you setting up your own little room for people who are like you. Just don’t claim that you’re doing that for “women”. You’re not creating safe spaces for women. Apart from trans women, you’re also not creating safe spaces for cis women who disagree with you. You swallowed the patriarchal definition of “woman” as “perceived to have baby-making facilities*” hook line and sinker and then you expect me to work from that.
*and that’s the smart subset, those who realise that many cis women are not in posession of working baby-making facilities.
Yep, one of them wears pink and the other one wears blue. Because that’s how people gender your baby or your toddler*. In absence of dress codes, long and short hair is in favour, too. As a child I desperately awaited my 6th birthday, because that was when my mother would allow me earbobs. I was sick and tired of people calling me “he”.
*People get upset to outright agressive when they find out that you dared to put your female assigned toddler into jeans and a T with a car on it. Nobody knows her genotype and usually nobody can see her phenotype.
The irony is so thick you can slice it. They are the ones operating with an outdated patriarchal definition. It’s actually feminists who criticised this biologistic essentialism, questioning the assumptions behind XX=female, XY=male.
No, you want to push your definition of “woman” and rigidly enforce it. You don’t want control over your space, you want control over mine as well.
You’re not being yelled at for the “I don’t like penis”, you’Re being yelled at for the “men in dresses” bullshit.
FFS, so you’d happily fuck each and every cis woman just because she has a vagina? I like penises quite well, but there are still a few billion penis bearers on this planet I don’t want to fuck.
+++
Menyambal
Male sexual predators already get into women’s restrooms. And bedrooms, and cars, and workplaces, and schools….
The idea that a guy would go to the lengths it takes to present as female is pretty ridiculous. It’S also an argument TERFs use to commit violence against anybody not being female enough* for them in “pre-emptive self-defense”
*What’s actually their meassure? Oh, right, conforming to patriarchal notions of how women have to look. So if nature dealt you to be tall and bony and flat-chested you probably need to carry a medical report saying you’re XX.
Tom Foss
I was thinking along those lines as well. Mandatory genetic analysys on a mandatory card?
It’s quite common for larger areas to block one restroom for cleaning and send everybody to the other one. Heaven does not fall down on them…
Jake Harban
How the fuck do you know? This sounds like my dear husband, back in his time as my boyfriend, exclaiming that “he doesn’t know any gay people”, about 6 months before his brother came out to him. I don’t know if I know trans* people in meatspace. It’s not something I’m asking people when I meet them.
+++
My personal experience with TERFS is that they’re quick to make assumptions about your genitals and chromosomes. They’re obsessed with genitals. Question their bullshit and you’re a guy with a dick. That’s a huge irony right there, them diagnosing people’s sex and gender from a few interactions on Twitter while claiming to be strictly biological in their assessments.
The male-female dichotomy must be one of the strongest held beliefs in the world. It’s the first thing people ask when a baby is born: is it a boy or a girl? Even before: is it healthy?
God, I hate TERFs. I think it’s the hypocrisy. “I, as a member of X oppressed group, deserve help and support and safe spaces, but they, as a member of Y oppressed group, do not”.
And they insist on using what is essentially the same argument that socially regressive conservative arseholes use when it comes to the Great Trans* Bathroom Debate™, i.e. “All trans* women are just peeping Toms and rapists who put on a dress to get into the female bathroom”. This argument is such illogical, fear-mongering, imagined bullshit it makes me fucking furious.
First Thunderf00t, then Michael Shermer then TERFs. Damnit, why does PZ steal all the best enemies!
Yes, yes they do, exactly like them, and it all boils down to your comment earlier on the article:
The arrogance, the internally inconsistent, fatally flawed “arguments”, the obvious emotional basis for their entire tantrum, leeking constantly out of everything they say, the pretense of knowledge and the apropriation of science and “the natural”, despite a complete disregard for what the natural actually contains and what the science has to say. They sound the same because they are the same: bigots.
Jake,
But now imagine being a trans woman having spent her life burdened by idiot men and idiot women blinded by their male and female (relative to trans) privileges.
I’m sorry, but even the most well intentioned trans exclusionary perspective is nothing but a form of punching down.
@ Jake Harban #51
Yeah, I understand why they’re like they are. If you look at things from their point of view, their attitude makes perfect sense. The problem is that their point of view is based upon incorrect assumptions of patriarchially-defined binary gender (ironically), and a woeful ignorance of trans* people’s lived experiences, and is therefore wrong and causes real harm to real people. And they utterly refuse to be educated on the matter.
#68
Sorry, that should have been “cis-female”.
But isn’t the whole ‘having been oppressed, it’s now my turn to be the oppressor’ thing normal (if not good) behaviour?
We see it in (for example) the ‘pilgrim fathers’, or the State of Israel, or in a more humorous context in that song…”Where once I was oppressed, I’ve now become the cruel oppressor.”
Oh and on toes, as a one-time football (soccer, if you absolutely must) player ;et me just add you don’t know the half of it :-(
Not even one sentence between calling the charge that TERFs want to exclude trans women from certain spaces a strawman and then affirming the legitimacy of the characterization? Jesus fucking fuck, how is one supposed to reason with someone with that little self awareness?
Jake Harban @ 51:
No, you don’t, you just think you do. A couple of decades ago, I got into a vicious, weeks long argument that left me fuming for…decades. I had run smack into a TE person, and this is the whole of her argument: those icky men just want the fun stuff of being a woman, they didn’t pay their dues! ‘Fun stuff’ being characterised as dresses, manicures, shopping, and so on, which is pretty fucking sexist on its own, don’t you think?
All there ever was to the argument was this notion that no dues had been paid, as in “they haven’t endured years of periods, so there!” It takes about 2 seconds of thought to discount that nonsense. There’s never a single fucking thought as to what trans people actually go through, and for the most part, it’s worse than periods. Please don’t go sympathizing with TERFs on this sort of basis, it’s bullshit.
That is certainly TE. Anything recognizable (to me) as “Radical Feminist”, not so much.
Leerudolph @ 74:
These might help a little: https://jadehawks.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/in-which-i-demonstrate-on-a-volunteered-document-just-where-radical-feminists-go-wrong/
https://jadehawks.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/ive-served-radical-feminism-the-divorce-papers/
Trans women are women. Feminism is for all women. There is nothing feminist in misgendering women.
I can’t imagine having anything else to say to a transphobic “feminist”.
Why do we even refer to them as “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” rather than “transphobic feminists” or just “transphobic”?
Caine@75:
Yeah, well, if by “help a little” you mean “induce deep despair”.
I guess my notion (incomplete and vague as it may be) of what “radical feminism” might mean, which was basically formed in the early 1970s, doesn’t have much to do with how the phrase is used now (at least by some). Either that, or it does, and I’m resistant to seeing it because it would just be too difficult and too painful for me to do so. Oh, well.
mickll @66:
You forgot the Irish wanker and Kent Hovind.
The cruel, warped suggestion of some women being disposable is just chilling.
Women need their own bathrooms to be safe from predatory men, but these women have to go into the dangerous men’s restrooms routinely? Really? Who thinks like that? Talk about throwing someone to the wolves. Do these cis women know how many trans women are raped and murdered? Those women should be excluded from safe spaces? What sort of spaces are these women to inhabit then?
Hey, did you know that to followers of the Dark Enlightenment, “transgenderism” is a feminazi plot to literally emasculate men?
https://fanghornforest.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/transgenderism-is-anti-male/
Jackie #80
There’s your issue. TERFs firmly believe women deserve all those things; they just don’t think trans* women are women. They’re men in disguise.
In other words, TERFs are reality-denying transphobic arseholes.
@ Lindsay
The fuck is wrong with people?
That link of Lindsay’s needs a serious TW for virulent transphobia, BTW.
Leerudolph @ 78:
I sympathize, mine was formed in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Like everything else, radical feminism has changed over the years, and unfortunately, there isn’t one single definition to conveniently pin it all down. Dealing with TERFs these days makes me remember discussions (back in the day) with Zsuzsanna Dianic women fondly.
Well, he can’t take Ryan Seacrest from me! *shakes fist* Damn you, Seacrest!!!
I’m a bit entertained at the beginning of the section. They say, “It’s a massive straw man,” but then they start the very next sentence with, “We are however…” Really? It’s like the “I’m not a racist, but…” line; everybody knows what’s to follow is going to be something racist. In this case, it’s a good signal that what’s about to come is going to show that it is, in fact, not a “massive straw man.”
Leo Buzalsky:
It’s sad, but this is now a common bullshitting technique. “Straw man” and “out of context” accusations are often used without support to handwave away legitimate criticism and defend utter tripe or, in this case, bigotry. If it is a straw man, if it is out of context, prove it. Otherwise it is just bluster.
I will say they did a fine job of proving the “straw man” to be right. She is weak in the art of bullshittery.
My daughter told me that she was going to hang out with a girl, and told me the girl’s name was Katy or something. As it happened, we had to meet up for something or other, and I saw that she was with a young man. Well, she introduced me to the young man by saying, “This is Katy, the girl I told you about.” Katy greeted me in a young man’s voice, and seemed a nice fellow. I made polite chitchat, handed over the cash or keys or whatever it was, and made a courteous departure.
My daughter later explained that Katy was in the earliest stage of transitioning, like recently decided to do so, but hadn’t the money for clothes, let alone surgery, so hadn’t done voice or mannerisms or anything yet. So, as I said, I saw a young man.
But Katy was a girl, according to the introduction, and that was all I needed to know. Not that it made a damn bit of difference in the conversation – I don’t talk sports or cars with guys, so we just chatted.
I later got that Katy was just beginning to transition, and that she didn’t have money for clothes, let alone surgery, so she tended to act the way she was dressed. Which, considering that this meet-up was happening in Branson, Missouri, was probably just as well.
Anyhow, that particular girl was in every apparent way a young man, probably with chromosomes and all, but she was a girl. I had no troubles with that, but I would have trouble with anyone giving her grief, or anybody else grief, because of chromosome counts. There is a lot more to being human than the contents of our genes.
Well, I need to quit trying to write on this tablet. Cursed small screen.
One of DaughterSpawn’s good friends is a young trans woman, who has come around to the decision to transition while at university; DaughterSpawn’s circle of friends seem to be just as unfazed as they should be with the fact that their friend who presented as a young man in first year (a pretty unhappy young man, as it happens) now identifies and presents as a much happier young woman. I’m glad she’s (I’m glad for both she’s, I should say – DaughterSpawn and friend are) hanging out with what seems to be a bunch of decent people (I would say decent kids, but then I’d have to complain about their being on my lawn).
Jackie #80
QFT
Somebody wrote to Dear Abby many years ago, when trans and cross-dressing and various gender confusions were not spoken of, and asked what to do when dressed as one sex but equipped as another, and facing a public restroom. Abby, bless her, expressed her surprise and then said to go into the bathroom that the person is dressed for.
She didn’t say to hope for a private stall, and to be courteous, but she gave a good, simple answer that some people have been ignoring since. I think it was Dear Abby, anyway.
I remember a few Feminist blogs, (including Zuska’s back in the ScienceBlog days, as I recall) where the commenters would (apart from more prosaic abuse) habitually misgender people with feminine screen names, even people who explicitly stated their gender as female, who disputed anything the blogger had to say, in any way, to any degree. I always thought there was something extra-icky about that angle, but I could never articulate what exactly. The TERF connection makes perfect sense.
The odd thing about the paranoia over bathrooms is that it seems to be a paranoia with no evidence. It seems I can’t go more than a month or so without hearing a news report of some creep who has managed to get cameras, cut a peephole etc. into bathrooms, change rooms, and other spaces intended for women. But I’ve never heard a report of a man dressing up as a woman so he can enter those spaces and harm women. I’m sure it has happened at least once, someplace. But the way it keeps being brought up you’d think it was something that was happening regularly all over the place.
Sigh. I hate to have to disagree….but my feet are adorable. They are amazing. If I wear sandals I will be complimented on them pretty much daily. I have had total strangers approach me to discuss the delicacy and sublime beauty of my feet. I only wish the rest of you could experience the joys and privileges that are bestowed upon me by my exquisite feet, but alas, I cannot. I pity you, all of you.
Fucking TERFs…you know, I’m helping a woman who’s been trafficked and forced into prostitution keep herself alive, and she tells me the support from a lot of her radfem allies dried up as soon as she dared stand up for a transwoman friend of hers. They actually cried “gender traitor” at her, can you believe it?!
I’ll tell you who’s the gender traitor: women who do not help a suffering sister, regardless of her beliefs. If Phyllis Schlafly ended up falling on hard times, raped or abandoned by her husband, we feminists would have to help her, because she would be a sister in need. But why, why, in the name of Cthulhu, would people who fight for the victims of gender-based violence turn on the most marginalized group of all?
It reminds me of something incredibly depressing I read once: “The dream of the slave is not freedom, but slave ownership.”
The parallels with right wing opponents of gay marriage (for example) are interesting. I listened to an interview with the egregious Cathy Brennan, and once you strip away the lawyerly obfuscation, the argument is that she feels that others having a different understanding of gender threatens her femaleness. Just like the gay marriage opponents who insist that their hetero marriages are directly endangered somehow by gay guys and gals getting hitched.
Feet are weird. You got this club of an appendage with five tiny digits coming off the end. Most animal paws are more elegant.
Rey Fox
“five tiny digits”
Try walking without a big toe.
That link of Lindsay’s needs a serious TW for virulent transphobia, BTW.
Oops :( I usually remember stuff like that.
That is some primo bigotry.
Complains that a child is too young to make life changing decisions; thinks it is “lucky” for a child to be jailed for a petty crime.
Complains about how trans women have high suicide rates; engages in hateful rhetoric that helps cause those suicides.
<sarc>Women definitely have fully functional wombs; men never have potency problems. </sarc>
“*But not toes. Toes are stubby deformed digits, and feet are like hideously warped mutant bony hands. We ought to pass laws against foot fetishists, and people who walk around barefoot in my spaces ought to be shot.”
Passing up all the important things you wrote, to comment on that passing observation:
OMG. You share my lifelong anti-fetish. Human feet are _gross_.
I mean, yes, they perform a vital job, and they work hard through all the abuse (and weight) we place on them, so I salute them for that…
But aesthetically speaking, they are the best argument there is for no intelligent designer (or an “intelligent” designer with a sick sense of humor).
(Great. That insult probably just earned me a spot in Hell… with my punishment being an eternity as a reflexologist or podiatrist. NOOOOO!!!!!)
The hypocrisy is breathtaking. It’s actually rather fascinating. Even as a child, I was taught empathy through the simple method of imagining what it would be like to be someone else. I somehow doubt the TERFs spend much time contemplating what their words and actions sound like to a trans woman.
I think that everyone should wait until they’re legally adult before they get braces on their teeth.
.
Wait. No I don’t think that.
.
I never had braces and my teeth are fine.
.
Wait. No they’re not.
Human feet are too big. It’s like we evolved walking on really soft surfaces and never recovered. And now, when we spend all our time on pavement, our feet are really much too big.
So many of the gender issues are caused by people thinking there are two distinct and separate genders. And by being exclusionary and hateful. Sad to say, a lot of the traits that make conservatives act the way they do, show up in more liberal people as well.
Damnit, everybody needs a safe space to get away from the “alpha-male” men, now and then, including the alpha males. If your safe space is only for women, you are assuming that all men are jerks and that all women need refuge. Let the trans people in, even if you insist on thinking of them as men, so that the troubled folks can meet some good ones, and maybe get some insights. And maybe you will learn to stop classifying folks, and to stop classifying your classifications.
That’s the biggest bullshit there is. The strawman’s so big, larger Zoos wouldn’t need to buy any more straw for a year if they had access to it.
What does “changing gender” in a 5 yo mean? Oh, right, they put on a different coded set of clothing*, cut or grow out their hair, change their first name. They perform a different gender because 5 yo are remarkably similar when it comes to bodies. If a child assigned male at birth putting on a skirt is “life changing”, they need to call CPS on our daycare because they do not stop the “boys” from putting on the princess dresses and the tiaras when they play dress up.
If, and that’s a very big if since there’s little indication that kids mistakingly think they’re trans*, our 5 yo AMAB should decide at 8yo that actually “Cheryl” isn’t who they’re being but “Tom” really is, they can throw away the dresses and tiaras and look and behold, gender has been changed again.
What do TERFs think is happening with trans* kids? That they’re being pumped full with hormones that are absent in their cis mates’ systems on account of being toddlers? That people are doing surgery on genitals of 4 yo because they like Disney Princesses?
*and gods I wished it wasn’t so and children and adults could just wear, do and look like they fancy without people making assumptions about their sex or gender.
I just don’t get the way TERFs want to reinforce societal gender stereotypes. How is that furthering the cause of feminism? One of the things I love about my 3yo son’s nursery is that they let kids play however they like, with no gender stereotypes being enforced. He joins in with the other kids in playing princesses, he loves Frozen (and I now involuntarily know all the songs by heart, dammit), and he loves playing in the toy kitchen and shopping. I was really annoyed when I noticed one of the things listed on the label of toy grocery shopping set we bought him was “great fun for girls” – what, men don’t do the shopping now?
I don’t want to raise my son or his imminent sibling to think that there are “boy things” and “girl things” or even a fixed concept of “boy” or “girl”. Although I can see why TERFs might wrongly disagree with the latter, I really can’t see how anyone can call themselves a feminist and yet identify being female with being a skirt wearing childbearer.
@ Lindsay #100
We all forget sometimes; just thought I’d stick a note in there in the hope that anyone who may be triggered would see it before clicking the link.
@ Jacob Schmidt #101
Yeah, the comments section is highly disturbing.
I think that bit’s sarcastic; he was bemoaning the fact that it’s easier, in his head, to transition from male to female than vice versa. They seem to think that a) this is a real thing, based on absolutely nothing, and b) that this indicates a conspiracy to reduce the population of males.
I might be off base here, but I’m getting a ‘welfare cheat’ vibe off of the TERF argument.
Yes, it’s possible – maybe even inevitable – that some creeper somewhere will try to use proclaimed gender identity to victimize women. By this argument, anyone who claims anything other than ‘approved’ gender identity must therefore be that creeper, and must be thrown under the bus.
Seems identical to the “Well, we found this one guy who buys lobster with food stamps, so let’s make applying for them as hard as possible and restrict everyone on them to diets of unflavored gruel because CHEATING!”
Sad.
My question is what litmus test do these TERFs have in mind that women need to pass before being allowed in their “safe space”.
Saad
That’s a good question.
Is it performance of femininity? Many trans women do that much more than I do, for various reasons.
Is it physical attributes? There are tall and bulky cis women, flat chested cis women, etc. There are small trans women with rather delicate body builds that me in all my cis-ness yould never achieve.
Genitals? Again, not a clear line.
Do people have to menstruate in front of them? Bring a certificate of cis femaleness from a doctor?
As I said before, TERFs use an outdated patriarchal definition of sex and then run with it.
Anri
They have that one case in Montreal, I think, where a sexual predator claimed to be a trans woman to gain access to a women’s shelter. This ignores, of course, the existence of cis female predators at shelters.
It’s basically the “Duke Lacrosse” case of TERFs: Whenever you hear somebody mention it, you know that rational debate is futile.
They probably just use birth certificate as a litmus test. Maybe they even ‘card’ people like it’s a bar.
Things are rarely simple. There are spectra and varieties of views in every ideological movement, and that includes Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism.
Some remain opposed to the Religious Right, others are in close alliance with them – as Janice Raymond called for in RADFEM 2013, and as with Cathy Brennan’s hosting of Pacific Justice Institute documents.
But sometimes a single statement can encapsulate their views, it’s a signature.
As Bev Jo Van Dohre said about the violence against Trans women –
That’s basically it. The rest is just detail, and often smoke and mirrors.
Wow, and they still think they’re the good ones
…and thus I called them eliminationist, all the way back @2. This is not news, to me. :/
If they were Eliminationist, they’d be saying things similar to other Eliminationists. Like
Heinrich Himmler, Memo March 23 1941.
Instead Professor of Ethics Janice Raymond wrote in 1979
Completely different, no resemblance whatsoever.
Jesus fucking christ, there are no words for how vile that is.
Er.. if you think that’s bad… maybe you shouldn’t read what some of them write.
http://theterfs.com/2013/03/02/terf-quotes/
Fortunately, apart from the UK and Canada, they have no political power now. They used to, back in the late 70s and early 80s, which is why certain Federal rulings from back then have had to be overturned recently. But no longer.
Now the threat is from the Religious Right – who have adopted many of these originally Radical Leftist views that Trans and Intersex people aren’t actually human. As here:
— Steven Mark Pilling, Chair of the Harris County TX GOP, on Intersex kids
Hence the recent Texas legislation designed to prevent Intersex people from using public restrooms, and the hot-off-the-press ballot initiative in California from the Pacific Justice Institute based on the premise that Trans and Intersex people “violate the privacy” of human beings if they’re present in the same restrooms. Similar attempts are being made in 8 states (so far) simultaneously, all funded by the ACLJ or associated right wing legal groups.
Putting a $4000 bounty on them in a civil case is a clever move, as it provides a financial incentive for persecution by those out to make a quick buck, as well as subsidising religious groups.
Hi PZ and readers. This misrepresentation of the feminist position, as shown in this thread, is a matter of frustration to many feminists. As well as being scandalously unfair, it adds nothing to the discussion. There is a lot of serious feminist writing on the trans issue, but a good essay I’ve just been reading this morning discusses the idea that feminists are killing trans people. If anyone is inclined to read another perspective on this issue, which is earnestly and soberly written, and which to my eyes is a comprehensive theoretical account, the link is http://www.troubleandstrife.org/new-articles/you-are-killing-me/
sylvania #119
Do you really think that there are no feminists commenting in this thread?
Really?
Do you really think that there is a single “feminist position”?
Really?
What have you “added to the discussion”?
Oh piss off with your claims that the multiple feminists who have contributed discussion in this thread is a misrepresentation of “the” feminist position. If your feminism involves oppressing and attacking other marginalized groups, you are doing it wrong. The source article of the OP is full of complete crap about man free safe spaces and fear-mongering speculation that trans women have a hidden agenda. Step one, infiltrate feminism. Step two, institute the bathroom agenda. Step three, initiate a sudden yet inevitable betrayal which completely destroys feminism foreveah! Step four, rule the world/profit!
sylvania,
There is no discussion. You aren’t a feminist. You’re a transphobe. No one is misrepresenting you’re bigotry. Stop hiding behind feminism and have the decency to own your hate.
Did you hear that the Michigan Women’s Festival is closing after this year? After 40 years of trans exclusion Michfest is over. They’re closing rather than allow trans women. So many women have boycotted that the owner of the land decided to retire. It’s a shame they could not have embraced inclusion. The experience the fest offered some women was inspiring. It could have offered that experience to all women. It’s over now. Things that don’t grow, die.
Feminists are moving on without you sylvania. Women like you can get over their issue with trans women or you can get left in the dust. You’re a bigoted fringe group. The millennials ain’t having it. Stick a fork in TERF. It’s done.
sylvania – I think you’re being treated a tadge harshly and unfairly. It’s possible to be a “gender critical feminist” without being a TERF.
However, let’s look at the record.
Except that gender critical feminist Janice Raymond wrote a position paper saying exactly that – that while trans people benefited from medical treatment, it was unethical to allow them to have it, for the Greater Good of Society.
See
Paper Prepared for the National Center for Health Care Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery
By Janice G. Raymond
Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics and Women’s Studies
Hampshire College/University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts
June, 1980
Available online at http://aebrain.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/50000-deaths.html
As was recognised by the Department of Health and Human Services review of the policy adopted in the 80s due largely to this position paper, arguing that medical considerations should be set aside because of Gender Critical Theory, many people were denied necessary medical treatment.
See
Department of Health and Human Services
Departmental Appeals Board ruling No. 2576
National Coverage Determination 140 3 Transsexual Surgery
Available at http://aebrain.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/dab-no-2576-ncd-140-3-transsexual.html
The policy was changed, but by the most conservative possible estimate, not until at least 50,000 corpses had resulted from it. Few ideologies can claim that as an accomplishment, though for most (not all – 95% give the others a bad name) Gender Critical theorists, 50,000 isn’t nearly enough.
Gender critical Feminist Sheila Jeffreys has written books stating that to allow Trans people to have medical treatment is a crime against humanity. That it is human rights abuse. The same has been claimed in Op-Eds in national newspapers by all Gender Critical Theorists of note. Not just Sheila “Trans women aren’t women because they do have smelly vaginas” Jeffreys, but Germaine “Trans women aren’t women because they don’t have smelly vaginas” Greer. And Julie “Trans women should just shut up” Burchill. Suzanne “Transphobia is your term. I have issues with trans anything actually” Moore.
So while articles like the one you quoted seem reasonable and rational, one has to wonder whether it was written by one of the 5% who really believe that, or the 95% who want to see Transsexuality and Transsexuals eliminated by any means necessary. A bit like the articles stating that the KKK isn’t racist in theory, nor National Socialism anti-Semitic. In theory, they’re not. Experience though has shown something different. Most who write apologetics for them are engaged in a “Religion of Peace” style con job.
Gender Critical Theory has one other ethical problem. I don’t mean the contempt for scientific results, because the Science is never “settled”. If some new piece of evidence came in showing that the Earth is flat, and explaining in a plausible way why all previous evidence was misleading, we’d have to accept that.
No, I mean the effect on Intersex kids. If Gender Critical Theory is true, then we would be morally obligated to surgically assign an arbitrary sex to Intersex kids as soon as possible. This was indeed the practice historically, for Gender Critical Theory was very popular in the past, and widely accepted until the 80s.
It was, and is, a farnarckling disaster. The experiment that supported Gender Critical Theory – the infamous David Reimer (John/Joan) case – turned out to be fraudulent, the data manufactured. Instead of being turned into a successful, happy girl, as was reported, David de-transitioned, and later suicided.
We have articles like this one too:
Discordant Sexual Identity in Some Genetic Males with Cloacal Exstrophy Assigned to Female Sex at Birth by Reiner and Gearhart, N Engl J Med. 2004 January 22; 350(4): 333–341.
If Gender Identity was not innate, if Gender Critical Theory was true, then such things simply could not happen.
But they do.
Gender Critical Theory hurts.
After having read that – please go read some of the works of Cordelia Fine, because historically, it’s been the practice to go too far the other way, and to confuse Gender, Gendered Behaviour, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and Sex – all different concepts, some entirely biological, some entirely socially constructed, some a mix (ie Sex is based on objective biology, yet is a social construct as the same biological characteristics can be interpreted as one sex in on geographic area, another in another).
Fine does a good job in exposing confirmation bias here. Biological differences have been exaggerated or even wholly manufactured. Gendered Behaviour in particular has very little biological basis. Gender Identity though – the situation is reversed, the biological effects have historically been minimised or discounted.
No worries Zoe. I read the comment thread and knew I was entering the lions’ den, I was prepared to get bit. I suppose I just thought that the position of feminists that reject gender was being unfairly represented, it wouldn’t hurt for people to see it if they are interested.
You have reduced to throwaway quotes the writings here of feminists who have spent many years, sometimes decades, writing about women’s issues, and being powerful activists for women. they’ve encountered vicious male opposition and are used to fighting hard. All these quotes have been in response to provocation about their activism in respect to trans. Immoderate language around this particular issue is due to frustration, and is certainly not limited to the feminist side. Feminists have made entire blogs archiving trans abuse of women online, and I did consider posting them, but decided not to. My reason is that trans and feminists are ideological adversaries, and people are going to say bad shit when they disagree. I am sick of arguments about who is being more nasty (although I do have an opinion on this!). I think it would be more productive to focus on the arguments themselves. At the moment, feminists are being reduced to bogeymen, and their analysis, which isn’t hateful, and which is considered and intelligent, is being ignored. The links you provide do admit of an alternative feminist interpretation, but my concern is discussing them will just result in more of the above. Otherwise, i would be happy to be the radfem AMA!.
I am a feminist and I fully support trans people.
sylvania,
Trans people and feminists are not and should not be ideological adversaries. In fact, people can be both at the same time, you have trans women who are feminists writing in this thread.
If your feminism posits you as adversaries then maybe that kind of feminism is hateful bullshit.
Beatrice, no. The foundational argument between feminists and trans is whether gender is innate. Trans say it is, feminists say it is a patriarchal ordering system designed to subordinate women. Feminism has always said gender is a system designed to subordinate women. That’s what feminism is. No hate. It’s the critique of the way in which men and women are treated differently, based on their sex, from the second they are born. If gender is innate, if being a woman means you have a suite of certain characteristics and behaviours, there’s no basis for saying men and women have the same potential, or should be treated equally. And that’s because the gendered representation of women is inherently inferior. Why? Because gender is the system of making women subordinate to men. When men say they identify as women, and you ask them, “What is a woman?”, they are referring to this suite of behaviours. That’s what gender is. That’s it. That’s the argument.
@sylvania:
How does it feel to be part of a dying, hated breed that could be safely ignored by polite society if not for the damage your kind causes in its last desperate death throes?
At least have the dignity to find a quiet corner to rot in.
You just ignore all of zoebrain’s sources and go on to deny the very identity of trans people*. You’re no better than a misogynist or any other bigot.
* it’s trans people : trans men, trans women… not trans
sylvania @126
sylvania and the other TERFs appear to want to have someone they can look down on and, if they deem it necessary, shit on. “Women are discriminated against so we need someone we can discriminate against so we can feel good.”
First point of disagreement – one can be Trans (I’m not) and Feminist (I am – though not Radical).
Second point of disagreement. Gender Identity is innate. Gender, not so much. The two concepts are as distinct as Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation. This misconstrual of the Trans/Intersex position (no, Gender is mostly not innate, almost none of it in fact) explains much of the bitterness on both sides. Ignorance, such as Greere’s ignorance about Intersex biology, explains much of the rest.
One can argue whether it was “designed” as such, or is an emergent property or a co-evolutionary result of “might makes right” Patriarchy, but yes, the concept of “Gendered Behaviour” (not Gender as such) certainly ends up subordinating and oppressing women. To see just how malignantly pathological this can be, see Boko Harum’s actions in Nigeria, the treating of women as cattle breeding stock in New Guinea, or just have a read of
Human Terrain Team (HTT) AF-6 Research Update and Findings Pashtun Sexuality.
Available at http://aebrain.blogspot.com.au/2010/06/misogyny-redux.html
I see the same problem mirrored in some of the more extreme Separatist Feminist writings – though they at least have the excuse of having been victimised by this Used Food first. Nietzsche pointed out the trap they fell into.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
He.. or in this case, she.
Yes, male is the default again, the whole Patriarchal BS is so deeply embedded in our culture that we think nothing of it. By itself, of no importance (to state the obvious), but it has signature significance. Like we accept that it’s perfectly normal, nothing peculiar, to never have had a female POTUS, that you can enumerate female war leaders by name – Zenobia, Catherine the Great, Artemesia, Manthetisi, Elizabeth I. Boudicca, etc rather than in the hundreds. But I digress.
The point is, anyone who can write
And other TERF quotes is, not to put too fine a point on it, nucking futz, sociopathic to the point of psychosis. Just don’t call them “Feminazis”, as they don’t just want to exterminate Jews, they want to kill off half the human race. Painfully.
While there are people who have been tortured so badly that it would be a wonder if they’d remained even marginally sane, these people are not in that category. Most are white, middle-class, neither victims of rape or torture, just malignant narcissists who get off on cruelty because they see themselves as superiors victimised by the unterfrauen. Just as the Aryan Supremacists did in 1930s Germany.
The trouble is, that to some degree, they’re right about having been victimised. To about a millionth of a degree they want to victimise others because of their inherent superiority. The Versailles treaty wasn’t exactly benevolent either.
They’re MRAs in other words, just on the opposite side.
I know I’m stating the obvious here, but sometimes it needs stating. You’re not like them. TERFS are.
Yes, you’ve ignored most of my evidence. But your welcome hasn’t exactly been warm here, and you deserve better than that. Guilt by Association I’m afraid. That’s unjust, though much of the critique is not. Difficult to see how you could answer it though without writing an essay like this post. Feel free to, please, I’m sure you have more to contribute than I do.
Can we agree that, by and large, all other things being equal, men tend to be taller than women? That it’s neither sexist nor oppressive to say this? That it’s a characteristic (as you put it) inherent in the biology, but also statistical, not universal. “Men are taller than women”, yes, but not everyone above average height is male, nor everyone below female.
Can we agree on that?
A basketball coach who put a 5′ 1″ male on the team because “men are taller than women”, while rejecting a 6′ 4″ woman for being too short, would rightly be considered out of his (or her) tree.
Yet we do the equivalent of that kind of insanity all the time in other areas. “Too pretty to do math”. GRRRRRRRR. We cannot afford the waste of talent. It’s inhuman to teach boys that “this is how boys behave” and girls “this is how to be ladylike”. If you have to teach it, it’s not “innate” it’s a social construct.
Conversely, if you don’t have to teach it, if it’s instinctive, and especially if it’s “gender atypical” so there’s social pressure against not for,,, then it’s probably innate. Not much is. And everything is individual, statistical differences are just that, tendencies, “most girls are..” “boys tend to be” and should be ignored unless you’re doing something like figuring out numbers of clothes to stock in various sizes.
Based on innate tendencies, about 30% of Engineers should be female, if we were to go by neurology. They have the talent, the ability, and likely the initial desire to be in that occupation.
But only 8% are. Too much peer pressure “girls don’t do that”, too much being ignored at school, or encouraged to do art not science, all the BS that can only be described as “Gender Oppression”.
No wonder observing facts like that, so many women prevented from achieving their potential, so much obvious obliviousness to fact and evidence because of “Gender”, that you conclude it’s totally bogus. Rather than mostly bogus.
(Aside – how many geniuses have been suppressed because they are Black, and to excel academically is “acting too White”? This rubbish isn’t just confined to Gender).
[Raises hand]. Another feminist here who disagrees with you, sylvania. Don’t try to force all feminists into your nasty hateful box, please.
Sylvania. I’m a woman. I was born with stereotypical ‘female’ genitalia. I strongly feel like a woman. I *am* a woman.
I feel feminine.
My feminine happens to include a high level of physical activity, aggressiveness, assertiveness, and other more stereotypically ‘masculine’ behaviours. In fact, I have these behaviours to such a degree that when I was a child my family was worried I was going to be a lesbian (this was back in the 80s when the prevailing view of such was ‘butch’ women).
One can be a woman, without having the stereotypical behaviours. I’m a woman. I don’t act like society says a woman is to act. One of my best friends in college was a trans woman. She also didn’t act like society says a woman is to act. But she is just as much a woman as I am, because that’s who we are.
Women.
Stop hating women.
@sylvania: So what your saying is that your version of feminism is built, fundamentally, on an assumption about reality: that gender must be, wholly, a social construct. You frame this as one half of a dichotomy, that the opposing notion is that gender is wholly innate. This tidy binary of possibilities is the foundation of your brand of feminism, so if it weren’t true, nothing else about feminism would be. Any evidence that seems to contradict that foundational assumption must be the result of a conspiracy (medical science is a tool of the patriarchy) or fraud (trans women are just men who want to infiltrate women’s spaces to rape them or force lesbians to have sex with them). It’s no wonder your cohorts react so violently to the notion that gender is more complex than your false dichotomy; you (and they) think that if any part of gender is innate, then there’s no reason to believe that men are not superior to women.
In short, you’ve made feminism into a fundamentalist religion. You have a central dogma which must be defended against all evidence to the contrary, and without which the entire belief system falls apart. Those who claim the label but do not accept that central dogma are not true adherents. Your problem is not with trans people, your problem is that your central dogma does not match up to reality.
If we instead put reality and morality ahead of ideology, we end up with a much stronger position. Biology, psychology, and sociology are complex systems with complex interactions that cannot be neatly separated in almost any other context, so why would we think they would neatly separate in the matters of sex, gender, sexuality, and gender identity? In fact, all the evidence we have from research and from the lived experiences of people on various parts of the sex, sexuality, gender, and gender identity spectra shows that the relationships between the forces of biology, psychology, and culture do not neatly separate. This becomes doubly difficult when you consider that biology, psychology, and culture also influence how we frame and examine these basic questions. But the evidence strongly suggests that there are neurological differences between male and female brains, and that the gender expected by a person’s brain structure and chemistry is not always the same as the gender expected by a person’s genitals or karyotype. Teasing out exactly what aspects of gender and gender identity are neurological, psychological, hormonal, or sociological, is a difficult process that we haven’t completed.
From the ideological perspective, this denial of the basic dogma means that we have no grounds on which to say that women are not inferior to men. From a reality-based perspective, we have to examine what we mean by “superior” and “inferior.” What are those metrics defined in relation to? Take, for instance, claims that black people have lower IQs than white people; the intellectual inferiority of black people would only be demonstrated if the measurement tool is a valid one, not biased by other influences. We’re generally confident now that that isn’t the case.
But even if it were, even if The Bell Curve were completely accurate and not shoddy research, that wouldn’t therefore mean that we should treat races with lower IQs unequally. If we believe in equality of opportunity and treatment and liberty as moral imperatives, then it doesn’t matter that one group is “inferior” according to some metric. We should treat them equally regardless, we should make that much more effort to ensure equality of opportunity. The same is true for women; only your brand of feminism ties equality to an ideological assumption; if instead we say that men and women should receive equal treatment and have equal opportunities regardless of biological, psychological, or cultural differences, then there is no contradiction. We see this with all manner of rights issues, from combating ableism to fighting for animal rights. The existence of differences between groups need not lead to a moral or social hierarchy, and should not if we believe that equality is a moral good.
If feminism requires the belief that gender, unlike nearly any other human trait, is wholly a product of culture and not influenced by biology, then feminism cannot stand any more than a Christianity that requires the belief that the Earth was created six thousand years ago and humans intermingled with dinosaurs. Such beliefs are in conflict with reality, and no amount of conspiracy theories or denialism will change reality. For a robust, stable belief system, for one that can actually drive positive change, one that doesn’t further marginalize or stigmatize individuals, you must put an accurate recognition of reality ahead of dogmatic adherence to assumptions or tenets that may or may not be true.
You may not think that trans-inclusionary feminists are “real feminists,” but your brand of feminism is at odds with reality itself. Patriarchal systems like fundamentalist religion and libertarian economics and imperialist politics have been fighting against reality, and losing, for millennia. You can join in, I suppose, but you’re not likely to have any more luck than they have. And meanwhile, people suffer, people who you could be helping if you’d look past your blinkered ideology.
sylvania
Feminism doesn’t shit, because feminism isn’t a person. Feminism is at best a loose collection of ideas and movements based on the idea that women are eople, too.
There is no one “feminism”. The same goes, of course, for “Trans”. There are trans people. There are trans activists, there are different ideas and opinions among trans people, funny, isn’t it?
Just for some feminist theory: I know, I know, the good old “gender is what’s between the ears, sex is what’s between the legs”. Only that, of course, for most people the stuff between the legs defines the stuff between the ears. Because there are sets of attributes and behaviours associated with different genitals.
Yet there’s this little problem: people come in more than two varieties. Yet only know are we discovering the incredible and beautiful diversity amongst us.
“Male” and “female” are not truths, neither when talking about gender nor when talking about sex. They are terms that express the current state of discourse. People are shoehorned into two opposite categories depending on some superficial examination as if this described the whole of the human experience.
The binary thinking in “male” and “female” is fundamentally flawed and it’s one of the things that galls me most about TERFS: You take the most restrictive and patriarchal definition of “woman” and run with it. You don’t challenge patriarchy and the idea that there are two sets of humans who are fundamentally different, you cherish it, you uphold it, you celebrate it.
Here’s a hint: If your whole theory hinges on having to define an entire group of people out of existence, it’s bullshit.