Two feminist blogging carnivals were published this week:
Both carnivals contain plenty of excellent posts to ponder, provoke and especially to disturb. Which brings me to the posts that provoked the rest of this post:
I note a disturbing contrast here between the way in which the two carnivals are dealing with discussions of the transgender experience and transphobia: the Carnival against Sexual Violence includes a post about how yet another murder of a transwoman [triggers] is being reported as the accused “being enraged beyond all reason” about being “duped” about the dead woman’s womanhood (and what this means for all women), while the Carnival of Radical Feminists, (edited to add: implicitly aligning all radfems with the trans-exclusionary radfem (TERF) activists, which I resent), links to yet another post from Miss Andrea that argues that transgenderism should be regarded as just another fetish and that transwomen are wrong and probably deliberately deceptive for claiming that it’s anything more fundamental in respect of gender identity.
I don’t pretend to have any magic wand to wave to reconcile those who accept that people can have a gender identity discordant with biological sex and those who don’t accept it. All I can do is explain my own views, and explore aspects of chains of logic offered by others that perhaps they haven’t fully considered, in the hope that this may lead to further examination of what appears to be very strong prejudices.
Now, on to one argument that Miss Andrea has used repeatedly and has received much praise for as an exercise in logical deconstruction: that transfolk, in reinforcing the gender binary by identifying as the opposite sex rather than presenting as more androgynously genderqueer, somehow undermine the classic view of gender as a social construct. The argument appears to boil down to “when feminists say gender is a social construct, they mean it isn’t “real”, therefore if we say that men can become women and vice versa, then we’re arguing that gender is real, and thus feminist gender theory disappears in a puff of smoke”. This simply does not compute, unless one has a very hazy grasp on the concept of social constructs in the first place.
Social constructs are not “unreal” rather than “real”, they are artificial rather than natural. Artificial things are not “unreal”, otherwise you, dear reader, are not “really” reading this blog. Constructs are made rather than found, that is the crucial concept (eta: and things that are made can be remodelled).
Each of the major social hierarchies of race, gender and class is socially constructed in terms of who is regarded as inferior to whom. Each of those social hierarchies is also based on certain objective physical signifiers – skin colour/physiognomy and sexual characteristics and material acquisitions – which are used to justify the assignment of “inferior” characteristics in those hierarchies (e.g. blacks/Irish are stupid, women are weak, poor people are lazy). But the fact that those physical signifiers exist has no necessitating natural correlation with the assignment of social inferiorities, and it is in the assumption of innate inferiorities that the gender binary is socially constructed on the physical framework of sexual dimorphism. The only innate aspect of the gender binary framework balancing on top of human sexual dimorphism regards who can give birth/suckle infants and who cannot, everything else about gender roles is cultural, not natural.
Miss Andrea argues that “guys in frocks” are merely buying into gender essentialism, but I don’t see how arguing that only those born with ovaries1 can ever be regarded as “real” women isn’t doing exactly that. It’s treating gender as inalienably aligned with biological sex, whereas those who have a trans* history are those are saying that their biological sex has not been sufficient on its own to make them feel comfortable in their assigned gender role. That strikes me as the very opposite of biological essentialism; even in cases where a transitioning individual adopts genderised dressing stereotypes, because the whole point of gender being a social construct is that those stereotypes are artificial rather than essential in the first place.
Of course transgender behaviours are an exercise in artificiality – but is it fundamentally any more artificial than cisgender behaviours? If reifying gender by dressing so very femininely is so fundamentally awful, then why so much criticism reserved mainly for the transwomen who do so, and so little criticism by comparison for all the ciswomen who embrace all the rituals and accessorised impedimenta of femininity?
It’s also important to note that choosing to display conformity to the social expectations of their transgender identity may literally be a matter of survival as much as preference for people who are gender-transitioning. It strikes me that arguments such as Miss Andrea’s are feeding back into exactly the same sort of attitudes about transwomen being out to fool the rest of us that end up bringing on the rage that results in their murders, especially when some of the commentors there respond to a challenge from a transwoman by simply mocking her as a “little boy” and asking “do you miss that penis you had chopped off?”. The contempt just drips from every pixel (eta: of those comments), and why exactly? Isn’t that sort of contempt and disgust exactly what led to Allen Andrade beating Angie Zapata to death when he found out (through an act of sexual assault) that she wasn’t a born-woman?
To demand that those in gender-transition step back and only adopt more androgynous, genderqueer identities rather than “appropriating” womanhood is to demand that they put themselves at greater physical risk, surely? Transwomen who “pass” are far less likely to be attacked when going about normal livelihood and leisure activities than transitioning individuals who are obviously “guys in frocks”. Is this what it comes down to? Back off from our women’s space and no I don’t care if you die because you have nowhere safe to go? The callousness of this appals me.
Now, I also understand that some women who identify strongly as born-women find the concept/presence of transwomen disturbing, confronting and even threatening. They speak of transwomen who identify as lesbians displaying all the sexually predatory behaviours with respect to women that entitled sexist gender-normed masculine men do. I don’t doubt that there are some transwomen who exploit women sexually, and it is right to criticise them for doing so, but are those shits sufficient reason to reject every single transwoman as a potential sister? Not for me.
There are also those who argue that women-born-male can never share some of the most fundamental gender experiences that result from gender socialisation as feminine from birth through childhood, and thus can never be “real” women because they lack this shared experience. This shared-experience is largely true, but I wonder just how crucial this distinction really is. What about those who realise their trans identity very young, before school age, and whose family fully support them in their transgendering as girls? Surely women raised in hypothetical all-female non-sexist communes would also lack the shared experience of a genderised second-sex upbringing, but would any Women Born Women group exclude them because of that? So is this difference in upbringing enough to demand that people in gender-transition divorce themselves from womanhood entirely? Not to me.
Yet, one point of Miss Andrea’s that I think she does get right is that many of the definitions offered with respect to gender transition by various organisations promoting trans* acceptance are hazy and overly generalised, to the point where any departure from gender conformity is labelled “transgender” by some, which I agree is over-reaching if it is argued to apply to boys doing ballet and girls playing football. Not all challenging of gender norms is necessarily about transitioning gender versus extending expectations of gender.
In contrast however to Miss Andrea’s assumption that this reflects an appropriation of women’s and particularly feminist experience, I argue that this more accurately reflects a lack of a proper vocabulary to discuss gender roles without falling back on the assumptions of the gender binary construct. That vocabulary will never develop or gain traction in these discussions while some people simply mock those who have gender-transitioned as fraudulent cross-dressing fetishists.
1. For the sake of brevity, I have ignored here all those women-born-women with vaginas and breasts who don’t actually have ovaries because, unbeknownst to themselves and the world unless they get tested, they are not XX women e.g. XY women with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, and XO women with Turner’s Syndrome, as well as intersex individuals with rarer conditions, all of whom further complicate biologically essentialist arguments. [back]
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- The next Carnival of the Radical Feminists is at la doctorita’s – put in your submission now by Lauredhel
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Polerin, I thought I already answered your question more completely somewhere else? Short answer: You should do what makes you happy.
And I didn’t “gloss over” the rest of your comment, there simply wasn’t anything to talk about. It makes you feel better — okay, what do you want me to say? The rules are “no long posts”, remember? Serial posting is just a cheap trick to get around that, so I’m only responding to basic concepts endorsed by the majority.
Tig, I’m reading three different conversations in three different places and the similarities, the pattern, is what I am responding to. No doubt it’s confusing to you — apologies.
So I’m trying to understand but I now need confirmation from Tig and Lias, because their words appear to speak for a large majority of transfolk. Is it the assertion that most transitioning is about feeling more comfortable with different body parts, OR is it the assertion that most transitioning is about feeling more comfortable with a different gender?
OR is it some combination and if so, care to guesstimate some percentages of how many feel it’s body parts and how many feel it’s gender? OR is there a third reason for transitioning, one nobody has discussed yet?
If reading a few hundred blog posts by transfolk answered these very basic question, I wouldn’t be asking them here. Lisa appeared to confirm the body part aspect, and so my question to her would be: if body parts are the issue, why do so many trans discuss (and defend) gender as the main issue instead of body parts? Why all the emphasis on “but I feel like a gender”?
Sorry, that should be “Tig and Lisa“.
How do my words do so? I’m certainly not attempting to speak for trans folk, I’m just being pedantic and tenacious about the fact that you are misusing terms from social and feminist theory to construct your fallacious arguments.
Not to speak for Lisa, but what I want to know is: why the fuck does it matter who cares about body parts and who cares about just mental/psychological gender? Why does this have to be broken down into statistics? Do a goddamn study, ffs.
But here, try this: body parts are important to gender because everyone’s socialized into that understanding, whether we like it or not, whether we can outrhetoric it with acaspeak or talk ourselves into thinking we’re past it. Knowing you’re ‘woman’ only goes so far when everyone looks at you and disagrees. It does a big number on your sense of self and gender, and feelings aren’t easily broken by logic.
I only speak for myself.
So we have established that (in general) you have no problem with my personal transition.
This is good, as it gives us a place from which we can start actually working to a conclusion of an argument instead of just arguing past each other. So there’s something else I think that we were sort of talking past each other about. People don’t transition to express a gender, and they don’t have SRS to make a political statement… They do them to be happy. That’s at the root of everything.
What would you have Them do then?
BTW, m Andrea’s trying to rearrange the discussion so that trans people have to justify ourselves to her, and she has no accountability to us for the hateful things she’s said about trans people. Answering her questions just plays into that.
It’s pretty evident from mAndrea’s writing that she’s not legitimately interested in the perspectives of trans people or getting to understand a life experience not her own – she is using trans people and refusing to listen and engage with the major content of comments that do attempt to engage with her *issues* and is manipulating and ignoring the words of trans people and those who are not transphobic, and who argue that feminism should do better – that trans peopole ought to be treated as fully human (duh!) and not subject to the discrimination and violence that we know statistically and anecdotally they are, and able to enjoy their lives and their bodies fully, in the ways they see fit, without outside judgment and free from interference.
Rather than engage, mAndrea’s comments show that she is only interested in grabbing sentences out of context to manipulate to push her agenda of bigotry and hatemongering (sorry mAndrea, but what *else* can you call it? Oh I know *you* call it superior logic and what have you, but I don’t buy that for a second). When given several eloquent answers which undermined her theory that *all* trans people are the same (I’m just wondering as well mAndrea if trans men exist for you? You never seem to mention them) and that give some food for thought to answer her complaint that she doesn’t understand…several comments later mAndrea is back to completely ignore all this in favour of wanting to hear all about a trans person discussing fetishes (any, because clearly one could speak for all, despite the fact this has been repeatedly rebutted).
I’ve read, from trans people on this thread some eloquent and moving personal comments on here that would give anyone genuinely interested in getting an understanding of the experience of others food for thought, comments which provoke deeply empathetic reactions and a feeling of solidarity in their humanity and pain and laughter and wit. These comments are decisive and logical, they demolish the claims to ‘logic’ that have been wielded against trans people, and assert convincingly that the issues at hand are somewhat different, and invite conversation around those topics. But time and again I’ve seen *that* dismissed for “Oh, but this one line right here…you *said* [taken out of context] which must *mean* [wild hypothesis]“.
You asserted mAndrea that if ‘reading a few hundred’ blog posts of trans people had *answered your questions* you wouldn’t be here. Have you ever questioned your right to be the grand inquisitor? I cannot help in reading your work to be reminded of MRAs who want feminists to *convince them* to their *standards of objective logic* that their feminist experiences are real and ought to be taken seriously.
Reckon you’re right there, Lisa. m Andrea is the one who has been making claims based on weird framings of social constructivist theory, she hasn’t been able to defend even the definitions of terms she uses, let alone the premises she states using those terms. After letting that part of the debate die down she’s back and trying to shift the grounds for debate back out to where she can continue to wave around her undefined terms and unsubstantiated premises.
Nobody should fall for that rhetorical ploy.
FP:
The same comparison has occurred to me more than once when reading mAndrea’s words.
Thanks to Lisa, Polerin and Drakyn for being so generous with their time and energy. We always say that feminists should not be responsible for educating their oppressors and here are trans* people generously offering their insight to educate us in the face of constant abuse and failure to acknowledge their experience.
On a purely selfish note I am glad that they do this because it was reading threads like this that changed my mind about women born women spaces.
Aaaaand…
I understand, but to be honest I’m not posting for her. I post so that people who are reading through have a counterpoint to her wild claims. Not that everyone who was here before me wasn’t doing a great job of that, I just am constitutionally unable to keep my mouth shut when I see hatred being proffered as logic.
I find it telling that almost 7 days after I posted comments on her blog, she still has not approved them, the only explanation being:
Thanks, but I don’t need your protection, especially as it’s price seems to be my voice and my identity.
Sorry, Polerin, that wasn’t aimed at you. I was just declaring non-compliance.
My apologies too, Polerin, if it seemed like I was trying to shut you down. This thread has at least 3 or 4 levels of discourse occurring, and dealing with mAndrea’s arguments is only one of them. By all means continue to post for yourself in terms of examining other issues that have been raised in the course of this thread.
err. don’t worry about it, I wasn’t implying that either of you were, per say… simply explaining my motives :P
Polerin @ 212, I thought about how that stuff might sound this morning as I was running (late) up the hill for work, and I wanted to say that you have done an amazing job in addressing her points on your terms and in order to assert far more lucid and important points yourself – I particularly love that you’ve come back again and again refusing to allow her ‘responses’ to disregard and ignore yours and continuing to press her to answer your questions and to engage over what *she would have* other trans people do now that she has fleetingly given your her blessing as ‘making sense’ and being awesome.
I have other issues going on Polerin, the main one right now is a wonky internet connection. I simply don’t have time to wait 10 minutes for each page to load, so must prioitize.
Besides that, 90% of the transgendered have apparently decided not to post my comments either, so not sure why it’s okay for them to withhold comments and yet at the same time anyone bitch about me withholding comments — IF that was my reason. Again, wonky internet connection inteferring with my ability to chat all damn day for your royal pleasure AND monitor the ensuing shitstorm on my blog. Satellite dewd arriving tomorrow.
But even after the speed improves, no one has the “right” to demand that I respond to their every soliloquy just as no one has the obligation to respond to mine.
Anyway, Tig. Upon further reflection, I may have to take issue with your term “artifical” and your subjective take on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructionism
Please try to keep your comments limited to the discussion at hand and not veer off into even more dead ends without finishing the first — probably didn’t make my point clear previously, apologies.
I don’t really have a problem with using the term “artifical” in relation to a social construct, but the disagreement begins when the term “social construct” excludes the term “unreal” as it appears as if you’re attempting to change the very meaning of the term “social construct” and which conveniently forestalls the use of logic from being applied to any subsequent conclusions.
It is my contention that a social construct is a perception of reality and so we need to remember that perceptions do not always accurately reflect reality: our perceptions can be false. It is my further contention that only reality is true, although no ethical value judgement of right or wrong is implied.
I am probably being much more nit-picky than even you assume, but you are correct in that my terms do not always reflect that precision — humble apologies.
And for everyone else: the reason these small distinctions matter now is because later they are magnified down our mery precession of logic and create heaping gobs of stoopid.
So you’re back to arguing that only the tangible is (really) real? The discourses of Plato, Descartes and Schopenhauer (among others) regarding our minds creating our reality you are rejecting entirely?
A strict Hobbesian Materialist view: fascinating. You are quite right that such a view is logically consistent, but many arguments can be logically consistent and yet insufficient in explanatory power. The history of philosophy is that strictly reductionist Materialism has largely been rejected as ultimately empty, in that it disregards the products of the mind far too much, and thus lacks meaning in analysing how humans interact, affect and change each other.
The Hobbesian view:
* the land mass on which I live exists, but the notion of it being something called Australia is unreal.
* my body exists, but the notion of having a name by which I am known is unreal.
* the house I live in exists, but my concept of owning it, of it being “my house” is unreal.
Nonetheless, when I say “tigtog’s house in Sydney” people understand what that means, and a whole vocabulary
definingdenoting/connoting my association with both my body and my house, including various kinds of ownership and financial arrangements regarding ownership, is shared between other people and the socially constructed institutions that regulate the society in which I live.The strict reductionist Materialist view can only point to all that and say that none of it is “real”. That may be logically satisfying, but it’s hardly actually meaningful.
Lord, you *consistently* demand that people give up their time to clarify for you what my eleven year old son can grasp with ease, ie that trans persons ought not to have to satisfy you, me, him, anyone of their ‘motivations’, or accept your take that clearly *all* trans people *must* have the *same* motivations, or satisfy your demands that they ‘make sense’ to you.
Then you hop on here and act like Polerin started some campaign way back in the beginning to get *you* to be on call to answer questions, and fling around barbed phrases like ‘royal pleasure’ when in actual fact Polerin called you on your own insistent demands.
“90% of *The Transgendered*’??? I note you continue to ignore requests that you refer to trans people. Also, no wonder you’re busy if you’ve somehow tracked down every trans person in the entire universe and asked their questions (one could say demanded they answer your every soliloquoy).
If the pressure of your insistently transphobic activism is getting too much, perhaps you ought to call it a day and get on with something else?
I’m sorry you’re having issues, but I don’t see why you are snapping at me about them. I would not have brought up my comments on your blog if you had not pasted in yours, as if I hadn’t bothered to read it before talking with you. While I can understand not wanting to deal with a shit-storm, please keep in mind that you have made several arguments that contradict my lived experience very deeply.
If you didn’t want the discussion, you shouldn’t have started it. And certainly please refrain from saying that transpeople have no answer to your questions if you don’t allow their answers through moderation. That being said, feel free to continue it here, or on my lj. Be assured, I won’t censor your blog posts even if you start calling me a fetishist. So, do what you will on your blog, and I’ll keep doing what I will where I will.
Anyhow, I’m still curious what your answer is re. what you would have the large majority of transpeople who desire SRS do? (You may feel free to lump in stuff like FFS or FtM top surgery in here as well)
As to the subject of whether a social construct such as gender is real, I offer a comparison. If gender is not real, is sexism real?
(err.. feel free to continue it here, so long as the wonderful moderators of the blog see fit for the thread not to be locked. I get bored easily, so I keep checking back. Don’t mean to presume upon your bandwidth, sorry.)
polerin, the twists and turns this thread has taken are really quite fascinating, so I have no plans to shut it down as yet.
Just one last expansion of my point in my last comment above: if a tangible person gains access to the tangible house in which I live, and refuses to permit my tangible body to enter that house, I can call upon the “unreal” social constructs of law enforcement according to the “unreal” social construct of Australian law to expel the intruder from that house, but only by relying on the underlying “unreal” social constructs of proof of property ownership and proof of my body being the “unreal” social construct of a legally recognised person holding proof of that property ownership. It is only through all these unreal social constructs acting in synergy that I can end up having the intruder removed from my property so that I may freely enjoy the use of it once more.
That’s a rather large level of undeniable “real” tangible effect that can only be brought about by the interaction of “unreal” social constructs.
One of the things I really like about this thread are posts like that one, about the reality of social constructs and how trying to act against them can be dangerous in some circumstances, and even what it means to act against them in positive ways (such as protest).
And recognizing the constructedness and playing with it rather than denying it exists – like genderqueers who try to destabilize their gender (as Butlerian performance) rather than find a single spot and settle down.
Don’t think that I didn’t notice this jibe by the way, mAndrea – I just had a day full of other things to get on with so haven’t addressed it until now. That’s a very cheeky misrepresentation, seeing how you have been the one in this thread who has continually attemtpted to move our debate away from establishing the “reality” of social constructs generally in order to claim something about gender and trans-gender constructs particularly (the thread-drift that has occurred between other commentors is quite natural and they are in no way obliged to stick only to the points that you and I are debating).
From your first comment in this thread at #34:
During the thread above, we already went the rounds to a clarification that social constructs are not the ideas themselves, but the social systems built around a group of related ideas.
As I wrote earlier today, taking the Hobbesian view that none of these social systems are physically delineable and therefore none of them are “real” may be logically satisfying, but it is hardly logically meaningful in terms of analysing how society functions through the interaction of its social constructs, seeing as we use these social constructs all the time in order to effect events in people’s lives that have real and tangible consequences in their physical circumstances.
Lisa #223
Thank you, Lisa. This is where I fail to understand the way that m Andrea mocks trans* folk for wanting to change an identity that she claims isn’t “real”, by implying that social constructs don’t (or shouldn’t) actually matter to people because it’s all about “perceptions of reality” rather than “reality” itself.
Without social constructs civilisation is impossible. To argue that one can/should engage in social interactions without acknowledgement of and working in/around constructed social systems is bizarre. That these constructed systems are plastic and malleable over time is also a feature, not a bug.
I’ve been meaning to ask…I keep saying trans people/persons, and I am assuming that the asterisk in trans* persons is to acknowledge the breadth of bodies/lives/experiences that get kind of lumped together in one term? Just asking as I don’t want to, in arguing with what I see as blatantly offensive arguments, end up inadvertently reinforcing homogeneity/erasure etc.
Yeah Fuckpoliteness, I use an asterisk to try to be inclusive of different trans* identities. Some people just use trans, others use transgender as an umbrella term (but some folks really dislike using transgender as an umbrella term–there is no monolith!).
Theres a huge amount of diversity in lives/experiences/identities/etc in the trans* communities as well as a lot of overlap and intersections.
My experience of trans*ism is quite different from a genderqueer butch or an androgyne, but we all experience transphobia and we all deal with internalized transphobia. We have different needs and desires, but many of these needs and desires are the same or intersect (like someone with a non-binary gender may need gender-neutral bathrooms to be safe/comfortable; so will a binary-gendered transsexual who does not pass as cissexual).
Cool, thanks Drakyn, very much understood – which is one of the things that makes it so strange to be having arugments such as the ones in this thread…this repeated and insistent emphasis on The Trans Experience TM, or The Transgendered Inc.
A lot of the arguments in this discussion look disturbingly familiar to me.
Well, damn:
Anyway, won’t keep linking to that trainwreck, I’m just saying… I don’t see the difference between one form of fundamentalism and another – both are highly judgemental to the detriment of others.
Yes, this.
The discussions around gender being a construct and what that means leads to some interesting conclusions about could be said about the rest. Mainly, though, the idea that gender being a social construct is something that trans people have to be held accountable for in ways that cis people are not is a matter of privilege, especially since no other construct is being interrogated and dismissed in quite the same way.
And also the way that some radical feminists will say that womanhood doesn’t exist…unless you were born female, which may look superficially consistent, but is really just applying a double-standard. “Womanhood can’t exist for you, so you don’t make sense. But womanhood exists for me.”
It’s so incredibly simplistic to me to run around saying to everyone else ‘I have the true truth about how things truly are, and you’re all falling for the social constructs so lucky I’m here to tell you what’s really real/true/proper/politically right/whatever else.’ This has been the line on ‘false consciousness’ since like forever, and if it doesn’t create a hierarchy of the one-who-knows and the one-foolishly-taken-in, I don’t know what does. Weirdly enough, though, telling people they’re the ones foolishly taken in doesn’t work so well when people, uh, *aren’t* taken in…
I also keep coming back to the point that if gender *is* a social construct, and the point is there’s no real, inherent womanhood, what exactly is the problem with trans* people doing whatever it is they do? And why do people like mAndrea consider themselves to be *not* reinforcing the gender binary by claiming to be women? I’m not interested in suggesting that they’re not, but I don’t get why it is that trans* people are politically retrograde if/when they transition, but cissexual women are politically progressive when they stick with what culture would deem natural for women. How is it not essentialist to suggest that cissexual women have a natural right to womanhood that transwomen (for e.g.) don’t?
And seriously, what’s with the continual claim to people being ‘irrational’ because they are trans*? First of all, women have been told they’re irrational, rather a lot, as a way to silence them, so the throwing around of that word as an insult/to silence seems to me really un-self-reflexive (to say the least). Second, who the hell lives a fully rational life… and, uh, who would want to?? What would that even mean??
Excuse frustrated punctuation… doesn’t Terry Pratchett say something about too many exclamation points being a sign of something? I’m sure multiple question marks are, too… ;-P
Sorry… frustration leading to lack of clarity… “I’m not interested in suggesting they’re not” should be followed by “women” ;-P. Ahem.
Well, Unknown Anthro student (as quoted by Lisa) I would imagine that you talk to someone who feels that way and find out. How does one know what it “feel like” to “break your leg” if you’ve never experienced it? Or what it “feels like” to “give birth” or “hear voices in your head” or any other number of things that a significant portion of the population are never likely to experience. Just because men can’t give birth doesn’t mean that they can’t empathise with their partner’s pain during childbirth, or her grief if her birth doesn’t go how she planned or any of the other myriad possibilities. So why is empathy with a trans* person so alien for you, Unknown Anthro student?
It scares me that they are a student of Anthropology.
What surprised me was that she was willing to accept the reality of other experiences that one might describe as ineffable (for example, communication from god), but completely unwilling to accept this experience.
Wait, no, that didn’t surprise me.
What got me though was that the Christians reproduce in that thread – through the assumption of morality as assured them by religion – pretty much all of the same arguments I see anti-trans radical feminists use.
WP: yeah, the mindsheer involved in “There is no gender, so transpeople are reinforcing the concept of gender, so they shouldn’t be allowed in women only spaces” sorta breaks me every time. By the way,I would have thought (as much as I can be said to think) you would be indulging in parenthetical statements rather than (the understandably frustrated) question marks?
Polerin has pretty much summed it up for my lack of understanding.
Polerin, this is for your latest comment.
lisa: I sees it but…
The belief structure that says:
* There is no gender
* Trans women reinforce gender
therefore
* Trans women should stay out of women-only spaces
=
A nuclear explosion of cognitive dissonance.
Err, yes, I understood what you were intending, I was just being silly. Too many years in IRC has left me silly by default, serious when I don’t understand.
Ah, clearly then I didn’t get it. :(
I didn’t realise that we had a Federal Senator with a trans partner. That will get them thinking in Canberra.
link
Polerin, just you wait. I am parentheses (within parentheses (within parentheses)) on a regular basis… I can’t seem to help it. Must be my need to qualify just about every fucking thing I say; or, more likely, the feeling that just saying any one thing never does justice to anything.
But somehow these particular kinds of transphobia are grounded in such simplistic understandings of the world that I can just be wildly interrogative ;-) Hmm, sounds like I need a new blog…
I think what gets me, though, is that even though we point this out over and over a-fucking-gain, it’s ‘irrational’, ‘illogical’ (I luvs this one, as when has life ever been logical, srsly?), or on a more aggressive note, politically inexcusable (or other much worse things). I just can’t really grasp how such cognitive dissonance (awesome pix, btw, you two) can maintain itself in the face of such pointed, and, to be honest, not really that complicated critique. Or, no, I can, in some sense, because unfortunately reactionary bigotry is not as rare as I might dream of. And — mope.
WildlyParentheticals last blog post..Am I back?
Thread’s getting long Tig, so not going to search for it but you were the one who started to go down a dead end. Just a polite reminder. And there is nothing wrong with reapproaching something from a different angle as one continues to ponder such a fascinating issue.
Tig, if there’s any term which you believe I have used incorrectly, then simply tell me the word and I can google it myself. It will save you the effort of complaining about it constantly.
Beliefs are “real” but are either true or false, actions are “real” but are either ethical or unethical, however only physical entities are “real” in that they require space and objectively exist without an innate value judgement being present. Since social constructs are beliefs I do get to say that social constructs are “false”. None of these causes are to be mistaken for the consequences.
Many transfolks have elevated a made-up group-think concept to the position of objective truth. On the one hand they admit that gender is a made-up group-think artificial concept, but on the other hand it’s treated as if it’s unchangable and everyone must find ways to bargain with it.
In case you’re not aware of it, these culturally constructed beliefs are harmful. They are responsible for sexism — unless you feel like blaming the inherent nature of biological males directly. Removing these social constructs is the goal, not letting them stand for eternity.
But what about the social construct of radical feminism?
Sheer equivocation, m Andrea. By defining only gender as “false” without making it clear that you are applying a strict materialist classification that would also include property, nationality, race, religion and money as “false” you are misrepresenting the entire nature of gender identity.
Suppose I could include a twenty page disclaimer but not really necessary.
Internal character is either significantly different for the various biological sexes, or there is no significant difference. If these variations exist, then we would expect to see that the intersexed folks possess an internal character which is considerably disparate from either biologically male or biologically female.
To be consistent, if each biological sex posseses a different gender from another biological sex, then the intersexed folks must be a third gender. To continue, if the bodies of the transsexuals are so dissimilar that they alone possess an incongruency between their “mind-map” and their body, then their bodies must be a fourth gender. And so they aren’t “women” at all.
This is all true, if trans supporters are to be consistent. Are you going to be consistent? Keep in mind, that if you’re not consistent, then all this argumentation in favor of transgenderism becomes merely justifications, much like an alcoholic will say anything to keep his bottle.
Lisa:
“And also the way that some radical feminists will say that womanhood doesn’t exist…unless you were born female, which may look superficially consistent, but is really just applying a double-standard.”
The problem, I think, is also that for some people, getting away with gender is actually… just getting away with the term “gender”.
Let’s take the example of women-only spaces. The mere notion of those spaces doesn’t hold anymore if there are no genders: we’re just human, after all. Ok, you can say that there are “female-only spaces”, but is the reason of those spaces a need to talk about anatomy ? No, in the vast majority, it’s because there is an oppression. An oppression which, for me is… because of gender.
The only way I see to justify those kind of spaces and even feminism while saying that there is no gender, is to say that women are oppressed because of their anatomy and some kind of natural oppression.
So behind the “supressing gender” which seems revolutionnary, I think that it smells more like disguised essentialism to me.
Yes, this is exactly it. It keeps getting covered with more and more theory to justify it, but when you cut through the g(ender)ordian knot, this is what you get: Men are men and women are women, and this is determined by the shape of the genitals you’re born with and is unchangeable.
mAndrea – except that alcoholism destroys lives.
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