Really? Is it just me who doesn't get the Daniel Craig drag thing?

then we think exactly the same thing . i just haven't got as far as pondering the activism element. but i will.

i do see trans as victims of the patriarchy as well though

in fact - the only trans activist i have come across invited my (male) friend to interview her, with his colleague. when s/he found out the colleague was female, we never heard from her again. refused all phone calls. didn't answer e-mails or messages. was dead keen up to that point.

i never did work out if she thought he was an admirer, someone looking for personal advice, or what. but s/he wasn't keen on talking to a woman at all. weird.

anyway - reading time!

sorry, I didn't mean to tell you what to think.
I'm frustrated in general (not at you!) at the absolute piles of shit that radical feminists have to put up with when it comes to trans, for the simple reason that nobody quite knows what we're saying (for the simple reason that nobody bothers to find out because we're women)

no I don't think trans is a deliberate response to the binary in most cases. It is, as you say, subconcious. They don't know what it's like to be a woman, but they know they don't feel like men so they think they must be the furthest thing possible from a man, which is a woman, and that's where the get the idea from that they're women.
I think it's encouraged by the patriarchy, because trans suits their aims.

but rad-fems are not transphobic (we don't have an irrational fear of trans women, for a start, which would be the definition of phobia ) , we're trans activist phobic, transfeminist phobic. Huge difference. It's men stepping on women's toes that's the problem for us.

oh god, sakura, don't tell me what i need to think

i still haven't had time to read it, but dh is away tonight, so can spend the evening on the computer without feeling unsociable. will catch up then.

most of my thoughts aren't based on activists per se, though. (of either the feminist or trans persuasion - just chatting to ordinary people and living my life.) i find it interesting that 'trans' has been set up as the socially acceptable way for people with a penis to choose to exhibit characteristics etc associated with femininity. trans is just another way of upholding the status quo in its binary form.

which is really sad. for everyone.

i think we're saying the same thing really (though won't know for sure until i read the blog though). i just think we've drawn slightly different conclusions about choice. i see it as a subconscious response to the binary - you see it as a deliberate response? (i'm asking - not trying to cause a fight?)

am well aware of the connotations of the term girl, thanks.

curious to read the blog. but work beckons... i was late yesterday

madwoman, there's a trans woman on this thread who said he's a 40 year old girl with a penis.

Girl is the derogatry patriarchal term for women, just like negroes were called boys. He also has a penis but knows he's a girl.
So you don't need to look very far at all to see how trans activists think.

madwomanintheattic,
your last paragraph is a sign that you're beginning to ask the questions you need to

When you've read the links and you've got any questions feel free to ask me and (if I know the answers!) I'll help you to understand the rad-fem POV

am reading the blog you linked to Sakura

claig, i genuinely love that i'm a left wing revolutionary that's seeking to destroy the natural order. you'd have to know me to appreciate the joke fully - 16 years in the military would probably beg to differ. and they used to call me maggie thatcher at uni.

fwiw, i do recognise the binary. i'm just not sure why scoiety is entirely structured around that dynamic.

i wasn't around yesterday, so missed all the replies - sorry, will have a read later when i get back from work. i just wanted to wonder whether we really do know what transwomen think and feel though? we know what they have been conditioned to say they think and feel in order to fit into the niche that society has designated is appropriate for them - is that really the same thing?

you only have to read the 'real life true stories' to realise that it is a very limited genre. aren't we all (those of us who aren't doing the opposite to make a point) just trying to fit into the space that society has designated appropriate for us? not to cause any waves?

i really don't think that you can discuss 'the trans' as a group without resorting to ridiculous (culturally defined) stereotypes. in exactly the same way that you can't discuss 'the women'. or 'the menz'. .

it is ridiculously reductionary. if that's even a word.

i'm a mother of three. i'm married to a soldier ffs. i'm about as defined on the binary as it's possible to be. i just wonder why it's so all important to society that i'm labelled (and made sense of) in this way. and i'm easy to define lol. if i didn't identify as a woman myself, or as heterosexual, or any of the other labels that get attached, i'm sure i'd feel even more strongly about it.

but as i said before (thanks for providing links) i haven't come across feminism in a trans context, so i'll have a read. when i get back from work.

I don't fully understand the difference between sex and gender. I think I need to read up more about it.

claig, gender and sex are not the same.
Of course we want to eliminate the gender binary because it's oppressive to women and men, but what has that got to do with sex?
No matter what they decide to do with their bodies, or how they try to present themselves, or whatever letter they have on their birth certificate, they still remain the sex they were born: male or female (or in rare cases, intersex. Intersex has got nothing to do with trans)

yes, left-wing thinking has got a lot to answer for, but left-wing men, deep down, are conservative in many ways. I would say men are inherently conservative insofar as they need to keep the status quo intact and the need the masculine/feminine panto to continue.

I just find it bemusing/mildly amusing that women still can't get the most basic laws passed when it comes to rape and yet trans women have whole patriarchal institutions on their side (medicine and law) . Because "trans" is ultimately anti-woman.
Though it's true that female to male transsexuals exist they are much much rarer, and generally experience gender dysphoria because, well, almost every woman experiences gender dysphoria. The patriarchy often doesn't allow ftm transexuals to be recognized as males. I remember another case in Australia where a woman had mastectomies in order to be allowed to become a man under law and they turned her down. I was literally shocked that the system had managed to convince this woman that having her breasts taken off would be a good thing.

I don't think that patriarchy makes all the laws. What about all the civil rights lawyers? What about women like Harriet Harman, Shami Chakrabarti etc.? Are they part of the patriarchy?

I think the church is patriarchal and I doubt that they think that transwomen are women.

I think a lot of these views come from people who want to eliminate the binary and restructure society into some type of utopia where there is no gender and everyone is exactly the same. I think it is a leftwing revolutionary type thinking which seeks to destroy the existing order.

I think the person who sued applied the law, which has been based on politically correct principles, the same type of principles that recently said it was unfair to discriminate against men where car insurance is concerned, so that we end up with the ridiculous situation where men as a whole cannot be charged more than women, even though they as a whole do have more accidents. I think this type of thinking is an inevitable result of thinking that is based solely on equality, without taking into account difference. It is mainly an outcome of leftwing thinking that can sometimes go as far as denying difference in an attempt to enforce equality.

Iblamethepatriarchy is not quite radical feminism

the patriarchy has uses for trans women; it has always used eunuchs to enter women's spaces and control them. Again, nothing new. What is new here is the British government allowing men who think they're women (who still have a penis) to change the M to an F on their birth certificate and obligate women to accept them. For example trans tend to like working in rape crisis centres and other women-only spaces. ONe sued a rape crisis centre in Australia for not allowing him to work there. and of course the patriarchy likes the idea that anyone feminine= woman.
Also the patriarchy believes that a mutilated "woman" is better than a "queer" man which is why they refuse to accept trans women as the males that they are.

How about this madwomanintheattic.
Indulge me.
Everyone knows what trans woman think/do/feel. They've got the patriarchal institutions of medicine and law on their side and, the entire interweb (it seems). OTOH there are only about 19 radical feminists in the whole world.

So if I give you some links will you read the rad feminist POV, try to understand it, and ask me some questions if you don't get something. put it this way, as a radfem, have a severe case of gender dysphoria

Do no harm

the difference between transphobia and transactivistphobia

the phallacy of cis privilege

Is it really the patriarchy that thinks that transwomen are women? Isn't it more the F-word and IBlameThePatriarchy etc. that think more in that way? Isn't it more a leftwing view, based on things like discrimination etc.? Isn't it politically correct law etc., based on justice and equality, that is more responsible for this view? What does teh patriarchal church think about it?

I disagree with IBlamethepatrirachy's view on this because I believe that view does eventually lead to the erasure of women as being distinctly different. I think it is a false view that stems from a leftwing communist type view of equality, where everyone is the same, where there are no distinctions between people and sexes.

I believe that there are distinctions between the sexes. I don't believe that women and men are the same. I believe that there are large biological differences. I don't agree with Cordelia Fine's view. That's why I don't think that transwomen are women.

I don't feel repulsion to trans women. I feel a repulsion towards the need of some of them to dominate women and a strong repulsion against the ease with which they are able to get the patriarchy to change laws in their favour. It is very difficult for women to get anything from the patriarchy. Not so for trans. Now trans women can scratch the M to and F on their birth certificate

the erasure of women begins here.

madwomanintheattic,
you have entirely misunderstood the feminist viewpoint, and you have misunderstood the reason why I'm angry.
If you'd like me to explain, then I will.

Trans is a very conservative viewpoint. It is opposite of everything that feminists have been fighting for since the year dot.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that men can do femininity better than women. It was, after all, the patriarchy that invented femininity and masculinity. Neither have anything to do with women and neither are natural. Femininity is merely the requirements placed upon women in a patriarchy. IN CHina footbinding was the height of femininity. IN the U.S plastic breasts are the height of femininity. In other cultures having your clitoris hacked off represents a "highly feminine" woman. Men and the patriarchy dictate femininity.

claig, I know you are a conservative and that is obviously why the concept of trans makes sense in your worldview.

YOu have to step outside the patriarchal box in order to realise how bizzare it is to suggest that a feminine man is. a. woman.
You have to step outside the brainwashing to realise that to say that a man who behaves in a feminine way is a woman is supremely misogynistic

I agree with madwomanintheattic that most men do not think that transwomen are women. I think madwoman is right that it is to do with upholding the binary. Unlike madwoman, I believe that the binary does exist and it is nature and that is why both men and women uphold the binary. I don't think eliminating the binary is a good thing, because I think it is a denial of nature and is doomed to fail.

my point was 'in bars' sakura. i know women get killed by men. but in context, vastly more trans women get beaten up in bars or walking down the street because they are trans.

a group of blokes might catcall a natal woman walking down the street at night, but if the same group of men happen to notice the 'woman' is an mtf trans, there is a far greater likelihood of actual attack. neither are acceptable, but it is infinitely more dangerous on a personal level to be a trans at that point.

i'm not really talking about the small percentage of men that have the personality required to rape or kill, i'm talking about average joes who are quite likely to take a swing at another bloke for looking at them wrong/ elbowing them in the queue for the bar, (in the name of 'being a real man') but if they happen to notice it's another bloke in a dress, they appear to think they have the moral right to destroy them. just for wearing a dress. without any other provocation ('he was looking at my bird').

of course, both actions (eyeing up another man's property/ a man wearing a dress) are challenges to masculinity on a personal level... (for those whose concepts of masculinity run to strength, power, and, oh... not being a woman. back to the other again.)

i'm sure that a man wanting to be a woman runs counter to the fibre of every power-happy chap's very being. but it's really interesting (to me), that you get the same level of repulsion to mtf trans from natal women (who identify as feminists). it's a very base response. but it appears to me to stem from the same ideology that upholds the binary. which i find really odd in a feminist context. in my little world, any challenge to the status quo of a society organised along gendered lines should at the very least be looked at sympathetically, particularly when it is made at such a personal level, rather than for political gain.

accept males as members of their own kin

not accept male members

two quite different meanings
!

the thing is, you are doing nothing to convince me that you aren't looking at the world from a patriarchal viewpoint. If you are not happy with excluding trans women from womanhood it can only be because you have accepted the view that women, being the negative, hologram-type "other", can take on all the males who don't fit the patriarchal masculine stereotype.

And yet, men are not willing, or expected to, accept their own kind ? They beat up and kill their own kind and the solution is to get women to absorb them?

But they (the patriarchy plus trans women)
still expect women to submit and accept males members of their kind.

THis is what I'm having problems with here. It's one rule for women and another for men.

A radical feminist can't accept that "woman" has got anything to do with a man who does femininity well (often better than actual women do it), despite how painful it is for said man to live in a world that men have created.

OMFG! how many years have I been calling you Steth . PMSL! well you could have waited until the nuclear threat was over before bursting my bubble. pffft

btw - this isn't really the moment to say this, but it's Seth not Steth

I know where you're coming from on your point about the term 'ciswoman', Sakura, but I don't see what's wrong with using it in the context of talking about transwomen to make it absolutely clear what I'm talking about.
If someone went around using it all the time I would agree with you but in this context I think it is perfectly reasonable. I don't want to say 'transwomen and women' because while I am not happy with a definition that says 'transwomen are by definition women' I am also not happy with one that says that they all definitely aren't.