Following on from the TERF thread...

Thanks to all who posted thanks about my above essay! post. I feel very annoyed and concerned by the current third wave liberal post-modern depoliticized made up definition of oppression

With you on that one, Beach I'm copying across what I posted on the other thread wrong thread Hope that's OK. THis is such a fascinating discussion & I'm learning a lot.

Thanks for a really interesting thread. I came to it because I've seen quite a bit of TERF-outing and criticism on my Twitter, and it's such a new thing to me (old 1970s/80s Women's Lib feminist -- hell, I was even in a consciousness-raising group in the late 70s, I'm that old). I guess in my extreme moments, I'd identify with radical feminist aspects of feminism/s. But I'm also very much aware of the Butler stuff (gender as performative, and sex not necessarily fixed).

I've worked with a couple of MtF people, when they've been both pre & post-op. Both identified as lesbian, but both had a gender-reassignment operation. The new emerging difference between the terms transgender & transsexual is interesting in this respect.

A lot of the TERF stuff is actually a misunderstanding of the complexity of BUtler's arguments, and also an emptying out of queer theory of any kind of politics. It gives few tools for analysing patriarchy as a STRUCTURE and sees gender as a set of personal choices a la neo-liberal post-modernism. All these young 20 somethings thinking they're being political and radical, hmmmmm

It seems to me that what we have is a lot of rather privileged young people (oh writing that makes me feel old) with a fundamental misunderstanding of theory around the DIFFERENCE or distinction between the terms "sex" and "gender" who've been educated in a post-neoliberal world (Fredric Jameson's good on po-mo as a symptom and tool of late global capitalism, not its destruction) and who think that if they want to break out of the socialisation of masculinity or femininity then they have to claim the opposite sex identity, rather than collectively work to destabilise gender identities which seem to coerce people into particular lives, styles, and behaviours.

And the fact that a number of vocal transgender activists seem to want to keep certain attributes of both male sex and masculine gendered behaviour (basic misunderstandings about women's rights over their own bodies, anyone?) I find very unsettling.

It all seems like another version of mansplaining to me.

isn't there an identified radfem (now vilified as a TERF) [Sheila Jeffreys??] who argues that a lot of people who identify as transgender (as opposed to transsexual) actually just want NOT to conform to the embedded and socialised gendered stereotypes of required masculine & feminine behaviour.

This seems to me to make sense: just because a boy plays with dolls or likes wearing a dress does not mean he has gender dysphoria/or is transsexual.

Is that a viable point?

Beach that distinction between oppression and discrimination was really helpful. Buffy, I don't want to treat you as the voice of postmodernism or the person required it explain postmodernism 101, but under Beach's definition of oppression, what does postmodernism have to say about that? How does it measure it, demonstrate its existence, explain its existence etc?

I do understand what you mean Buffy - I think where radical feminists disagree with liberals is to the transgressive nature of transgenderism.

As I say above, in radfeminism, transitioning is analysed as being deeply conservative and patriarchal. It is seen as a manifestation of gender and a consequence of a belief in gender as being a personal concept rather than a political hierarchy. Indeed of gender as existing as anything other than a tool of social and political control for men to wield over women. We are back to what was discussed above about men defining women for their own purposes.

I think your speculation as to how the situation came about is correct. Just, I would also add that the context of male supremacy has played an enormous (but disguised) role. In particular WRT the rapid change in laws such as the Gender Recognition Act, the mainstreaming of transpolitics and the colonization of women's spaces and issues (the F-Word is a good example). The privilege held by born men is another factor - this is a big difference between transwomen and transmen and IMO the reason for the male dominance in the movement and explains much of the success of the movement.

Transgenderism, whilst appearing (particularly to liberals and post-modernists) as a transgressive underdog minority which needs sympathy and cuddly feelly concessions, it is in fact a male centric movement operating in a male supremacy to the detriment of women and guided by the sense of entitlement held by men. The sympathy and (enormous) concessions that are being asked for are being primarily demanded of women - and this suits patriarchy down to the ground. This is the bit that liberals fail to notice in their desire to be righter on than thou. Never before has the term 'handmaiden' been so apt....

I'm glad there are people like you in academia. When I criticize the academy I mean the institution.

Thanks to all who posted thanks about my above essay! post. I feel very annoyed and concerned by the current third wave liberal post-modern depoliticized made up definition of oppression.

Good point Buffy.

[[Lightbulb][

agree buffy, I made a similar point upthread. what brought it home to me was kim explaing about the f on her driving licence and the difference that makes. simple and measurable. vs the radfem perspective which is a bit out there at first.

Yes, Beach, exactly. Very well said!

great stuff beach

Yes, thanks Beach that was a brilliant post.

Thank you for that post, Beach - the stuff about the difference between discrimination and oppression is extremely interesting.

All this crap about the London Dyke March is just a big political reversal. They are trying to paint feminists and lesbians as essentialists because we identify patriarchy as a sex based hierarchy; as sex based oppression. And that it is the females of the population who are oppressed by the males of the population.

We are apparently, according to trans activist logic, patriarchal essentialists who uphold sexist stereotypes because we point out that sex matters when you live in a goddamn patriarchy. (And we are no better than porn hounds! Trust an autogynephile to work porn into the conversation...)

They are too stupid to understand the basic tenets and observations of feminism. They are too steeped in male privilege (and obliviousness of that privilege) to have even the most basic clue what the sex class 'woman' is and why it is important to human females.

Buffy, I disagree with what you say in your above post.

1. It feel natural to be accepting of trans because a lack of acceptance for any deviation from right wing values gender and social conformity (e.g. homosexuality) is something that, by and large, we fight against. And I do not feel convinced by arguments against the notion that in mainstream society trans people are not oppressed. I think they are and it would be better if feminists and trans could be allies.

Firstly I think it is important to separate out "trans" into what it actually means (something that has been disappeared by that little asterix). "Trans" has become so vast it now means very many things - from the old fashioned homosexual transsexual who goes for GRS, doesn't actually think they are a woman and who lives peacefully alongside women, to your modern male bodied person with penis and testes intact who reckons his 'inner gender identity' trumps the lived reality of over 50% of the population and who has sexually predatory intent to lesbians and other women, and who thinks his narcissistic desire for validation and 'passing' is more important that global oppression of girls and women.

I feel sympathy towards the former but not for the latter. Within the whole "trans*" spectrum in between I find it hard to see how trans and feminists are natural allies when our politics, ideology, worldview, values, priorities and class analysis are so different. The trans movement is an overwhelming male centric movement. Feminism is all about resisting male centric perspective.

Most of the time people forget about the females who come under the (male centric, male dominated) "trans*" umbrella. IMO most of the time when a woman transitions she rejects feminism and accepts gender. I feel deep sympathy for transmen but I think it is difficult for people with fundamentally different politics to be political allies.

In general, for both male and female transgender people, transgenderism is founded on deeply conservative ideas about gender and homosexuality. On deeply conservative ideas that feminists reject wholly.

I also disagree that transpeople are oppressed. IMO they are discriminated against but they are not oppressed. They have coopted the language of social justice movements and of the oppressed (whence such concepts as cisprivilege, transmisogyny, cissexism etc ). Transactivists (and liberal feminists) tell us all the time that transpeople are oppressed but how exactly does social or structural or institutionalized oppression of transgender people manifest? Most certainly, if one were to argue that transpeople are oppressed, one would struggle to find solid arguments that they are oppressed by women. Feminist analysis is not that transactivsts want women to stop oppressing them (despite this being their message), what transactivists want is for women to capitulate to them on everything they want and for women to give up hard won and incomplete rights in order for transwomen to occupy female space because they have decided that they like it even better than the male privileged space that society has afforded them as their birth right.

In feminism, oppression has an element of control and exploitation, and of one group gaining substantial benefit and advantages from the social domination of another group. For example in female oppression by males, males get domestic and sexual services as a benefit of oppressing women. Power structures and cultural rituals and practices are constructed in order to control and exploit us. Men also get to own most of the world's property and money whilst making women do most of the world's work. Women service men. Men control and dominate women and enjoy the fruits of female labor, domestic service, sexual service and reproductive capacities whilst withholding freedom from women. Male dominated society socializes women to believe this is the natural order. THAT is oppression.

This, certainly in radical feminism, is the difference between discrimination and oppression. Discrimination is treating people unfairly/differently due to a socially constructed categorization. Oppression is much larger, is much more institutionalized and structural and is exploitative. That is not to say that discrimination is not a serious and harmful practice - it can lead to terrible violence and make people's lives extremely difficult due to lack of employment opportunities and so on.

Oppression is primarily about resources, be that resource; the labour of black people, the land of indigenous people or the domestic and reproductive labour of women.

And this for me is where the relativist language of post-modernism has played an obfuscating role WRT sex politics - it has shaped thinking about oppression as being something that happens on an individual level and which can be bucked on an individual level. Whether this is the intention of post modernist thinking or not is immaterial, as the writer in the article I quoted upthread what matters to feminists WRT to post-modernism is how it functions in the real world not what it abstractly is in the academy.

So the women who have been killed and mutilated down the years mean nothing in the face of a few men who want to take centre stage and redefine gender in such a way that, as usual, their needs come first

Absolutely agree. There's a whole lot of vioent mansplaining going on in the TERF debates on Twitter & the blogosphere. It comes, IMO, from a superficial [mis]understanding of Judith Butler and queer theory. One that's be emptied out of feminist politics. But call me an ageing radfem and shoot me!

Coming to this late, and I stupidly posted on the other thread ...

Would it be bad manners to just re-post from the other thread?

I don't know what a female soul is.

I can think of no other descriptor of a person that carries no traits as to what the person is saying about themselves.

Even if a person says they are Aquarian or they are choleric in theosophy, I can look up the character traits of an Aquarian or a Choleric and understand what the person is trying to tell me about themselves.

I don't think it makes much sense either, yet that's the message I'm getting. but it's a good example of the appropriation of feminist discourse to further other agendas.

No feminist will say Yay bodies are the only things that matter when it comes to attraction. But that's what lesbians are being accused of. Not recognising the female soul over the male body parts that come with it

Or else I am more confused than I thought

I don't see how that makes any sense at all. Putting a priority on one type of body over another does not mean you then don't see the full humanity of the people you are having sex with or the people you don't have sex with.

It can just mean that while you make choices about sexual partners based primarily on the individual's personality, the individuals you are prepared to consider must have particular genitalia.

haranguing lesbians for not wanting penis is telling them that they are objectifying the person with the penis, instead of being attracted to their womanly personality

They are saying that lesbians are putting a higher value on the body than the personality.

What do you mean seven days?

Surely objectification is about being attracted to a person's body and stereotypes about them without seeing them as a human being with their own personality?

While being sexually attracted to someone of the same sex is usually about being attracted to a particular kind of body and someone's humanity/personality at the same time. How is that similar to objectification?

Beach, that wall of text comment is so full of reversals, it makes my head spin. Taylor is taking historic conditions of women's oppression and using them to justify why 'woman' should be a meaningless category that can be defined and redefined at will by men.

Thus: sexist men have historically defined women in terms of their genitals, therefore women have no right to exclude people with penises; men have imposed sexist stereotypes on women, therefore if women say there is something fundamentally different about being socialised female vs socialised male, THEY are engaging in sexist stereotyping.

It's all so dishonest and manipulative and is such a breathtaking appropriation of feminist analysis in the service of male dominance - and the worst part is I know it works on many women. I've seen any number of libfems claim that radfems are 'reducing women to vaginas and wombs' if they assert that woman simply means adult human female.

I think what I'm getting from the whole cotton ceiling debate is that it is a feminist notion not to objectify by body parts, one should in fact be attracted to the whole person. because that is not objectifying or dehumanising. ( I could have misunderstood as I am confused. It is a confusing subject)

Which has a lot going for it.

But you can't argue away physical attraction, can you

that they are just MEN and are MEN because thats what MEN are because I said so. etc. You can see the fundamental irony here I hope

I certainly can

Actually they are welcome, indeed they are taking over the organisation whilst magnanimously assuring lesbians that they are welcome.

Facebook comment from one of the male Dyke March organizers Natalie Jane Taylor:

Lesbians are obviously welcome and DML has tried to facilitate this discussion in the most constructive way so that people can air their grievances about the speaker mentioned throughout this thread so they are heard. people’s opinions matter. Dyke visibility at DML includes this type of dialogue. The aim is to stop this cycle of hatred by facilitating this kind of discussion. I can understand a lot of the comments about ”patriarchy” and other things similarly mentioned. The issue about the speaker is obviously one that will not see rest for sometime. Moving aside from that, the amount of transphobic hatred has been outrageous. patriarchal oppression doesn’t just enforce negative female stereotypes but male stereotypes as well. That there is no other way to be other than insert premise which is what you’re all doing when you judge anyone by an outdated stencil. trans women on her birth and the struggle to fight through Male ego which states very often ” that those women are not women but just faggots in dresses” This is EXACTLY the stereo type you as women are actually upholding. You deny trans womens feminity in favour of a patriarchal ”fuck off” that they are just MEN and are MEN because thats what MEN are because I said so. etc. You can see the fundamental irony here I hope of you trying to smash patriarchy, yet at the same time uphold all of it’s negative stereotypes about what a man or woman is, and even what a lesbian DYKE woman is. You do not have the deciding rule on what consitutues a DYKE just because you are one. YOU have the right to define yourself within your body and who you chose to love and have sex with.(IF you’re lucky enough to be able to chose who you love or have sex with) Every person is different, every persons life is different. What you’re all doing is upholding generalisations about what a WOMAN and well as what a MAN should be. Based on the fact you have a vagina and nothing more. That sounds more like a casting couch of a porn movie than patriarchal deconstruction/ ”Oh you have a vagina YOU IN THE MOVIE!” Which a lot of trans men would be dismayed to hear. Buck Angel is Not a Dyke, but he very much has a vagina. You’re hearts might be in the right place as regards to breaking negative images of women around the world. Fuck stereotypical stereotypes of women. Fuck stereo types in General. But the way in which you do it is so much like a manager at the playboy club who sniffs for entry in. They only let the REAL vaginas dance. THAT’S PATRIARCHY. Basing your importance around the genitals you were chanced to be born with is a patriarchal mould of how a women is supposed to value and define themselves. That their vaginas are all that a they are worth, that a woman is worth, and nothing else. It’s disgusting. Stop. I’m not dismissing the love of vaginas as being important to the attraction of gay women it’s such a small part of the whole person. There is so much more to being in Love that that, or really it’s just meaningless sex without emotion. Which, again. Kind of a Male ego patriarchal mould.. let people define themselves, which is what Dyke march is about. let women, define themselves. NOT force an image of what they THINK a women/lesbian/DYKE should look like feel like or act like. And what of women and glamour models in the Porn or sexual working trades? Are they enemies as well of the negative images that men and male egos impose because they work so hard to please the men to become that image of what men want? or do they get a pass. None of that is ok. None of it. Define who you are within yourself. that’s it. to NOT let others in any way dictate how a person looks/acts/feels/identifies. And I want to emphasize that the key note speaker and your problem with them is something that really defines a larger argument on how PEOPLE in general can be very rude and abusive. As part of the organizing team on the day, no form of hate speech or aggression will be tolerated. from anyone. I love that you’ve been so expressive and open and tried to push boundaries of what I understand is a huge issues for you. It’s been fantastic for me to read at times that there are very passionate people who stand up against hateful speech and hopefully, DML has been able to be a place where you can talk( Ground rules are still enforced though of course). I Hope you do come. But Bring no overt acts of hate. Bring yourself, bring your power and rage and anger. We march past playboy gentlemen’s club that’s a great place to unload that rage….