Being silenced/feeling voiceless

Jeanne - I completely understand that position.

The thing for me is, our brain is our body.

where gender is concerned, it is different: we live in a patriarchy, and it is fucked up, and I can believe that one response to that would be to think 'I've been born in the wrong body'

Thanks I understand where you're coming from and I think I agree. For me, whichever way you look at it, the idea that you can be "born into the wrong body" is a delusion. We are our bodies (the major part of which of course is our brain), and who we are is of course hugely determined by how we interact with the environment. And that interaction with the environment can make our minds feel desperately unhappy with - and even disconnected from - the body, and we can seek to change the body, but the idea that it is the "wrong one for our minds" is a delusion, because it is our bodies that give rise to our minds, which are then heavily shaped by the environment in which we exist.

"The problem is, while helpful beliefs and facts are different, I'm less sure than you that I know how to tell the difference all of the time."

It is just scientific method - scepticism, evidence, logic.... I don't claim to know the difference all the time - that wouldn't be sceptical, I just wish more people - okay - more women... would trust in their own senses, their appraisal of the evidence, their own ability to use irrefutable logic.

I think that to be a 'fact' something simply has to be supported by all the available evidence.

A belief is something which is felt to be true but does not need (or unusually have) any supporting evidence.

An opinion is somewhere in between. It is something of a feeling, but is supported by evidence, though that evidence may be incomplete (ie may be personal experience or biased).

I'm not convinced other people are delusional for holding a different belief from mine

Just trying to understand this (rather than making a point). Are you saying that you are open to the idea that the belief that a person has been "born into the wrong body" is not a delusion?

"I'm not convinced other people are delusional for holding a different belief from mine."

I am utterly opposed to queer theory, in fact any philosophical system created by induction and intuition (eg- religion), being put forward as a means for arriving at the truth or being used as a basis for secular decision-making, eg- laws, the legal definition of 'woman' - etc. Scepticism and empiricism are essential for finding out the facts and underpinning a fair and rational society - (and as a feminist - I just want things to be fair!)

I am not being absolutist about it - for example, AA is 'God-centred' and it is one of the most effective forms of staying sober out there. This doesn't mean that God exists, but it does show how helpful a belief in God can be. This tells us something about our psychology and how believing in things that have no evidence or defy logic can help us at times - eg - bereavement.

But helpful beliefs and facts are very different things, so I don't believe these disagreements are just about miscommunication - it is about fundamentally disagreeing. Queer theory is to radical politics what religion is to science.

I also think that the right to freedom of expression doesn't extend as far as redefining collective nouns to include me. Because that tramples on other people's right to freedom of expression. Where a collective noun is to be extended / redefined it needs to be done with the consent of (at least the majority of) people already covered by the collective noun.

Words have great power, and can cause great pain. But the right to freedom of expression extends (in my head at least) as the right to call myself what I want. I don't think that it necessarily extends to choosing what I get to call other people, because that can cause them pain. So other people can call themselves trans/cis/gender queer or whatever else they want. But I have the right to reject any/all of those labels.

However, I wouldn't describe words as being 'violent' because 'violent' means, to me at least, physical harm. Which is quite distinct from mental harm.

Dodos - love your oppression top trumps analogy. I find the whole "well I've suffered more than you so shut up" attitude incredibly tedious. Isn't oppression supposed to create solidarity, not competition?

Jeanne, the "verbal violence" thing really gets me. It's an insidious threat to free speech in my opinion. Violence is violence, words are words. And why are we not allowed to claim trans activists are doing us "violence" when they describe us in terms that we are not comfortable with, or worse, try to make us adopt those terms without our enthusiastic consent? Or when they threaten women who object to their ideology with actual violence?

Jeanne "under, sorry, but that doesn't work for me."

Which bit?

"Because I do see that some people use this terminology productively (for them: it helps them understand who they are)."

Do you mean 'internal self-identity'? Because I agree that having a language of internal descriptors can be helpful- ie psychology and psychotherapy, but when these internal descriptors are at odds with reality, yet are claimed as one's 'identity', it is another thing altogether to then insist others concur reality itself is wrong. My problem with the nature of 'internal self-identification' is it justifies controlling behaviour.

"So I don't want to just say, oh, they're a bunch of deluded fools."

Delusional people are not necessarily foolish. Delusions are common. Here's the OED definition: Characterized by or holding idiosyncratic beliefs or impressions that are contradicted by reality or rational argument, typically as a symptom of mental disorder. It isn't disparaging or dismissive to call a delusion a delusion. It is not a slur on a person's intelligence or ability to hold down a job. It is simply a matter of fact.

"I also have issues with 'violence' done by language. I do feel upset and hurt about all of this, and I don't know why really. But I know that people constantly claim that language is 'violent' and I find it Orwellian and frightening - eg., people claiming that radical feminists are literally 'causing violence' to them by speaking. I don't want to go down that road."

A very fair point, apologies - I had to dash to take the kids to school and posted before a proper read-through.

Oh, perhaps I've misunderstood genderqueer after all. I may abandon the term, I've only known it for a couple of weeks.

Gender critical and gender fluid I can get behind, having been around, and been, both for quite a lot of my own life.

It's a bit like cultural appropriation isn't it - which is something I found really hard to get, but through feminism (that WoC thread was very helpful), I'm starting to get an inkling of understanding about.

I think when you have the privilege it's very hard to understand why an unprivileged group is so upset about something, because it seems so trivial ('but I love saris they're so pretty, why are you upset about me wearing one to a party'), whereas from the other side you see that something that is a key part of your identity is being used as a game - which makes you understandably angry.

I really dislike genderqueer ideology - (besides it being based on the rubbishing of logic) how it is a means by which the most privileged in society can do a bit of dressing up, play acting and mucking around with their mates as a release from the apathy that comes with privilege - and then get to claim status as a member of an oppressed class.

For example, I once saw a male in a dress and make up, with a girlfriend - and both described themselves as lesbians. This means straight women and men can call themselves lesbians and go on a dyke march, just because the male likes dressing up in women's clothes.

It is so disrespectful to the people genuinely engaged in a struggle for liberation.

YYY, Jessica. Thank you.

Actually I've just discovered that 'genderqueer' covers most of this, so I have another word for a complicated idea :) Wish it didn't say 'queer' though. We all know how comforting that is in a heteronormative patriarchy.

Oh, god, yes Paw. I'm so sorry, I was really thinking about everyday small things in OUR societies. You know, freedom to wear a dress or trousers and choose whether to do engineering or interior design, boxing or ballet. And the language which facilitates those choices.

Thanks Garlick, that's really helped me understand what I feel but I've been to frightened to say. It seems to me, that at least some issues surrounding MTF transgender people would be made significantly easier if men (as a group) were more able to display traditionally feminine characteristics without fear or harm.

I look around me and see many women who are not as oppressed as they would have been 100 years ago. Their behaviour is less defined by their sex - they don't have to stay at home, they can like cars, they have equal rights (in law at least) to education and to work in many professions traditionally done by men. The link between being a woman and feeling / behaving a particular way (ie gender stereotypes) is slowing being broken. The movement is by no means complete, there is still lots of work to be done. But progress has definitely been made.

But then I wonder why a similar movement hasn't happened for men. I know at least two fathers who would love to be SAHP but won't because "men provide for their families" is so ingrained. Men who work in childcare are often viewed with suspicion. There are probably more examples that I can't think of right now.

It feels like there's still a problem with (most) men still conforming to their gender stereotype even when they don't want to. But I'm not sure it is a problem that I (as a biological woman) can solve. And I don't think I should have to give up hard-won rights (such as women-only rape crisis centres) in order to help those who are fighting that particular problem. I still need language to express the problems faced by biological women. And I don't want to start using 'ciswoman' because that just re-links women and their gender stereotype.

Garlick "punishes non-conforming men more harshly than dissenting women"
I don't really agree here. Non-conforming men are not punished worse than dissenting women. Think of the Taliban... or many other regimes that suppress female dissent and empowerment - stoning to death, 'corrective rape' etc. Gender non-conforming men can still host prime-time shows, become 'leading experts' on women, etc, win the Turner prize doing traditional 'women's' crafts, win Eurovision, Big Brother...

And all those Suffragettes who were force-fed were largely upper-middle class, so even their class privilege wasn't enough to protect them