Very sorry to see that thebewilderness and Pratchet have chosen to opt out.
Pratchet says:
What a surprise, from being invisible they're suddenly here and there on social media, pretending to be reasonable. We see you.
I am not invisible, in fact I have not been invisible – anywhere – for the last 26 years. You will find my posts on facebook and twitter.
As for pretending to be reasonable, what can I say. It is the only way to have shared discourse. Being unreasonable won’t create any sort of understanding.
Thebewilderness says
If affirmation of your delusion is the price I have to pay to talk with you I will pass.I am not willing to lie, and I am astonished that you claim dishonesty "It's only words , and it won't harm you, but to not do so might harm me"
To be frank, I do not know whether my ‘delusion’ is that, or anything else. But then no one else has that answer either. There have been several papers published over the last 10 years purporting to have ‘found’ the basis of the gender identity of trans folk. e.g. differences in one of the 16 (known) sex dimorphic nuclei (tiny bundles of cells in the brain normally different in number according to the biological sex of a person) - But as no one is quite sure what the sex dimorphic nuclei do, it is hard to say these differences mean anything also. There is research demonstrating apparent ‘sections of genes’ which are different for those who female to male trans people, when what that means is just not known, as to date it is impossible for us to say how most of our genome works, and why it works, and what it does.
I don't know if any of that research has any meaning for any of us, because I am not sufficiently knowledgeable in the science. But ...
as I often think "Thank god I am a human rights lawyer, so I don't have to work out why people exist, my only concern is that they exist"
Colette Chiland, a French psychologist who clearly did not feel at all happy about increasing numbers of people requesting gender reassignment (in the 1970s) , in her second book on the subject; Exploring Transsexualism, did ask "is this a mad idea?” and I understand exactly that might, I have asked myself the same question many times.
Chilland poses the question (again in the 2nd book) “Is this a delusion? Or is it an illusion?”.
If the first, then she asks why has no psychotherapeutic resolution (cure) been found. A counter argument is that there has been no such resolution for most of those mental illnesses which are grounded in delusions.
If the second, ’an illusion’, then she suggests we have to investigate what drives us: why are ‘we’ spending our time (money and infinite amounts of energy) creating these illusions, Is it so that we (for trans men) get access to power and material wealth, and (for trans women) access women’s space and culture, and consequently women’s bodies.
For me, are both inadequate responses to the question of whether this is a mad idea. But then I don’t have a simple answer either- certainly not short answers for this morning, other than to say that one alternative would be that what we (some of us at least) claim might be true, we are the people of the gender we say we are. But then if gender isn’t real, then that is also an inadequate answer.
I can’t write a full-scale essay every day, but to answer UniqueHornsOnly who asked:
“Do you believe that women and girls have a right to single-sex spaces? For clarity, I mean a distinction based on biological sex, not gender identity.”
Yes of course I do. I was at one time a Queen's Guide, deputy head girl and cricket captain in an all-Girls School, and then a member of a lesbian collective. Those Spaces allowed my consciousness raising, the awakening of understanding of the unjust burdens that girls and women carry. Those Spaces made me a committed feminist with a determination to contribute to justice for women.
I’ll admit, that being a ‘Custom-home-Built model’ means I truly don’t have those same understandings in relation to what it means to be a ‘factory fitted’ boy or man.
Trans Spaces have enabled me to be conscious of the pervasive prejudice, discrimination, and often violent transphobia every trans person experiences almost all of the time. Before those spaces, we used to be grateful for ‘what little we thought we had got’. Our Space allowed us to understand how we were sacrificed repeatedly to an archaic modernist understanding that dictates gender as only ever a rigidly ruled binary.
Having a Space is crucial for all minorities, and powerless groups. It enables the consciousness raising which facilitates participation in creating real changes (and for girls and women, it was such Spaces – in people’s homes – that have allowed the advancement of core feminist theory and understandings.
As I believe in Trans only Space - allowed our consciousness raising - again in each other’s homes, spaces over which of course, men, women, or tans people have some real control as to access.
Similarly, I also think ‘Men is Sheds’ is a great space for effective consciousness raising amongst men.
Yet for 70 years, women and trans women have been using the same loos, often together, sometimes with knowledge, often without.
Trans women are not the people to fear when going to the loos. I can honestly assure you, that trans women are as frightened, if not more, of the man in the loos who attacks women.
They know that a criminal man who assaulted them would leave them for dead or close to it. Someone on MN suggested trans women should have to use the men’s loos, effectively they are suggesting that trans women should daily enter a cage fight with tigers. That would also suggest a willingness to see the bearded faces of me and my mates in ‘your’ loos. That is clearly not the solution.
Of course. the answer to the loos is relatively easy;
-- Women’s loos for all who can only feel comfortable peeing when they ‘know’ the other people in there are, like them, ‘read’ as ‘real’ women.
-- Men’s loos for all those who can only feel safe in a space inhabited by other people who are ‘read’ as ’real men’, and
as my work building has just had created
-- gender-neutral loos.
In my work building there are also more non-gender-neutral loos. And within all those ‘loos’ the spaces are civilised, in the way loss are at home i.e. no urinals, and each loo cubicle is a fully closed room, with no opportunity for peeping toms or glory holes.
There are Spaces and there are Spaces.
Most spaces are for sharing; church, the bar, the cinema, the Golf Club, the football stand, the Theatre, are in principle places for people to be together. Sure, you can have ‘special events’ but they must be exactly that; the exceptions.
I absolutely believe in ‘women only lists’ to increase women’s participation in government. But you can’t have that, and another assumptive space for men, and then not be willing to create the equivalent for those who don’t fit into of the modernist definitions of what a woman or a man is.
Just as women-only lists cannot work if women are then only selected to stand in marginal constituencies, similarly trans men and women must not be denigrated to the position of being tokens – people who buy a lottery ticket, but who can never, in the rules of the game, win the prize.
Similarly people with disabilities, older people, Asian men, Black women must be able to win, otherwise they are merely tokens, to prove someone else’s claim to ‘right-on’ politics.
If we want for example, to afford trans men and women an equal and respected opportunity to participate in the political process; to be elected to parliament, I suggest we must make those complex decisions together.
When I went to see the Vagina Monologues, how brilliant it was that the other men in the audience were getting a tiny sense of what it might be like to live with a vagina.
Let’s say I was asked to take part, would it be reasonable for women to campaign for the exclusion of my voice. Surely, I have as much to say as anyone else who has lived with a vagina and importantly, it would give my community their voice and their sense of belonging.
Of course, being (I hope) honestly ‘reasonable in my dishonest delusions’, I would not wish to take up a woman’s space in the show, I would consider just the one opportunity – the special as the exception.
In-group Spaces are not an absolute right, but are, at times, essential.
I will respond to the points posed about the new generation of trans kids, the aggression seen by women from some trans women on some parts of social media, etc. etc. when I can get to them, but I do have to work, sorry.