Finn Mackay in Guardian today

Yes, butch is very much a twentieth century construct (cf Leslie Fineberg); though I think the difficulties increase, as you go back through history, in talking about women with a “masculine identity” - largely because “identity” and “sexuality” are both post-1800 constructs in the first place. Even “emotion” as a term and in the modern sense doesn’t really exist before the early to mid 19th century.

We find it very difficult to conceptualise a world where people’s sense of themselves does not quite map on to our post-19thc, post-Freudian notion of “identity”, but that’s part of the interesting thing about history - we really can’t assume we can just read the past as easily as we assume we can, or that contemporary ideas easily map onto past ones.

I’d argue that “transmasc” is an identity that only exists n relation to “trans”, whereas “butch” has a much longer history of gender role play which is not itself anything to do with the modern senses of either “trans” or “masc”.

I'd argue that "butch" as a concept of female masculinity / homosexuality only really arose in the 20th century while women with a masculine identity go back to at least (and not exclusively) the Old Norse sagas.

Tell you what she don’t speak to ordinary women.

Just another want to,say posh woman.

But will just say it.

Another posh woman who hasn’t a clue how most of us live in the uk now

@NellWilsonsWhiteHair

I think the ways in which many lesbians throughout certainly the past 100 years of history (perhaps longer) have experimented with adopting "male" appearances or behaviours or roles or jobs or habits or sex roles are complex, varied, and culturally significant. My shorthand is to describe this as lesbian history and to feel put out when parts of it are sometimes reclaimed as trans history, but the objective truth is probably that there are overlaps (as well as tensions).

I’m a cultural historian working in this field, so I’m well aware of the history of lesbian women presenting as male and male cross-dressing: from the late 19thc. until around the 2WW this was very much still under the aegis of sexologists such as Kraft-Ebing and Ellis, and the highly disputed “inversion theory” - itself quite repressive and something that LGB people were largely delighted to jettison (but which persisted in the popular imagination for some time). There are crucial differences between butch and “transmasc” though - particularly around whether these are experienced as roles or identity categories (I’d argue that “transmasc” is an identity that only exists n relation to “trans”, whereas “butch” has a much longer history of gender role play which is not itself anything to do with the modern senses of either “trans” or “masc”.

In any case, this pinpoints for me some of my discomfort with the disingenuousness of this approach. Despite Firestone (who was a bit of an anomaly), second wave feminism was all about being woman-centred - thinking of women as essentially part of a community of similarity despite difference, a continuum of shared experience (this didn’t, though, crucially, have to be the same experiences).

I find it very strange for someone to be trying to draw on second wave feminism, whilst simultaneously “identifying” outside the female experience as “queermale” or “transmasc”. Those are “identities” that are not only very much part of contemporary queer discourse, but they also fundamentally draw on terms that are male, queer, trans, masc - not to do with women at all. To me, it feels very much like trying to have your cake and eat it - trying to pretend you’re part of a great feminist tradition, at the same time as hedging your bets with “identities” that deliberately and explicitly fall outside that. Second wave and radical or Marxist feminism rejects “identity” as an ideological false consciousness, something that alienates you from the reality of class and sex oppression and prevents you seeing the truth.

There’s an element of obfuscation (or even class traitorousness) about trying to pretend you can have queer identity politics as well as radical feminism - you can’t, because then you’d be kidding yourself. The divergent strains in radical feminism largely centred on what to do about women’s reproductive role, not identity politics. It feels very much like trying to make use of radical feminism whilst also wanting to stay conveniently outside some of its crucial aims and tenets.

I’d be more sympathetic if she made a case for being in tune with some of the French lesbian feminists who were interested in gender binaries and sexuality, like Monique Wittig - but that doesn’t seem to be her argument.

NellWilson I agree with every word of that.

I think the ways in which many lesbians throughout certainly the past 100 years of history (perhaps longer) have experimented with adopting "male" appearances or behaviours or roles or jobs or habits or sex roles are complex, varied, and culturally significant. My shorthand is to describe this as lesbian history and to feel put out when parts of it are sometimes reclaimed as trans history, but the objective truth is probably that there are overlaps (as well as tensions).

I definitely recognise the internalised lesbophobia that I imagine sometimes (currently) makes a trans type identity easier for young women especially to own, and on top of that I think identifying similarity with and embracing the "butch stereotype" lesbian is often the final bit of internalised lesbophobia to overcome, even whilst celebrating that people's vision of The Lesbian is now more diverse. I wouldn't want to speculate on Finn as an individual on this point as it feels a bit crass, but I would be very surprised if she hasn't already done all her own introspection on all this stuff and more.

This LGBT "debate" about gender is not new. It's the same debate as "are butch/femme relationships intrinsically regressive". Gender and sexual orientation are culturally entwined, even whilst for many gays and lesbians that connection isn't relevant. I don't think there's really any virtue in one side or the other, I only care when the argument concerns access to single-sex spaces.

I like her, I think she's thoughtful. Her Twitter can be quite spicy, but that's Twitter for you. I'm interested to read the book, not least because there are so few accounts from the 'other side' that I have any patience with, and I think it's good to listen to your opponents' best arguments (and I think Finn does this in her way too).

I thought it very poor from the moment it aligned 2nd wave feminism with a single identity.

No thank you.

Academically weak.

I don't think you can set too much store by someone's twitter bio, otherwise half of us here are medieval goodwives and the other half are dinosaurs. I think "queermale" is tongue in cheek, if that needs saying.

Finn has done some enormously valuable work setting up the London Feminist Network and with Reclaim the Night, and I would hesitate to dismiss what she says out of hand. As it happens, it was Finn at LFN who persuaded me of the value of women only space many years ago (I doubt she remembers this as I'm sure she was having the same conversation over and over again at the time). If she has changed her mind I'd be interested to know why, and to have that discussion. I've never found her unwilling to listen.

I felt rather ambivalent about this article. On the one hand, I appreciate the attempt to rehabilitate radical feminism for those who would otherwise instantly dismiss it - it’s true that there are strains within second wave and radical feminism that were closer to a rejection of reproductive biology - she references Firestone for example. On the other hand, I found the slide into “be kind queerness” disingenuous, and a refusal to acknowledge some of the conclusions of the radical feminism she/they wants to domesticate. For all the be-kind-ness of this stance, I can’t help feeling there tan undercurrent of self-hatred about the desire to identify as “transmasc” (a very recent term which would surely not have been around when she/they was younger), rather than lesbian. There always seems to be a special kind of embarrassment and reluctance about identifying as boring old lesbian amongst these activists, that makes me feel they aren’t very accepting of the many lesbians who don’t see themselves as “masc” at all.

It seems all about gender and nothing about sexuality. In the late twentieth century lesbian and gay people found it liberating that sexuality could finally be thought of as independent of sex or gender. Stereotypes of the effeminate man or the butch woman were finally melting away in favour of a much freer understanding of sexual orientation.

Now even LGBT activists buy wholesale into the idea that gender stereotypes are an essential part of sexuality. It makes me feel a sinking sense of going backwards in all of this - it’s regressive and stifling rather than positive and freeing.

That guardian article said nothing at all.

Finn likes herself very very much!

FM tweeted an account of experience with the NHS that I would agree was poor. It reminded me that there is a lot of useful work to be done for improving the experience of LGBTQ+ patients/service users in the NHS.

twitter.com/Finn_Mackay/status/1424061707484270597

I think that's why I can't trust a word [pronoun] says if [pronoun] doesn't understand basic biology.

She uses she or they, so at least you don't have to do the liguistic shell game. She's a butch nonbinary queermale lesbian IIRC (apologies if I've missed any identies out).

She does understand biology- hence the willingness to refer to herself as female in relevant discussions and to accept female pronouns. Like others I think we should be tolerant of the well intentioned middle grounders even if I mentally sigh at the implied prospect of having to pretend some really stupid ideas aren't stupid.

It's a helpful little primer on the fact that feminism actually has some helpful things to say.

Quite why the Guardian suddenly feels its readership could benefit from a very simple primer on why feminism is a good thing, I'm sure I couldn't say. Perhaps someone there has twigged that pandering to those for whom nothing will ever be enough is a hiding to nothing, so they're hoping to slowly reintroduce feminism to Owen Jones' fanclub.

Good luck with that, chums.

I don't think this article is spectacular in that I don't think it actually advances too much of a proposition, but I do think it's a healthy and timely take on radical feminism and (coming from her) might nurture a kernel of feminism in some trans/allies who would be otherwise inclined to dismiss radical feminism as some bogus shit invented as a cover for transphobia. Which would be a very good outcome.

Pretty sure I've read her on twitter distancing herself from the title of her other recent Guardian appearance, saying she never claimed to be the peacemaker for the 'gender wars', but nonetheless I think it's a reasonable positioning, and I'm supportive of conversations in that middle space.

Julie Bindel has endorsed this article...

See also PP comment re Finn being TWAW.

Finn is no ally as I far as I'm concerned.

According to Amazon products related to this book include The A to Z of Pasta.

I am beginning to think that the alphabet soup of gender identity has gone too far............

I thought McKay's article interesting but neither profound nor original. Kind of C+ article, in other words.

Yeah, I think that's a good summary. She uses lots of words to say relatively little.

Finn Mackay is not on my mental list of allies, thought I can't quite recall why.

She's not a rabid TRA but she's certainly not on our side. Her solution to resolving the self ID controversy is basically for everyone to be kind.

Dr Finn self describes as a queermale.

Finn is female.

I thought McKay's article interesting but neither profound nor original. Kind of C+ article, in other words.