[quote TalkingtoLangClegintheDark]@Linning thank you for your considered reply to my post upthread. I appreciate you trying to discuss in a rational fashion.
I’m not sure I buy your arguments though.
You say:
The thing is, and it was purposeful, I did NOT, at any time, state my opinion on non-binary, I did NOT state whether I fully supported it or not, or even if I supported it at all (as a concept which I separate from being polite by using specific pronouns) and if I did, which part etc... I simply said " if someone ask me to use they, I do.'' That's it.
I didn't say " I do so because I believe in it.'' I said. " Using they is no-skin off my back, it makes the other person feel good, it doesn't change anything for me and I care more about the person I am around than the use of a word.'' That's all I said.
But the thing is, just going along with preferred pronouns like this is supporting it. It’s not a neutral position. There is no neutral position here. There is an ideology which seeks to break down the very concept of female people as a discrete socio-political class, and in so doing remove the right of female people to assert our own boundaries, our right to autonomy. You are either for it or against it. And the concept of being “non binary” is absolutely a part of transactivism.
Unfortunately, however much you may tell yourself that it’s no skin off your nose, that’s just not true: transactivist ideology is having profound and far-reaching consequences on women’s rights and safety around the world.
Ask the women in prisons in the UK, Canada, USA and Australia being sexually harassed and assaulted by male offenders who have been incarcerated with them without their consent. Or the women losing out to males on sports team places, medals and sporting scholarships. Or the women harassed and sued and financially devastated by Yaniv. Or any of the other women on the long list of those whose rights and safety are being infringed by this covert male supremacism.
Every time someone goes along with these non sex-based, inaccurate pronouns, it gives a little more grist to the transactivist mill, it embeds their ideology a little further in our culture, and it makes it harder for us to resist them. It harms women, girls and it destabilises the proper safeguarding of children. For a brilliant analysis of how this works I recommend Barracker’s superb Rohypnol piece:
fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/
Obviously it’s not up to me to decide this for you but IMO your assertion that as a black lesbian you are more privileged than a white, potentially heterosexual, male is proof of how far this has gone, how much damage has been done to the ability of women to recognise how disadvantaged we still are, in this endless centring of males and their supposed lack of privilege and victimhood.
Male privilege doesn’t disappear when a man is gender non-conforming or vulnerable in any other way, just as white privilege doesn’t disappear when a white person has other disadvantages. Male privilege is absorbed from birth, from the earliest years - an unconscious sense of entitlement, of being “the first sex”: an experience of being the default human, and always being centred in the cultural narrative in a way that those of us who are female just aren’t.
Transactivism is the ultimate demonstration of male privilege, and the power it has when combined with an opportunistic hijacking of the cultural zeitgeist that loves to preach diversity, equality and inclusion - while not loving so much to practice it. Especially not when it comes to including women, still excluded from so very, very much of the world’s wealth, power and opportunities.
I’m not au fait with Trump’s healthcare decision but I would frankly be surprised if anyone with the ability to pay for it was denied healthcare in America. The scandal of lack of healthcare for those who can’t afford it goes much further than “LGBT” people, surely. But if anyone really is refused treatment solely on the grounds of being “LGBT” then obviously that is utterly immoral and deeply wrong. (And as a lesbian wouldn’t you also be affected by that?)
And as I said before, the dynamics here in the UK are very different from those in the US, and those of us opposing transactivist ideology are in the main very, very far from being Trump supporters.
Happy to continue the discussion further on another thread if you want to. Have a good day![/quote]
You can support certain aspects of something without supporting EVERY aspect of something.
I support my friends, their well being to me means more than my use of grammar, therefore I support and respect their choice to refer to themselves as they and it cost me nothing FOR ME to refer to them as they too. I do NOT support people being forced to use words they don’t want to us though I do think it’s rude to purposefully call or refer to someone by a word they do not want to be referred as when there are other option (saying their name rather than pronouns for example as explained).
Also, while I personally have no issue with Mixed bathroom, I do NOT feel Mixed Bathrooms should be imposed but I do believe there should be a Mixed option (Female, Male, Mixed).
I also don’t agree with Transwomen being allowed in female prison or female safe spaces though I also don’t feel like they should be forced to be with males either (where they are at higher risks of being assaulted and raped) so I would want maybe an option for Western countries to have one detention center that could host transwomen as well as other gay and LGBTQ+ folks who would feel less at risk in a jail with other fellow LGBTQ+ people (those jails could potentially also host other minority groups who are at higher risk of being assaulted in the currently segregated system).
I also don’t agree with transwomen competing within women’s sports due to the inequality that creates so I would be for expending the male sport section if I had to expend either as it would technically change nothing for men and would probably allow trans men to pick between the two? Not sure.
In other words, I do not support every aspect of the Transactivist agenda but I support basic respect and not being unnecessarily mean when unrequired.
As for my comment about as a black lesbian I am more privileged than a trans (especially black) man, I stand by it. MUCH more black men are killed than black women within the current system and much more trans individuals are killed than lesbian. As a lesbian I am also much more accepted societally than gay men or trans women (as shown by this thread) and I have to deal with homophobia at a much lower and usually less violent scale. Acknowledging my own privileges isn’t denying male privileges. Statistically in this world I would pick to be a black lesbian over being a black transwoman, the discrimination I deal with being me vs the one I would deal being them is incomparable and I do think I would thoroughly struggle being them.
In Relation to healthcare, well it’s like everywhere else, when in a car crash they don’t request your credit card before treating you, they treat you and then you pay, so it has nothing to do with who can or can’t afford to pay, so yes, effectively they could refuse to treat a trans individual, in fact it’s because it used to happen that a law was made to protect trans individuals from being discriminated medically:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Tyra_Hunter
Trump overturned it, the thing is those laws don’t affect me in the same way no. Because I don’t carry a lesbian badge around my neck and I am feminine so unless I expressly said I was gay, nobody would know and especially not upon looking at my body, trans individuals don’t have that chance. Some are post-op and can’t be told apart from the rest of us but many many are visibly trans or have body parts that would betray them.
Not only was Tyra Hunter NOT helped but she was mocked and humiliated as she died slowly in front of her abusers, abusers who are certified medical staff who chose to let her die because she was trans.
Saying that trans individuals are protected by their male privileges is simply not true, the only male who are truly protected and are benefitting FULLY from male privileges are straight cis male who fit most of the stereotype of acceptable male behaviors anybody else is subjected to discrimination, not necessarily at the scale that women are but definitely up to a scale were their male privileges would serve them of very little (black transwomen attracted to men for example).
So yes, I didn’t develop my views because they are nuanced, I know enough trans people and navigate alongside enough trans people and see enough of their lives, to know that this isn’t a black and white issue, that not all trans people think or feel the same nor are after the same policies and that transwomen aren’t just men in a skirt trying to rape women and little girls, they are people who, for the most part are just wanting to be accepted and have, in part, been hijacked by extreme transactivists they don’t necessarily agree with and have for the most part, suffered from their condition in ways I, a black queer woman, simply haven’t, in and outside the queer community.
It’s because I am a minority and know a lot about prejudice through lives experience that I can tell you openly that trans individuals, especially trans black women, suffer from an amount of prejudice and hate that, if I, a queer black lesbian had to deal with, even 10% of their ordeal, I probably would not be around to talk about it, it seems unbearable even for me observing it from up close. So yes, I will continue to do my part in doing the small stuff that helps them feel more welcome and accepting by using “they” and or “she/he” as required, I don’t need to support every single aspect of trans activists queries to accommodate the ones I can and do support.