MNHQ transphobia guidelines part 2

[QueenStromba]

First thread here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2120841-MNHQ-are-going-to-decide-what-constitutes-transphobia-on-MN-What-advice-guidelines-would-you-give-them?

Sitestuff thread that was about is here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/2117350-MNHQ-now-email-posters-with-how-to-get-around-the-talk-guidelines?

The thread that was about is here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2107862-Following-on-from-the-TERF-thread?

I'm skim-reading all these analyses now, and I fear you may have scared off the thread lots of people who may have contributed with their thoughts on what constitutes transphobia, as well.

Would you consider taking these detailed discussions (on I'm not sure what) to FWR and leaving this thread to thoughts on transphobia?

Buffy, I know a lot of people who 'reckon' they or their kids are 'a bit dyspraxic' because they are slightly clumsy or have bad handwriting. They haven't been properly evaluated/diagnosed though, oh no. This drives me up the wall, because if someone who tells people they are dyspraxic can do stuff, then why can't I or (more importantly to me these days) my DDs? Because being dyspraxic is being subtly redefined as having bad handwriting or being a bit clumsy and nothing more.

It's a bit the same with vegetarianism - so many people claim they are vegetarian yet eat food which vegetarians do not eat. This enables restaurants etc to provide a 'vegetarian option' that is, in fact, not vegetarian.

MyrtleDove thank you for your apology. I'm also a very slow typer and reader.

Pretty hard without using a prefix, and if you're going to use a prefix it needs to be both.

It's not hard at all and it doesn't need to be both. I'm getting tired of hearing this.

I'm not a FWR regular. I feel strongly about this. I'm just not able to post with such eloquence and knowledge.

^this. I don't have the knowledge to participate fully in the discussions but I am really enjoying reading them.

With childcare and work I've fallen hopelessly behind with this thread but imo it is one of the most important threads on MN right now. I'm going to read every single comment even the ones that have hurt me and enraged me. These threads have had such a positive impact on my thinking so thank you to all the amazing women who have contributed. It is so much more than words on a screen.

MNHQ, looking forward to hearing your response.

I'm with Cote

You can lose the language battle of control by the language you use in the actual battle.

If reams of people feel unqualified to give an opinion, or have their belief that this is a strictly radfem v transactivist punch up reinforced ... that is an own goal.

As Cote has asked, I am going to make a thread in FWR, unless somebody else already has.

True, but then, we can't really win, can we?

You talk about material reality or lived experience - you're being an oppressive bigot who doesn't understand how other people's lives are more complex than yours.

You talk about language and power structures and you're an irrelevant academic using your educational privilege to shut out ordinary women.

You get into scientific arguments (not that I ever do) and you're met with idiocies about biology and told 'every biologist' would disagree with you, without the slightest awareness you might be a feminist and a qualified scientist.

I think there should be a heck of a lot less concern about how different people want to talk, and a lot more acknowledgement that sometimes, we are all actually saying the same thing, which in this case is, we do have legitimate worries about the ways some people want to redefine 'woman'.

On a wave of unjustified enthusiasm, I just started this, btw: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/meetups/2123233-Would-anyone-like-a-feminist-meet-up

Another comment from my elderly perspective: "there are certain men who are saying 'we don't feel like men' why then, has the shift became 'therefore we feel like women'"

What happened to the 'androgyny' of the 70s and early 80s? It was great! In Europe it was also far more mainstream than most people today would believe, I think, and did actually feel like it would last. It was very post-structural It seems to have survived only in showbiz and a few special individuals who are mostly hair stylists or designers. I feel very sad about this. For one glorious decade people didn't need to be all binary about their appearance, lifestyle or sexuality, though they could even overdo that if they wanted to. No surprise that this was the decade when so much ground was gained by feminism and gay rights. Grumpy Daily Mail readers incessantly moaning "You can't tell if they're girls or boys!" vindicated the whole thing, as that was the point.

I've not got enough spoons to think this through analytically, but I'm agreeing that men need their own strand of feminism to help liberate them from gender strictures - which are real, even for the totally straight average white man. And regretting the unmourned death of the 'rainbow unicorn' of the 70s.

LRD, I am not sure where you disagree with me? because this

"I think there is a group out there insisting on 'salt of the earth language' and 'saying it like it is,' but that group is not feminists. It's the types who have no interest in analysing the gendering of language. The sort of people who snigger if you point out that 'mankind' reflects the oppression of women through history. Or the sort of people (because it's not just language, is it, it's all communication we attach meaning to) who say they just don't care if the bride wears white and a veil because 'it's tradition'. "

I TOTALLY agree with, and they are big fat bullshitters because they make a song and dance about talking in terms of "reality" and "not reading too much into things" but actually they are deliberately eliding important distinctions that are being precisely and effortfully drawing by people to whom they very much matter - because the elision of these distinctions is in their interest.

This is very, very much in contrast with, eg, writing like Dworkins, which is brilliantly precise, though not complicated. You will not find a spade being called a shovel in Dworkins work.

I have not read the rest yet! will do so

thread started:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2123236-Feminism-and-theory

I agree with Cote and it is what I mean about how feminism should not be a complicated intellectual domain of cleverness or look like one or sound like one. Sorry if I have contributed to that due to my hassling Buffy drum banging about PM/PS.

MNHQ gave their verdict on transphobia guidelines this morning on this new Site Stuff thread.

allhail - perhaps I just misunderstood, then. What I meant was, I don't think the language beach is using is just 'salt of the earth'. I think it's got a lot of concentrated theory behind it.

Oh right I see what you mean better now LRD because I did describe a false dichotomy within feminist modes of discourse didn't I

excuse me please! I am at work and will be back later when better able to focus

Sorry, I'm not the most clear.

I'm going to decamp to the other thread and try to follow a bit better.

I am going to repost my last post, because I feel it has been completely lost/ignored in the academic conversation loosely related to the thread topic.

'feeling like a women' surely is, in reality 'not feeling like a man' that being not feeling comfortable with the male roles and social construction.

So why do these men who do not feel that they fit in with, or want to accept that social construction, have their own movement that creates a more diverse and accepting image of what a 'man' is?

Because that is what women have done, I can well imagine the brave women of the generation above me and perhaps even the generation above that, saying 'I do not feel like a woman' that being that they do not feel connected to the sociological reality of what a woman is.

So they changed it, they worked fucking hard and battled and argued and so on in order to change the ontological reality of what a woman is. As such, my generation are afforded a much more diverse spectrum of what we 'can' be as woman and what thoughts and behaviours are considered acceptable for a female to do. I understand there is still a long way to go but that is the reality.

So now there is a (much needed) shift in male consciousness where by there are certain men who are saying 'we don't feel like men' why then, has the shift became 'therefore we feel like women' because I cannot understand how anyone can specify they 'feel like a woman' unless they actually are a woman.

I realise there is body dysmorphia and I appreciate that is a separate (and to my mind mental) condition.

I am just wondering why the focus has changed from 'I do not feel like a woman therefore I will change the status quo' to 'I do not feel like a man therefore I will become a woman'

If it is a given (and surely it must be) that we are men and women purely because of our biological codes, then how can we change from one thing to another? How is that possible?

It is a shame that the transactivists are spending so much time trying to rescind womans rights in order to be considered as one, rather than trying to improve mens rights in order to be accepted as one.

I would also like to know whether MNHQ have been following this thread and will they be changing guidelines and if so what will they be changing?

Will my right to say 'I am a woman because of my biological reality' be lost in order for a male to say 'I am a woman because I feel like one'

That is the big question here.

Postmodernist theory actually has a lot of time for material reality of the most literal kind.

For example, Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism is very concerned with how postmodern architecture, for example, seeks to give us an illusory and artificially "natural" environment, one in which the commodification of everything becomes to be seen as "naturally" woven into all parts of the built environment. Modernist architecture has not much time for shopping, for example - it's all about work (Bauhaus), spiritualism (Le Corbusier) and primitivism (Lloyd Wright). Whereas postmodern architecture subtly makes shopping an indivisible part of every place from churches to hotels to libraries to museums to airports to shopping malls themselves - we don't even notice now how pervasive it is. Everything must have a shop, even places that two generations ago people would have thought it profane to shop in. And postmodern buildings are designed to give that subtly organic feel. Glass that looks like skin. Organic shapes. Curves. Ooh and it's so feminine, cos curves are feminine, whjch proves how "natural" it is, cos everyone knows that women are uncultured beings, close to the state of primitive nature! Lots of greenery! And shopping! And really, it's all to sell shopping (which we all know is the domain of women ;) ), and partly because if "man"-made spaces and nature seem to run into each other as organic structures, we no longer notice the imposition of the man-made, or of profit and commodification, into all aspects of our surroundings.

Such is the way that late capitalism has infiltrated every kind of space we move through and naturalised itself as something inevitable. Postmodernist theory tries to retrieve some of the awareness of the artificiality of this from its naturalisation.

Sorry to derail. Anyway, you can see how it develops out of postructuralism. If poststructuralism is interested in language on a micro-level - words and binaries and oppositions - then postmodernism is interested in the stories language (and other forms of structuring our reality, like buildings and visual media and art and money) tell us about how our reality is controlled, and what and who desires it to be as it is.

Oh what was the point. Cheers anyway all.

I thought that was what we were all talking about, ICan!

I do think we should go onto the other thread for the explanations of poststructuralism. Not that it's not interesting, just people who're interested can surely dip back and forth between threads.

I will say, on the thread topic, I still want to know how myrtle's view of everything stacks up against not erasing the realities of lesbians, and I reckon that's fairly central too. But I'm happy hanging about before we get to that.

"'feeling like a women' surely is, in reality 'not feeling like a man' that being not feeling comfortable with the male roles and social construction."

It is a bit more than that.

Transsexuals have a disorder called body dysmorphia. My understanding is that it is more like "This is not my body. It's someone else's body. I need a different body" kind of thing (happy to be corrected on this by kim or whoever)

There are some people with body dysmorphia who ask for one leg to be amputated because they are absolutely sure that it shouldn't be there, that it is too much, and they would be happier with one leg. There is a whole lot of www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2012/may/30/1debate around ethical concerns. I can't say why it's apparently OK to cut off a penis because its owner doesn't want it but not an arm or a leg, though