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 think it's got a lot of concentrated theory behind it.

Yes, I think that's what it is. Thanks LRD. No doubt influenced by people like MacKinnon, Dworkin and Jeffreys who write in a way that is simple but which is saying an awful lot. I don't think it is 'calling a spade a spade' exactly but more 'thinking really hard about what a spade is and what the female perspective is on spades and how spades affect women and then trying to use the most precise language possible to describe those thoughts and observations'. (phew!)

Shame Dworkin is no longer with us, she'd have plenty to say about all this.

Anyway what I really came on to say is this. Lots of posters have mentioned how it pisses them off to hear 'living as a woman' and how that makes us feel - 'which woman, who do you mean, what do you mean by that?'.

I think this is a really rich area for discussion and consciousness raising.

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?

Totally agree ICanHearYou.

Like you say women have worked really really hard to carve out a slightly better reality for ourselves. We have to fight to hang onto it. I don't agree with men rocking up and demanding that we do the same for them without them putting in some of the hard (and painful) work of defying patriarchy. It is just back to that thing about men using women's energy again (women as a resource).

Do you think what you were writing about is so divorced from what I was writing about, ICan?

You said:
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

Isn't this partly because we live at a historical moment where if we want something, but it isn't our current material reality ("I want to be a woman, but I am not") - well, instead of being told or forcibly made to accept this (as in previous eras), we now think we can actively change this? We can transform our reality merely by the narrative we tell about it. Isn't this also related to living at a historical moment where just about anything is available for possession or purchase?

YY, exactly! They thought really hard and I think it is important to recognise that.

It is really fascinating.

The problem is, because postmodernism is trendy, as buffy says, you will get people doing it badly and glibly, who really have no clue that feminists might ever have thought about anything.

It's the well-meaning 'oh, but let me explain this to you, you radfem dinosaur' types that I think take over this conversation in so many spaces other than MN. So I am really relieved MN isn't going with guidelines that would shut down these debates.

I've just watched all of the Dworkin videos that were linked to - she would definitely have had a lot to say about all of this.

How did having compassion for a small number of individuals who really do feel like their body is wrong turn into being expected to believe (or pretend to believe) that being a woman is a feeling rather than a biological fact.

Don't go away ICanHearYou, I want to talk about this too.

Something someone (sorry can't remember who) posted on another thread was this question;

Would so many transwomen be so keen on 'being women' or even 'living as a woman' (whatever that is) if women's rights and status hadn't improved dramatically in recent times?

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'

Perhaps because it shifts some of the work of changing their experiences to more preferable ones, onto women? As you have said, the fight to change the status quo to one where women have so many more options and so many more variants of gender and (this is badly phrased) lifestyles are accepted and available, was long and hard and literal blood sweat and tears were shed. Who (men) would want to sign up for that if you could get the women to do some of the work for you?

Perhaps because it shifts some of the work of changing their experiences to more preferable ones, onto women? As you have said, the fight to change the status quo to one where women have so many more options and so many more variants of gender and (this is badly phrased) lifestyles are accepted and available, was long and hard and literal blood sweat and tears were shed. Who (men) would want to sign up for that if you could get the women to do some of the work for you?

And this smacks of male privilege. Rather than having their own revolution to redefine what gender means to a man, they are instead redefining gender as a whole in order to become a woman.

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.

And this too.

Which I think explains a lot of the anger and aggression. It is a bit too big and a bit too scary to be angry with patriarchy and defy patriarchy so the anger is projected onto women (bit like MRAs do). Plus I think there is an element of 'we're all equal now' blinkeredness going on which makes it seem justifiable to see women and men has interchangeable and that it therefore doesn't actually matter to ask women for entrance into their space.

Aaaannndd, this is where a lot of the 'you are oppressing me/transpeople with your cissexism' becomes valid and righteous anger for a lot of people.

Which liberal men jump all over of course. Bit like TiggyD did with the Gender Recognition Act.

Catching up reading the original thread in fwr, and cailindiana has actually just verbalised something that i identify with, so have brought it over here. I feel like nothing, i have had depression forever and been suicidal a lot. Right now, i am 'okay', but i still feel i should be dead. I have a long term 'disorder' (illness suggesting short term).

Should I be supported in my right to be what i feel i am? Or acknowledged as having a disorder, but told i am wrong, I (obviously) cannot be dead without actually being dead? I cannot 'feel' dead, as dead isnt a feeling. Thats not stopping me feeling depressed, just acknowledging that depressed is a valid human 'state' without actually having to be dead.

That made more sense in my head!

Is it transphobic to compare the two?

Also because some of the messages our current surrounding culture gives us are:

Bodies are plastic, and can be perfected: indeed, it is your moral duty to do so, especially if you are a woman;
Identities are fluid, and chosen, not given;
anything you desire can be changed or bought, if you have enough money, including power and any kind of social positioning;
femininity is both "natural" and a conscious work of art;
the individual is solely responsible for his/her situation in life, including any unhappiness or discomfort;
everything can be medicalised;
no-one is truly oppressed [any more], so no social position I take up can truly harm me;
our reality can be reshaped by the stories we tell about it.

If all women were forced to refer to themselves as CIS women wouldn't that be transphobic? After all trans people would be barred from using the term.

wowzers. What an incredibly interesting pair of threads. My brain aches.

I am now officially confused (which is a good place to be really).

I am XX female but have spent my entire life failing to identify with anything one might describe as feminine. I don't do make up, or pretty dresses and I work in a male dominated arena. So the only times I have felt like I have anything in common with 'women' is via my reproductive system. I have suffered during pregnancy and childbirth in a way that noone without a womb can. I have breastfed etc.

I wish we could ditch the whole idea of feminine and masculine. There are no such things as tomboys or effeminate men. We are all just people with different likes/dislikes and patterns of thinking. And then we have reproductive organs which require different management/medicines and which may necessarily lead to different life experiences.

I do not believe that anti-abortion rhetoric is a male on female aggression but a non-womb on womb aggression. Anybody with a womb has a different voice on the issue of forced pregnancy than anyone without one.

Some women don't have wombs Ice or they cannot carry children

It is important (I think) that we don't silence and diminish their voices in order to make sure that another (male) voice is heard.

BeyondTheLimitsOfAcceptability, so sorry to hear what you are going through.

No I don't think it is transphobic to compare the two. Indeed I think your post is really illuminating with regards to what ICanHearYou is saying about it being a lie to tell someone they can change sex. I actually think it is cruel. Just as it would be cruel and massively damaging to 'indulge' your feeling that you should be dead.

I hope that comes across ok and I don't offend/hurt you. Especially as you have been so brave as to share something so painful. for you from me too.

Ican I see what you are saying but if you not under the threat of forced pregnancy then you aren't. It doesn't matter why...on that one issue you are not in the same boat. On plenty of others you are...like treatment of ovarian cancer for instance. And then there are issues of people not taking you seriously because of your appearance which extends well beyond XX females.

I think I feel like each topic of debate has a different relevant subset and to pretend otherwise is crazy.

The extreme version of this is that childcare is portrayed as women's issue. This is stupid at all levels.

So I guess the problem with feminism and transgender is that feminist issues range across massive areas of debate some of which place transgender people in the same boat as 'women' and some don't.

Really the problem is in labelling issues as 'feminist' in the first place....

Beyond thank you for sharing your experiences with us. You have really strengthened my perspective and my argument in that respects.

It is as cruel to put someone through a massive surgery telling them it will 'make' them a female when it will do no such thing as it would be to 'kill' someone telling them they will 'feel better when they are dead'

actually these things need help and support of a different nature and we as society should be willing to offer that support at whatever level necessary.

I do not believe that body dysmorphia is 'solvable' with castration.

thanks Cote, I hadn't realised MNHQ had published their verdict

I think there is an important difference between a person who grew up believing, and being treated as if, she has a womb and can have children, and a person who's always been treated as womb-less.

So if, say, you'd been born with indeterminate gender and had been brought up female (which is commoner, because medics used to have the truly horrible view that cutting off what looked like an over-large clitoris was ever so much better than letting someone grow up with what looked like a tiny penis ), you'd always be treated as if you had a womb and could have children.

The same is true of women who find out they're infertile, or women who have hysterectomies, or even women who go through very early menopause and know from pre-adult age that they will never have biological children.

This is different from people who were brought up to believe they don't have wombs.

Ice I would disagree, I think that regardless of a woman's ability to carry children, there is still argument over what her wishes to carry children would be.

I can imagine someone who has suffered through the experience of finding out she will never conceive is in a way more 'qualified' to offer an opinion and understanding on abortion or rights in pregnancy.