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?

LDR I completely agree that in any discussion there are different voices whose contributions are worth different amounts...but I think those lines hardly ever fall down actual XX v XY boundaries.

I cited ovarian cancer as one place it might (although obviously people who have suffered it have a different voice to the rest of us who might). Miscarriage doesn't because not all women are directly involved. Abortion doesn't because not all women can become pregnant. Childcare provision blatantly doesn't.

There is a massive issue in society to do with the treatment of personality traits seen as feminine being considered inferior to those seen as being masculine. It is an overarching problem that affects so many different aspects of society it is almost impossible to enumerate them. I feel this is the fundamental 'feminist' issue. I also feel it is one that affects people who exhibit feminine traits whether or not they are actually biologically female or not.

Yeah, I don't think we need to worry about them turning female embryos male any time soon.

LDR I think I am converging with you...I think the point I am trying to get to is that there are some issue which are very much biased towards being relevant only to biologically female people but the issues that feminism is trying to address as a whole pertain to societies perception of femininity which is not actually determined by a persons XX / XY status.

We may be converging, but I'm not sure.

I think it is still incredibly useful for feminism to look at these things as 'women's issues'.

Sure, I don't have children. But, as a group, childless women still face the discrimination of employers assuming they'll go off and have children and take time off. They still face the knock-on effects of there being fewer women who can act as mentors to them from higher up in the career path, because many of those women were pushed out when they had children. Basically, they still face the assumption that they belong to the child-producing, child-caring sex and they still suffer the fallout of actually belonging to that group.

Obviously, they don't have anything like the same experiences as women with children, but if we don't refer to this as a 'women's issue', it becomes less obvious why women are doing less well than men at careers.

And people really do struggle with this one - you get lots of people who simply don't know that childless women might be passed over for jobs because the assumption is that women will go off and have babies, and that lack of knowledge comes as a shock to them when they experience it. If we talk more about 'women's issues' and less about 'the issues that affect the people already affected by them' (which is the alternative), we get a better sense of what is likely to happen to us before it does happen.

How can having a feminine personality possibly be more central an issue than 70% of the global poor being female, a woman dying as a result of childbirth every minute and other major issues?

Yes. Absolutely that, almond.

Because "what about the menz?" almond.

I should change that to pregnancy or childbirth.

The issue with the feminine personality traits is that they do not correlate with each other (according to Daphna Joel, who I seem to be a bit obsessed with now) so there isn't really a group of people who have feminine personality traits to create a movement for.

There is of course a group of people who are expected to perform Femininty - women. This has so much overlap with expectations based on biological sex and how both maternity and childlessness for women is perceived, that these states combined with the simultaneous enforcement and devaluing of the feminine role are an issue in its own right - feminism.

I don't think childcare is just a mother's issue. It is also a major contributing factor to childless women not getting an education, as they are pulled out of education to take over child rearing so that the mother can work. And of course many childless women go on to become mothers later, and many women who only have adult children also do childcare. Child care disadvantages women as a group. It does not disadvantage men as a group. And I agree with LRD about expectations that you may become pregnant and are therefore a liability.

I am obviously not speaking coherently...I think it is bad to group things by gender because it reinforces stereotypes and stereotyping is the route cause of the problems.

Women who are not having a family shouldn't be grouped with women who are for the sake of making it easier to discriminate against them due to lost business hours (or whatever).

Putting one label on a whole bunch of people with diverse issues and interests is the cause of the problem...I don't think I see how it could therefore be part of the solution.

What about the Menz?!

Well, it is a major issue that women's lack of resources during child rearing years is particularly increasing the number of male children who end up homeless in some countries.

Because if you don't have enough money to feed all your children, and you have a paid job, the elder girls get pulled from school to manage the house/ small holding and look after the very little ones, and the older boys get sent away in the hope they can fend for themselves, even if they are seven. Because what is the other option?

'Women who are not having a family shouldn't be grouped with women who are for the sake of making it easier to discriminate against them due to lost business hours (or whatever).'

But that's the opposite of what I'm saying.

I'm saying, like it or not, women are grouped together in this discrimination. That's not to say it's totally uniform within that group, but all women suffer, directly or indirectly, for the fact that we are the group who have the babies. This holds true even for those of us who are childless, because we are still treated as part of the group expected to have babies.

Unless we acknowledge that, I don't see how we can really get to the room of the problem, to the place where those damaging stereotypes are formed.

Did you ever do that thing at school where you have maps drawn on transparent plastic, and you're meant to superimpose them until you can see where the features on one map line up with the features on another? We had to do it looking at maps of Roman Britain and Tudor Britain and modern Britain, and see which roads were still in the same place.

Anyway, that's what it feels like to me when we analyse things according to sex groups. Yes, you're superimposing groups of different women, and not everyhing is exactly the same, but so many things line up, that suddenly you can see that these are maps of the same underlying geography.

If you tried to superimpose those maps any other way, you'd just get blurred confusion, and if you didn't superimpose them at all but treated them as separate maps, you'd never be able to identify the things that always stay the same.

I dunno if that's useful in any way, but I think in pictures and it makes sense to me.

almond I think you are just saying check your privilege. Which is fair enough but I live in a developed country where the debate has moved on. In my work place, I hear core hours, childcare responsibilities etc talked about as a women's issue when the majority of people it affects in the office are actually men (due to massive gender imbalance in employee numbers). What this is does is reinforce erroneously that women are losing us money, women are causing us problems and making us have to rearrange meetings...while the men are actually benefiting from the changes more.

It is a parenting issue. speaking about it as a women's issue is making the life of women even harder, when it isn't even true.

the fact is that when dealing with matters of social exclusion, it is important to get an overall view of how a demographic is being treated.

So if we do (as you are suggesting Ice) take every single thing in isolation as a social problem, then we are far less equipt to deal with it, what we need to do is continually approach social problems as indicative of wider issues and petition, fight and debate in order to affect policy change which promotes inclusion on a wider level.

When it comes to working rights for women, it is important that we look at every aspect of that and discern how we can change policy in order to include women who are subject to social exclusion because of their gender.

LDR I do understand what you are saying. But if we refuse to say that childcare is a womens issue, and instead say it is a parents issue then surely that is the best way to stop people generalizing that all women of child bearing age should be viewed with suspicion when hiring?

But women are collectively discriminated against. As such, many want to stand together to fight that collective discrimination.

It would be a bit ridiculous (and essentially Russian Roulette) for me to say that I don't really care about Ovarian cancer because I haven't currently got it and it is just a stereotype that I might get it.

I am in the only group that can get it, same for female infertility, pregnancy, miscarriage etc.

No, I don't think it is the best way.

I can see it could be, but then, childcare is predominantly a woman's issue because of the way women are viewed in society more widely. Broadly, childcare is a woman's issue for the same reasons caring for elderly parents is a woman's issue, for the same reasons poverty is a female issue, etc. etc.

All these things line up, so it is much more efficient to treat them all together.

YY, what almond said.

This conversation is making me aware how much MN shapes the way I think, too. Lots of feminism isn't actually very interested in mothers (which is crap, and mind-boggling to me because I come to feminism these days largely from MN). It is a major weakness in feminism when it doesn't theorise about women's reproductive capacity, IMO.

Argh I give up.

I just feel like I spend my whole life fighting the idea that I should sit in the box marked 'woman'. Particularly as that box causes me to be discriminated against.

I want to push at every possible point the idea that people are not defined by one aspect of their genetic inheritance.

It just amazes me that people apparently fighting against gender stereotyping are so keen to say that all women are the same, that all feminist issues affect all women and that all women should care about all issues that affect other women.

I think you cannot possible have that cake and eat it.

Don't you see the contradiction in saying that all women should stand together to fight against the idea that they can be treated as a homogeneous group?

The way to social justice is to make personal justice a social concept.

So one woman getting the shit beaten out of her in a house in the UK is a personal issue, however if she is allowed to join with other women who suffer domestic abuse and they in turn join with other women who are affected by issues then they have a movement, they are many rather than one and as such have a much better chance of invoking social change.

To say 'but it makes women targets because it only focuses on women' is point the finger in the wrong direction, it is patriarchy that makes women targets, not women joining together to collectively fight against issues that affect them.

Well, I feel as if I spend all my life fighting the same idea, ice.

If you mean me or others are keen to say women are all the same, then we are failing to explain what we think coherently, because I can absolutely promise you, it ain't that.

And I have no idea what having your cake and eating it is, except that phrase generally means 'woman, know your place'.

Ice, I am not saying check your privilege. I agree with neither the concept of privilege nor the checking of it.

Women in the UK are still doing most of the childcare. It disadvantages women as a group, increasing poverty, reducing women's participation in decision making and has consequences for all women. Not only in terms of role models as LRD has said, but also for all women to be represented in politics, to see a female expert in a medical field, to read published opinions of women and so on.

ice, where did anyone suggest that?

You seem to think that eradicating misogyny is treating women as a homogeneous group.

I don't.

If being commonly free of misogyny makes women a homogeneous group in the respect we'd no longer be oppressed, I quite like that idea.

How it'd require any of us to give up any individuality in the process I utterly fail to see. I believe it'd free us up to show more of that individuality, actually.

The cake is saying that women can't be treated the same solely on the basis they are women, that gender stereotyping is wrong.

Eating it is then saying that all women should get behind a campaign to support eg better miscarriage care because they are women so obviously they should think the same way.