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?

Slightly off the point, perhaps, but I must admit that I do find myself in a work context using more complex terminology than necessary, which I suspect is due to the experience of finding that any given audience is likely to listen to what I have to say through the charming filter of assuming that I have roughly 30 fewer IQ points than my male equivalents. If I present scientific explanations in words a non expert could use, I find myself treated as a non expert by default. DH says this is a bad and patronising habit of mine, but then he never has to put up with being called 'nurse' and having people look at me for confirmation of what he has said and referring to me as 'doctor' whilst I stand beside him wearing the exact same uniform.

Apologies for the double post. Bloody phone. that certainly wasn't worth saying twice.

We were talking about titles ages ago and Kim was saying the bastards wouldn't change her title. Anyway on from that, I'm just getting insurance and compare the market now has options. mr, mrs, ms, miss, dr-male, dr-female.

wtf?

I have not seen that before. A company insisting that sex/gender neutral titles now have one attached

That is kind of heading in the opposite direction to the way I thought things were heading...

Crikey.

Maybe it's because being Dr used to mean male whereas now it means those air-head flippertygibbets who become medics then go off and become mothers too, as we're always hearing these days?

I would guess that either it's so they can target you more 'effectively' with advertising when they sell your information, because obviously women only buy sparkly lady crap, even if they're educated enough to have a PhD, or so that the people they pass your details on to won't automatically ask for your husband when you answer the phone if they have Dr. written on the sheet, which might put you off signing up to whatever they want to bleed you dry with that day.

Just thought I'd interject that I've skipped over the last three pages because they're full of obfuscatory language and - as far as I can tell, having skipped - about commonsense issues to do with using obfuscatory language when discussing gender politics.

Slaps wrists all round

I was a member of the original Plain English campaign. Seems it didn't get far enough.

Kim I've finished doing that now and closed it and am watching criminal minds aka women being horribly murdered so less said about that the better

Since the gender directive (NOTE this piece of legislation refers to gender not sex) for insurance it is illegal to differentiate on price purely on the grounds of sex so I would hope it would not change.

here's a quick linky to Which which has some stuff about the gender directive it was first on google

georgettemagritte, I suspect you think I am criticizing academia in general. I'm not. I think teaching and learning are good (in general). I'm criticizing what academia has to bring to women's issues in the everyday world and I'm criticizing a tendency to make everything academic and therefore detached from and alienating for potentially the majority of women. I asked you upthread what solutions post-structuralism can provide and I didn't understand your answer (which I asked you to explain and you didn't so you may have missed me asking you to make it easier to understand but the fact is I still don't know what you were talking about).

I'm with Garlic on the Plain English thing.

Sorry I hurt you, Buffy, it was only meant to be an admonishing tap!

When making presentations for business, the key message is "start at the bottom" - work from the ground up, laying out the ground when you begin. Somebody said this with reference to using programming analogies. It applies equally, or more so, when speaking about the actual topic in hand. When you assume that
a] Your audience already understands where you're coming from
b] Your audience thinks in the same words that you do
You automatically exclude a large percentage of your audience, because you've made it into a clever club instead of acting like you really want to communicate your method/thinking/point to all people who hear you.

Look at successful Ted-X talks. They always lay out the basic principle and purpose of their talk, then race through complex revelations using straightforward language.

The more interesting FWR threads have an unfortunate tendency to create a clever-club ...

Oops, and of course
c] If you can't describe in ordinary language, the tendency is to assume you don't fully understand it yourself!

Cheers, Beach :)

I'm going to take a shot at putting my money where my mouth is wrt to post-modern/structural/ism. It aims to challenge assumptions that are received as facts or truths.

So: We "must" have separate ladies' and gents' loos. Why is that?
Women won't use loos that men use. Is this true? Why would it be?
They think men's loos are skanky - challenge both parts of that statement.
Men & women have important same-sex conversations in the loos - is this true? Do men & women need to have gender-segregated conversations? Do they have to be in the loo? Why? Etc.
Men wreck the toileting environment - Do they? Why? Is this a given? Explore origins of this belief, and whether the nature of men's toilets could be encouraging skanky behaviour.
And so on ... until you get to:
Do we need to have toilets at all?
What has led us to think men's/women's/unisex toilets might be better in Z/Y/X circumstances?
Shall we experiment? How may we do it? (Why do we think so?)
Is it a given that men & women are different anyway? ... and so on.

I shall be fascinated to see what georgette thinks of this

... aaand one last bit before I get back to the not-very-good novel I'm reviewing ... In my opinion (which is personal) Conchita is post-modern because she 'exposes the truth'. In displaying her XY beard and suchlike, she makes clear what she is and, post-modernly, makes it nice to look at. The issue of "nice to look at" is a further question; I bet she can do a perfectly good 'this is what I am' without the trappings of performed femininity, because I bet she fully understands it.

Your transvestite who demonstrates "being a woman" by hiding the workings - and, in many cases, adopting clichéd expressions of femininity - isn't at all postmodern and should stop spouting theories she doesn't understand.

But Conchita's an artist, and I guess most transsexuals are simply taking the path of least (available) resistance.

garlic, in the nicest possible way, saying 'I didn't bother to read but I'll admonish' makes me way to use some exceptionally plain language and tell you to fuck off. I'm not going to, but you do realize you are just being a bit arsey there. Sorry, but you are.

Fine to say you don't much get it, but you're not in a position to 'admonish' anyone.

Sorry, I have missed a few pages somewhere. I wanted to come back to Georgette's argument that postmodernists do deal with material reality.

Postmodernists deal with material reality by treating it as a social construct that carries a range of symbolic meanings, which is what the architecture example was about. While not entirely without value, it doesn't really get to grips with material reality at all; it just treats it as another language.

So if a woman is working with sewage in a slum, we can say, in postmodern terms - how did that woman show agency in the designs she used in the design of her slum dwelling, how does it echo or revolt against society by using designs associated with another group, what kind of basket weaving did she use in the designs of her sewage containers, how is space symbolised to demarcate her space from her other 15 family members in her one roomed dwelling?

What it refuses to address is Why and how is anyone living with 15 people in one room and spending every day at risk of cholera and other serious diseases by walking around in an unsafe environment, carrying other people's excrement on her head, dripping down into her mouth and nose? And what can we do about that?

Because that we might actually have to describe, quantify and analyse that woman's and everyone else's access to time, energy, land, pollution, food, the bodies of others,water and resources and say that somebody is being exploited here at great risk to their own life and that other people are gaining from that.

Yes, LRD, your point is valid. Sorry.

Thanks, appreciate that.

I agree almondcakes. You never seem to be able to pin a post-modernist down to what they are actually going to do (or suggest could be done). And I agree they don't treat the concept of material reality in the same way that most of us use it.

A bit like Butler describing sex (as in biological sex) as a social construct. So there we go, a material reality, that women carry and birth babies, becomes a social construct. And how does that help women who need abortions, contraception, men to stop raping them, childcare, breastfeeding support, birthing support, etc??

Now I get that if sex as a category it is a social construct then that leads to the optimistic hope that we can stop using those categories and that will somehow free women from oppressive social constructs such as sex. I mean I get it in theory. I don't see how it works in the real world though because women will still be the ones having babies and being oppressed for it because the problem is that society doesn't want to change the social construct. That's why it is there at all for Butler to pontificate about.

Social constructs are important. An aid agency gave some agriculturalists long handled hoes to prevent injury and reduce working time. The women did not use them because a woman doing agricultural work standing rather than crouching was perceived as lazy by others. So the agency provided different tools that fitted the social construction. They can't just be ignored in the finding of solutions.

And as I say every time before I get picked up on it, everything is socially constructed but only some of it closely pertains to allowing people the knowledge that makes them safe, healthy and alive by having some relationship to material reality.

I am not a Geographer, but like another poster, I really like it. It is the only academic subject that from school level up, remains closely involved across a wide sphere with women's rights.

Part of the issue of women having a reality is that they have different bodies that do different things (as you have said Beachcomber).

But the issue is that in some ways women's bodies are the same as men's and do the same things and need the same material things.

And by ignoring the materiality of the body and all life, we also stop asking why are so many women (whether they are pregnant or not) getting not enough to eat, or getting food lacking in micronutrients, when the men they live with are properly fed? Why are women having to grow crops on poorer quality land, and not allowed manure? Why are women not allowed bicycles to get themselves to medical centres, or not allowed to go at all, when men do?

And the answer is probably that it is 'symbolic.' And it probably is. And it is definitely worth analysing that symbolism, but only if the purpose of that is to get women what they need, and not to heap more symbolism on top of more social complexity and more symbolism, making it more of a mystification and never actually attempting to create fair access to resources, good health and survival on this planet.

So that we can stop discussing the way women 'perform' poverty and gender and just end them.