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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Radfem2012 banning trans people

1000 replies

allthegoodnamesweretaken · 26/05/2012 08:53

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/25/radical-feminism-trans-radfem2012?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038

Has anyone seen this? I don't really understand this bigotry against trans gendered people.
If we're trying to make the world a better and equal place through feminism, surely excluding people who also want to do this because of their genitals or the gender they assign themselves is going to make this impossible and is a bit hypocritical?

OP posts:
KRITIQ · 28/05/2012 09:47

I think that's the difficult thing about the concept of privilege. It's difficult to recognise or accept that you have privilege until you realise that some things you take for granted can't be taken for granted by others.

The term "Cis" isn't meant as an insult, merely as a descriptor in the same way as "white" or "non disabled" or "middle class" are. So, I'm not offended by the term any more than I would be by the first two on that list that do apply to me, say.

I suppose the point is, do folks believe that trans people experience discrimination, disadvantage or abuse in society because they do not conform to the "accepted" gender or sexual identity roles? It doesn't matter whether or not you agree with those socially-endorsed roles (like gender) or not. It doesn't matter whether or not you had anything to do with those socially-endorsed roles existing. If one believes that trans people experience disadvantage because they are trans, then the flip side of that disadvantage is Cis privilege.

Just as the counterpart of sexual discrimination, abuse, etc. is male privilege and just as the counterpart of racial discrimination, abuse, etc. is white privilege.

It doesn't mean that just because a person benefits from one type of privilege (e.g. white privilege) that this negates other forms of oppression they experience (e.g. sexual discrimination.) Often here, I've seem working class male members protest that they don't accept that they are more privileged than women, particularly educated or middle class women. Thing is, the disadvantages they experience due to class don't negate the privilege they and all men experience within a patriarchal society. In my view, they often fail to engage with this not because they don't understand the dynamic, but because they don't want to "wear" their male privilege. I also see that alot in the Guardian CiF comments from otherwise pretty right on men who can't wrap their heads around male privilege or the need for feminism.

There isn't a Eurovision style system for totting up points awarded for privilege or points deducted for disadvantage systematically. Also, the experience of disadvantage isn't just "oppression plus," but can be unique at the "intersection" where, for example, sexism and racism meet, or homophobia and classism meet.

So, if one doesn't accept that trans people experience any disadvantage for not conforming to the socially dictated gender and sex roles, then you won't accept that Cisprivilege exists. (In the same way a working class MRA will insist that male privilege doesn't exist.)

If you DO accept that there is oppression against trans people that non trans people don't experience, then you accept the existence of Cisprivilege.

I understand why people don't identify with the term "cis" though. I don't wake up each morning seeing myself as white, or as non-disabled or as an employed person. Those things just "are," and I'm only aware of them when I encounter a situation where someone who isn't those things experiences things differently. I've been on forums where people have resented others pointing out their white privilege, saying they are "colourblind," (which imho is a way of denying white privilege.) The people who refer to them as "white" aren't doing so trying to offend them, but in pointing out their ethnicity and subsequent racial privilege, they may feel uncomfortable and conflicted, and translate this feeling into "offended."

So perhaps thinking about why one feels uneasy/hurt/offended/upset by the term "Cis" would be beneficial.

Beachcomber · 28/05/2012 09:52

Privilege isn't the flip side of discrimination.

It is the flip side of oppression.

EthelMoorhead · 28/05/2012 09:52

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

VashtiBunyan · 28/05/2012 09:58

Kritiq, you seem a bit confused as to what cis means. It is not about gender roles or the extent to which you conform to them.

A cis person is a person whose internal gender identity matches their assigned sex at birth.

A trans person is a person whose internal gender identity does not match their assigned sex at birth.

Most people are claiming to have an internal gender identity so are neither cis nor trans.

And you do not have a right to assign labels to people without their consent. People self identify.

VashtiBunyan · 28/05/2012 09:59

Sorry, most people are not claiming to have an internal gender identity.

HotheadPaisan · 28/05/2012 10:00

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

neepsntatties · 28/05/2012 10:00

Yes that makes sense. There is no doubt that they must suffer terrible discrimination and that there will be issues that they face that are particular to them.

I think part of my discomfort comes from that fact that a group of people born with male privilege have given us that label. It didn't come from us

VashtiBunyan · 28/05/2012 10:06

Perhaps this will help you understand it better, Kritiq.

Christians in the UK have privileges that Muslims do not have. But I am neither a Christian nor a Muslim. I don't believe in God. You insisting that I am a Christian because I am not a Muslim doesn't stop Muslims being discriminated against or mean that I am Islamaphobic. It just means that you discriminate against atheists.

It doesn't matter how many times people insist that everybody must believe in internal gender identity. I still don't have one, and you are discriminating against me by denying the truth of my experiences.

KRITIQ · 28/05/2012 10:13

Beach, if it helps, transpose "oppression" for everywhere I've written "discrimination." Thanks.

Ethel, I think there are many similarities in the kind of oppression Lesbians and gay men and trans people face, particularly where Lesbians or gay men do not conform to the characteristics society expects from the two genders. Particularly with children and young people, those who are designated as boys and young men can be abused and oppressed because they don't conform to expectations of maleness, of masculinity. That may be due to behaviour or due to appearance. They may not conform because they are gay and straight behaviour or what they associate with straight appearance are not what they are about. Or, they may not confirm because they are trans and behaviour or appearance they associate with maleness (regardless of sexual orientation) are not what they are about.

Our society divides people into male or female. When was the last time you saw a form that offered an option other than those two? I get narked when faced with a form that says Mr, Mrs, Miss and no other options because I don't see myself as any of those. What if you don't see yourself as either male or female, but are given on other option? What if you know you are absolutely one of those, so have no option but to select the other whether that reflects who you are or not?

So, while a Lesbian will face oppression for not conforming to society's expectation that women have sex with men, it is still possible that they will confirm to society's expectation of what a female person looks like and acts like. However, they may experience abuse, discrimination or oppression if people aren't sure if they are male or female, or if they know they are female but believe they are acting or look too much like men. You don't actually have to be trans to be abused or excluded by others who think or believe you might be trans. In a similar way, my dark skinned, dark haired Anglo-Italian friend was often racially abused by those who assumed him to be Asian.

Neeps - there are also people who were identified as female at birth, who did not grow up with male privilege, who transitioned from female to male, who use the term "Cis." It's a descriptor and not an insult.

neepsntatties · 28/05/2012 10:13

That is a good analogy. It seems that it is ok for a mtf transgender person to say that they are allowed to say that they are a woman because they feel like it inside and we can't deny that reality but they are allowed to impose their reality of everyone having an internal gender on to us.

VashtiBunyan · 28/05/2012 10:23

It just isn't analogous to any of the situations mentioned.

A genuine analogue would be that a person who is trans-disabled would say that the fact they can hear makes them oppressed by people who are born deaf, because deaf people have had the 'privilege' of being socialised in deaf culture from birth while a trans-disabled person will have to learn that culture.

Except of course you can make a hearing person go genuinely deaf. You can't give somebody who is born without any female body parts those body parts.

VashtiBunyan · 28/05/2012 10:25

Sorry that was confusingly posted after Neeps. I mean that Kritiq's examples are not analogous to transgender.

KRITIQ · 28/05/2012 10:25

Vashti, perhaps the confusion here is that I'm not talking about internal gender identity. I'm talking about oppression of people because of how other people in society regard them.

Either we accept that trans people experience oppression in society, or we think they are just making it up and it doesn't exist.

When someone refers to another person as Cis, they aren't insisting that they must accept/adopt an internal gender identity for themselves. They are just asking that they recognise that the experience of a trans person in our society differs from the experience of a non-trans person, someone who has always seen themselves and been seen to be either male or female. That's it, full stop.

Cis privilege is the further step of saying that people who grow up seeing themselves as either male or female, and who are seen by others as either male or female will not experience the same kind of discrimination, abuse or oppression that a trans person will experience.

There are white people who accept that they are white, but don't accept that they have any social, economic or political advantages in being white. There are straight people who accept the label of straight, but don't accept that they have any social, economic or political advantages over Lesbians, gay men or bisexual people.

But, as mentioned, there are white people who don't want to be regarded as "white," and straight people who don't like that term - perhaps just see themselves as "normal."

So, imho, there are two issues - acknowledging (or otherwise) that trans people experience oppression and accepting a term for people who aren't trans that isn't intended to be offensive.

Having said that, I've read lots of blogs by trans people where they carefully avoid the word "cis" because they know some non trans people are offended by it.

I'd not be happy dropping the word "patriarchy" or any term that describes advantages males have in or society though out of worry that it would offend or upset men though.

neepsntatties · 28/05/2012 10:33

x - post Kritq. I don't think I see it as meant to be an insult. I just feel odd about it. I get that I might just need to adjust. But then I can't imagine it being ok for say white people to come up with a new descriptor for the black community. Especially when lots of women are saying that they don't identify with this idea of an internal gender and that in fact gender is something that is oppressive to them as a group.

KRITIQ · 28/05/2012 10:33

I don't think I'm quite getting what you are saying.

I think the analogy of a person who is born hearing but becomes deaf, say as the result of a serious infection later in life could be applicable to the experience of a person who transitions from male or female.

Through drug or surgical treatment, you can give a person who was identified as female at birth the "female body parts," and other way round with someone identified as male at birth.

Imho, medical technology has advanced now so that trans people have more options to enable them to align their physical selves with how they feel as people.

Technology has permitted people to address or overcome other physical and physiological barriers like the treatment of illness and assisted conception. As with trans surgery, all of these throw up ethical issues and make us question our perceptions. Sometimes, we don't want to question those perceptions though.

KRITIQ · 28/05/2012 10:34

Soz, that last one was to Vashti. I think we were agreeing, but I think she was saying we weren't! Sorry for the confusion. Must dash.

neepsntatties · 28/05/2012 10:38

x post again! Lots to think about there thanks, got chidden crawling up my legs though so will need to come back later!

VashtiBunyan · 28/05/2012 10:46

Kritiq, if you are not talking about internal gender identity, then it is very confusing for you to talk about cisgender because that is what the term refers to.

Although an individual may be both white and disabled, there is no overlap between the two categories. Describing somebody as white makes no comment on whether or not they are disabled. The same with class and sexual orientation. Describing somebody as working class does not mean they are describing somebody as also straight or gay. So intersectionality works for those descriptions - it is possible to have privilege in one way as an individual and to have disadvantage in another.

But when we come to gender and biology, it is ludicrous to say that biological females benefit from gender roles. The whole point of gender roles is to make biological women into a subordinate class. The fact that transgender people are also oppressed by gender roles doesn't mean women gain privilege from them.

Extreme examples would be-

Chinese foot binding. Are those female children 'lucky' to have their toes broken because a MTF transgender person would have to go to the hassle of having their toes broken as an adult?

FGM - are females 'lucky' that they were held down and had their genitals cut and then sewn together because a MTF transgender person would have to go to the hassle of having that done as an adult?

Pregnancy - am I lucky if I end up in a dangerous position during childbirth because services to women have been cut, because I am only pregnant due to my 'gender role' and a transgendered person would have to wear a maternity cushion instead?

Transgender women are oppressed in ways that biological women are not. And biological women are oppressed in ways that transgender women are not. We are oppressed through attitudes to pregnancy, IVF, abortion and so on.

If a transwoman has the same life as me in every single way except that she is trans and I am not, neither of us have more privilege. We just face different forms of discrimination for being either a biological female - an oppressed group or a transgender woman - an oppressed group.

If a black person has the same life as me in every single way except that they are black and I am white, I do have more privilege. They alone face a discrimination I do not face.

So there is no comparison between being white and having white privilege and being a biological female and having privilege over trans people, because society isn't attempting to harm white people for being white.

SardineQueen · 28/05/2012 10:53

What I don't understand about all this is how it fits in in societies like afghanistan / saudi and places.

If your sex = your gender and your gender is self defined that all the girls can just say "actually I'm a boy" and get an education / not get married off at 12 etc etc

But that's not how it works is it. In 99.9999% of the world everyone knows which is a boy and which is a girl and thus how to treat them, what they wear, what they are allowed to do, what standards or behaviour apply to them and so on and so forth. This is the problem that I am interested in as a feminist and it starts at birth when the assembled people see the child's genitals and say "it's a boy!" or "it's a girl!" or in a small number of cases "um not sure" which is a separate issue quite frankly.

What happens to gay people, trans people, intersex people, tall people, short people, people who are disabled and all of the other sorts of people in the world who experience difficulties because of their difference from the norm (male straight able bodied etc) are things that need addressing. But while there is some intersectionality with the reasons for the discrimination they are not teh primary concern of feminism. The primary concern of feminism (for me) is the oppression experienced by women globally because of their sex, and that is decided the moment they are born. If "it's a girl" then that is a different life to "it's a boy" and that's that.

I totally take kim's point upthread about people when they transition and if they "pass" then yes they will experience what other women experience but only from that point it has not been there from the moment of birth. And I think that things must be much harder for people who do not "pass" and TBH I think that is a greater problem than people getting the right to be a woman what about the right to be a trans person and just go about their business without abuse or discrimination.

VashtiBunyan · 28/05/2012 10:54

Kritiq, I am not talking about people who get ear infections later in life. I am talking about people who are trans-disabled. Those are people who have no physical impairment but have an internal sense that their identity is that of a disabled person.

Transdisabled people want to live as a disabled person and often want (and sometimes get) surgery to make them disabled.

According to your argument about trans and cis, being born disabled (in my example deaf) is a privilege because a deaf person experiences deaf culture from birth while a transdisabled person who in their mind is just as deaf because they identify as deaf even though they have full hearing is oppressed. They are oppressed particularly by deaf people who are privileged by being born deaf and are carrying out cisdisableism against people who can hear who consider themselves deafidentified.

VashtiBunyan · 28/05/2012 11:00

And of course what would be really outrageous cisdisableism would be if deaf people held a conference to talk about sign language and lip reading.

That would be discriminating against the trans-disabled, because it would suggest that hearing impairments are an issue for deaf people, and such an idea would discriminate against deaf identified people who don't have a hearing impairment. It would be offensive to say that deafness was to do with the ability to hear.

That would be like going to a women's conference and talking about abortion, pregnancy, IVF, cervical cancer and so on. It would be really offensive because it would suggest that being a woman had something to do with having a female body.

EthelMoorhead · 28/05/2012 11:16

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kim147 · 28/05/2012 12:46

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JuliaScurr · 28/05/2012 12:51

discrimination is about attitudes, oppression is about systems and structures

TunipTheVegemal · 28/05/2012 13:08

I don't have a problem with the prefix cis- per se, it makes sense to me. I think I do have cis- privilege alongside my female lack-of-privilege.

However what I DO have a problem with the way it is used.
Two things:

  1. I frequently see transwomen or their allies misuse it to deny male privilege - transwomen often say 'I have never had male privilege because I am trans, you are more privileged than me because you have cis privilege' even when they have transitioned relatively late and have had decades of being benefiting from men's place in the patriarchy.
  1. The onus to use it appears to be distributed unequally between the sexes. I have often seen women 'called' on not describing themselves as ciswomen and rarely if ever seen the same thing done to men. This relates to Ethel's excellent point below, 'You can't view cis/trans in isolation away from real material dynamics between the sexes'.
I have no objection whatsoever to transpeople having a handy word to describe people who aren't trans and I will happily use it when chatting someone who is trans. But where the power issues come in are the matter of who is expected to use the word and when. When feminists are expected to nuance their conversations about reproductive rights by inserting an extra term to acknowledge the feelings of those who don't have reproductive systems with no benefit to clarity I think there is something very strange going on.
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