Radfem2012 banning trans people

[allthegoodnamesweretaken]

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?

Yes the difficulty is that there are lots of people who do not adhere to the "roles and behaviors considered by society to be appropriate to their particular sex", or those who adhere to them but hate it, or adhere to them when they have to to get by but not the rest of the time, who are not trans-sexual.

Cis means more than "not trans" - going on that definition then FAAB women who do not feel that they have an internal gender thing going on, or do not "perform femininity" are trans-sexuals. This is clearly not the case.

What would happen if a load of FAAB women turned up at a meeting for trans people and said that by definition they are trans people, and that they therefore demand a full active role in the organistion and proceedings, that the meeting must include things that are important to them but are of little relevance to trans people etc?

Well it's not going to happen I don't imagine but it's an interesting idea.

It kind of takes us full circle to the idea that women who do not wish to perform femininity and want to organise and make a fuss and not be brow-beaten etc have a funndamental problem of "wanting to be men". That has been the response levelled at females who refused to look pretty and be meek for decades (more?) and the idea that now women who are this way inclined must be trans-sexual is just same old same old, surely.

Thanks everyone, that is v. helpful.

Back when I first got into this feminism lark I (naively, it turns out) thought that trans people and feminists would be natural allies. Feminists want to get rid of gender, and if that were to happen, there'd be no gender norms for people to be obliged to conform to, right? Transactivists don't share feminism's analysis of gender though. Their ideology is completely at odds with feminism's aims. And it wouldn't be such a big issue if we were talking about a tiny, powerless minority of people who simply don't agree with another tiny, powerless minority, but transactivists have managed to get the law changed (I'm referring to the Gender Recognition Act 2004) such that women have been defined out of existence, and all without any consultation with women's groups who, you'd think, would have some say in the matter (if we were accorded full human status, which we are not, and there's the evidence of that). A man can get a gender recognition certificate in this country that says they are legally a woman and must be treated as such in law. This potentially renders the sex discrimination laws that feminists fought so hard to obtain meaningless, in fact it means that men can use those laws against those very feminists, as has been threatened by those who want to use the Equality Act to stop feminists from having a women-only conference this summer.

Of course trans people exist as human beings who should not be subjected to any kind of violence or harrassment for not conforming to gender norms. I find it incredible that anyone believes radical feminists think otherwise. But I do not accept that a biological male who does not conform to masculinity is in fact a biological female just because he says he is (same goes for female to male, although the difference is that females lack the power and human status that males always already have). That idea is just manifestly false, and I wonder if anyone here is seriously prepared to accept that there can be such a thing as a female penis or a male vagina, or that to use the term 'female' is oppressive, or that discussion of things that uniquely affect females - like abortion, pregnancy and so on - is oppressive to 'transwomen', because that's the sort of nonsense that some transactivists are coming out with and it looks a lot like a concerted effort to silence feminists from where I'm sitting. Nor do I subscribe to the idea that gender is some innate essence or identity. That idea is in opposition to a feminist analysis of gender as a hierarchy that needs to be overthrown.

Central to the feminist project of liberating women from male supremacy is the need to recognise ourselves as a class or a distinct group. Male power is maintained by isolating us and by silencing us through the fear of the male violence that is wielded against us everywhere. We can't be free unless we recognise ourselves as a distinct group who are in fact oppressed and act collectively on that basis, just as other oppressed groups have had to do. The ideology of transgenderism as demonstrated by transactivists (who may not represent the views of all people who identify as trans, but be that as it may, these are the vocal few who are getting laws changed) is trying to deny us this possibility. This is a radical feminist view. Those who don't agree with it but do accept that women are oppressed, I'd like to know how transgenderism is going to free women from oppression - anyone know? Whose interests does this ideology in fact serve?

How about if I'd always felt like I was black? If I had medical treatment to change the appearance of my skin? If I contacted black equality groups and community organisations and told them that I understood their struggle for equality as it was mine too. And that they now had to call themselves 'cis black' so as not to offend or exclude me.

For me, this is an issue of intersectionality of oppression. That's a concept that I think is often misunderstood and one which imho, radical feminist thinkers are unwilling or unable to engage with fully. It's not just that a woman experiences "sexist oppression with added racist oppression," if she is a woman of colour, but her experience of oppression as a Black woman will be something different from the experience of oppression of a white woman or a Black man.

Intersectionality is also predicated on the understanding that the same person can experience oppression because of one part of their identity and privilege because of another part. There is no formula for working out top or bottom of the league tables and absolutely no point in trying to do it, although alot of people DO seem to waste a helluva lot of energy in trying to do so.

I have seen in discussions here and elsewhere the insistence by radical feminists that patriarchal oppression is the root of all other forms of oppression and/or that misogynistic oppression effectively trumps all other forms of oppression. However you slice it, that suggests a belief that misogyny is inherently "worse" than racism, homophobia, class oppression, etc. There seems to be the idea that once patriarchal hegemony is smashed, there will be no more racism or homophobia or classism, because all these forms of oppression stem from the patriarchy. Back in the early 80's, I was told the same thing by a Socialist Workers' Party mate - that once the class struggle was won, there would be no sexism, racism, heterosexism anymore because these were all predicated on class-based oppression.

So, here's the point. Trans women challenge those of us who were identified as female and have remained so all our lives to acknowledge not just the oppression we experience as women, but the privilege we enjoy as not being trans. As I've mentioned before, it's not the first time in history that feminists have resisted the idea that they are privileged, for example, due to ethnicity if they are white or class/economic privilege if they are not working class and/or educated. This has been and remains a painful issue for many women of colour and working class women who still feel they aren't necessarily "heard" or their specific struggles acknowledged within feminism of any type.

IMHO, lack of acknowledgement of the intersectional experience of oppression perhaps comes from fear - fear that if you acknowledge you have privilege, it will somehow dampen or negate understanding of the oppression you experience. In some cases, folks will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid "owning" their privilege. We can all think of scores of examples I'm sure of men who use all sorts of contorted explanations, "scientific" evidence, subject changing, anecdata, personal pops and flat denial to avoid owning their male privilege.

And, on that note, kim asked above whether people here believe trans people exist. In my view, I don't believe the radical feminists who organised and support the policy of the conference in question do. They have invested everything in the idea that there are males and females but nothing in between. The former benefit from oppression of the latter. Introducing the idea that there are people who aren't just male or just female jeopardises this central concept, so can in no circumstances be countenanced. Therefore, if you are identified as male from birth, nothing you do, nothing at all will make you anything but male, will make you anything but a person within the group defined as oppressors of women. To "prove" that point, they will use contorted explanations, "scientific" evidence, subject-changing, anectdata, personal pops and flat denial.

I'm seeing lots of them on this thread, along with quite alot of high fiving and back slapping, strangely reminiscent of comments from male contributors to The Guardian CiF section, when trying to rubbish articles with even a slight feminist theme and take down their authors, particularly if female. Depressing there. Depressing here.

Encouraging though that pretty well all the real world feminists I know and collaborate with aren't this prescriptive in their understanding, thankfully. Time to leave the mouse and get on with making a difference! Ciao all.

Kritiq, despite writing an extremely long post, you still fail to address at all the point that MTF trans people experience both discrimination for being trans and privilege for not being biologically female. As such, biological females have a need to organise without the presence of people who don't face the same kind of discrimination they do.

I am not sure what the point is of you explaining over and over again intersectionality when one part of an intersecting venn diagram - the bit that includes the group biological women that never intersects with the group FTM trans is missing from your explanation.

It is almost as if you want to claim that biological women don't actually exist, or if they do, don't experience any kind of oppression based solely on their biology.

Ethel: Thing is, nearly everyone is actually a mixture of ethnicities if you go back a few generations. I'm pretty sure the current theory on human evolition is that we are all descended from Africans. So technically a white person who 'feels black' might have a few chromosomes in the right place to back up his/her argument. And if that 'white' person (who is light-skinned with European features, perhaps) can actually prove that s/he had one or more non-white great grandparents, would that make it more, or less, offensive for such a person to label him/herself as at least mixed-race?

you could say the whole concept of 'race' is a result of justifying eg enslaving some groups of people. whereas in reality there is a spectrum, not distinct races. but once slavery is something done by white people to black people, it's not just a concept, it's a political category.

likewise with gender; there might be more than two biological sex chromosome variations, but politically there are two genders and only one of them has the power to enforce what that means politically
that gender is the one disproportionately involved in wanting to move between genders, onto the other one's space.
this tells me more about where they came from than where they say they're going

Vashti, final word from me on this.

I note that some here appear to believe the sole reason women as a class experience oppression is because of biology - specifically their reproductive function. I don't agree with this because trans women, intersex women, women who do not have female reproductive capacity still experience sexual oppression.

I also do not believe that trans women experience privilege because they do not have female reproductive organs. They can suffer sexual harassment just as women with female reproductive organs do. They can be sexually exploited through prostitution just as those with female reproductive organs are. They can be raped by men who feel entitled to rape, whether or not they have female reproductive organs.

I will accept that trans women may retain some privilege associated with having been biologically male in the past. For example, their parents may have paid for a son to have a better education than a daughter and they will benefit from that education after transitioning. The same could be said (as I did above) that a person who is disabled from birth may not benefit from the social and educational privileges that a person who became disabled later in life will have done.

But, if folks are insistent that trans women experienced male privilege before transition and continue to retain male privilege after transition, then nothing I say, nothing kim says, nothing anyone says anywhere will shake that belief. I'm not going to waste my time trying anymore, just as I tend to give up trying to "reason with" MRAs, fundamentalist Christians, Socialist Workers Party members or any other folks who cling to an unshakable belief in something.

However, some might find this blogpost to be of interest. My message to those who would attend Radfem 2012

I'll leave it there. Best wishes all.

Ethel: I am a white-skinned mixed-race woman; absolutely no aspect of my colouring would indicate that I am, in fact, someone with an Indian mother who was brought up to identify, proudly, as Indian. I pass, spectacularly efficiently, for white (I am white skinned, red haired - I look Celtic) while my mother is an eminent translator from her mother-tongue, Tamil.

Yes, I am a white liberal. But I am also Indian. You may find this offensive - goodness knows I spend my life repeating the same damn conversation again and again, the prodding and the poking and the being treated like something in a zoo for my manifestation of genetic freakery. But I do not want simply to abandon the Indian-ness with which I was brought up. I am as mixed-race, ethnically, as my dark-skinned Anglo/Bengali partner. Yes, I live with white privilege but I also live without that recognition - unless I go through the prodding and poking - of my ethnicity.

Kritiq you appear to have an unshakeable belief that the category women should include males who claim to be women. Is that a fair assessment?

The other thing that is interesting, and that never gets answered on these threads is if a woman isn't an adult human being with female biology, what exactly is a woman? What is the definition?

Because there's nothing that connnects males who say they are women, with adult humans with female biology. They are two separate categories.

Also interested to know what the definition of a woman is these days.

And a girl.

• I may not always agree with everything you say but your last posting including the link are great.

WW what is your definition of a girl?

I could have said French to make the point but people would have pointed out that nationality isn't genetic.

That's how I feel about this whole thread though - like a group of people who 'feel' French and hate their Britishness have bought houses next to me in the french countryside. They are wearing stripey tops and strings of onions and think that emphasises their frenchness. They seem to think my choice not to do so is some comment on how I identify. Some of them still live in the UK because they feel moving is too much for them but they are still insisting that they be recognised as French - which they are by xenophobes who see all those who aren't British as 'other'.

Just because someone doesn't identify as a man doesn't make them a woman.