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?

Kritiq, I have always had enormous respect for your posts on here, for their good sense as well as the articulacy and intelligence with which your arguments are expressed, but with respect your last two posts fail to address the arguments and contain nothing but a mixture of ad hominems and lofty patronising assumptions that if we don't agree with you we must have read less than you. Some of us do know what intersectionality is, thanks. What you haven't shown is why it removes the need for groups such as ciswomen to meet in their own space.

So why is there a need for ciswomen to meet in their own space? It's presented as if it was a fact, when it's no more of an opinion than the claim that there is no need.

SQ - girls are female humans before they reach adulthood. What is your point?

Why do people, many of whom have penises, feel the need to identify themselves as women?

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

No it doesn't help.

Trans people are discriminated against. They suffer as a result of not fitting into the strict gender binary.

The gender binary hierarchy exists as an system for the oppression of women (trans people are caught up in the fall out).

How can I have privilege (so called cis privilege) at the hands of the thing that oppresses me?

Ya what? More cognitive dissonance.

As a woman, I am oppressed by the gender binary hierarchy, not privileged by it. Privilege means benefiting from the oppression of the group that you oppress. Women don't oppress trans people (patriarchy does).

I would help and support them through whatever action they wanted to take. And that's the point isn't it - trans does not automatically = full 'gender reassignment' surgery. There are people who are trans who want to have the outer physical appearance of the sex they identify as but there are plenty who want to keep the same body but change how they dress/act. And there are some trans people who eg might want to gain breasts but keep their genitals unchanged. It seems utterly ridiculous to me to say not that all these people fit under the umbrella of 'women'. For some trans people it seems that they identify with the female gender - skirts, dresses, makeup, society's view of what is 'feminine'. Basically all the reductive stereotypes feminism has been fighting for decades. To say that that is what it means to be a woman offends me.

Kritiq, some people on here may well believe that all oppression women experience is connected to reproduction but I didn't say that so I don't know why you are addressing that remark to me.

What I am saying is that there are forms of discrimination and oppression that apply only to biological females. I will not bore you by repeating those forms of discrimination and oppression as I have mentioned them several times before. In much the same way that there are some forms of oppression that are experienced only by black women.

Neither you nor Kim are prepared to address that point. Every time either of you post about intersectionality you both fail to acknowledge or even discuss the fact that there is a form of oppression that only applies to biological females. The fact of that oppression existing does not mean that I am denying the existence of oppression that is only experienced by trans people or the existence of oppression that both biological females and MTF trans people.

I will say again, as I have said in previous posts, that I would like both of you to explain why you refuse to acknowledge, much less discuss, the oppression that is only experienced by people who are biological females.

WW

"SQ - girls are female humans before they reach adulthood. What is your point?"

What about the boys who feel inside that they are girls? Are they girls, or boys?

Sorry missed a word out there...

It should have said:

'oppression that both biological and MTF trans people share.'

'oppression that both biological females and MTF trans people share.'

!

In fact the automatic assumption - from the male dominated psychiatric profession - that a man who hates his masculinity should have full surgical 'gender reassignment' has caused a lot of trauma for some trans people hasn't it. There are people who have had reversal ops? People who feel cheated because they have gone down a path and can't 'pass' as they were encouraged to believe they could?

beachcomber - maybe the "difficulty setting in the game of life" analogy helps here - male white heterosexuals have the lowest difficulty setting. Female (xx) white heterosexuals have a higher difficulty setting, but it's really not as high trans white etc. (And that's not even taking sexual orientation or race or class into account)

The idea that just because you experience discrimination in one aspect you can't be privileged in another is as ridiculous as it is arrogant.

I'm female, white, middle class and straight. I might experience/have experienced more discrimination/oppression than my white middleclass straight husband, but that doesn't change the fact that I am privileged compared to a lot of other people.

A man who hates his masculinity does not equal woman.

WW

What about the boys who feel inside that they are girls? Are they girls, or boys?

SQ - if they feel they are girls, then I would go with what they identify as and hope they can get all the support they need on their journey, rather than denying their reality.

What about girls who don't "feel" anything other than people. What are they?

I think they're called feminists, SardineQueen.

But lets not get into the realms of utter fantasy. People believing females are people! Like that is going to happen any time soon.

People. Girls. Whatever they want to be.

But children born with female genitalia aren't given a choice. Nor with male genitalia. The announcement "it's a boy" or "it's a girl" is made and that is that.

In the world that you live in, are children not ascribed a gender at all until they are old enough to choose for themselves?

In that case, how come so many people are choosing the gender female in Afghanistan?

That was to WW.

Kim, I'm not attempting to explain the feelings of transgender women at all. I am not making a point about what transgender women as a group feel, think or offering any explanation of what it means to be transgender or why people are transgender. That is for transgender people to explain to people if they want to explain anything at all.

I am simply talking about the experiences of people who are biological females and don't have a gender identity.

Obviously you can't identify transsexuals at birth, but can only go by appeareance of genitals. How does that invalidate the feelings of children who experience gender disphoria at a later stage?

This whole assigning thing sounds a bit pompous to me anyway. My daughters were identified as girls at birth, so they got female names, often wear girls clothes (but not exclusively) and other than that are just raised as children without being pushed into any direction.

Should any of my children express they're gay or trans or whatever, I'd want to support them rather than theorise their feelings away.

I totally accept that their are people who feel they are born in a body that doesn't reflect how they feel on the inside. My problem is with trying to shoehorn all those people into being 'a man' or 'a woman' based on whether they feel male or female. Sex and gender are two different things.