Violence Against Women

[EatsBrainsAndLeaves]

Just been reading this blog post which talks about women who Transition as violence against women. I agree with her.

[Warning from MNHQ - this contains graphic images]

dirtywhiteboi67.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/transition-violence-against-women.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheDirtFromDirt+(The+dirt+from+Dirt)

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desk

"So sorry, it's not something one can compare to anorexia or self-harming because there is clearly NO positive physical or mental health outcome as a result of the individual's actions."

Actually, anorexic people gain a sense of 'control' and self harmers feel 'purged'...which are short-term mental positives.

Also there are actually no 'physical' benefits to having this surgery. It is very dangerous, has many complications, numbness from scarring, etc and leaves you infertile (if the full hysterectomy). Though taking sex hormones gives people both physical and mental benefits there are also some negative physical side-effects for this too.

Of course it is a major form of mutilation. Sheesh!

Oh look EBAL your tag partner has arrived as predicted.

"More explaining from someone who has no understanding. I was wondering when you'd pop along"

What do you mean by having no understanding?

MooncupGoddess "Actually it would be interesting to have a proper discussion about FTMs, rather than the usual ill-tempered and repetitive fighting over MTFs. Unfortunately this thread is not it."

Though I've never been on one of the MN trans* threads before, I agree it is interesting to look at FTM from a feminist perspective.

"As an aside, if we lived in a society without ludicrous imposed gender roles (something surely everyone on this thread wishes for) it would be much easier to get a sense of whether transsexuals genuinely have something different about their make-up that means they feel a natural affinity with the other sex rather than their born sex. Or whether many of them have internalised gender roles, realise they don't suited the roles of their born sex and hence at a very early age subconsciously decide they should belong to the other sex."

But there is something about sex being something other than a reproductive category that is contentious. Saying 'I believe I should have testes and produce sperm- and my having ovaries producing eggs just feels wrong, I know it with all my conviction' - doesn't change the fact that my ovaries cannot become testes. And so what is this 'affinity' with, if it is not about reproduction? What is the distinction between a transsexual and someone who has a very strong affinity with the opposite gender?

"Since we don't have this ideal society, and in the absence of any science bar the vaguest speculation, it is impossible to make any firm judgements as to the causes of transsexuality and I am pretty unimpressed by anyone who claims that we can."

I would add that since many people feel at odds with their prescribed gender role, most people feel affinity with people of both sex, some with the opposite more than their own - at what point do you say someone is a transsexual as opposed to being one sex who is more comfortable appropriating the prescribed gender role of the opposite sex?

Perhaps kim means you're not a trans woman, but trying to explain the experience of a trans woman. We get something similar here from time to time when men try to explain what what the experience of being a woman is like. On another message board I used to frequent, the handful of members who were persons of colour were forever being told by white British folks that they knew better than they did what it was like to be a person of colour.

That sort of thing.

Apologies - looking at the context, "transman" rather than trans woman above.

"Perhaps kim means you're not a trans woman, but trying to explain the experience of a trans woman. We get something similar here from time to time when men try to explain what what the experience of being a woman is like. On another message board I used to frequent, the handful of members who were persons of colour were forever being told by white British folks that they knew better than they did what it was like to be a person of colour. That sort of thing."

"Apologies - looking at the context, "transman" rather than trans woman above."

Hi KRITIQ, although I often hugely agree with what you say, I don't in this case. I know what it is to be a woman and I feel I can comment on the brutal mutilation of a healthy woman's body.

"I think there's a word for that. Feminists call it "mansplaining"."

I know all about mansplaining kim147, but the issue of transsexuals is complicated. Transpeople believe very strongly that they know what it is to be the opposite sex. That is a HUGE assumption. When MTFs suggest that this vagueness (in the sense that there is no physical evidence) is the definition of woman, they are inherently mansplaining - assuming they are more expert in what makes a woman than women are themselves- to the point that they get to define what a woman is.

For this reason it is silencing for a MTF when speaking to a woman to imply "you are not trans, so you can't talk about trans" - especially since I was in that post responding to errors KRITIQ had made about the annorexia, self-mutilation and the 'physical benefits' of brutal surgery.

But women aren't being left alone, are they? That's the issue.

If we could all simply live and let live, it would be lovely. But there are mutually incompatible issues. Not sure why women have to be the group to back off. Is it because we don't experience 'loads of prejudice and anger and hatred'? Or because we really should be used to those things by now, whereas they just sting that little bit harder to men?

I agree with LRD. If trans men to "women" didnt want to access women only spaces and services, I dont think most feminists would be that bothered about this issue. We wouldnt agree that a man could ever know what it "feels like to be a woman", but that would simply be a minor irritation.

But this does affect women and because many feminists, and especially radical feminists, value women only spaces, it affects us personally more than most women.

We always get asked if we have met any Trans people. Most of us have met lots - either in woman only space or trying to get into woman only space.

But without this I would still acre about women who think they are really men. Because they are being encouraged to mutilate themselves to fit in with sexist ideas of what a woman is under patriarchy. And that is a feminist issue.

So was this the point of the entire thread then, to come back to a discussion that has been had very recently in which several radicle feminists were accused of being offensive and bigoted? In essence how very dare people who still have a willy try and get in to female only spaces, despite those willy wearing people identifying with and as women.

The point of this thread was to talk about women who are having surgery and taking hormones because they think they feel like a man.

And i dont care if men with willies identify with and as women. They are not. That is the point.

They are not what?

They are not women.

I thought the point of this thread was to talk about how women are "mutilating" themselves in order to become men and how this translates as VAW.

Which is clearly bollocks.

"You could of course leave transsexual people alone and let them get on trying to sort out their lives. In the face of loads of prejudice and anger and hatred."

I take exception to this post, since your first comment was in response to my talking about anorexia, self-harm, mental health and the 'physical benefits of surgery'. This could hardly be me 'not leaving transsexual people alone' [insinuating harassment?], since I wasn't even talking about transpeople in that case. Also I have never responded to a MN transsexual thread before, but this one was labelled as being about Violence Against Women.

Although LRD and Eats have answered this already, I want to point to further mischaracterisation in your statement kim147.

I know that people who are 'different' or 'gender-defying' incur a whole spectrum of difficulties up to an including violence and even death by people who are heavily invested in cultural norms, for various reasons. Feminists are some of the main activists trying to change these cultural norms and end male violence (which is usually what is targeted at people who are 'different' as well as towards women). However I have seen with my own eyes transwomen get preferential treatment when they are amongst women - there's a certain 'celeb-like' mystique and maleness that throws women into excessive gratitude.

Also 'trying to sort out their lives' sounds very benign and unassuming, when it is bizarre that a huge focus of transactivism seems to be eroding women's rights by redefining the meaning of 'woman' and legally challenging protections arising as a result of female reproductive vulnerability and low social status. Of course not all transpeople are part of this activism, but as a movement transactivism is a huge issue for women and feminism.

"Feminists are some of the main activists trying to change these cultural norms"

Sooo the norms then, women cannot be men, men cannot be women they stay exactly as they were born and thats the end of it. This seems too be the outcome of what Eats has just said. No do not even try and justify buy arguing gender and that cannot be changed. Being whatever gender, or acting as one sex or another is as much a state on mind as it is what you have in your underwear.

"Sooo the norms then, women cannot be men, men cannot be women they stay exactly as they were born and thats the end of it. This seems too be the outcome of what Eats has just said. No do not even try and justify buy arguing gender and that cannot be changed. Being whatever gender, or acting as one sex or another is as much a state on mind as it is what you have in your underwear."

Leithlurker you'll have to rephrase that in a way that actually makes sense before I can respond.

Sex is immutable. We are born as a boy or a girl.

Gender is societies ideas of how a girl/women boy/man should behave and think. That is very changeable and that is what feminists want to get rid of. We should all be able to act as the individuals we are and be treated as individuals.

"Being whatever gender, or acting as one sex or another is as much a state on mind as it is what you have in your underwear."

I must say though, that when I gave birth, it wasn't a state of mind that the babies came out of. It would have been a lot less painful were it the case.