Women are being censored because they wish to discuss the politics of gender. I say NO. Who wants to join me?

[Beachcomber]

Ok, I'm guessing that many here have heard about Julie Burchill's explosive article defending her friend Suzanne Moore against trans activists.

I'm also guessing that there are a lot of women who don't know that trans activists have been becoming increasingly influential in many areas that affect Women's Rights since the 1980s and 90s. These areas include feminist websites and blogs (such as the F word), feminist meetings and conferences, women's music festivals, in feminist literature and in academia teaching gender studies (a subject that used to be taught as women's studies) and in post-modernist and queer theory circles.

Transactivists call any resistance to their increasing influence and presence in these areas of female interest "transphobic". Discussion of gender identity as an oppressive social construct and as a threat to feminism and women's rights is also considered transphobic. Consequently, discussion of women as being a political class of people oppressed due to our sex and our reproductive capacity is becoming harder and harder for feminists to have without being accused of transphobia and bigotry. This is very very concerning.

Numerous women have been threatened or silenced by these people (for example they have been no platformed and/or picketed at feminist events or attacked and threatened after writing articles or essays discussing gender identity).

Let me be very clear that this discussion is about transactivists and people who threaten others into silence. It is not about transpeople in general (some of whom have stated that they are afraid to get involved in the controversy).

In my opinion, no matter which side of the gender identity debate one stands on, surely we can all agree that debate should be allowed to take place. One side cannot be allowed to shout down, threaten and silence the other.

The recent events are not just about differing opinions on gender identity though (or I wouldn't be bothering to post this), they are about women's right to talk about and identify sex based oppression and male supremacy, and therefore to fight against sex based oppression and male supremacy. And that is why this is an important if not vital issue for women's rights.

I think women's rights politics are reaching a pivotal moment - a moment in which we must stand up for our right to discuss our status as second class citizens as a result of the biological fact that we are female. If we can't discuss it, we don't have much hope of fighting it.

bugbrennan.com/2013/01/19/for-every-one-of-us-you-silence-100-more-will-rise-to-take-her-place/

To summarise the link - a well known and influential feminist blogger has been censored for discussing the issues outlined above. She is not the first woman to be silenced by these people. I think it is about time we stood up to them.

Thanks for reading.

What is pansexual? I wonder what the world would be like without labels?

Trans people on the whole would rather be known as people. Trans women would rather be called women.

Where has the * come from? New one on me!

I think people need to accept who they feel they are.
Even if society struggles with that.

I think it means you're attracted to all genders and sexes.

Thanks Beach, will have a read. I can't read some of the blogs. I really can't.

There is a lot of anger in the blogs and that often makes for uncomfortable reading (although there is often very good analysis to be found). No worries.

Surely m to f transpeople should be embracing feminism, not attacking it? Unless someone is a quisling, keen to curry favour with the powerful by attacking their fellow members of the oppressed class/group/whatever.

I'm a woman and a feminist. I don't feel threatened or bullied or censored by transgendered people in any way. I can't think of any "women only" conversation that I would want to exclude transgendered people from. No two women are alike anyway!

I don't see why the term 'cis' is so threatening either. It's just one more way of acknowledging the complexity of identity. LRD, I usually appreciate your posts a lot, but I can't see where you're coming from when you argue that cis privilege is just male privilege in disguise. I am a white, middle-class, educated, cis woman - that doesn't make me any less a woman, or reduce the impact of any gender-based discrimination I might experience.

This is an interesting thread, though, and I particularly appreciate kim147's contributions.

Interesting post: www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/16wcvj/im_tired_of_radical_feminists_being_silenced/

Interesting post: www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/16wcvj/im_tired_of_radical_feminists_being_silenced/

I am with you Beach.

I am not a radfem nor a lesbian. I have no particular desire to form or join a women's only group or go to a women's music festival. But I'm astounded that so many liberal feminists are effectively saying radfems and lesbians cannot be free to organise themselves on the terms they determine and campaign for whatever issues they want unless they accept an externally imposed dogma they fundamentally don't believe.

Beach hits the nail on the head that one side cannot be allowed to silence the other.

That's pretty much it for me too FloraFox except I probably am a radical feminist.

And you know, having thought a lot about this lately, I think my main issue is with the silencing and intimidation. I see a sort of conflict of interests for both feminists and transgender people and there must surely be a way to work it out but it can only be worked out if there is dialogue. If there can't be dialogue then at the very least there should be mutual civility and respect of boundaries and the right to hold and express a differing opinion.

I don't know an awful lot about the history of transitioning but it seems to me that the post-modernist/queer theory schools have played a role in us arriving at the current mess. When I was younger, transitioning was described as being 'transsexual' and there was very much the idea of a person's body not fitting how they felt and wanted to live - there seemed to be an accepted idea that the person's genitals did not fit and were something the person wanted to rid themselves of. Now, whilst I find that incredibly sad and destructive, I can empathise with the concept and can see how very real it is for the person concerned. I think the medical community is being irresponsible and probably unethical in providing surgical and chemical treatments - but that is my opinion and I accept that a transitioning person no doubt sees things differently. Transvestites and crossdressers were entirely different to transsexual people.

Then the post-moderinst and queer theory influence changed things and transsexualism suddenly became encompassed in transgenderism. And, that was were things got tricky for me as a feminist - because it seemed that a person could be male bodied and not take synthetic hormones but simply identity with another gender and that was enough for them to be considered of another sex. And that just sounded like so much pomo bullshit to me.

Around the same time, discussions got shut down. Transphobia became a buzz word and any questioning of this post-modernist idea of gender identity = sex became unacceptable.

Then after lobbying and activism we got the Gender Recognition Act (without much discussion being had, certainly women's rights actors weren't asked what they thought) and we all had to accept that male bodied persons who identified with some abstract, patriarchal and oppressive concept of a female gender had the right to access women's safe spaces. And if you didn't accept that you were at best illiberal and retrogressive and at worst a transphobe and a bigot.

And, ever since, feminists have been saying 'hold on a minute' but there is a wall of non-discussion and an insistence that an adult male bodied person is in the same sex, social and political class as FAAB women who were born girls, grew up oppressed by female gender and have the bodies and biology of human females.

In a similar way there has been a shutting down of the discussion of societal homophobia (and issues of body image, abuse, self-esteem, etc) pressuring young women (and men) to 'transition'.

This is another link to an article written by Sheila Jeffreys. It is most thought provoking.

The campaign against radical feminists who criticize the harmful practice of transgenderism has been quite effective up ?til now in preventing any rethinking. But I think a tipping point has been reached. Support for the practice has been almost total on the left, amongst all those who see themselves as progressive, amongst feminists and queer theorists and activists. Now it is clear that a rethinking is beginning, in the medical profession and amongst an increasingly broad swathe of feminists. The fact that transgenderism has had such blanket support despite the fact that it involves sterilization, other brutal surgeries, and the ingestion of harmful drugs for life, is not without precedent in the history of ?sexual surgeries?. The campaign to sterilize the ?unfit? was instigated by physicians and biological scientists, the very same groups of professionals involved in the construction of transgenderism, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Thanks for the link sangiec - that is certainly how I see things. This for example That isn't hate, it's dissent.

You object to 'cis' but use 'FAAB'. What's the difference?

Thank you for that really clear post about postmodernism/queer theory, Beach. I had an inkling that something like this had happened - I was actually just about to ask about the difference between TS and TG - does TS still exist or is it all called TG now?

WidowWadman the way I understand it is -

FAAB - you were born and someone said, 'It's a girl!' - it's something that actually happened and which has had a huge effect on the way the world has treated you ever since that moment.

Cis - literally, 'on the same side' - your body matches a concept of what 'gender' you are. If you believe that gender is a social construct this can have no meaning except that you are perfectly happy in the little 'feminine' box that the patriarchy tries to shove you into. That's why I'm not happy being called 'cis'.

I'm in.

I find it quite hard to explain my objection to the word "cis" - to me accepting that word means I accept that I have an innate gender identity (and that gender in general is innate) and that that gender identity matches the one associated with my body. I don't accept any of those things, and so to accept the label cis means describing myself as something that I don't believe to be true. I hope that makes sense, I am tired and my brain is fuzzy, I'm MN'ing to avoid essay writing

I'm in too, Beach. Only just managed to read all the thread. Thank you for starting it. I too am not happy about being called "cis". PlentyofPubeGardens has explained it nicely. Thank you, as well, Beach for explaining postmodernism/queer theory too.

FAAB = female assigned at birth.

It is a factual description of a concrete biology reality (and includes intersex people who were identified as girls at birth). FAAB is a term that women have come up to describe themselves, when necessary, in a discussion about transgernderism.

Cisgender = a person whose (patriarchaly imposed) gender identity corresponds to that attributed by patriarchy to their biological sex.

Gender is an abstract notion, a social construct, a status hierarchy, a political tool. It is a socio-political construct based on the patriarchal notion of male=masculinity=dominant/oppressor/higher status/higher value/gender priviledged and female=femininity=submissive/subjugated/oppressed/lower status/lower value/non-gender privileged.

Gender identity is which gender/gender role one identifies with or has been socialized to accept. Many feminists reject gender entirely and many many women do not identify with (or reject socialization of) the femininity=submissive/subjugated/oppressed/lower status/lower value socio-political role. As a consequence these women are not cis and may even reject the entire concept of cis as being a patriarchal construct in the same way that gender is. (Although possibly even more flawed as it is a social construct constructed of a social construct therefore even further removed from concrete reality than gender itself.)

Cis is a patriarchal term which has been imposed (mostly on women) and is both dictatorial and othering. It is used to gloss over the politics of gender that are contradictory to the politics of the phenomenon of transgenderism. Cis is yet another term which attempts to pass a socially constructed hierarchy and privilege system as a concrete reality. It is a politically loaded term and IMO in the case of women, a gaslighting one.

sorry for typos!

(biological reality) and I think I said (identity) in a previous post when I meant (identify).

I do proof read but am working so not very careful!

Cis - literally, 'on the same side' - your body matches a concept of what 'gender' you are. If you believe that gender is a social construct this can have no meaning except that you are perfectly happy in the little 'feminine' box that the patriarchy tries to shove you into. That's why I'm not happy being called 'cis'

Very well put, PoPG. I agree entirely.

This is getting ludicrous now.

Trans people should not be allowed to exist and should be shunned because the term "cis" is such a huge abusive act. Really?

Also, saying "Sheila Jefferys said" every time you want to make a point is just an Appeal to an Authority debating tactic.

You claim to want to demolish the patriarchy, but you'll use exactly the same tools (holding up individuals as authorities who should not be questioned) as they do.

Also, using a trans-hating website to dismiss the solidarity between trans and intersex people is another poor debating tactic.

Look what Google brings:
www.isna.org/node/190

As for "anger is not hate", since the anger is directed at trans people, shouldn't they be the ones to decide that? Just like we as feminists don't allow MRA's to define misogyny for us.

Or can Stormfront claim that their anger towards non-whites, isn't hate either, so is equally acceptable?

Kim - it is an utterly pointless fixation and yet it actually consumes some feminists beyond the point of all reason. Someone said on the last thread that trans issues were not the hill they wanted to die on, sadly lots would disagree.

It is incredibly sad.

I hope you're ok, these threads must be very hard for you.

I too hope you are ok kim. I've kind of given up on this thread. I guess it is hard for you to do that though.