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 this whole mess really boils down to is the fact that activist groups (whatever the cause) are attractive to people with big mouths and bigger egos, who try to overcome what they percieve as their own lack of progress in changing the world fast enough by picking on other small groups to attack and stir up hatred against. Being a member of an oppressed class is no guarantee that you're not a self-righteous bullying shitbag, whichever oppressed class that might be. So the likes of Bindel and Jeffries love playing the martyr (despite being well-paid, well-known academics and writers), particularly when they can justify having a go at other women - whether that's transpeople, sex workers, 'fun feminists' or anyone else who might actually be broadly on their side but is disinclined to worship them.
And some transactivists will revel in being professionally offended and insisting that their rights come ahead of anyone else's.
That stupid debacle over the feminist conference last year could have been sensibly solved by the setting up of an 'EVERYONE' welcome event alongside one that was for ciswomen only. But it might not even have arisen if Jeffries and co hadn't made the wording of the ban as offensive as possible and then started hurling insults at transwomen.

So radfems can't organise a conference unless they set up a separate conference alongside their own for people with a different agenda?

Is it so hard to understand not wanting penises in women only spaces?

But surely it's not the penises that are the problem but the intentions or attitudes of those who have them, that is the problem. People born with penises are not the problem unless you want to blow gender politics out of the water entirely. people with penises are socialised to behave in a certain way. It isn't a given that a boy will grow up to be a sexist misogynistic pig. If certain personality and behavioural characteristics are biologically determined then there is no such thing as socially constructed gender identity.

I think it is a case of accommodating people based on the society they actually live in. So, while a gender binary exists, people will want to live as the opposite gender to their birth gender. While women are oppressed through the femaleness of their bodies, biology will still matter to many people and while rape and sexual abuse happens to women so frequently, many people will be triggered by male genitalia.

So we find ways of accommodating all those people, and we find ways of making the future better, which probably contains ideas from both feminists and trans people who consider themselves outside of the binary (not that the two are mutually exclusive).

mini - I think people do genuinely sometimes have strong, scared, not entirely rational reactions, yes. If someone has been hurt or abused or raped, it's not that unusual for them to be scared of other people who're innocent, but who remind them of the rapist. I hope I'm not being insensitive by saying this, because I am dead lucky and I've never been raped. But I understand that it is quite common. I would say if there's a woman in that situation, who feels scared and wants to be told there will be no-one with a penis in the room, fair enough - if that's what she needs, she should have it.

Apologies to freya for making yet another comparison (though I really have thought about it) - my brother has worked with asylum seekers, and sometimes it's really important to make sure someone has a case worker who doesn't physically remind them of the people who abused them. That's not the asylum seeker being bigoted, IMO - that's someone who's been traumatized and knows they can't respond on a rational level right now.

Sorry LRD, I didn't mean to try and ban comparisons. Clearly most of the kinds of oppression that are done to various groups can also be done to women, so there are comparisons to be made in those situations. I just meant that many of the ways women are discriminated against can only be done to us because we have female bodies, so our overall situation isn't analagous to anybody else's overall situation.

I agree with you - comparisons only help when we've thought about them. I just wanted to acknowledge I had tried to do so, and wasn't just ignoring your point.

I agree very strongly that there are many kinds of oppression that are specific to women having the bodies we have.

I think we're almost so used to that, that it doesn't shock us the way it should.

Flora: No, the transactivists and non-transphobic feminists should have organized an all-inclusive event rather than trying to shut down the radfem-ciswomen-only event. Sorry if that wasn't clear (and it probably wasn't - cold hands and easily distracted...)

SGB - so, when you say 'all-inclusive', what would you do about people who would feel unable to attend such an event, or unable to speak once they got there?

Is it just a case of, these people may have suffered but they need to 'man up' and get on with it?

Because I think that is the worry.

'But surely it's not the penises that are the problem'

A penis in a women only space is a problem to me. I spend enough time around sexually entitled people with penises. Cotton ceiling anyone?

I feel like I am talking past people somehow, and vice versa. I suppose it is quite arrogant to come onto a thread and say a word doesn't mean what people are saying it means. I still don't think the word cis implies a belief system, but never mind: clearly those of you who have decided it is an oppressive term will continue to think of it as an oppressive term.

It doesn't matter to me, ultimately, whether people accept the term cis or not; what matters to me is whether or not they perceive transgendered people as threatening in some way. On this thread, rejecting the term cis, and seeing transgendered people as threatening, seem to go hand-in-hand.

I absolutely agree with Vesuvia that patriarchy is the enemy, and that women of all kinds, and for that matter humans of all kinds, should unite to fight it. The 'battle' that the OP posted about originally is a straw figure.

I also agree with LRD that there isn't a hierarchy of oppression. Trans women are not necessarily more oppressed than any other women. You can be privileged in some ways and oppressed in others. To say that cis women retain some privileges that trans women don't have is in no way to detract from the continuing reality of women's oppression.`

I don't think I see transgendered people as threatening at all.

My experience is quite limited, but my feeling is that there are activists (who are often not transpeople) who are very threatening (in the literal sense of making death threats). But that doesn't seem to me to tally at all with what transpeople seem to be saying about themselves. It's as vesuvia says - we're being set against each other.

But, but ... I still don't know what these 'privileges' that 'cis' women have are.

I'm still concerned with body parts ! If "gender" is socialised and someone hasn't been socialised to behave in a way that is masculine/feminine how could you begin to make a guess about what "she/he" has in her/his knickers/pants. ie, you exclude on the basis of sex assigned at birth because you don't want "men with penises" to be in your space. That is using biological determinism as the basis for behaviour/characteristics, risks assessment and value judgements.

If you wittle down your assessment of someone just to the sum and total of body parts then that blows the whole gender politics thing out of the water anyway, surely???? because if characteristics of masculine or feminine are socialised then biological determinism has no place. If biological determinism (ie she was born a "he" and still has a penis) is used to exclude then gender would seem to have no place in the assessment. Many women claim not to want to fit with gender stereotypes , what about if the person with the penis feels the same way and does't want to subscribe to behaving in a certain prescribed "male" way. That leaves me thinking that both sides are wrong! The two contradict each other, they are diametrically opposed ideas. Either identity is tied to sex or it is tied to gender, which is it?

marfisa how is it a straw figure? This is real. Women are being threatened and silenced for speaking about these issues - including threats of violence, picketing feminist events and being no-platformed as beach said in the OP. You can reject their position and say "why can't we all just get along" but the silencing and threats are real, not a straw figure at all.

I don't follow you mini.

I don't know about 'identity'. But sex is (to me) determined by your genitals or DNA. Then, being a woman is to do with your experience living in a world where genitals are considered the basic way of differentiating between two groups, and discriminating against one of those groups.

That doesn't mean there can't be men who resist being socialized as masculine or women who resist being socialized as feminine - the whole point is, of course there are! And thank god there are. But it's still resistance. It's not that we can wave magic wands and suddenly remove the central system we're resisting against. And that central system is the patriarchy, which does care about what sex we are.

I never like generalisations and the suggestions of what is feminine and the like. Just because I want and like money and power and triumph and success does not mean I am not female, just part of the wide variety of women. Those are not male values and to suggest they are (as some do) in a sense keeps me down from being the person that I am.

I often find I have little ni common with many women (and probably many men too). It would be boring if we were all the same.

However women may want a group which consists only of women or women against hunting or whatever the narrow category is and let them have their little debates if they want. Let them have women who are working class or women who are tall or women who have never had a penis groups if they want to. Why cannot they have all kinds of different groups and exclude whom they choose from their debates - they are just talking shops, not employers excluding women or men or whatever?

They need to concentrate on the basics ilke making sure men on a daily basis do their share of toilet cleaning and childcare and not fuss over group memberships and stuff which detracts from basic feminist issues.

let them have their little debates

how condescending.

LRD but that is proving to be rather difficult when people keep taking these to the swap shop! (no offence intended)

I listened to a Sheila Jeffreys talk on Kate Millet, (trying to gauge what Jeffreys is all about) yesterday while I was working and although the book itself was ground breaking, (at least in showing how women's subordination is woven into society through culture, I don't know if Millet thought the men problem was one of penises or gender stereotyping but she certainly made women consider the concept of patriarchy) anyway the talk is incoherent and once again I was left quite puzzled. Beach I will print off the paper from the link and read this evening. Jeffreys special area of interest, so I am hopeful that it will be a good read.

So the people with the penises have control of this thing called patriarchy? I am concerned that we are looking for this patriarchy in the wrong place. It alludes us because every theorist and therefore almost every feminist uses a different frame work to explain exactly what it is. Some contend it's patriarch as in head of the family, others put forward the idea that it is located in institutions, some both. I think this is partly why RadFem always comes across as man hating, unless you locate it somewhere men and women are left feeling that ALL men (those with penises at birth) are somehow the problem (even if they are socialised to think they are women, think that they feel like a woman and have these problem appendages removed), forever tied to their biology. Men alone can't be the problem because women have made society and we have been active in our history and in our subordination (although to be active would imply less subordination and more acquiescence) I would suggest that this patriarchy if it is to be located is in the productive forces within society, within the competition between men, has changed over time and women have been active agents.

Working from this basis I have to conclude that the idea of "gender as a social construct" is in actual fact also a social construct" and could very easily be turned upside down by any other theory. If that is the case it is tied also to production/reproduction and changes according to production and exchange processes.Under capitalism we have more competing forms of inequality than at any time in the history of people. We have so many oppressed groups that we must surely make up at least 90% of all human kind. And of the other 10% with the controlling interest, are they oppressed? no because they have competed for and won almost all the spoils from our oppression. Of course it suits these people to have us all finger pointing at each other.

There is nothing irrational about rape victims wanting to talk about their shared experience in a female only space. Women who want to do this are listening to their instinct of self-preservation which tells them that in order to share in a safe space they need that space to be free of members of the social class who commit rape and who perpetuate male violence or benefit from male violence. They need this so that the space can be 100%, entirely about them and what they need at that moment.

They shouldn't have to put up with feeling triggered, insecure or observed by a male bodied person. (Cos that would be oppressive.)

In addition, women need these spaces so that they can speak women's truths. Women alter their behaviour in the presence of men - they speak less, police what they say and how they say things and will very often adapt what they say in order not to offend or ruffle the feathers of men. The last thing rape victims need in a workshop is to be wondering if their working out of deep pain and distress is going to 'offend' some bloke or ruffle his male privilege. I have posted this before on MN about women only spaces, here it is again...www.fempages.org/wos.htm

Lots of women would simply choose not to participate in certain women-centric events if they knew that male bodied people would be there because they know that they would not get what they need (and deserve) from the event.

For women to work through trauma as a result of male violence they often need to examine how their socialization has affected how they experienced an event and its aftermath. Women have every right to do this in the exclusive company of other people who understand that socialisation - and I mean really understand it, with a visceral understanding that does not need to be explained, justified or questioned.

beach - yes, sorry, 'irrational' was an insensitive word. I'm trying to find a better one.

mini - sorry, I can't get that to load at the moment, but will watch later if I can.

I don't think the patriarchy eludes us - it's simply a structure of power and oppression. It's not man-hating to say that men have had the power over women through history, and still do. It's just factual. Many men I know would agree. They don't hate themselves. Many radical feminists are married to men, have sons and brothers and fathers, and I din't think they hate them. Any more than you'd say that objecting to racism is something only 'white-hating' people do.

But it's true to say men alone can't be the problem. They're not. The patriarchy is. Women reinforce the patriarchy all the time. But the benefit from it less than men do (as a generalization). That's why we call it 'patriarchy'.

Necessarily, yes, it is a social construct that gender is a social construct. It would have to be, wouldn't it? I don't see where you're going with that one, though?

LRD: Are you trying to say that conference organisers shouldn't be allowed to include transwomen? That's ridiculous. Conference organisers should simply choose (according to the viewpoint of their particular group and/or the nature of the conference they want to hold) and make it clear whether it's a ciswomen-only event or not, and then potential attendees can decide for themselves.

There's a certain type of radfem thinking that isn't happy with simply identifying sexist, entitled, misogynistic men as the enemy - everyone who isn't totally obedient to a very narrow ideology and behaviour pattern is the enemy, and the most venom is reserved for women who are broadly feminist but not interested in purer-than-thou point-scoring.

Thank you LRD. I would say it is entirely rational.

Although it is the sort of instinct that women are often told to ignore or dismiss.

SGB - no, that's not what I'm saying. Of course conference organizers should be allowed to include transwomen - why not?

Honestly don't follow where you got that from.

beach - I suppose what I mean is, if someone is vulnerable and/or traumatized, they shouldn't have to explain why they want to talk or listen in a particular kind of environment. We might not understand their reasoning, they might not even understand it very clearly themselves, but it's only humane to do as much as possible to make a space where those women can feel safe.

If that means that people need to run two or three different sessions for victims of different kinds of crime, what's wrong with that?