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.

Thanks for the link Kim, I found the following very interesting;

When trans people were allowed to legally register their changed sex in 2005 there was an awful tangle over marriage. Fearful of creating a situation where two women could be legally married, the government decided that trans women who married when they were still men must have their marriage annulled to receive legal recognition as women.

Mini you are absolutely right in saying that biological determinism and social constructs are incompatible within the same argument. It's what makes a lot of these arguments incoherent to me.

I think rape survivors are entitled to a safe space. I'm not sure why a trans woman, living her life as a female, perhaps even sans penis, who does not even appear to be a male, and who has also been raped, would be automatically a problem. If no one even knows she was born as a man, why would it upset them?

I found, in my own recovery from rape, that I felt more affinity to people who had been sexually abused or raped, whether male or female, than people who had not been. We were all victims. So I would not assume that everyone would be upset by including trans women in a rape workshop, and if I were organising the conference I would schedule two workshops, one more open and one more limited, so that everyone could benefit.

x-post LRD

yes I would rather see multiple sessions than certain people being excluded from just one

SGB, CisWomen event? If transgender people can choose their own label and I can respect that, why do we have to accept being re-labelled and redefined cis-women

For me, you can't have two different things sharing the same space, I don't mean literally I mean laterally. I can be a woman and I can be a mother but I can't be a cup and be a saucer at the same time. So why do women now have to be cis women? there is no need unless of course trans women don't want to be trans women and instead want to be women??????

dreaming - I'm not saying a transwoman would 'automatically' be a problem. I would envisage that many sessions could be shared. I also know that some women wouldn't mind men in sessions too. But others do mind. So, they should have a space on their own.

As I understand it, that's what was being objected to with the Manchester conference.

I'm trying to stay out of the cis debate as I don't really understand why it's such a big deal.

One of the primary steps in identify formation is not just identifying your own group, but the 'other' against which you are portrayed. That's not to say the other is bad or wrong, it's just not you.

If people want to think of me as cis, what do I care? Are they saying all cis women are bitches? No? then so what?

I am many, many things in life. I'm a woman, white, straight, American, New Yorker, Gooner, etc and so on. All of those labels separate me from people in the same sphere but with different identities. So if someone wants to tag cis onto that, go ahead. It's not changing my identity, it's just adding a label when speaking within a certain context.

LRD do you know what the exact circumstances were?

If there was only one rape workshop, and it was limited to victims who were born women, then I can see why victims who are trans would feel excluded. To me the appropriate response to that would be to add a workshop for trans victims or a second workshop open to all. If the actual response was more along the lines of 'nope, don't care, you're not women anyway' then I can see why people would object. Do you know how it actually played out?

I don't, no, so I may be wrong.

But surely ... if someone has organized something, that shouldn't mean there's an onus on them to organize something else that's not even for them?

I don't see how that is fair. In my local area, I know there are rape survivor groups for muslim women. I would find it very odd if someone said that the organizer had a duty to take on the task of organizing for other faith groups too - and she would presumably not be the best person to do it, anyway, being muslim and knowing more about that.

About 'cis' as a label ... if someone labelled me 'infidel' because I don't believe in their religion, I would not be thrilled. It's similar: I don't subscribe to this belief system, so would rather not be named from within it.

I think labels are important because in conveys information about people. It is descriptive.

If a man wants to redefine not only how he feels but how I relate to him, then he changes not just his clothing but the label he uses to signify his status....he wants to feel like a woman (although it may be debatable to what extent dependent upon how he felt in the first place) but he wants to pass as a woman. Therefore it relies upon others to share with her, her own idea about her identity. Labels are very important. To be hones it's a bit like being given a bus pass at birth and then every time I get on the bus there are either no seats or someone always says "budge up"

Dreaming do you mean that women setting up workshops or crisis centres must also offer groups for transwomen? Why?

*to be honest

I'm studying psychology. I tend to lurk on these boards as learning as I read. I would like to simply add that ina recent module it was made clear the difference between sex as in biological sex and this can be hard to measure at a chromosomal level and hormonal and as in gender ie what makes a person male or female in their behaviours, congivitve traits.

That's all, so I just don't understand why both perspectives cannot be heard. Surely transgendered individuals only benefit from the voice of other females.

To be very blunt it smacks of we want to be like you hence changing but still different... Oh I'm confused by their message really.

I don't object to the title cis for people who believe it adequately describes them. What I do object to is the assumption that the majority of people are cis; we have no reason to believe that. It requires a discussion across the whole of society about how people feel about their gender identity and what range of identities people could identify as. It doesn't make trans people less oppressed if cis people are actually a small numerical minority. White people are a numerical minority in South Africa; they still managed to run a white supremacist society.

I also don't doubt for a moment that the hostility MTF Trans gender people experience is hideous. I was assumed by strangers to be a MTf transgender person and the focus of the hostility was very different to that experienced in other situations, and the people involved were clearly benefitting in reinforcing their own identities to each other. I can't imagine how that must feel to go through all the time.

LRD: You said that organising an all-inclusive event could lead to some women feeling unable to attend, that's why I asked if you meant that conference advisers should always exclude transpeople.

My initial point about events was that the people who objected to the radfem event being for ciswomen only should have set up their own event rather than shutting down the radfem one.

And labelling an event 'ciswomen only' is easier than labelling it 'Only for women born with ovaries and vaginas', surely.

SGB - I don't see why they should always exclude transwomen, no. I would think it is possible and easy enough to run lots of separate sessions. Was anyone suggesting transwomen shouldn't organize their own sessions?

I think we're agreeing?

OK, I finally read the whole thread, as Freya admonished me to do and I will now collapse in a heap. As a result I realised that most of what I originally wanted to say was actually said early on, and much better than I could have done it, by Kritiq and WidowWadman and dreaming bohemian. Oops.

I also realised that different people on the thread seem to mean very different things when they used the term 'gender identity'. A few of you seem to think that gender identity is solely constructed by patriarchy. I see it as a much more flexible term. Yes, my gender identity is always at least partly constructed by the culture I live in, but I have some freedom to play around with it - to make gender trouble with it, as Judith Butler might say. When I say I have a gender identity, I definitely do not mean that I am happily embracing my gender role as defined by patriarchy (not that patriarchy comes up with consistent gender roles for women anyway: women are always supposed to be all sorts of contradictory things at once. Sexism is blissfully inconsistent like that).

Freya, clearly you and I don't see eye to eye on the cis question, but I like your emphasis on getting away from binaries. There are loads of different trans identities and loads of different cis identities. And I believe it's impossible to separate issues of gender and sexuality from issues of race, ethnicity, culture and class, so that complicates matters even more.

Death threats are appalling and inexcusable, as is any form of bullying. And any trans activists engaging in those practices must be unequivocally condemned. But I am not convinced that the trans community at large (to the extent that such a community exists) is systematically bullying feminists. Julie Burchill is certainly no shrinking violet. She courts controversy and is probably loving all the publicity she's getting out of this. The link that the OP gave originally alienated me so much due to its violent language that I couldn't get through it all.

LRD, you really can't imagine ways in which a trans woman might be the target of prejudice and a non-trans woman might not? Take a look at the Guardian article Kim linked to. When I taught at an American university years ago I actually took a (non-obligatory) training course called SafeZone (www.gayalliance.org/safezonet.html) in order to help make the university a friendlier place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender members of the community. A couple of trans people spoke about their experiences and it was enlightening and moving to hear.

One form of oppression doesn't trump another. We're all on the same side really. And Julie Burchill's hate speech hasn't done any of us any favours.

Marfisa, I agree that we are all on the same side and my intention is to read some of Kate Bornstein's writing on non-binary trans experiences so that I can find common ground which may lead me to understand gender identity more. At the moment I feel that the discussion and portrayal of what trans means in the media is not helping me to be more understanding of myself or anyone else.

dreaming - I've gone back and checked. I was wrong - it was 'no platformed', which I thought meant they were banned from the venue, but apparently meant people refused to advertise them. Anyway, here's an article about it:

gendertrender.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/women-up-north-feminist-conference-protested-no-platformed-for-scheduling-a-female-only-survivor-of-sex-abuse-workshop/

It sounds as if it the same issues then blew up more strongly with Conway Hall and RadFem 2012, which the venue did ban.

marfisa - I didn't realize you hadn't read the thread properly until now. I think I see why you were asking questions about cis.

I'm sure different people do mean different things by 'gender identity' - but you do get that some of us simply don't really believe we've got one, right? I keep trying to work out what that feeling and I can't separate it from my body and my experience. I know some women feel they can, but I don't think I can.

Unlike you, I do actually read things, unless I actually say I can't. I've read kim's link. I simply don't agree. It's not that I am ignorant or stupid or can't be bothered to take the time to read up on the issue, and I am getting a little bit sick of people assuming that. Especially when it's someone who hasn't bothered to read the thread until now, but feels quite secure preaching to me that I must be ignorant.

I do not see how 'cis' women have 'privilege'. A huge, huge amount of what people discuss, sounds to me disturbingly like what being a woman is about. It's shit and horrible.

I like being a woman, sounds like your having a tough time LRD. I know it isn't easy at times but I have been very very fortunate. My father today trotted in, he's 82 years old and if any man could be a feminist, it would be him. He started talking about the rape cases in Pakistan and India. Not all men are privileged and sexist.

LRD the better parallel for cis would be 'non-believer', not infidel (i.e., a non-pejorative descriptive). I personally don't find this offensive.

Flora if I were organising any kind of workshops or meetings focused on rape victims then I would want to reach as many people as possible so yes, I would include trans women, either as part of one event or within separate events. Why wouldn't I?

You also asked earlier if I thought people who did not agree my friend was a woman should still be allowed to debate and discuss things. Well, obviously. I just think their viewpoint is incredibly narrow-minded and I would not be interested in joining those discussions really.

Although I'm not keen on the term cis privilege, I do think that there is a discrimination specific to trans people (although I am not in a position to speak for trans people). As a woman, you can be attacked in many ways for how you dress or present yourself. But there is a response which I would consider transphobic rather than exclusively sexist. That is where a person sees somebody dressed as the opposite gender to that suggested by their physical characteristics, and reacts as if that person is an impostor and a threat in the way somebody would if they saw somebody impersonating a police officer, a health visitor or a teenager to get into a school for some nefarious purpose. When that happens in a situation where the supposed impostor is just minding their own business in some ordinary social situation, that is transphobic, surely? I don't think the existence of such behaviour benefits women as a group, but I also don't think it is a usual experience of most women.

mini - your father sounds lovely. My DH is another lovely one. I've certainly never suggested all men are sexist. All men are, however, privileged. The good ones fight against it - like your dad and like my DH.

dreaming - no, I deliberately went for 'infidel'. I do think 'cis' is perjorative. That's the point I am making.

'non-believer' (or 'atheist') doesn't imply that the natural and correct belief system is faith. 'Infidel' does. And so does 'cis-gendered'.

freya - I agree, absolutely, that there is prejudice against transpeople. But I think it is prejudice from the patriarchy. I think it's prejudice that is very, very closely related in to misogyny. The language that's offensive to transpeople makes this really clear, IMO - people talk as if they are disgusted by transpeople daring to be both like women and like men (in their eyes), or, worse, to have genitalia from the other sex. That sort of language is vile, and to me it suggests that the transphobia is rooted in the same misogynistic ideas about women and men that the patriarchy always puts forward.

dreaming I wasn't asking what you would do but rather whether you think other women must do that if they want to have a group that excludes transwomen. The OP was about the very real efforts (and some successes) of transactivists to prevent women setting up groups that exclude transwomen.