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.

I suppose to use another analogy (which I try to avoid doing, but am clearly failing), we could make the problem of murder go away by saying that anybody can identify their family members as being a victim of murder. If people simply stopped saying that a member of their family was or was not a murder victim based on things that happen in material reality, murder would cease to be a social problem. Because 'murder' is a social construct and being a victim of murder is not inherently meaningful or important.

xenia - isn't it sexuality, rather than gender, that makes us attracted to one or other sex, or both? I don't see what difference 'gender' makes.

I don't think I get the murder analogy, freya. I don't think it is so clear cut.

LRD, sorry if it isn't helpful. I am just trying to make the point that things happen in material reality and have a huge consequence for people whether we acknowledge them or have them as part of our identity or not.

Hey, I'm not trying to shut you up when you make that analogy! I'm just saying it doesn't quite work for me.

That's all.

But comparing murder to people being trans is a very offensive analogy.

Women have as much right to being forceful, being assertive, and wanting power money and being ambitious as men. Those values are not male.

Very much this! Neither are they masculine values, except in the eyes of some repressive/retrograde enclaves.

I have a question about constructivism & gender. I don't know how to frame it as a question, so will have to go ahead and hope dreaming and/or some other experts will be kind enough to answer.

I understand how 'femininity' is a construct, in the way that we talk about performing femininity. In my perception I see some trans women performing femininity and apparently confusing this with 'being female'. It makes me sceptical about the very concept of gender dysphoria. BUT I'm unable to say whether 'female' is a construct because I have only ever experienced myself as female (though not 'feminine'.) I cannot possibly comment on whether the core, inner-self, identity of a man or a transgender person feels ANY different from mine. It simply isn't possible! Surely the only people even remotely qualified to say whether there's a difference are trans? What does it feel like to be "a girl in a boy's body"? I have no fucking clue. When someone tells me it's a real, identifiable, inner-self core feeling, then I must believe them.

So they're saying gender isn't a construct, aren't they?

I'm not comparing murder to being trans.

GB, I think different trans people, like different kinds of all people, see gender identity in different ways. It is rather like discussions about whether or not sexual orientation is innate or developed through social experiences in childhood, or in adulthood, or if it changes at different points in a person's life. You can believe any of these things, or none of them, or think it really doesn't matter at all, and still support rights for trans people or not support them. I don't think the fact that someone is trans should be taken to mean they hold any specific opinion on the 'realness' of gender identity.

It did kind of look like it, Freya. You said murder was a social construct like being m/f/t. If everybody goes around saying they've been murdered, and saying other people who were maliciously killed were not murdered, then changing their minds, the word "murder" loses its meaning. But the fact that some people are maliciously killed doesn't alter - only the word we use for it.

So I'm not seeing how it was helpful to say the fact of "trans" is like the word "murder". iyswim [again]

Thanks for your expansion, Freya.

Basically I'm going to have to back away from this because it keeps coming down to conflicts between various people's subjective experiences of gender afaics. If there can be no consensus on the definition of the issue, no opinion on it can be held to be more authoritative than the others.

I just hope I never have to get into one of these rows in RL!

I read all the JB thread. I made one post without comment re definition of so-called cis privileges as posters had been arguing re what privilege meant (bloody awful cartoon but wanted to hear what people made of the 30 examples given).

Have not read all this thread but have clicked through the link For every one of you who silence us...

The blogger described Janet Mock as he as a powerful man presumably labelled her photo thus and claimed Julie B. was simply writing what we were all thinking...

Not all of us. No.

garlicblocks isn't that the problem? What does it mean to say a person "feels" female or male? How is a trans person in any better position to assess whether the feelings they have about their non-conforming social gender attributes makes them feel female let alone therefore be female? This does not mean the feelings are not genuine, particularly a feeling of not conforming with societal expectations of a person of male or female sex.

I have just been listening to this (while I work) it makes a great deal of sense.

She makes a very clear argument about the distinction between why we are oppressed= female biology and what is gender. She makes a clear case for Female only spaces and women's activism where the gender of both females and trans intersect in their experiences. BUT the case is made very clearly that trans women can never know & will never experience the same kinds of oppression as females. No hyperbole, no emotive bullshit and no discrimination.

I don't get the comparison to murder, still.

Hmm, need to think on recent posts when less tired. Will listen to your link, too, Mini. Have some doubts about the premise as have observed much oppression of gay men who dress up (can't think of word right now.) They do have male advantage but also suffer special disdvantage.

Flora, your point is why I find it easier to relate with Brazilian travestis, I think. They do the opposite of labelling themselves according to binary; they are a third sex, culturally - don't know whether legal ratification has now been granted, it riased international hackles so probably not.

Am vv tired but will be dreaming of eyeliner & glitter on the streets of Rio

Freya I think I get it. "Murder" is a legal / social concept distinct (unlawful killing) as opposed to death which is a biological fact or even legal homicide (self-defence, accident etc.) which is a different legal / social concept. We all agree that murder is a bad thing and we would not like it to exist. If we recharacterise all or some other deaths to murder, murder loses its distinction and therefore we can say the problem of murder has gone away. Except it hasn't.

Is that it?

Oh I missed the bit about the murder

Great points FloraFox, that really cuts to the heart of the matter (ooops that sounds murderous too ) I can't conceive of feeling like a woman, I'm just me, female, designated woman & expected (although I don't) to behave in a certain way. How can a man observe women (more to the point females) and know how we feel in relation to how he feels. Surely he would have to have experienced what we experience because that is what shapes our feelings, its all too subjective.

Being female is not a feeling.

For crying out loud.

It is a biological reality.

I can feel like a man/male all I want but I wont produce sperm.

My DH can feel like a woman/female all he wants but it will still be me going through the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth when we have children together.

We can both feel feminine or masculine, we can both change our gender identity a hundred times a day if we want. Want we cannot do is escape how society classes us and treats us on the basis of our sex (female/male) nor escape gender socialization as long as we are members of a society which is founded upon the concept of gender.

These concepts are actually very simple.

kim - I don't get this. Are you saying you think cis privilege doesn't exist?

I was referring to sense of identity as a feeling, Beach. I tried to make that clear with inner-self, core qualifiers. Is definitely part of my identity that am femalse. Cannot therefore imagine equivalent feeling/sensation/etc of being male or trans. I beleive, however, that my sense of 'female identity' has more in common with most other women's than with other gender(s). Is so subjective, vv hard to isolate & describe.

yy Beachcomber

Oh, I'm with you now kim.

I thought you were saying, because your mate would be treated as a woman, she would be treated as a woman, not a transwoman.

I am obviously far too tired for this thread. I hope she'd doing ok.