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.

Interesting garlic. I think the problem is that trans people are in a bind.

People are aghast at people not having hormones and surgery and claiming to be a different gender to the one assigned to them, hence there are lots of comments about men in dresses and penises in female spaces.

There has also been a lot of criticism (particularly from trans-critical folks) at the UK being too lenient for allowing people to officially change gender without having srs.

But people also object to srs and surgery.

Then there is the issue of people needing srs and surgery to be able to achieve any chance of passing within society and not passing carries many negative aspects from the threat of physical violence, verbal abuse to unemployment.

GAG, it is not generally considered that people know what their sexual orientation is from an early age. Some people do and some people don't. Some people keep one sexual orientation all their lives and some people find that who they desire changes as they get older.

Trans people are not people who feel wrong in their bodies. That applies to some people and not others, whether they are trans or not. Some people know very early that they are trans and some do not. Some people have one gender identity over their lives and some change their identity numerous times. Most children diagnosed with GID do not grow up to be transgender.

I'm not sure what parallel you are trying to draw between sexual orientation and gender when you are attempting to stereotype both.

If someone isn't going to have surgery/take hormones/whatever, and they just decide to dress differently and act differently, why does it matter? Isn't that what feminists have been saying we all ought to be able to do for decades?

I take your point about being in a bind, Goth, but do you think that concerns about someone who presents physically as a man, complete with male genitalia, being in a female space are per se unjustified, or illegitimate?

I don't know. It seems far too self-deprecating to say what you're espousing isn't theory, or isn't part of an intellectual movement (though I am perhaps overly attuned to women downgrading their intellectual achievements, being an academic).

The only reason I care is that I think it's important for women to be doing theory, to be intellectuals. I mean, even now, your average person, if they think of a theorist or intellectual, they think of a white man. That needs to change. I think the more we insist that feminist schools of thought are theories, that feminist activists are engaging in an intellectual movement by virtue of the reasoning processes they constantly engage in, the more we can broaden the idea of what theory and intellectualism is.

There's no reason why a set of principles derived from lived experiences can't be a theory.

Anyway, feel free to ignore, it's just one of my bugbears. I see it all the time, women coming up with these brilliant arguments and theories but downplaying them as, it's just an idea, it's just my perspective.

What upsets me most is the acceptance that physical intervention is a proper response to social pressure.

Doesn't matter whether you're a young woman getting bigger boobs, one of my friends getting a chin lift, a man having pec implants or a trans having reassignment. I think it's horrible: not on an individual level, but in the critical mass that says society's expectations of appearance are worth so much we must risk our lives for them.

I am aware of prioritisation issues regarding people with severe disfigurements and so on. But I'm repulsed by the culture which labels a small bust, saggy chin or sexually ambiguous features "disfigured".

Goth I agree, I don't really know what people expect trans people to do. Any option they choose is wrong for some reason or another.

DB - that is an excellent point, and you've put your finger on something I'm really uncomfortable with too. I really disliked Burchill doing her whole anti-academic thing. I don't like the way Mary Beard is coming in for flack on the same subject. And I don't see why it seems to be assumed that if Julie Bindel is a published writer, she's somehow no longer equipped to write about women who're not (I don't just mean SGB's post, btw, as I'm not clear if that's what you were saying, but quite a lot of other stuff I've seen).

On the other hand, I think there's an issue with assuming something must be valid and intellectual because that is how the men do it.

For example, I know that lots of women writers collaborate. And you could say, why don't they have the confidence to be single authors, like men? Or, you could say, wait a minute, why do we have this odd system where 'genius' is assumed to be lonely and masculine and better than collaboration?

I wonder if the same is true with theory. Some theorizing seems to me to be simply a way to interpose an excluding structure between yourself and anyone who wants to debate with you (and I don't mean 'you', obviously, but in general).

Btw, sorry if I've become totally incoherent, my thesis is driving me nuts.

a digression but I thought you may be interested in a different thread about online abuse of women

Sorry, that came across wrong.

I do know why it matters.

I wish it didn't, is all.

I'm sorry, I know this is simplistic, but we've been talking for so long. I just don't get it. The patriarchy is shit. Life would be much better if we could all dress and act how we liked. To me, this 'gender identity' business perpetuates the idea that you need to identify with a gender, but I can see that for others, it's something that has a lot of meaning.

So, I am just going to say: come the revolution, I have faith we will all be fine. And we will be looking back on the bad old days and blaming what needs to be blamed, which is the patriarchy. Not each other.

Oh gosh, sympathies on the thesis!!

That's really interesting actually, I've never thought of theory as a potential excluding structure. I think certainly bad theory serves this purpose! I think the better theories are actually trying to do the opposite, they try to somehow simplify and explain really complex phenomena so that more people can analyse them, more easily.

I work in a field that unfortunately does have a lot of bad theory, and is male-dominated, so I certainly don't see something as intellectual just because that's what the men are doing. And by no means do I want to suggest that every woman has to start loving theory or anything like that.

But it's important to me that my field become less male-centric. I don't know how that can happen unless more women have the confidence to say, hey I have this amazing new theory. (Not that I'm putting blame on the women but the men will never change unless we really push for it.)

The collaboration bit is interesting (same thing in my field). I wonder how much is lack of confidence and how much is willingness to share credit (which is also a socialised thing).

Oh, I'm fine, just brain block. I started a thread in Chat to help me think it through. This thread is useful too.

I do think theory can be quite excluding, even if it's just at the level that some people won't know the jargon. I'm really interested in how people think and that sort of thing, though.

It's not that I think theory is inherently useless, or anything, I'm just fairly conscious of how it sometimes comes across. There are problems on both sides, IMO, because there is also this very English thing of being suspicious of anyone who declares a coherent approach that isn't a compromise (I think this suspicion is rooted in the C of E ). I think it's partly why people are suspicious of rad fems - lots of people will argue 'but why don't you compromise'. And of course, you can't usually compromise a theory, you have to modify it, and those are fundamentally different activities.

I think the collaboration thing is, to a large extent, men being told that to be a genius you have to have ideas on your own and you have to obfuscate your sources.

I don't think people should compromise on their different approaches; I think they should learn to coexist while still believing fully in what they believe. It would be more like Muslims, Catholics and atheists than the CofE I hope.

Oh, sorry, my C of E comment was very flippant, excuse me.

I think we should coexist too.

But I would like to see it being like the way some people describe the god debate - not the polemical 'OMG, it is made up, you can't prove it' and not 'you're all wrong', but just an acknowledgment that, at the very least, we all trying to find some kind of meaning and we are all in earnest.

GothAnneGeddes wrote - "do you think trans people can choose to not be trans?"

I believe that trans people cannot choose to be trans or not trans.

I believe there is an element of choice in how a trans person deals with or reacts to being trans, in terms of their psychology, anatomy and social interaction.

Some trans change their gender role but not their body.
Some trans change their body but not their gender role.
Some trans change their gender role and their body.
Some trans people change neither their gender role nor their body, and suppress/deny it.

So there is a whole range of choice being exercised, otherwise every trans person would have identical life experience, which is not the case.

How free the choice of how to deal with being trans really is, in a gender/sex binary society enforced by patriarchy, is worth examining.

'So there is a whole range of choice being exercised, otherwise every trans person would have identical life experience, which is not the case.'

Well, or what we call 'trans' is a spectrum experience?

Again, though, I would quibble at the suggestion women have to be collaborative and that it's male to want power, glory and single success. I don't regard a lot of values which a lot of feminists hate as male values. A lot of them are my values, people values and it should not be wrong or male if women have and want them too. In fact it can do ambitious power hungry clever successful women harm to suggest how they are is an aberration like being a woman born with a penis in a sense.

One answer might be to ensure women ditch the touch feely I love you all pathetic stuff and be like a normal, human being who may well want all the power and glory.

dreamingbohemian, I disagree on the intellectual thing with regards to radical feminism - and it isn't self-deprecating. (I do agree that we need more women in positions of authority/prestige be they academic positions or otherwise.)

There are some excellent thinkers in radical feminism and there are highly intellectual women, but the movement remains one that is primarily grass roots and political - it is a revolutionary movement. The tenets of radical feminism could be explained to a child in simple language in about 5 minutes and this is how it should be because it is a folk movement; one that should be accessible to all women no matter what their educational opportunities have been.

Anyway this is a slight tangent, but it is also a bugbear of mine!

Trans is a spectrum experience in terms of different trans people having different feelings and identities. But wherever somebody is on that spectrum, they could still make a range of different choices about what is best for them. The job of society should be to make sure people have a genuine choice and are not being pushed in any particular direction that aren't in the person's best interests.

'Again, though, I would quibble at the suggestion women have to be collaborative and that it's male to want power, glory and single success.'

Yes, xenia, so do I. Not too surprisingly, since that's not what I said.

Women don't 'have' to be collaborative, but it is the case that genius in our society is often constructed as both male and individualistic. I don't think this need have anything to do with power or with success as a single person. There is a huge difference between querying the idea that genius need be solitary, and accepting the idea that it's good if people can be happy when single.

beach - YY, don't think anyone could say radical feminism is self deprecating! I think that is why it is often knocked.

But, I wasn't sure that was what DB meant?

Thanks for the link NormaStanleyFletcher. I'll read properly later.

I am just guarding against the tendency which I see all the time on mumsnet to glorify dull boring caring tasks - the shiboleth that tedious domestic work should be elevated to a plane of the nirvana we all seek and then all would be happy. I think that's a sexist plot to keep women in kitchens doing dull stuff, this idea that hearth and home is some wonderful choice for women.

Money is our currency. If women make inventions in teams they will get rich although not as rich as if they have the sense to structure things so that they are the sole shareholder etc. Perhaps we need to educate girls to abandon collaboration in some senses.