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 a 'sole shareholder', xenia?

I'm not even going to ask what you think 'shibboleth' means.

I don't agree with you that it's best to elevate women just so far, and no further. I don't agree that it's a good thing for ignorant, half-educated women to feel happy because they're making other women feel worse.

I think shibboleth gets misused a LOT

It does, doesn't it?

I blame President Bartlett, myself.

It does make things rather hard to follow

I think you get my point. Women do not have to be collaborative and sharing. They have just as much right as men to succeed. it is not about treading down on other women and men in the process as most of us are not communists who want everyone on the same pay.

I don't think I said elevate women so far and no further. I would be more than happy to turn the statistic on its head that presently men own 99% of the world's wealth. If women could own 99% for say 5000 years after that we could reduce that to 50% and give men a chance again. I think they would be more than happy to abandon their major share of cleaning up and washing and dusting as part of the bargain.

I never said women did have to be collaborative and sharing.

What I wondered was, why do we assume that 'success' is the same thing as not being collaborative.

You've been quite clear in the past that you're happy to be rude about SAHMs and, when pressed, have admitted you've no kind of feminist answer as to who would look after children if everyone worked 24/7. This kind of anti-feminism obviously suits you, but you can't expect everyone else to agree with it.

I know it's a whole other thread (or several) but I often think this idea - that women collaborate more than men - comes from historically long-term situations where women go unheard, so joining forces offers more chance of making a louder noise.

In most first-world situations nowadays, I think it's tosh. Men collaborate as much as women (if not, what's the patriarchy all about, heh). Women are as 'alpha' as men.

The fact that feminism exists is sufficient evidence of a continued need for women to collaborate in the interests of parity with men, but I don't see a hell of a lot of evidence that we as a class are more sharing than men or less limelight-seeking.

Freya I agree about the genuine choice and it's a real worry when people start assigning categories to children (which is happening in the US). Even worse when some people suggest starting hormone treatment for children. Like others, I wonder about the causes of transsexualism but there is the concern about being offensive in discussing it, particularly with a person who is affected. I believe that for most people, their feelings are genuine and not a choice (although there are always some a-holes and unfortunately their behaviour often drives the discussion and the rules - Colleen Francis for example). But is it the same as sexuality or is it more like phantom limb painÉ The pain is real but the limb is not. I had a very brief experience of that when I was recoving from an operation and was thoroughly shocked to see my legs were not where I feltthem to be. It was very jarring but there was an external truth to where my legs actually were. I can imagine that living with that sensation every day would be incredibly difficult. Other than intersex, there is an external truth about sex which is binary and which is different than gender which is not binary. There are feminine men and masculine women and lots who are somewhere along the line. There are feminine men and masculine women who are heterosexual and some who are gay or lesbian. It would be great if everyone (society and ourselves) could be happy with who we are without insisting people match their sex with cultural ideas about gender or sexuality. But kim your individual life and the individual lives of others are not my political platform and if you want to have surgery and hormone treatment, that`s your choice to make. Most of us just want to get on with life and often that means conforming. I would absolutely not support any treatment intervention with children and I would go a little further to say that I would not support labelling children as transsexual.

I think as long as hormone treatments and surgery are being offered to trans people, there is an ethical responsibility on medics to try to figure out what exactly they think they are treating. There has been some work done in this area and there seem to be distinctions between MTF trans who were and continue to be attracted to women and MTF trans who were and continued to be attracted to men.

Like FloraFox I am against a diagnosis of GID for children (and I find it concerning that diagnosis and treatment of children is becoming more common). I read somewhere that the majority of children who have a diagnosis of GID who do not follow any treatment go on to be homosexual, and that the majority of GID diagnosed children who do have treatment go on to transition - which makes the diagnosis = treatment, a self-fulfilling prophesy. I think we are in scary eugenics type territory when it comes to children. I find the dependence on medicine and the sterilization aspects positively sinister.

I agree that transgender people are in a difficult situation with regards to post/pre op, and I don't think the pomo/queer theory stuff helps with that. Nor does patriarchal society.

The idea that a person can identify as female in a male body with male hormones and that is enough for them to be officially considered as female, strikes me as misogynistic.

The idea that a male person can identity as female and be officially considered female because they have had surgery to construct body parts that imitate a male idea of female body parts, strikes me as misogynistic.

I think anyone prepared to go through GRS must be very brave and obviously in deep distress to put themselves through that.

Forgot to say, I am discomforted by parallels drawn with homosexuality as there is no medical intervention/dependence in homosexuality.

Homosexuality has been (and continues to be) controversial because it challenges patriarchal norms.

'I think as long as hormone treatments and surgery are being offered to trans people, there is an ethical responsibility on medics to try to figure out what exactly they think they are treating.'

Absolutely! I hope everyone believes this (I think most do?).

I agree with your points re. homosexuality.

I don't at all like the idea of diagnosing children with 'gender identity disorder'. To me, that sounds like diagnosing children who don't fit the sexuality categories as 'effeminate' or 'butch' and thinking that means there is something wrong with them that must be changed. I'm not sure that parallel is valid, of course, but it worries me.

Firstly sorry for the essay
I have been giving this a lot of thought which is why I haven?t posted so much today.

Woman is a socially defined construct and that women are therefore expected to perform femininity in looks and behaviour. (few actually achieve this completely or even wish to, thankfully) As women we often concentrate on this and in doing so overlook something which I think is fundamental to understanding. I believe that the subjugation of women is rooted in the historical process of production and reproduction. men were driven in two interconnected ways, to acquire the means of subsistence to reproduce daily life and to reproduce themselves.

The subjugation of women is not the purpose of men or the intention but women are victims in men?s competition between themselves. Production facilitates subsistence, subsistence becomes private property, private property becomes wealth, wealth becomes social power, this creates and recreates the conditions for.....production of daily life, reproduction of life.

If anything men/males are under more pressure to perform masculinity and adhere to strict gender characteristics than women. Men are under pressure to behave in ways that harm us and them and deny them their humanity too, especially in how they have come to be socialised to think masculinity can only be proven by creating and recreating power over others especially over "their" women and working class women. Patriarchy can?t abide anything other than a binary gender divide. Not because they want to make females feminine but because if we have no feminine we can?t conceive of what is masculine and masculine is defined and shaped by power relations between men.

There are more men transitioning and suffering from gender dysmorphia than women, perhaps they are alienated from their nature by having to conform to a strict gender role.

Men are constantly divided, they are deeply contradictory, in trying to escape mother and the female world they latch onto what is often nothing more than an abstract idea of what masculinity is. The most obvious way they can achieve status with their peers is to adopt the very narrow gender identity. For this reason I don?t think trans people are ?made? they are a product of social processes.

Transgender people face discrimination from both men and women. If they have surgery and they pass, they are accepted as being women at least legally, this means by the patriarchy. If they choose not to have surgery they become outcasts. BY not having surgery they themselves have stepped out of the binary position and stand in stark contrast to the rest of us. WE ARE subjugated because of biology and yet it is to biology in our final attempt we turn, to make the case of upholding a binary position???? and the right to discriminate.

Unless we are prepared change the base structure of class society and economic relations between men I don't think we have the right to deny Trans people our support. Only once you change the relationship btw production and reproduction of life and daily life can you then start to dismantle sex class oppression, out of that will come the end of binary gender roles.

There was a case recently where a child, Bobby Montoya, wanted to join the Girl Scouts and was treated inappropriately. By the statements made by his family, Bobby was not a transgender child. His mother referred to him as a boy and used male pronouns. He was a boy who liked girls' clothes, toys and activities. He was a gender nonconforming boy, who while perhaps trans* at the time the incident happened was not transgender. The Internet was quickly full of people referring to him as a transgender girl, and using female pronouns regardless of how Bobby and his family were discussing his situation. It concerns me that lots of people feel they can act as amateur psychologists and decide a child or adult they don't know is transgender (with no diagnosis) and so create pressure for everyone to be entirely gender conforming or transgender within a strict binary definition. You must either be entirely masculine or female acting and anyone in between will be ignored or pushed into the binary.

Xenia, can you not say women need to be like "normal human beings". What does that actually mean? If women are not normal human beings does that mean only men can be normal? Why are you on FWR?

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)

Db I left school when I was 16, no real formal education since then and tbh, I feel out of place when people start discussing theory, like I don't belong and won't be wanted if I had something to add to a conversation (or maybe it would really be adding by adding iyswim). Not to say things shouldn't be discussed on a higher level just that you will lose some people by doing it.

kim not to call you out (and feel free to ignore me if you think I am being rude) but I am a bit clueless really, is cis sexual a term often used by men who were born as women or is it generally used by all people who identify as transgender for those who don't? Also would you say it tends to be more women who were born as men who are the most vocal, because from the outside it does seem a bit that way but it could be because there are so many fewer men born as women?

MiniTheMinx I agree with you that control of production/capital and 'manpower' (hah!) is patriarchal and interconnected with both reproduction rights and the development of male supremacist power structures.

Current society is built on the backs of women, on the exploitation (reproductive and financial) of women's work.

I disagree that men/males are under more pressure to perform masculinity and adhere to strict gender characteristics than women - although I think that transgenderism is a consequence of masculinity.

Kim, what do you think of the whole 'passing' thing?

It seems to me to be sexist and patriarchal. The trans people who are best presented in the media tend to be MTF who 'pass successfully' and are considered heterosexual. A phenomenon which I think reinforces misogynistic, homophobic gender conformity.

Thanks Kim, for answering me. I googled both of those names, as I hadn't hear of them, is there a reason you don't use cis, or is do you not just use it?

I disagree that men/males are under more pressure to perform masculinity and adhere to strict gender characteristics than women

Really? i can go out in a pair of dh's shoes and jeans and one of his tops and would never get a sideways glance.... if he wandered out in a pair of heels and a dress, people would notice.

Really? i can go out in a pair of dh's shoes and jeans and one of his tops and would never get a sideways glance.... if he wandered out in a pair of heels and a dress, people would notice.

Yes, because he would be acting feminine and that is a shameful thing to do.

The 'markers' for femininity are very distinctive.

I think men are under a lot of pressure, esp now with porn culture, how to get young men to resist? you see young boys all looking for peer approval it is nearly always with the express purpose of reshuffling their place in the pecking order. Girls usually want approval but this seems rooted not in competition but in acceptance to gain support. So it starts in childhood (what to do????) I also think that even Levi Strauses theory of Gift giving can be rooted in the material, the striving for subsistence. If women were gifted, (slavery???) The gifted women must have sought protection with the other women, thus building two distinct cultures, masculinity and femininity. Grounding this historically, men took over public life which means that they competed with other men for power and resources.

Even now religion and certain male bastians have a hierarchy whereas women's spaces and the way we organise is usually with no leadership at all. Anyway as women we have always sought protection and collaboration with other women, I think this is where this reluctance to include Transwomen seems strange to me. Thrown out and cast out of male/masculine centric sphere, we then leave them out on the doorstep.

The other thing that worries me, having read some of Jeffery's work and listening to her, I think this is born out of something else. Struggling to put my finger on it and don't want to say anything offensive or clumsey, so shall think on it

So essentially you agree but you are arguing that it isn't performing masculinity that men must achieve just not performing femininity? Semantics? If it is seen as either/or.

beach, he wouldn't be acting in a masculine way, it needs reframing