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.

Agreed, Beach. I wish I could find ideology-free ways of explaining this - the porn/backlash thing - outside of FWR. I keep slithering around on the oily traps of free choice and sexual liberation, which have been laid for the purpose.

I agree to some extent yes but I think it is more complex than you believe Beach.

There are differences of culture and place to take into account as well. Whilst I might agree that the working class male has privilege in terms of controlling women through the fear of violence and sexual violence I would also point out that working class women in many cultures are becoming economically independent of their working class men. In recently industrialised and non-industrialised countries women are working for peanuts but they have work over their male counterpart. Women are exploited for cheap labour. Its no longer simply a case of sex exploitation but that of class.

When I think of the cuts to welfare that Goergie Peorgie is making, I feel that it is driven not just by the ideology of moralising over the poor but over working class women who refuse to play happy families with their male counterpart. Women have gained tremendously through welfare provision but that is being eroded because "working class men" have not been bought off sufficiently, they have seen their importance in terms of the family, as the family breadwinner, head of household, their wages have stagnated for 30 years, they have been made economically and socially defunct. No wonder we have problems with everyday acts of sexism and violence.

A contradiction exists because the bourgeois family (the only church/state patriarchy endorsed family form with worthy mother) is seen as the moral standard whilst capitalism has empowered the very women they hate the most "the whore" to go it alone, thus undermining the nuclear family. So in one sense you have the state making it harder for women to go it alone but you have the power of the capitalist class eroding the family through stagnating wages.

Anyway, that isn't anything to do with Trans.

Back to that, I feel that a lot of left wing female writers like Laurie Penny have adopted the hegemony of liberal thinking.

"When an ideology gains control of the institutions that shape opinion it is said to have gained hegemony. At this point, something happens to public discourse. As the tenets of the ideology are considered objective and not subjective, all contenders must embrace them to keep their corner of the ring. The result is the assimilation of all competition into the dominant ideology and their reduction to a shadow of it. There are thus no options beyond minor variations in the same type of thought. In Western democracies, this is the current condition in regards to Liberalism"

This is probably why radical feminism stands out as being out of sync, it isn't only challenging ideas within liberal thinking, it actually challenges liberal thinking itself.

Free choice is a flawed concept - it ignores socialization and the context of a gendered power dynamic of submission and dominance.

Sexual liberation - same thing, it ignores socialization and the context of a gendered power dynamic of submission and dominance.

I agree with you about liberalism Mini. Will comment more when have a moment.

'And yes, it has the additional advantage of keeping the masses quiet - if men are jacking off to images of women being abused and thumping their wives, they aren't protesting against class, and they are keeping the women in line.'

Is that what you think? That working class men are too busy masturbating and beating their wives to complain about class inequality.

Well that's one way of calling them a bunch of wankers I suppose.
And I thought religion was the opiate of the masses.

Do you know many working class men?

Well, I guess I think of the masses as being pretty much everybody who isn't part of an 'elite' - all the people who aren't at the top of the pyramid. So that wouldn't just be working class, if we are going to talk in terms of class. Which is why I said 'men' and not 'working class men' in my post.

It probably wasn't very clear as I was replying to Mini who had referred to working class men.

What I was trying to say is that the privilege that men are afforded over women has a double advantage - it keeps everybody in their place.

I hope that is clearer.

(And my DH and his family are all members of the French Communist Party - they are proletariat through and through.)

No, Pornography is the new Opiate.

Working class, is anyone who sells their labour.

OK, Mini - we did mean the same thing then. Should have realised that you of all people would use a Marxist definition!

Still want to talk about Liberals but it is late here in France. Maybe tomorrow.

That is a difficult question and I would imagine that the answer various from child to child.

As long as we have the constraints of gender and sex discrimination, I suspect we don't have a very good way to help such children, nor adults.

I have read that many such children go on to be homosexual - in which case I would have a wait and see attitude and talk to the child about gender, gender roles, homosexuality, basically lots of the things we have talked about on this thread. Present the child with options rather than put them in a box.

I have also read that children who want to change their genitals, especially if they talk about cutting them off, etc should be very carefully examined as they may be victims of sexual abuse and or exposure to sexual violence or imagery.

I disagree with labelling anyone under 18 as trans as there is evidence that the labelling then goes on to become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

I'd agree with that. If we encourage other children to be tolerant and accepting, maybe things will be easier for children who want to be boys. It would help as well if children's clothes, toys, furniture etc weren't so dominated by pink and blue. I'm glad Hamley's has gotten rid of its Boys' Toys and Girls' Toys labels. I'm so disappointed with Lego's newish girls' range - utter utter crap.

God,this is good

You're welcome WhentheRed.

Actually, now I think about it, I think 18 is too young. I think I said that just because at that age a child officially becomes an adult - but I think in terms of sexuality, identity and thinking ahead to one's future it is still too young - perhaps 21 would be better. Certainly I think the person needs to be given the time to figure out if they are simply homosexual and/or not very gender conforming and I think you need to be an adult to be able to do that.

The issue of children is another area where unfortunately if one takes transgender theory to its logical conclusion, one finds oneself defending the indefensible.

Much of the argument for treating children with puberty blockers and then cross gender hormones is because it makes it easier for them to 'pass' when they are older and it means the surgery is easier because there is less work to do. That seems utterly unethical to me (additionally it is an argument made for MTFs as it helps them to pass better but can actually make it harder for FTMs to pass as the blockers stunt growth and make their already not very 'masculine' bodies even smaller). I find a lot of trans theory/politics/arguments/activism to be very male-centric and often misogynistic.

Oh and I think children are being treated like guinea pigs because we don't know what the long-term outcomes are for them. I find this experimenting on young humans horrifying and very very patriarchal. And homophobic and misogynistic.

I agree with the guinea pig point as well - with all the concern about cancer from the pill or HRT, the idea of giving hormone treatment to children or messing about with their hormones in any way is horrifying.

Also, I find children to be quite matter of fact about other kids not conforming with gender so long as the adults are not making a fuss about it.

Why aren't there any girls who become trans-boys?

I have read about quite a few. I also know quite a lot of butch lesbians who say that they would quite likely be identified as having GID were they to be growing up now.

God, Red, what a sad story. I found the story of Bobby, upthread, distressing as well. So many adults are invested in shoving directing a child one way or another ... it often does as much harm as good, but when it's a question of the child's whole identity ... :(

Is this a question of gender roles and it's harder for boys to be "feminine"? Or is it much much deeper?

I know quite a lot of butch lesbians who say that they would quite likely be identified as having GID were they to be growing up now.

We're indulgent of "tomboy" girls, and quite proud if we were tomboys. You don't hear many parents bragging of their "cissy" son's exploits, or men fondly reminiscing about their much-loved Ballerina Sindy.

This comes back to the masculine default, doesn't it? It's somewhat understandable if a girl wants to be like a boy - a fine ambition! - but a boy wishing to be a girl must have something wrong with him. If he really won't put that doll down and play rugby instead, we'd better turn him into an actual girl. Better to be a woman than a cissy.

Finding research is tricky. Most medical research is done because some body - a pharmaceutical company most likely - wants to establish something. There isn't any large interest group who wants to fund research about transgender people, so there's not a lot of research.

However the research that has been done is a bit depressing in its findings. The conclusion of a paper I tracked down: Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden found that:

This study found substantially higher rates of overall mortality, death from cardiovascular disease and suicide, suicide attempts, and psychiatric hospitalisations in sex-reassigned transsexual individuals compared to a healthy control population. This highlights that post surgical transsexuals are a risk group that need long-term psychiatric and somatic follow-up. Even though surgery and hormonal therapy alleviates gender dysphoria, it is apparently not sufficient to remedy the high rates of morbidity and mortality found among transsexual persons. Improved care for the transsexual group after the sex reassignment should therefore be considered.

The research included all 324 sex-reassigned persons (191 male-to-females, 133 female-to-males) in Sweden, 1973?2003.

The bit that surprised and saddened me was that, far from what I had happily imagined, sex-reassignment did not solve the individual's problems. Far from that, as group they went on being just as confused and unhappy post-reassignment, and the crime rate (or the conviction rate, anyway) rose across the group, particularly among FTM people.

It does make me wonder, what with the confusion between woman=adult female and woman=anyone who says they are a woman, (well, I still find it confusing) whether transexuality may in some cases be a form of dysmorphia, where people are so unhappy about themselves they dream of a better life in another body, and those dreams can be unrealistic. It would partially explain the otherwise bizarre situation in which transwomen who essentially look like very large men dressed as women complain that lesbians/men don't fancy them, as though being desirable was some kind of right or entitlement.

Being sexually attractive is a bit of a lottery, and your success rather depends on who you want to attract. You can do a lot to improve your attractiveness, but anyone who starts out male and built like a rugby prop forward is unlikely to become a wildly attractive woman. And any woman can tell them that men generally prefer young to middle aged women, which a lot of MTF transexuals become. I've even seen blogs where women who possess a penis complain that lesbians aren't interested in them. I feel immensely sorry for anyone in this horrible position, but I feel their problems are distinct to them, rather than to women, and one of those problems is an unrealistic view of themselves.

This article in The Advocate is a complaint from a parent that her daughter's 6 year old classmates question that she's her daughter's biological mother. Which she isn't. She's not female, but she feels that 6 year olds unconvinced by her version of reality are transphobic. It's beyond entitlement.

Obviously there's an overlap, but some of the big issues that face women (abortion, contraception, maternity rights) are largely irrelevant to transexuals, whose womanhood sometimes seems more defined by the superficial attributes of femininity in our society. A friend who's husband reassigned complained that for the first few years all he ever talked about was his nails.

BTW, Beachcomber, you write that porn (which is hate speech against women), lapdancing, etc is the backlash. It is keeping us women in our place with sexualised violence - we have got too uppity you see.

I totally agree with you about lapdancing, but I passionately believe that porn can be recaptured both by men and women for joyful purposes. A while ago I spent a lot of time writing woman-centred erotica online (under another name). I got a lot of feedback, all hugely positive. Two of the most striking emails were one from a woman who wanted to take one story out of the "porn" category and distribute it to a women's group she belonged to who would normally not think of looking at porn, and another from a man who said he felt terribly guilty about his use of porn, but that one story I'd written about married love was, as he saw it, Christian erotica...

Don't get me started on the difference between porn and erotica. Seems to me wholly subjective. I always say I wrote porn, rather than risk sounding pretentious. But all my stuff was woman-centred.

You continue: In addition, this backlash has been sold to us (and internalized by many women) as 'liberation'. Absolutely. I went to a party on Saturday night where a friend of mine got pretty drunk and was hysterically funny holding forth to a group of rather dazed young men about the oppression of male demands for pubic depilation. "It's either bush or rash" was her starting position, and she went on to describe her own appearance the last time she'd shaved her bush as "a badly plucked turkey with rabies and impetigo."

Writehand wrote - "Obviously there's an overlap, but some of the big issues that face women (abortion, contraception, maternity rights) are largely irrelevant to transexuals"

I think issues such as abortion and contraception will probably be relevant to a transman who chooses to keep his potential for pregnancy and childbirth.

I think issues such as abortion and contraception will probably be relevant to a transman who chooses to keep his potential for pregnancy and childbirth.

I suppose that might be so, Vesuvia, but isn't a transman who had chosen "to keep his potential for pregnancy and childbirth" a transvestite rather than a transexual? If your body is still the one you were born with, surely it's just the clothes that have changed? What's the distinction?

Forgive my confusion, As reading this thread and following a whole host of blogs and links brought up by it has taught me, I am a real innocent on this topic. I can't see how someone with a fully functioning female body can be referred to as a transman.