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.

Writehand, I was very interested - and saddened, and shocked - by what you wrote at 15:18. From the pov, it must be said, of one who's suffered body dysmorphia but not gender dysphoria: it seems likely that a high number of transsexuals sought answers to psychological problems through surgery. I'm kind of reluctant to say that, since I know transgender people have to fight against presumptions of psychiatric illness, but the fact of continuing emotional/behavioural issues after surgery would seem to support it.

It's also very like the condundrums associated with cosmetic surgery - will the patient's altered looks allow her to feel good about herself, or does she need to fix her self-image before changing her reflection?

I agree with your opinion that porn can be re-invented in non-abusive ways, but feel this is a very multi-dimensional area which isn't going to get any funding in the foreseeable future. Which is a shame.

Yes, garlicblocks, I was a bit upset too. I'd always assumed that once people got to change their sex the way they'd always wanted then they'd be happier. Otherwise what's the point? To go through all that and end up still very unhappy seems awful.

With cosmetic surgery, it depends on whether the patient has a realistic idea of what they want changed, doesn't it? If people have body dysmorphia they aren't going to be happy whatever is done. They'll just move on to the next fixation. It's always the next operation that's going to solve it all.

Could you look it up, Kim? It would be cheering to see a different conclusion.

Writehand - that article is interesting. I'd have to meet the author to be sure, but from her picture, she certainly looks as female as some female people I know. But surely, it really won't help that she has given her dd a male name - unless Dylan is unisex in America?

Just to say, Julie Bindel and Jane Fae are on Radio 3 now discussing this.

Writehand Ooh, another writer of erotica! Who do you write for?

(sorry for hijack, everyone).

Article from: Archives of Sexual Behavior | August 1, 2003 | Lawrence, Anne A:

"This study examined factors associated with satisfaction or regret following sex reassignment surgery (SRS) in 232 male-to-female transsexuals operated on between 1994 and 2000 by one surgeon using a consistent technique. Participants, all of whom were at least 1-year postoperative, completed a written questionnaire concerning their experiences and attitudes. Participants reported overwhelmingly that they were happy with their SRS results and that SRS had greatly improved the quality of their lives. None reported outright regret and only a few expressed even occasional regret. Dissatisfaction was most strongly associated with unsatisfactory physical and functional results of surgery."
Not very long term but it's the best I could find.

Interestingly, Dr Anne Lawrence practises in the area of gender identity and sexuality concerns. She has also written about autogynopehelia (sexual arousal to the thought or image of having a woman's body or otherwise resembling a woman) in MtF non-homosexuals (ie who desire women). I don't want to summarise in case of getting it not quite correct but here she considers that some men who desire GRS have a mental disorder:

www.annelawrence.com/desire_for_sr_a_mental_disorder.html

Even more interesting for this thread, she wrote a book called "Men Trapped in Men's Bodies". The writer of the foreward (Dr Ray Blanchard) notes

"The contemporary dogma in the transgender and allied health communities was that male-to-female transsexualism is caused by a feminine gender identity?a proposition that is obviously and utterly circular without some auxiliary hypothesis such as neuroanatomic intersexuality."

He notes that when Dr Lawrence first began writing about this she received hate male. He goes on that:

^"Worse consequences than hate mail awaited J. Michael Bailey, who published a book dealing in large part with autogynephilia in 2003. This book, The Man Who Would Be Queen , so enraged some male-to-female transsexuals that a small group of them made a coordinated and sustained effort to get Dr. Bailey fired from his university faculty and ruined professionally. The events of this extraordinary campaign have been documented in a long and meticulously documented essay by medical
historian and bioethicist Alice Domurat Dreger.^

"In light of this history, it is remarkable that Dr. Lawrence has written a book that describes autogynephilic transsexuals in a way that differs in important regards from the way many in this group wish to see themselves or wish to be seen by others. Her motives for completing this project are twofold. First, she is convinced that psychologists, psychiatrists, and other helping professionals can provide better care to autogynephilic gender dysphoric men if they understand the nature and significance of autogynephilia. Second, she believes that there exist many isolated and confused autogynephiles who would be comforted and reassured by the knowledge that there are others in the world like them and that, in the long term, autogynephilic transsexuals would lead mentally healthier lives if they had a self-understanding based on objective reality."

www.annelawrence.com/shame_&_narcissistic_rage.pdf

"I propose that nonhomosexual (i.e., presumably autogynephilic) MtF transsexuals are probably at increased risk for the development of narcissistic disorders?significant disorders in the sense of self?as a consequence of the inevitable difficulties they face in having their cross-gender feelings and identities affirmed by others, both before and after gender transition. As a result, many autogynephilic transsexuals are likely to be particularly vulnerable to feelings of shame and may be predisposed to exhibit narcissistic rage in response to perceived insult or injury."

Blimey, she's brave.

She is indeed,

Started reading Shame and Narcissistic Rage in Autogynephilic Transsexualism. Very interesting. Thank you FloraFox.

Dr Anne Lawrence has a lot of very interesting things to say on the subject (as do Blanchard and Bailey). www.annelawrence.com/

She is a transwoman and I think she is still working in the area of gender therapy.

This is finally going to bring me back to what I want to say about liberals when I find a moment.

The ideas that Anne Lawrence puts forward are new to me, and a bit disturbing, but what she writes ties in with rather a lot of the material I've become aware of since joining this debate. The complaints made by the brave woman who made the video fit with this, as does the sense of entitlement that comes over with, for example, that outrageous "cotton ceiling" business.

I've only watched the first five minutes of that, Writehand. She's shown a bubble diagram of women's issues, with one side applying to biological women, the other to trans women and the overlap to both. As she presents it, all three bubbles are fairly equal.

The fact that trans women activists seem unwilling to recognise this is where I completely fail to understand their anger. It's extremely tempting to blame it on residual male entitlement - we're all well used to men telling us what our issues are! - but I cannot know whether this is the case. It could be all mixed up with narcissistic rage/disappointment/shame as far as I know.

How do our trans MNers see this?

Thank you, Kim :) I know more about narcissistic rage than trans issues! It's a consuming, irrational (to onlookers) fury that the world does not adore the rager as much as s/he believes it should. Best described as a full-on toddler tantrum, when the toddler has been told they can't ... drive the car, eat a pound of chocolate before dinner, ride the cat. You know.

It is absolutely genuine, and is a symptom of a severely disordered view of the self in relation to the world. Such disorder is developmentally normal in toddlers; abnormal in adults. You posted about some trans women being outraged that everybody doesn't fancy them. That fits perfectly.

I think narcissistic rage describes pretty well a lot of the actions we see from the the people we have been referring to as transactivists.

And this is where I think it is interesting to look at satisfaction with life after GRS/transitioning and the (what I call) false promises made by liberal thinking.

Liberal/individualistic/post-modernist thought encourages trans people to think that the trappings of femininity a woman make. When they quite obviously don't. Such thinking also goes along with the idea of gender identity = sex, because it reinforces pomo/progressive, ideology and appears to be humane and respectful of the individual, and by consequence, of their human rights.

And the question feminists ask is - isn't all that actually inhumane in reality, because it encourages people to chase rainbows? And that is unfair and cruel. After transitioning, lots of MTF are victims of rejection and disillusionment - lesbians don't want to have sex with them, feminists don't recognise them as women and men still treat them as men (but as 'faggy' men). No wonder they are pissed off - a false promise has been made to them, a whole bunch of false promises. And instead of everybody admitting and dealing with that, the easy/convenient to patriarchy way out is taken. Which is - change the definition of women/female and dictate that the women STFU and suck it up because nobody really gives a shit about them anyway.

And then the transwoman who have joined the group women have the additional disappointment of finding out that when they are treated like women - drum roll........ it sucks. (I think a lot of what transwomen experience as 'transphobia', is plain old fashioned misogyny mixed up with homophobia.)

And yet the radical feminists are the ones being called nasty in all this because we call bullshit - I think the liberals and the pomos need to take a long hard look at themselves and at the lies they are telling trans people.

Same goes for the medics - they are all enjoying playing god. But to what end? And why? Why are they doing it? Well, let me take three guesses......

a) misogyny
b) homophobia
c) because they can

I think it is all three.

I think a lot of what transwomen experience as 'transphobia', is plain old fashioned misogyny mixed up with homophobia.

The liberal way of looking at the situation is one where individual rights trump collective responsibility. The individual has the right to and therefore access to treatment on the basis that no one else should prevent that individual from reaching their potential. Of course when things don't actually turn out quite so well, the problem remains one which the individual is meant to deal with. The fault is with the individual rather than in the society .

I don't think I am ready to support the Rad position just yet although sympathetic. Not because I support liberalism (or neo-liberal social and economic theory) the problem is with society and not necessarily within the individual. How the difficulties (narc rage etc) are played out seems due to disappointment that others do not share in the trans vission (were they a band ? of him/herself. Most people want acceptance, to deny it to them must be damaging? One problem with liberalism is that I can choose who to accept and that is the contradiction with liberal theories.

Kim, I have no wish to enquire about your private circumstances on a public forum, so I'll just say that I hope you are happy and find peace. I really do.

I should clarify that much of what I have said above applies more to MTF trans people who want to have sexual relations with women than it does MTF trans people who are attracted to men.

Good luck with your personal issues. And good luck with surgery if you decide to do it. I wish you wouldn't though. But that is none of my business.