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.

[AliceWChild]

dreamingbohemian - what you're saying is really interesting. It shines a bit of light for me on why I see this battle over who is essentialist, with both 'sides' saying the other is. Which I've never understood. (To me saying gender is innate and something in the brain is essentialist)

My understanding of how the whole constructionism bit fits (don't recall whether its constructionism, or constructivism, and there is a difference. Which I've also forgotten), is that the 'social' is key. Gender is constructed by the powerful in patriarchal society. It's political. It's a way of constructing femininity and masculinity in ways that prop up patriarchy. So my gender is assigned based on the way I look, based on my sex, from birth. And so society treats me a particular way, expects particular behaviour from me etc. So I don't get to pick gender or attributes of it, it's placed on me. It's not an individual thing. It's a social thing. So I can say I'm something different till I'm blue in the face, but unless society labels me as something different I'm not. I've come to the conclusion that it's rooted in the whole structure/agency thing. I don't think we all have agency, free choices or are just individuals. I think our agency is variable depending on who we are, our choices are always limited and we are part of society. So thinking gender is something we as individuals can change doesn't fit with the way I see the world.

Would be interested in your thoughts on that. Only if you're interested of course. You've added a little layer to my onion.

[Narked]

Gender is a social construct. Saying identifying with it equates to being a woman is offensive.

[FloatyBeatie]

And not only is there a paradoxical kind of biological essentialism/anti-constructivism involved in saying that there is a monolithic biological basis for socially constructed gender oppression, there is a further essentialist restriction in considering certain zones of biology and not others. Genitalia and hormones are represented as the essential basis of socially constructed gender, with its consequent oppression, but other, putative, invisible biological characteristics are downgraded namely the hypothesised neurological components that might be an element in the causation of gender dysphoria. When this possible basis for gender dysphoria is mentioned, people are quick to say that a reductivist biological-neurological account of gender is being promoted but in fact you could see it instead as redressing the more narrow biological essentialism of restricting oneself just to focussing on some biological features (genitalia) and ignoring others (neurology).

I am very far from endorsing all of the widespread neurological reductionism that is so popular at the moment (and I haven't a clue about whether the hypothesised brain-basis for gender dysphoria is a correct one), but I just wanted to point out that there is an equally reductionist element at work elsewhere

[EldritchCleavage]

I've no relevant experience to bring to this re transactivists and feminists, buut I wholeheartedly agree that 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 is vitally important.

As for this: I also genuinely don't get why people get so aerated by term "cis." It is not used pejoratively. I've met folks who didn't like being called white with the, "we are all some colour or other so why make a deal of it" argument. I've met straight folks who don't want to be called heterosexual because think they are just "normal" and using it legitimises being gay. Can't help but think the "cis resistors" are following the same line of thought (i.e. refuse to accept that even in some ways, they are more socially, economically and politically privileged than transfolks

Can I say that to me is has real parallels with how my race is described. Nothing gets to me faster than having my right of self-description and self-definition away by being told I must apply to myself a term I have not chosen. You can double that when the language imposition comes from someone who holds him or herself out as having a superior understanding of my disadvantaged group than me.

I accept my heterosexuality privileges me. I don't accept that I no longer have the power to name myself. I expect the majority of transpeople understand that latter point very well.

[Beachcomber]

No, Kim, it isn't all down to transpeople. And I don't hate transpeople. Your post saying that I do is a personal attack BTW.

I'm very unhappy with society and the way it is treating human females in all this. Although I am not surprised, women have been getting treated like this since forever. And I am angry that it is happening to us again.

I think transactivits and trans politics are being used by a society that doesn't give a shit about women other than that they be kept in their place.

Transactivists (and I mean the intimidating, threatening aggressive ones, not the people who fight for transpeople to be treated as humans with fair and equal human rights) are being used like hired guns.

[dreamingbohemian]

Thanks Alice, I'm glad my confusion isn't a total waste of time then

I would agree that gender has been largely constructed by patriarchal forces, but I think what's really exciting today is that this is changing. Individuals are challenging those constructs, not just blindly accepting the gender that is laid upon them at birth. People across the spectrum are challenging not just the individual aspects of the construct but the ways in which it is assigned.

You say, 'So I can say I'm something different till I'm blue in the face, but unless society labels me as something different I'm not.' But doesn't this go back to your earlier question, about why people would change their bodies? Part (not all) of this is to ease that process of societal acceptance. There are many other ways as well to signal your rejection of the identity that society wants to impose on you.

I can see that getting rid of gender constructs altogether is a good thing, but it seems to me that this goal is actually furthered when people reject the biological basis for it, when we accept that people can choose their gender. Because if society can no longer determine your gender for you, doesn't that make it less powerful? If you can float back and forth between gender identities over the course of your life, doesn't this diminish the control that gender has over us?

I think basically, the more we can accept gender as fluid and changeable, the less it can be used to prop up rigid systems of oppression. And eventually it would cease to be a really meaningful marker of difference.

[AliceWChild]

Kim - I can get that. And it makes me really fucking angry that patriarchy does that to people. But I can't go from that, to thinking that the there is something 'wrong' with the individual that needs 'fixing'. And that therefore we have to change whole ways of seeing the world to fit with it. I blame the patriarchy. And I know that doesn't help you, but it doesn't help me either.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

dreaming - I would want, sometimes, to talk to someone with both the same biology, and the same social experience of what that biology has been made to mean in our society.

I'm not good at abstractions. But - I remember when I first found MN, what it was like that there were all these women who would talk about things like sex or pregnancy or abortion, and not just the physical, biological stuff, but the common experiences that resulted from it. On this site people routinely have threads discussing what it is actually like to get pregnant and have an abortion, or what it's like to miscarry, or whatever. That's an experience that is both social and biological.

That doesn't mean I never want to talk to men (or women with hysterectomies) about these things - but isn't the interesting bit how the biological realities interact with what we feel and what society seems to think of us? I don't think I'm automatically sexist because sometimes I want to discuss this stuff without men, and I don't think I'm automatically transphobic because sometimes I want to discuss it without transwomen.

[FairPhyllis]

I'm with you Beach.

I don't believe anyone has the right to censor discussion of gender. I reject the label 'cis'. I believe political classes should be able to organise on the basis of their common experiences and interests. I believe that the silencing of women who speak about gender is a manifestation of patriarchy. I think this trend threatens all the gains feminism has made.

I think that telling feminists what "bigger" issues they should be angry about instead reeks of male privilege. Women get to decide what their priorities are.

I will say though that I do find the sheer vitriol in gendertrender and some other radfem blogs really hard to stomach. I would like to be able to have productive discussions about gender and gender identity theory - but if transactivists and supporters just try to shut you down all the time by shouting 'transphobia' then I can see how you reach breaking point.

[amillionyears]

I cant say I understand even the majority of what is being said here, but is the gist of it, that transwomen are not being accepted as women?

[GothAnneGeddes]

Not in my name.

Gender trender is a hateful site, that links to even more hateful ones.

You might want to paint yourself as the victims against the "big bad transactivists", all you're doing is stirring yourselves up into a festering hatred against a group of people who have many struggles in their ordinary lives.

The likes of Cathy Brennan et al:

want sex change surgery outlawed,

claim that trans women are either penis-wielding usurpers or

have "fuck -holes" that smell of dead meat.

Out trans people online without their permission.

Gloat about murder trans people and claim they deserved and that they wish all trans people would die.

Any just generally spend vast amounts of time being hateful and self-congratulatory instead of doing any actual useful work.

You do not speak for all feminists, all feminism and you do not speak for me.

Meanwhile: //www.transgenderdor.org/

[dreamingbohemian]

LRD But would you rather talk about abortion with a pro-choice, pro-feminist male friend, or a rabidly anti-choice, anti-feminist woman?

I have personally found it easier to discuss pregnancy and children with male friends who have children than female friends who don't.

I'm not arguing with you, not at all, but what I find interesting is that I really don't connect my biology with my discourse with others. I think it's all much more situational and dependent.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

dreaming - all of them, but not necessarily all at the same time. That's the point I'm trying to make. There's nothing wrong with forming sub-groups in order to have a discussion.

I'm not sure I want discussions to be 'easy' all the time. I found the thread kim started really difficult in a lot of places, but also really, hugely helpful and interesting in terms of letting me work out what I thought.

I do think it is fascinating how some of us obviously place much stronger emphasis on biology, others on gender identity, others on shifting situations and our reactions to them. I don't think those differences are bad, though. They shouldn't automatically be labelled as transphobic.

[drjohnsonscat]

you are obviously all a lot better read as feminists than I am.

I suppose my feeling on this is that for me feminism is about women being a majority living in a world run by and for a minority who have managed to convince themselves, and us, that they are the norm.

I don't really want to see my feminism get hung up on the issues of what is a very small group of people. Not that those people shouldn't have their voice heard and their issues dealt with. But why are these cis privileges being pegged onto feminism? Why are women having to account for themselves (again)? It almost adds to the sense of us not being the norm - "we're the other and the victim and the ones who use special pleading so the cis privilege type issues must be ours as well..."

Meanwhile, the men go about their business as usual.

[dreamingbohemian]

Floaty that's fascinating and a really good point. What do we even mean by 'biological'? We are still just on the limits of understanding the human brain and how neurology interacts with society.

[dreamingbohemian]

Agreed LRD, it's really interesting. It does make me despair a bit though because I don't see a lot of room for common ground.

[EldritchCleavage]

Genuine question: if it is a small minority of transactivists who cause the problems the OP is about why not name and shame? It strikes me this is an area where emphasising individual culpability over group identity could actually be healthier.

[Narked]

XX?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

drj - kim's long thread has loads of good discussion on it. I'm picking lots up as I go along, so I'm also needing to get to be better read.

dreaming - me too. But there is also a lot of certainty, isn't there? We all know some things are definitely worth fighting for, and most of the time, don't we just stick to those?

beach is right (IMO) that this is an important issue we need to be able to discuss, but if that discussion doesn't get to consensus, it doesn't mean we have to keep re-hashing things - we can just focus on something else for a bit, right?

[TunipTheVegedude]

'Genuine question: if it is a small minority of transactivists who cause the problems the OP is about why not name and shame?'

Then GothAnneGeddes and others will complain that you are outing them without their permission. Cathy Brennan has been accused of outing transgender activists when she has posted their death threats to her online.
Women are supposed to take this stuff and shut up about it.

[Beachcomber]

I find it interesting that quite a few people have wondered why there seems to be such a fuss over a relatively small population - people who identify as trans do not exist in huge numbers after all, so why are feminists so hung up on them? Right?

The reason for the fuss is not the existence of transpeople or how many they are or how they choose to live. The reason for the fuss is that in order to accommodate the transpolitical notion of 'gender identity' being the deciding factor in which sex a human is legally defined as, the definition of female has been changed. And that has huge ramifications for women. That is what we care about - not how individuals choose to express their gender compliance.

This has ramifications for women on two levels: one - that of sex segregated spaces which women need in order to refuge from sexualised violence, harassment, voyeurism and political oppression. Two - that of women no longer having an identity which is that of our biological sex despite us being oppressed due to that biological sex.

[GothAnneGeddes]

Turnip - I was referring to sites like "Pretendbian" which posts photos of trans women taken from dating sites or blogs without their knowledge or consent and then makes oh-so feminist remarks about their attractiveness.

As Kim pointed out, in the original post Beach had linked to, a photo of one of Kim's friends had been used without her permission. Why should these amazing radfems have to ask permission from subhuman lessers (which is how they view trans women), right?

People making death threats should be reported to the police and screen shots taken of the threat. I have no issue with them being named.

[TunipTheVegedude]

'subhuman lessers (which is how they view trans women), right?'

You're just being silly now.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

People did that with Cath Elliott, too, didn't they? It would seem there are people who're horrible on all sides of any debate.

I don't know who made the death threads on Brennan but I do hope she has gone to the police.

[dreamingbohemian]

But if we're being oppressed on the basis of our biology, why would you want that biology to be the defining characteristic of our identity?