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.

Hear hear LRD

Another example of Sheila Jeffreys' analysis with regards to children. It is hard to argue with and strikes me as perfectly reasonable, not transphobic.

www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2162

BC "She would like to discuss that with others who have similar reservations about the practice - there are lots of people who share her concerns. "

Yeah, she'd like to discuss it with those who agree with her, but doesn't want to hear from or about those who'd be negatively affected by her campaign.

LRD - I don't understand the point of your whataboutery. Stopping trans people from living the gender identity they feel is the right one from them doesn't change anything for the better.

I think there's nothing wrong with discussing surgery, the pros and cons, and the issues connected with it. What I find wrong is actively campaigning for it to be banned.

If large numbers of gender non-conforming children who began medical treatment as children later regret it, it will be viewed as a massive human rights violation by future generations. It will be seen as similar to the medical treatments that were given to gay young people in the 1950s, and much of the diagnostic criteria remains the same. It seems a matter of conscience to question it. But perhaps I'm biased because I grew up with a gender non-conforming sibling.

This is also well worth a read if you want to understand Sheila Jeffreys' analysis. There is lots to consider and discuss.

www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/sites/default/files/imce/Transgender%20Activism%20A%20Lesbian%20Feminist%20Perspective%20by%20Sheila%20Jeffreys%2C%20Journal%20of%20Lesbian%20Studies%201997%5B1%5D.pdf

WidowWadman do you know Sheila Jeffreys? What makes you think that she doesn't talk to transgender people?

Have you read much of her work? (She quotes transgender people she has spoken to all the time.)

I agree with the points made here about surgery. It may be too soon to know whether surgery, on the whole, is an effective treatment for most transgender people. But we don't have a good track record on medical treatments for conditions related to psychological distress about the body. We have also in the past wrongly pathologised non-gender conforming behaviour by gay children. These things make it perfectly reasonable to discuss whether surgery is an appropriate response to people experiencing distress about the body and gender. If it's wrong, or wrong for some people, then the effects are going to be pretty catastrophic.

I have a friend who was treated as a teenager by a well known "ex-gay" therapist in the 1990s, and it has had terrible psychological consequences for him. At the time he wanted the "treatment" though.

i think surgery or hormone treatment for children should be banned, they are just too young to know. It just seems a bit sick to tell a child that if he wants to put on a dress and play with dolls that he should not have a willy. Many children feel weird about different parts of their body at sometime this may continue until adulthood or may not. Alligning it with wanting to be "atypical" seems to re-inforce the problem. Morevoer, is it not possible that a boy could both hate his willy AND want to climb trees.
I am NOT saying that surgery for adults should be banned or stopped but the risks are just too great for children

Boys don't get surgery. They can get drugs that block puberty which are reversible, but for surgery they would have to wait until they're an adult. I don't know any trans person who advocates surgery on children.

Would somebody mind posting a link to "Kim's thread", mentioned above? The search function and my phone browser don't seem to agree with one another...

i thought men could be feminists?

there is something very dangerous in ANY quarter about saying that This club, political, gender, race, disability - is for certain people only.

TiggyD wrote "Boys don't get surgery. They can get drugs that block puberty which are reversible, but for surgery they would have to wait until they're an adult."

The surgery is now done on people who are as young as 16 years old.

Custardo, I definitely think that is a debate worth having. If lots of people no longer want anything whatsoever segregated by sex, age, disability etc, that's something everyone should discuss and we could reorganise things. Certainly lots of younger people seem to not want single sex toilets and changing rooms anymore, and educating by age seems also to be going out of fashion.

Whether or not people were supportive of then introducing a new system of segregation based on gender would then be a separate argument.

Thank you Beach for all the interesting links, I am reading what Sheila Jeffreys has to say in relation to children. Reading about the case of the young girl named Alex, something suddenly dawned on me. When I grew up in the 70's children were pretty free from early gender stereotyping, we wore green not pink, we climbed trees with the boys, I had scaletrix etc. However now there is so much pressure through the media, through children's television for boys and girls to play with different things, for girls to wear pink and behave in certain ways. This effects too how adults behave towards children and it is far more common for people to make generalisations about what boys and girls do, think, how they act, what they should look like.

Surely if children (and indeed adults) are now being pigeon holed along very inflexible gender identifiers ( I don't know how to express this exactly) but markers then surely more people will simply not feel any belonging to the gender they are assigned. No wonder so many children now express the fear that they don't feel comfortable in the gender they are assigned.

No treatment should be given to children. What adults choose to do, up to them. They only thing I don't like is having to now prefix woman with cis. It is obviously opening the door for the day when transgender women will become simply women, and us well, we will be other......cis women.

You don't have to prefix woman with cis unless you talking about cis and trans stuff which would be a nightmare if you made no distinction between the 2. Just call 'cis' women and 'trans' women women. If you call 'cis' women women and 'trans' women 'trans' women you'll be doing what you said you don't like to other people and labeling yourself as 'normal' and them as 'other'

Tiggy, the purpose of naming particular groups isn't solely to make sure nobody gets to claim the title of 'normal.' We rarely name people to solely mean they are not something. There isn't a specific word that just means not gay, or not Muslim, or not from Somalia or not a woman. It doesn't mean that gay people, Muslims, the population of Somalia or women are disadvantaged. If you name a group of people it has to describe something about what they are. So a person who is not gay might say they are asexual, bisexual, heterosexual and so on and it means a specific thing. It does not just mean 'not gay.'

If people who are not trans are to have identities that describe what they are rather than what they are not, they have to agree with what the identity means. Lots of people who are not trans do not feel that their gender identity matches their assigned sex at birth; they find their gender troubling but for different reasons than trans people do, so there needs to be a range of descriptions related to gender that the people taking on those identities actually agree describes their experiences.

"There isn't a specific word that just means not gay"

There is two. Straight. Heterosexual.

It's a conspiracy clearly well I won't be using any prefix. Partly because I accept any adult to be what they say they are. I regularly bump into a French woman in the mornings, she is so bright and friendly. She was apparently a he. I can't imagine describing her as a trans women. I wouldn't be terrible happy if she referred to me as a cis. But then I don't really care whats going on under peoples clothes, I only really care about whats going on between their ears. I am concerned though that there seems to be more and more children being treated with hormones. They might have "treated" me I was a tomboy. In fact I clearly remember saying at about 8yrs to my best friend (a boy) I wish I was a boy! I often said this to my mother as a child. I am of course very happy and I am a woman.

No, straight means a person who is sexually and/or romantically attracted solely of the same gender or sex. It has a meaning in its own right. It does not just mean not gay. If it just meant not gay then straight would also includes categories like demisexual, pansexual, asexual, bisexual and so on.

Does not gay = heterosexual? Really? [Confused]

Sorry, I meant opposite gender or sex, not same.

Do people now referred to as "Trans" like this label?

I think that collectively it is trans to be inclusive of a range of different trans experiences. The star is important I think, from what I see people using. Individually trans people will want to be described using different terms. Trans is an umbrella term.

Mini, you are very welcome for the links. This one is very worth reading.

www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/sites/default/files/imce/Transgender%20Activism%20A%20Lesbian%20Feminist%20Perspective%20by%20Sheila%20Jeffreys%2C%20Journal%20of%20Lesbian%20Studies%201997%5B1%5D.pdf