Just posting from Radfem 2013 with the MN feminists - couple of interesting comments :-)

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I'm just posting because I'm at a conference with a few MN feminists. We've just been to a panel about feminist parenting, and the others are chatting with other feminist mums.

I've been listening in on the discussion mostly on account of not having any children - which is why I'm posting on MN instead of talking - but a couple of women mentioned the old stereotype of MN being full of anti-feminist middle-class white mothers who only talk about nappies. And a couple of FWR regulars were saying that we're actually quite nice. So, I am hoping maybe people who were at the conference will come to check out this section.

Or maybe they won't, but if they do - hello! :-)

Do you think so, kim? I've never seen anyone ever hound a gay teacher out of a job. Or suggest gay people shouldn't be allowed to work in organizations with young children. Or have the press hounding them.

Except, obviously, I have. And so I imagine have you.

But it's not a competition, is it? Lesbians suffer from straight privilege, trans people suffer from non-trans privilege. I daresay in some situations (like the exampled you mention)straight privilege may be more problematic than non-trans privilege, and in some situations it's the other way round.

Am on bus so possibly not at most coherent!

But it's not a competition, is it? Lesbians suffer from straight privilege, trans people suffer from non-trans privilege. I daresay in some situations (like the exampled you mention)straight privilege may be more problematic than non-trans privilege, and in some situations it's the other way round.

Am on bus so possibly not at most coherent!

But it's not a competition, is it? Lesbians suffer from straight privilege, trans people suffer from non-trans privilege. I daresay in some situations (like the exampled you mention)straight privilege may be more problematic than non-trans privilege, and in some situations it's the other way round.

Am on bus so possibly not at most coherent!

Aargh, bloody app! Sorry everyone.

I find that the whole concept of privilege has been so misused and (sorry to be repetitive) aggressively used that it is no longer a helpful concept.

A poster on here said something alone the lines of privilege should really be things like earning large sums of money, running the country or owning a mansion. Things like the right to be fairly treated in an interview, to give birth safely, to not be murdered or attacked are not a privilege; they are basic human rights which some people don't have.

I will acknowledge that I was privileged to go on an exciting foreign holiday ten years ago. It isn't a privilege that I didn't die in childbirth and haven't been murdered by extremists.

Of course it's not a competition.

So why is it that, persistently, when we talk about this situation, we get people posting and putting women/lesbians/radfems in the 'privileged' category and transpeople in the 'oppressed' category?

Is it really so difficult to accept that maybe we could hold off that judgement just for a little bit?

But no, instead, we get 'oh, radfems are behaving like white people who scare the poor oppressed blacks/ transpeople'. That is extremely unsubtle in its assumptions about relative privilege.

Because radical feminists and lesbian activists have made mistakes, like every group of people ever. It's easier to label yourself as part of queer theory or intersectional so that you are part of a new movement and can claim to be free of all those mistakes. Claiming to be in the same group as trans women is an easy way to do that because there are very few trans women (compared to ethnic minorities, poor people, gay people, people with disabilities etc) so it is easier to co-opt their struggle and say you are speaking for the oppressed and the other person is the oppressor.

But now I'm just being cynical.

Sorry, was answering MRD's question.

I was just thinking about Kim's question about who finds it harder to get a job, and it shows how complicated things are.

My hunch would be that all other things being equal, it's the transwoman more often than not (and especially in Kim's job where there's all that 'Think of the children!' bollocks about how it will confuse them) but because the transwoman has already experienced elements of male privilege in their education and career before transitioning, they won't be starting from an equal place. And the transwoman who has already had 30 years of a successful career in computing as a man is going to be in a better place career-wise than the one who transitioned at 18 and had all those years of being discriminated against as a woman. And the one who passes as a woman is going to get a completely different bundle of discriminations anyway from the one who reads as male.

The transwomen I have met with good careers are in the traditionally male jobs of science and computing and established themselves before transitioning. I wonder if they are met with less suspicion than those who want to do traditionally female jobs. It also seems to be a lot easier in universities than schools.

I know you can never quantify oppressions anyway, but this would just make it even more impossible to answer meaningfully. You would have to research the hell out of it even to come up with some general trends.

Cynical, but quite likely right freya.

So what's the answer - for us all to be more open about mistakes? It might be.

tunip - it's the same with lots of things, though (IMO). I have a better chance of getting a job, especially in a nice conservative US university, than a woman who doesn't look as nicely feminine as me. I have a less good chance of getting a job anywhere than a bloke who doesn't get the twits 'OMG, might have a baby and go on leave' radars going. There's shedloads of intersecting reasons why some people find it harder than others.

What I have an issue with is the assumption that before we even begin to discuss anything, we're already meant to assume that cis privilege is the most important form of privilege in the world ever. And I do feel as if that is what is happening.

I felt that the comparison of radfems in this debate to well-meaning white anti-racist activists was pretty telling, TBH!

Yes, but you are a rational person. And you fly off the handle less than I do.

MRD, I can only speak for myself. I care less about what label somebody gives themself in terms of feminist, radical feminist, queer activist etc as they are, after all, just words, and more about finding points of shared ground that I can work on, and on conversations that are between people who are in definite disagreement but allow me to learn even if we still disagree at the end of it.

I also try and give other people the benefit of the doubt online, and treat them (based on a piece of online advice) how I'd like my teenage niece or my 90 year old grandmother to be treated, with all the lack of knowledge or skills they might bring to some contemporary political debate. But I still make mistakes and regret not being more tolerant online all the time.

MRD, I mentioned white anti-racist activists but I wasn't comparing them to radical feminists. I was talking about people who are supposedly acting in favour of the rights of a group of people but are not part of that group verbally attacking members of that group.

So that would apply non-trans queer theorists attacking trans women, non-female feminists attacking females, non-gay gay rights activists attacking gay people and so on. It would only apply to a radical feminist of the radical feminist was a man or non-binary person attacking a woman.

kim Who do you think is saying that?

kim, I think this is effectively what is being said when one group of feminists rejects discourse with another group across all topics and try to have them no-platformed because they disagree about gender theory and trans issues. This doctrinaire behaviour is happening in mainstream feminism, not just on the extremes of transactivism. In the US, Lierre Keith was recently no platformed by feminists and transactivists at a university where she was due to speak on environmental issues - she was not even going to speak about trans or gender issues!

I think it is also evident in the criticism of Cathy Brennan by mainstream feminists and transactivists where nothing or little is said about the horrendous abuse she faces online and sometimes in person. There seems to be a clear context which is that trans issues and cis privilege are, as MRD says, the most important issues or privileges ever.

This just popped up in my Facebook feed.

It's a well-known transactivist writing in a high profile feminist magazine (absolutely NOT somewhere marginal or lunatic fringe) saying that feminism needs to centre trans issues: On trans issues within feminism and strengthening the movement?s gender analysis

Yup, trans issues are the most important issues ever and they are the most oppressed people ever according to this writer.

The writers is just convinced that if we can only break the link between gender and vagina, the oppression will disappear. It's just so naive, and frankly such a self-serving view.

The people with vaginas will still be oppressed but we will be unable to politically organise because we won't be allowed to meet together and we won't be able to use existing movements to fight against our biologically-based oppressions.
We will still have the babies.
We will still be at the bottom of the binary whether you call it gender or sex or beetroots and parsnips.

typo, that should say writer not writers. It's single-authored.

Any blog, article or book that starts going on about cisnormative loses points with me straight away. It's just becoming a fight to argue about which group is the most oppressed. How the hell does such a small minority group manage to make feminism about them and why do they get to claim feminism for themselves and then accuse feminists of not being feminists ?

What on earth is feminism if not a movement first and foremost about women ? Why do women have to accomodate and accept near enough every variant of gender as part of the group that is women ?

My problem with transactivism is that it has chosen feminism as a vehicle to get its voice heard instead of lobbying for their own specific voice and requirements for non discrimination. And in doing so, it dilutes feminist theory and as a result, renders feminism impotent.

In my darker moments I'm not convinced that transactivism does anything other than support a patriarchial society. And getting increasingly frustrated about the fact that it's not acceptable to have this debate. I'm sick of being told to shut up.

I truly don't understand how feminism is meaningful for women in this construct where trans issues are centred. The author seems to think the oppression of patriarchy is that "femininity is devalued" and she brings up (again) this issue that reproductive rights are not feminist issues because transwomen don't have female reproductive organs. That seems so retrograde and not helpful for women at all. If the problem of patriarchy was primarily the expression of femininity, butch or masculine women would fare better than feminine women and anyone can see that the opposite is the case.

I agree Tunip this is so self-serving. And I agree with Freya that it is largely young, white, middle class, straight women who are jumping on the queer bandwagon.