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! :-)

[TunipTheVegedude]

Cathy is basically saying 'fuck this shit' to the idea that women have to be quiet and good and passively take whatever is said or done to us without being anything other than polite.

Self-defined queers tell her they want to rape her (and her 5yo daughter), she describes them as violent. Seems fair enough to me. As women it is very hard to do anything other than shut up when people attack us. Look at what happened with that singer a few weeks ago who got sent rape threats for criticising a male artist, and she ended up grovelling and saying she was wrong.

Saying you believe that transwomen are men when you do believe that is totally taboo and unsayable for most people. It is heresy. But should it really be? Why is only one opinion allowed about what constitutes gender? Who told us it has to be about supposed brain sex, regardless of other aspects of female experience like the body and socialisation? Who decided that? She doesn't follow trans people round shouting 'You're male!' She responds to them, when they address her, by being open about her belief.

The most common Brennan myth is that she goes around maliciously outing trans children. What actually happened was that a trans-identifying teen sent her rape threats, and she told the school (IIRC the messages originated from the school computer.)

[TunipTheVegedude]

Actually, you know, I can't help thinking there is an element of lose-lose for women when talking about male violence.

If we focus on the things that are done or said to us, we are making ourselves victims. If we focus on the perpetrators we are full of hate.

What we really ought to do is just shut up and pretend it didn't happen. That would be nicer and more polite.

[Hullygully]

I remember on another thread (one of the many many...) Kim pointing out that there are a few radical trans activists who hold the don't-mention-periods etc line, but that the majority don't.


I think, in simple terms, there are raving extremist loons in all walks of life and the raving loony extremism comes out in whatever their "thing" is, be it religion, transactivism, racism etc etc.

Which is not to say it shouldn't be gainsaid or fault back against, indeed it should even more so, but I do think it's more about the person than the belief.

[TunipTheVegedude]

And one more thing (before I go and do some work), just in case anyone is wondering.

Radical feminists never have and never do advocate violence of any kind. The radfem response to the threats of violence aimed at us (and the people wishing we would be raped with broken bottles and the ones telling us to eat shit and all that stuff) is to say 'look what these guys are saying'.

[TunipTheVegedude]

Hully - yes indeed.
I know some lovely transwomen activists who have a very full understanding of the politics of the situation from everyone's side and who completely understand why we need to have separate activism as well as shared.
Unfortunately they too come under a lot of pressure from the extreme end, which dominates the conversation and tries to silence them just as it does the radfems.

[MalenkyRusskyDrakonchik]

hully - yes, isn't it always the issue. Brennan herself was saying that most rad fems she knows know trans people who're friends and who don't do this stuff. It's not fundamentally normal to want to be a woman and to want to spend your time saying you think a woman you dislike should be violently raped. That's the bottom line, really. It's an incredibly disfunctional and horrible dynamic.

What I don't get is why there is far more widespread knowledge of what some rad fems say to and about this minority of people, rather than what this tiny minority of people say about - I'm afraid - all radfems.

The problem, as you say, isn't the belief. But, what's happened with the legal situation and with a lot of public opinion, is that it's become very, very, very difficult to object to this minority of transsexuals as a radfem, and absolutely standard to object to radfems if you are part of this minority, or if you're an MRA, or if you're part of the 'queer' grouping, or whatever. It's not even. On the one hand you want to thank goodness it's not because no-one wishes more oppression on anyone, but on the other, you want to say, wait a minute, can we at least acknowledge this is a raw deal here?

[Hullygully]

Advocating any kind of violence is always wrong

Refusing to acknowledge any person's right to their biological identiy/pick a term is also always wrong

so on those grounds I think we can shoot them

[TunipTheVegedude]

'What I don't get is why there is far more widespread knowledge of what some rad fems say to and about this minority of people, rather than what this tiny minority of people say about - I'm afraid - all radfems. '

Surely that's as simple as the fact that the anti-radfem message has the assistance of all the other groups who don't like radfems, to amplify it? The MRAs, the porn industry (who have masses of money), not to mention all those blokes on the internet who like telling feminists how to do feminism and get cross when we point out we don't need them to lead our movement.

After all, it wasn't trans activists on their own who got the original Radfem2013 venue changed. It was MRAs using trans rights as a cover and transactivists were happy to work with them on that (though we get accused for bigotry for pointing this out).

[MalenkyRusskyDrakonchik]

Well, yeah.

I am taking refuge in a spot of cognitive dissonance. What I mean is, it should be incredible. It isn't, but it should be.

I've got to say, I don't see (genuinely, this time) why anyone wouldn't be shocked and horrified by what they hear radfems like Brennan say, when they don't hear the other side of it. I mean, you would be.

[Hullygully]

I think people are really threatened by what they think radfem means, and see radfems as aggressors whereas poor trans folk are unhappy victims of life that we need to try and be tolerant about.

[YoniBottsBumgina]

I really wish I'd been able to come now! Fingers crossed for next year. Perhaps I'll bring some of my new German friends with me! Sorry to jump ahead but is it planned for June again?

[MalenkyRusskyDrakonchik]

I can believe that kim. We do need a space where we can all discuss this stuff.

hully - I think that's true. I'm now getting well out of my knowledge area so kim may well correct me, but I think the people who think like that (ie., don't really analyse) aren't doing transsexuals many favours either. I mean, I know people who seem to think a sex change operation would be like waving a magic wand, and you'd suddenly be happy and fulfilled and never need any kind of support ever again. That seems a bit like saying 'awww, poor people ... they need a quick fix solution so I don't have to think about it any more'.

[Hullygully]

I don't know how that feels, kim

if I'm honest, I think we all have our crosses to bear and we just have to make the best of it and get on with it as best we can. Life is very short.

[Hullygully]

For instance (and I hope this doesn't sound quite as mad as I fear), I was listening to Radio 4 just now to the woman who wrote The Wave, who lost her husband, two dc and parents in the tsunami and couldn't move from a dark room for two years.

There is terribleness and unfairness everywhere and we musn't let it define who we are.

[TunipTheVegedude]

I'm not sure anyone thinks monthly cycles are oppressing her! It's just biology, not something anyone is doing to us.
What oppresses us is the way they are constructed within a patriarchal society, so menstruation becomes taboo and we are considered dirty for it, or the pain is seen as something we should put up and shut up about.

I can imagine feeling like I desperately want to have those things, and I can see that it may be extremely painful not to, but what I am sceptical about is the sleight of hand that turns people who possess them into a privileged class even while we are oppressed for having them. It looks like an extremely neat way to prevent women talking about that oppression.

(And NB I am not suggesting it is a cunning plan by devious transpeople to shut women up, but I think it suits the patriarchy very well to hitch their wagon to that particular horse and blame women for trans suffering, rather than be forced to deal with the actual violence and discrimination the patriarchy inflicts on transwomen through its punishment of people who don't fit into one of 2 simple gender boxes.)

[MalenkyRusskyDrakonchik]

YY, agree, I've never heard anyone suggest monthly cycles are 'oppressive' and TBH I find that quite an upsetting thought. It's biology.

Otherwise, what hully and tunip said.

[MalenkyRusskyDrakonchik]

Actually ... I am really struggling here ... seriously, kim, did you think radical feminists - or any feminists - actually thought that periods were a form of oppression? I'm not having a go, I'm just so surprised and it does seem relevant given how much it seems we miscommunicate.

If people out there have been thinking that radical feminists locate some of the oppression they face within their own bodies, within their own biology, I suppose it must seem utterly confusing that we're not falling over ourselves to agree with transactivists. Is this a popular understanding of radical feminism?

Because I would think it is totally the opposite. It makes me angry that society treats women's bodies as something to be ashamed of or attacked, but that makes me protective of us and our bodies, it certainly doesn't make me see them as oppressive.

But then .. the recent issue with periods (as I understand it) was that some lasses were tweeting when they had their periods as a kind of Judy Blume-esque 'let's all respect our bodies' thing, and they were told they were being transphobic. Even if people thought that those girls were somehow tweeting about periods to say 'look how our bodies oppress us', I still don't see why that would have been transphobic. It would have been very sad, IMO, but sad for the girls primarily.

[MalenkyRusskyDrakonchik]

Cross post.

Yes, lucky me.

[TunipTheVegedude]

I wasn't upset or offended Kim, I just didn't want to let it stand in case people read it and thought that was what radfems thought and it became another stick to beat us with! You know how it is.

[MalenkyRusskyDrakonchik]

It seems to me that the 'fully functioning female body' that you're talking about, kim, is a wishful construct that doesn't exist. If it is cis privilege to have been born female because you can get pregnant, then cis privilege is a fairly bitter joke when you look at the stats for how many of us can't get pregnant, or get pregnant and miscarry repeatedly, or get pregnant with foetuses that will never survive, or get pregnant and die or become severely injured in labour.

The patriarchy would love to pretend that this 'fully functioning female body' did exist, and that if women don't live up to the ideal, it's somehow their fault (they didn't consider themselves 'pre-pregnant' enough, or whatever). The patriarchy also resists the idea that we need to support non-ideal female bodies, which are actually quite normal, so there isn't enough funding and enough acceptance of the things I'm describing above.

But it is simply female biology that our bodies don't fit this ideal, and it seems to me that envying an idealized version of it where you simply say 'you are lucky to be able to get pregnant' is glossing over the realities of it.

It's not that I don't see what you're saying. Many women born women get pregnant and have babies and it's all lovely and wonderful. And I think we all envy them. But no-one knows when she starts trying to have a baby, which camp she'll be in.

This is why I struggle with the idea that discussing biology could ever be transphobic, and why I'm glad you're saying it's not a normal reaction (if I understand you right).