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! :-)

Sorry, that is a truly terrible explanation. I know what I don't go for queer theory but I'm bad at explanining it.

Maybe it helps to say that I think lesbians, in particular, feel queer theory really doesn't speak for them. It is rather like those bits of feminism that talk about 'empowering' people a lot - it doesn't provide much of a framework for people who're in less of a positive situation.

It was way better than I could do!

My problem, in a very small nutshell (a pine nut or something) is that the emphasis on the agency of those performing gender has little of use to say about the people who suffer the most from the gender hierarchy. What price identifying as a woman for the missing baby girls in China?

We should all transgress so gender loses power as a construct?

I think that's sort of the idea. It's not meant to be, but that's how it comes across.

The issue being that, while it's lovely to claim that fluid gender identities free all of us, if you end up claiming 'well, we are all queer', you end up reducing something meaningful to nothing.

Ah

sounds bollocks to me

Here's the thing.
The more powerful you are within the patriarchy, the more freedom you have to inscribe your own gender.
The people who have the most freedom are the rich older white men with successful careers, who can not only afford the medical treatment to transition, they can hang onto their previous careers and social status and are in a better position to force those around them to accept their definition of gender. It's a very nice theoretical framework for them. If you are poor or less powerful you don't get the same options.
I would like to know more about the experiences of transmen and the extent to which the gender identity they claim is recognised by other men. There has been all this scrutiny of the women surrounding transwomen, who are shamed as bigots for refusing to accept the identity of transwomen as female. But do men even in our culture accept transmen wholeheartedly? I think we know whether it is possible for a woman to claim male identity in the very woman-hating cultures.

Well, you know, I'm not exactly neutral here, hully, it may be someone who loves it could convince you it's the dog's non-gender-specific performatively-defined lumps.

tunip - yep. Me too.

I imagine we would see a gap between what the key texts of queer theory actually say, and how it is used by the people it has trickled down to.
Someone who had read more than me would probably read my post and say 'But- but- that's not what it says, it never claims to do that anyway.' And I would think, sure, but people who throw around the ideas on their blogs about why radical feminism is hate speech make out it does.

True, and I think it's an important point.
That said, I still don't believe the theory is defensible.

It's just so important, that we are allowed to analyse and organise politically according to the categories that make sense to us.
I wouldn't go to the stake over the definition of woman. I would think 'ok, if everybody else has decided it makes more sense to divide people up by what they identify as rather than what they've been divided into based on genitals, society can redefine woman if it wants. Words change.' But if I believe I have been treated differently based on my female biology, refusing me the right to name a category of people who share that biology with me, and to meet and organise with those people, would be not only a major headfuck, but an oppression I would have to resist with all my strength.

Hello! I was also at Radfem2013. I didn't get to the parenting workshop, partly because I'm peripherally involved in the Feminist Party UK project, so had to concentrate on that.

It would be great if there were an event or training course about feminist parenting, though. I have 2 small daughters & need to make sure I don't screw this up - including by droning on about the patriarchy until they turn anti-feminist!

This is interesting (though it's just from wikipedia) ...

A significant yet sometimes overlooked part of Butler's argument concerns the role of sex in the construction of "natural" or coherent gender and sexuality. Butler explicitly challenges biological accounts of binary sex, reconceiving the sexed body as itself culturally constructed by regulative discourse.[29] The supposed obviousness of sex as a natural biological fact attests to how deeply its production in discourse is concealed. The sexed body, once established as a ?natural? and unquestioned ?fact,? is the alibi for constructions of gender and sexuality, unavoidably more cultural in their appearance, which can purport to be the just-as-natural expressions or consequences of a more fundamental sex. On Butler's account, it is on the basis of the construction of natural binary sex that binary gender and heterosexuality are likewise constructed as natural.[30] In this way, Butler claims that without a critique of sex as produced by discourse, the sex/gender distinction as a feminist strategy for contesting constructions of binary asymmetric gender and compulsory heterosexuality will be ineffective.[31]

Thus, by showing both terms ?gender ?and ?sex? as socially and culturally constructed, Butler offers a critique of both terms, even as they have been used by feminists.[32] Butler argued that feminism made a mistake in trying to make ?women? a discrete, ahistorical group with common characteristics. Butler said this approach reinforces the binary view of gender relations because it allows for two distinct categories: men and women.[16] Butler believes that feminists should not try to define ?women? and she also believes that feminists should ?focus on providing an account of how power functions and shapes our understandings of womanhood not only in the society at large but also within the feminist movement?.[33] Finally, Butler aims to break the supposed links between sex and gender so that gender and desire can be ?flexible, free floating and not caused by other stable factors?.[16] The idea of identity as free and flexible and gender as a performance, not an essence, is one of the foundations of Queer Theory.[16]

So, if I've understood correctly, Butler sees both sex and gender as socially constructed whereas radical feminists see sex as biological but gender as socially constructed.

I understand how sex has been used as an alibi to construct gender. What I don't understand is how sex itself can be socially constructed

Thanks all for a really interesting and civilised discussion. I'm off to bed but will check back tomorrow evening.

Her argument is based on the existence of intersex conditions. We are all assigned a sex at birth, rather than the sex being a completely natural artefact unmediated by culture. Usually that assignation is uncontroversial, but it is still culturally created.

I am not really convinced. It may be culturally created, but that doesn't make it completely contingent - it still has to match up with something in the objective world, because you need one of each sort to make a baby and you can change the name of either if you want but you will still be left with two classes of people both of which are necessary for reproduction.

Welcome Renarde!

I am following the 'droning on about the patriarchy' method of childrearing, but I took dd to Million Women Rise last year and she had such a great time that she totally buys into feminism. That and the Horrible Histories Suffragette song.
It is working so far but my oldest is only 8. When she gets to 14 she may have a different view.

I once overheard my son saying to his sister, 'I want to smash the patriarchy! Do you want to smash the patriarchy with me?'
Investigations, however, proved that he had no idea what the patriarchy was, he had just overheard me using the phrase and thought it would be fun to smash something.

tunip I agree with you that sex is not contingent. I believe he oppression of women is rooted at least partially in our biology - our capacity or potential (real or perceived) to be raped and to bear children. I also believe our experience of girlhood with this biology is a very important part of womanhood and I don't like the queer approach that says there is no shared experience of girlhood.

It seems to me that Cathy Brennan has tried to express that she supports gender non-conformity and is a butch dyke but this seems not to be listened to by those who attack her. I really don't understand why queer activists call RFs biological determinists. It seems the opposite to me. I guess it boils down to what Butler says about sex being a social construct but I just can't accept that.

tunip

Ah Tunip that is fantastic! :o)

Maybe i'll take my eldest to MWR next year then. She's only 7, but she has absorbed my "if only one sex is supposed to do something, there's probably something dodgy going on" rhetoric to some extent.

( BTW, having read through the entire thread in one go - I expected Cathy Brennan to be a hateful bullying loudmouthed git, but she totally wasn't. I was amazed. She's funny and humble and makes excellent points very articulately. I myself couldn't say what she does on Twitter but I can see why she does, and why it's needed. I've had to block several people in the last few days just because I stated publicly that I was at Radfem2013. Just being called 'radscum' is about the best we can expect. :( )

She's a lawyer and her focus has been campaigning for better equality legislation, originally for gays and lesbians, then through that she got involved in housing and employment equality legislation for transpeople which is what brought her face to face with the whole issue.
I don't think she sets herself up as a thinker or an originator of ideas, she just sees herself as a loudmouth who is in a position to say things that other people can't! I think apart from that, her contribution to the movement is to do with her legal knowledge.

Flora, it makes me laugh how both sides call the other biological determinists. 'You're a biological determinist!' 'No you are!'

I think tbh there has been enough diversity of thought in both movements that you can probably point to writings from either side that can be read that way. I've seen radfems saying men will always be violent because of their testosterone (more 30 years ago than now though), and I've seen transwomen believing that they are biologically programmed to like girly things while I know others whose view of most aspects of gender is virtually indistinguishable from ours and who are hugely uncomfortable with being forced into stereotypical roles in order to access medical treatment for physical dysphoria.

Renarde, that was my reaction to Cathy exactly. Also to Lierre Keith, though I missed the beginning of her talk.

I realised that my expectations had been shaped more than I knew by the 'these women are bigots and must be no-platformed!' stuff surrounding both of them. I hadn't read of any of Lierre's writing and was half expecting her to slip in a call for us to castrate all men or something, because I thought there must be something behind the level of protest she was getting.
As for Cathy, I thought she'd have an underlying hostility to trans and there would be invective and sneering comments about men in dresses. And that was totally not the case.

I now know that the assumption that if people are being protested, there must be something for them to be protested about, is completely wrong. In a detached historian sort of way I'm finding this extremely fascinating, as is the way the myths about radfems are getting repeated on Twitter (we think sex workers are subhuman and plan to out them against their will? What the fuck?!)

Like I said earlier, I'm not that phased by the rape threats from nutters, but the readiness of feminists to believe all these things without making the slightest attempt to check they're true is quite shocking.

kim147, I was wondering about that too. So many of Brennan's posts are devoted to attacking transpeople, queers, etc that it's difficult to see what else exactly she is contributing to the feminist movement.

tunip, I haven't read any of the myths going around about Brennan; I only read her own words on her own webpages, and that was enough to turn me right off. I admit that the definition I gave of hate speech above was hastily made up and a bit clumsy - and anyway, there are lots of different types of hate speech, not just one type.

But here are examples of some of Brennan's recent tweets:

The GLBT community demands lesbians adopt a woman-hating ideology. We will not comply.

[Implies that there is only one GLBT community and that everyone in it believes the same thing - untrue. Uses loaded words like 'demands' and 'woman-hating' instead of making any real argument.]

The T in LGBT was an odd addition, but the T are now dictating to everyone that the L should no longer be welcome. Fuck that

[Again, implies that LGBT people are homogeneous and that all transpeople share the same beliefs - untrue. Uses loaded words like 'dictating' and hyperbole like 'everyone'.]

The fascism of the trans community should scare all gay ppl

[The trans community is homogeneous. The trans community is scary and anti-gay.]

Queers silence and intimidate women just like men.

[All queers are the same. They all 'silence' and 'intimidate'.]

The language of queer culture is the language of male violence and intimidation.

[Queer culture is homogeneous and has only one 'language'. That language is violent and intimidating.]

Yes it's a shame transwomen lack respect for women.

Trans activism consists of thinking of new ways to insult women. Kind of like men's rights activism. There's a reason for that.

I could carry on with more examples but I won't. See what I mean? Inflammatory generalisations about entire groups of people. Repeated characterisations of transwomen and 'queers' as violent and hostile. It's just mud-slinging.

And I'm going to stop being coy here and come right out and say it: I think it's appalling that RadFem excludes transwomen from its conferences. That argument that someone made above, about how transwomen would be welcome if they were radical feminists, but if they were radical feminists they wouldn't want to go to a RadFem conference anyway, because they would understand the importance of women having a woman-only space? That is a clever argument, but it sounds like exclusion to me.

Transwomen are already a vulnerable group, who face social discrimination and have a high suicide rate, as kim147 has pointed out), etc. They are living as women, but despite the fact that "women born with vaginas" have all sorts of different life experiences based on race, ethnicity, class, family background and their own extremely diverse bodies, transwomen just aren't 'woman' enough to count. So the RadFem organisers have to specifically exclude them from their conferences, because trans identity is so threatening to feminism. I'm not impressed and I'm not convinced.

If Brennan and her friends want to hold a conference without transwomen, that's their right. But do I support the right of transwomen and their supporters to engage in non-violent protest at such a conference (emphasis on 'non-violent')? Absolutely. Do I support their right to write letters to the venue where the conference is held, urging that space not be given to such a discriminatory event? Hell yes.

Because if one of my DS grows up and decides he wants to transition, I want him/her to live in a friendlier, more tolerant world than the one kim147 has to cope with, though she copes with it courageously and graciously. It's as simple as that really.

In the meantime I'm happy to meet any radfem and chat about sex/gender over or . Because I don't think they're violent monsters. I just think that if they share Brennan's views about scary intimidating anti-gay transpeople and queers, they're wrong.

Right, OK, sorry to have appropriated you as an example, kim; it was presumptuous on my part. However I haven't had the debate on here before and I am still at the and stage to learn that there are feminists who actually think and speak like Brennan.