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! :-)

My impression is, because no-one is listening otherwise.

Yes, I wouldn't do it - but I don't see the point of saying 'well, dear me, I mustn't be aggressive, I must be balanced' when there is very little balance to this issue.

I don't see many people saying, re. issues such as FGM, 'well, we must be balanced, it's really very wrong to call FGM an abusive and appalling practice, we should be more understanding'. It's not like none of us can possibly imagine the complexities of that issue, and the way some women will feel forced to carry out FGM on their daughters, or the way some daughters will ask for it ... but we still manage to accept that the absolute statement 'FGM is abusive and wrong' needs to be made.

FGM is a different sort of issue, though. I have no problem with Brennan saying, 'Making violent threats against radical feminists is abusive and wrong.'

I really don't think they are, kim.

How so?

As far as I can see, she's saying that possibly if lesbians aren't attracted to transwomen, they should not be told it's transphobic. That sounds like precisely the opposite of what people were saying about lesbians 30 years ago, which was, if lesbians aren't attracted to men, they're deviant and should just try a bit harder to like men.

I don't get what it has to do with gay marriage. The religious idiots who make a fuss about gay marriage are of the belief that someone else's relationship can cheapen their own, which is selfish bollocks. She's not saying 'OMG, I don't want transwomen ever to be in relationships as it'd spoil my relationship with my girlfriend', is she?

I'm prepared to believe FGM is a different sort of issue, but I'm interested in why you say so?

You are saying (if I understand you rightly), that whereas it's ok to label the perpetrators of one kind of violence against women, it's not ok to label the perpetrators of another kind of violence against women.

Yet we surely know there will be women and men who carry out FGM not because they are consciously and deliberately being abusive woman-haters, but because they are trapped in a vile and misogynistic culture. We still label them, and I think we're right to do so.

Well, it depends what you mean by labelling the perpetrators. I have no problem with:

'FGM is vile and abusive' or
'Transactivists who make violent threats are vile and abusive' or indeed
'Perpetrators of FGM are vile and abusive' (though for the reasons you give this is not necessarily a useful thing to say).

I do have a problem with:

'Somalis are vile and abusive' (because many Somalis carry out FGM, but not all) and
'Transactivists are vile and abusive' (because many transactivists make violent threats, but not all).

It's only 'ironic' if you believe you've already proved the parallel is valid. Saying it's ironic is pretty much saying 'oh well, I'm so sure I'm right I don't even need to argue the case', isn't it?

Precisely the same argument could be applied to paedophilia - oh, look, how we struggle to be accepted and people say there's no medical basis for how we feel. Aren't they mean?

I don't think those sorts of parallels add anything to the debate. Being lesbian isn't fundamentally about erasing someone else's identity or abusing someone not old enough to consent. Being trans isn't fundamentally about either of those things, but an awful lot of transactivism is edging extremely close to the first one, and certainly the 'cotton ceiling' is well over that line.

mooncup - fair enough, I take your point.

'My point is that as a gay person, she has had a lot of struggle to be accepted in a world that until very recently was anti gay and did not even believe homosexuality existed.'

But many lesbians feel like being told their sexuality doesn't exist is precisely what is happening to them now.

If you've always believed attraction to the female anatomy meant you were a lesbian, and then you get told you're transphobic for thinking that, because women can have male bodies and lesbians can be attracted to penises, it's understandable that you might feel like someone is trying to erase your identity. Surely that's not too hard to imagine?

And if the largely male-dominated LGBT movement is telling you this too, you may be a little bit about it all.

(Obviously this is not my struggle, because I'm straight, and obviously there are lesbians out there who are cool about it, but I've heard a lot about this from lesbians who are very upset that they are being redefined and they don't have any say in the matter.)

YY, I agree, that is how I understood what was being said too, tunip.

People were also expressing a lot of concern that young lesbians were being given the message that it was more acceptable to come out as transgender, than it was to come out as being lesbian.

I don't think anyone thought you did, kim?

I'm saying, the reason I don't feel the parallel adds anything useful to this discussion is 1) because you could draw similar spurious parallels to the rhetoric and situation of groups with which neither lesbians nor transgender people would wish to be associated, and 2) because what lesbians are being pressured to do is precisely the same as what they have always been pressured to do - give in to another group telling them they must change their identity and sexuality.

It's not surprising if some lesbians don't feel comfortable with that, even though the groups putting pressure on them are not the same as they were in the 70s.

I would say, too, it's not like it's suddenly become really easy to come out as a lesbian, is it? The prejudice against homosexuals (and I would say perhaps particularly against lesbians) didn't disappear in the 70s. I am 28, I wasn't alive in the 70s, and I still had parents who told me to keep quiet about being attracted to women. I am lucky, because I ended up in a nice conventional heterosexual marriage, but I met a lot of women at this conference who were talking about the level of shit they face because people feel they don't look or sound or behave the way women should.

I think a lot of this is a product of social media on the Internet rather than something particular to either feminism or trans rights. It exists across all forms of social justice on many social media sites (MN is very calm in comparison). There just seems to be very high levels of aggression and hounding people across multiple platforms.

This puts a lot of people off joining any kind of activism, and must be very difficult for both trans women and lesbians in isolated locations who are trying to connect with people online.

Perhaps it is particularly associated with queer activists (who frequently are not lesbian, gay or trans women) because it is so much based on language, definitions and 'discourse analysis' that it is possible to use queer theory to deem almost anything anyone says as prejudiced, dehumanising etc. It is hard to know what kinds of social identities are going to stick and influence society and which ones come and go. I tend to think in twenty years there will still be lesbians, gay men, feminists and trans women (not all mutually exclusive categories), but I'm not convinced that 'queer' which seems to now be mostly white, young, university educated straight people talking about their sexual interests and clothing choices is going to be seen as a marginalised identity group or political movement. But I change my mind on it a lot. Time will tell.

I think that's true, freya.

Especially what you say about 'white, young university educated straight people'. That seems to be about people so passionately wanting to be part of an oppressed group, they sort of imagine themselves into it, but I think that's always happened. It's like very middle-class teenagers getting very into Marxist theory and frantically trying to redefine themselves as working class.

I think you are spot on there Freya.

Yeah. That's a real problem.

I feel like, if it were more ok to just talk about this stuff without being shut up, we would probably end up sorting it out. Because I do keep noticing how difficult it is to get a perspective on both sides.

I'm feeling very disillusioned with it at the moment. The kind of experiences Kim is describing I've also heard from black people being scared about interacting with white anti-racist campaigners. I know that there are always conflicts and disagreements in political activism but it seems to have escalated horribly on social media. Maybe we will all learn to collectively use it better over time and learn from mistakes.

There are always going to be groups of people that you can agree with on one issue and not another, and it should be possible to collaborate on the things we agree on. That seems less and less common now online and disagreements are made too personal and about attacking individuals.

But why is it automatic that transpeople are equivalent to the oppressed group in that scenario?

I get that transpeople face oppression and discrimination, I really do. But not-so-subtle attempts to make out that any woman who doesn't totally agree with transactivism is equivalent is part of the privileged group is really pissing me off.

Women face huge amounts of gendered violence and discrimination. It is patently obvious that lesbians come in for a really nasty combination of these things with homophobia.

I can see that many women and many lesbians don't have an issue with saying 'personally, I feel I have more privilege than a transwoman'. But why is it automatic that everyone must feel this way, that everyone has to look at their life and say 'yeah, I thought I was facing a lot of discrimination and oppression, but clearly I was wrong. Bad me.'

Well - I have no problem with saying I'm privileged in that I'm not disabled, and similarly I feel privileged in that I'm not trans. I don't think that detracts from the potential discrimination I face as a woman.

Privilege is a group issue, isn't it - of course there will be trans people who have amazing lives and are fortunate and successful in lots of ways, just as there are rich and successful disabled people. It's just a way of saying that, on average, disabled/trans/ethnic minority/female people have it harder, no?

I did just acknowledge that lots of women don't have an issue saying they're privileged, mooncup. It is right there in my post.

Privilege is indeed a group issue. This is why I don't believe cis privilege exists in any meaningful way.

How does a transwoman have it harder than a lesbian? Especially if - as was pointed out at this conference - people frequently cannot even tell the difference in day-to-day life?

How does a transwoman have less privilege that someone like Dani Tauni, who explained she was pressured into identifying as trans because it was seen as more acceptable?

I do not follow this at all.