Am I wrong to feel shouted down by this?

[Puddingpop]

This is the first time I've ever ventured onto here,and I may regret doing so,but this is really annoying me and I'm curious to know the opinions of other women on the subject.

I use Tumblr,and I keep seeing messages like this on my dash,which have been reblog fed by friends,Cis women can have abortions. Men can have abortions. People who identify as both male and female can have abortions. People who don't identify as male or female can have abortions. Don't erase people.

Now I don't consider myself to be transphobic,but messages like that,and others referring to the 'privilege' of 'cis' women,are really starting to make me angry,perhaps unreasonably so. But I can't help feeling shouted down as a woman,when I see posts like that.Also being called a 'cis' woman really rankles,for some reason.

I don't deny that trans hatred exists,but when countless women are unable to get access to safe and accessible terminations when needed,and when so called developed nations are removing that right from women,doing all they can to make it harder for women to get a termination,is that really what we should be focusing on?

The thing is there is no consensus on brain gender (though the evidence points to socialisation rather than anything innate, but it's not conclusive)

So here we have people saying I feel, inside, like a woman, regardless of outward markers, regardless of the way society treats me. That means Woman is an internal feeling. Respect that.

And of course others saying Woman = sex + socialisation. I'm a adult human female, all else is irrelevant. Respect that.

And of course it all goes to fuckity fig because as a political principle it's irreconcilable.

( Though of course following another principle every one can just be polite and respectful to each other)

Flora, I simply don't agree that women experience oppression because of their biological sex. They experience oppression because gender IS a social construct and our patriarchal/kyriarchal society has determined that people who have physical attributes that are not associated with the physical attributes held by men are inferior.

Similarly, race is a social construct. There is nothing inherently inferior about having dark skin, but our white supremacist society associates anything less than the white ideal as inferior.

Ditto for disability, class, sexual orientation, etc.

The other problem with the idea that the oppression of women is based solely on their reproductive organs and the oppression of people of colour is based solely on the amount of melanin in their skin is that it means such oppression is inherent, that it can never be changed or overcome. So long as men and women exist, women will remain oppressed. So long as white people and people of colour exist, people of colour will remain oppressed.

I just refuse to be that fatalistic because well, it rather means there's no point doing anything about injustice because it's always going to be a given.

I also don't agree that it follows that feminists are supportive of those who are non-gender conforming, but become less so as they gain knowledge, understanding and experience. Having identified as a feminist for nearly 35 years now, I can honestly say I've grown more supportive, more keen to show solidarity with others who experience oppression (including for non-conformity to gender constructs) and more aware of my responsibility to be an active ally to those who don't benefit from the same privileges I enjoy.

Maybe the path you follow depends on how you came to feminism? I think there must be many factors.

But the gender you are assigned is tied to your biological sex. The day you are born you get the pink or blue balloon brought to the maternity ward. If the oppression is tied to your gender and your gender is tied to your sex you can't separate it out in any meaningful way, in terms of oppression.

How can oppression not be linked to biological sex when female foetuses are aborted and female children are drowned at birth?

At those ages there is no way they can have identified their own gender identity.

Sexism & misogyny are real, and I'm not sure what the point is in saying that isn't so.

I get what you're saying about society deciding what characteristics are preferable and rewarding those who suit and harming those who don't. But I am really not sure where that gets us with all of this.

"The other problem with the idea that the oppression of women is based solely on their reproductive organs and the oppression of people of colour is based solely on the amount of melanin in their skin is that it means such oppression is inherent, that it can never be changed or overcome. So long as men and women exist, women will remain oppressed. So long as white people and people of colour exist, people of colour will remain oppressed."

Why?

Oppression can be linked both to sex and to gender. Saying that there is oppression against trans due to gender does not take away oppression against ciswomen due to sex. They intersect. Transwomen face more violent oppression for their gender than transmen, and Black transwomen even more so. It's not an either/or situation, taking notice of the oppression of trans people takes nothing away from noticing oppression by sex. Sex, gender, gender expression are all different that doesn't mean they cancel each other out (and being trans does not equate with just enjoying a different gender expression, it's not about painting nails and rugby). Taking away gender doesn't really solve anything and would erase a lot of people's experiences.

In the tumblr debate, many people are more used to it being called Reproductive rights or reproductive justice, both because of trans* issues and because it isn't just abortions on the table. Most of the clinics in America under threat also do reproductive health for all genders, some the only accessible ones for the poor. Trying to get more funding so people with penises have more reproductive control rather than condoms or sterilization would make it possible to equalize the reproductive burdens (and side effects) would impact everyone. It's a cross gender and cross sex issue. California's government is currently being brought up on issues of forced sterilization years after it was made illegal, that affects everyone.

FloraFox - The very very few intersex depends on ones definition. Some definitions have intersex people being 1-in-50. That's not very few at all. Just because it's rarely talked about doesn't make it rare. Remember science definitions are made my people, and people have biases and systems to upkeep. See the large swathes of science used to create justification for chattel slavery when war and debt slaves could not fill the quota for White elite's businesses. See the ridiculous amounts of studies to prove how different men and women's brains are . Science can and has been a tool oppression just as much as any other system.

I've never gotten the issue with being called cis. It's like being called a White woman, a straight woman, a British woman, a 27 year old woman, it's just a qualifier. Trans*woman have a qualifier, for cis-women not to have one is to essentially make them "normal" rather than just typical. All genders are normal.

KRITIQ In my view gender is the tool which inflicts oppression on a person because of their biological sex. I can see that if you don't believe women as a class of persons based on their biological sex suffer oppression, your approach to feminism would be very different from someone who does believe that. If you take your approach to kyriarchy (which I don't accept as the basis of society) then I suppose you might say that you must include everyone who faces oppression of every sort in every campaign regardless of sex, sexuality, colour, class, sexual identity etc. However, I believe that oppressed people should be entitled to define their oppression and campaign accordingly based on their own criteria of their group without making it a prerequisite that they also campaign for or include members of other groups. If someone only wants to campaign for e.g. services for rape survivors, they shouldn't be criticised for not also campaigning against female genital mutilation, for example.

"I also don't agree that it follows that feminists are supportive of those who are non-gender conforming, but become less so as they gain knowledge, understanding and experience." I didn't say this and I certainly don't agree with it.

I'm also interested in your response to NT's question - I don't get that at all.

LittleSporks

"Saying that there is oppression against trans* due to gender does not take away oppression against ciswomen due to sex."

It does take away from it if you do not permit women to name the oppression they suffer due to their sex or if you deny that women suffer oppression as a result of their sex.

I agree that science can be used as a tool of oppression however that does not mean it can be ignored altogether nor that it should be twisted to meet a political objective. The one in fifty number for intersex is based on a controversial definition. Other figures are as low as 0.018%. I feel the trans activists desire to prove a male or female brain is very dangerous for women and could put us back into Victorian concepts of what women can or should do (it is not so long ago that women were not permitted into my profession because it was considered unsuited to the female brain). Like NiceTabard, those BBC brain tests put me as more male than the average male. I conclude from that that the concept of a male brain is false since I am demonstrably a woman, not that I am in fact a man because of my "male brain".

Although this discussion gets quite complicated, there is an Occam's Razor that can be applied to the question of whether or not someone is a man or a woman which is biological. In my view, the issue of whether person A is a man or a woman is not so much the issue as how does or should society treat men and women. I'm not that interested in feminism as an exploration of self or of individual identity or expression. If other people are, that's fine by me but I'm interested in a movement for the liberation of women as a class.

Tabard, if oppression is based on social constructs (which I believe), you can change those constructs. There are plenty of examples from history where societies and their institutions have changed and structures that perpetuated oppression have been dismantled (perhaps not completely, but significantly in many cases.)

However if one believes oppression is based on biological factors, which are immutable, it means the oppression is inevitable. How then would YOU suggest that the situation could change, that oppression can cease?
What would that process actually look like, step by step? How would the oppressors relinquish their power - power that they hold because their biology is not like that of those they oppress? Are they likely to give that up willingly?

In my view, dismantling the patriarchy/kyriarchy (and I believe you must do both in tandem, else you just end up with a situation that really only benefits those women who already enjoy considerable privilege, leaving other forms of oppression to thrive,) is about dismantling the social, political and economic structures and institutions that perpetuate male, white, non-disabled, straight, etc. privilege. Those things CAN change. That's where I can put my energy and genuinely believe change is possible.

Spork, you are right on the money. Great post! :)

No, it doesn't. Sexism is still sexism. Against trans people it's cissexism or transmisogyny (the latter being the greater oppression transwomen have than transmen). Ciswomen can still use sexism, no one wants to take that away or take away the concept of systems oppressing by sex. Seriously, I've never heard anyone wanting to deny that.

And I just linked in my previous post a video on how male-female brain is rubbish. That if we had to define it by sex everyone would have an intersex brain. Watch it, it shows how stress can literally change the shape of the brain and how our brains are mosaics. I don't know of any trans*activists who use male brain and female brain, when we said gender is in the brain we mean the identity which obviously comes from the brain not the actual brain itself is male or female or genderfluid.

And liberation of women "as a class" will still involve looking at intersections. See the long history of White feminists throwing other women under the bus by not recognizing how women's oppression differs by race, ethnicity, ability, and so on (Susan B Anthony and her horrible treatment of Ida B Wells - and all other Black feminists - springs to mind).

I'm not the definer of the word, it's been used for decades. Cisgender simply means someone whose gender is the same as the sex designated at birth. That is it, that is all. It started simply as a way to qualify people who agree with the sex they were designated at birth and those who do not who are described as trans It is a way to ensure that transpeople are not othered or treated as not normal. Because all genders are normal. Because language is important and having a qualifier on one person and not another designated the person without as normal or default. Ciswomen aren't the default, they are just more typical.

I really don't get what is so hard or offensive or unacceptable about this. Maybe it's because I've had a label all my life - even as a child I was never just a girl, I was always defined by my skin and disabilities. Most people have labels, it is a blessing and an immunity to feel one can describe oneself and be defined by society without quite a few.

"However if one believes oppression is based on biological factors, which are immutable, it means the oppression is inevitable."

Why do you think this is inevitable? The methodology is the same as you have pointed out - to change the constructs and institutions that perpetuate the oppression. It is not necessary to change the biological categorisations in order to change society. Where society has changed in relation to race (slavery, apartheid etc), religion, etc. this has not been done by having everyone accept that there is no such thing as black and white people, no such thing as Jews and Christians etc. The changes in western society for women in the past 100 years or so have been truly revolutionary and have been achieved without denying that oppression of women is based on their biology.

KIRTIQ you say that you are agreeing with Spork but you say oppression is not based on biological factors and she says she has never heard anyone wanting to deny that.

Spork what do you mean that gender is in the brain? How does the identity "obviously" come from the brain if you do not believe there is a male or female brain?

I agree that there are intersections of oppression. I agree that all forms of oppression should be dismantled and I respect your decision to put your energies towards activism that addresses all forms of oppression. However, I do not agree that there is no point campaigning on one intersection unless you also campaign for all others. I believe all women have benefitted from the advances brought about by feminism even if some have benefitted more than others.

I am glad that my feminist forebears campaigned for women's entry into the professions, that my working class forebears campaigned for access to universities and student grants and that my Catholic forebears campaigned against discrimination against Catholics. I'm glad they didn't leave me uneducated and in the kitchen with no political, economic or marriage rights until oppression of every sort was eradicated.

"Cisgender simply means someone whose gender is the same as the sex designated at birth."

What does gender mean here? If it means that I comply with socially constructed norms attributed to persons of the female sex, then I am not cisgender because I do not conform. If it is some feeling of identity of being female that is located in the brain, I am not cisgender because I have no such feeling.

The categorisation that distinguishes me from a trans person is that I not believe myself to be of the opposite sex nor do I want to become a person of the opposite sex.

This link gives a basic description of the differences between sex, gender identity, and gender expression. People keep mixing up gender identity and gender expression on here, they are not the same thing. Gender identity is how you think about yourself (in your head), Gender expression are actions that may line up with a certain gender - the gender roles stuff. Kanye West identifies as a man and wears a skirt on stage, that doesn't mean he identifies as less of a man. The only other phrase to ciswomen that I've seen used is women-born-women but that seems to promote otherness and biological essentialism to me.

a more accurate picture but the former has all the information. As shown in this, not all trans* want to be the "opposite" sex, it's not all about the binaries. Many cultures (and other animals) have the concept of a third gender, genderqueer, and many other variants.

Flora: Where do you think your identity comes from? It isn't your body, it's the you inside of you. Your personality, your thinking, the real you. The part of you that knows you are a woman, that identifies as a woman. It isn't the genitals, it isn't the brain as a whole.

Brains aren't male or female - I already posted a video on this - but our identities, what makes us us, is inside of it (everything that makes our personalities runs from the brain). Some may describe it as the soul or spirit. That part is where gender comes from. Simply: What do you think of yourself as when you think about you, what identity makes you comfortable in your own skin. That's it. What do you think of yourself, and since we think of ourselves with our brains, the identity is described as being in the brain.

My argument with your latter point is that you can't fight for women as a class unless you fight for all of them and you can't do that if you ignore the other intersections. Because they're women too. If you do ignore them, you're only fighting for some. I'm not saying it needs to be your main focus, just that it needs to be recognized that other women need and are treated differently based on these things. "Feminism has a bad image in many communities because of it's history and lack of recognition of this (hint: Most White feminists weren't fighting for all women's entry, they were fighting for White women of a certain standing's entry - as I said, see Susan B Anthony, the holy one of the States, and how her fight was mainly because she thought White women should get the vote before Black men, and never considered that Native women would want to vote, which they wouldn't get for years after "women's vote" came into the States and treated Black women who took most of the brunt horribly and didn't say anything about the voter suppression tests and trials many Black women went through. Voter suppression is a still a major issue, bigger now that we've just lost the federal protection to prevent it, but the outroar is...no where. It was the same day as the Texas filibuster everyone going on about what a great day it was, forgot about how horrible it was the rest of us). Most I know fight under a different banner (some much older) because they've been burnt by it too often.

For example, I'm Metis and sovereignty and representation are major issues for me. Many Metis and Native women are stuck uneducated (80% dropout rate in many areas) and in the kitchen because the lack of sovereignty over our image and area. Prices in Native areas are sky high because of outside control (imagine paying 14£ for red sauce, imagine women and small children with signs begging for milk). We try to protect our image and we're told it's a bit of fun and everyone plays genocide victims but, forgetting that that sexy S* has led to Native women being three times more likely to be raped than a White woman and less than 20% of that is by Native men. This affects me and my sisters as women. But it gets swept aside by modern White women feminists like Lena Dunham who fights for White women's representation on TV, but "literally could not give a shit" about the representation of any other women. The image popular culture gives out literally risks our health more but it isn't deemed important. That's the bad image feminism has now. Dunham's "fight" doesn't help anyone but her own and I don't trust anyone who would do that.

Spork

I don't believe in a female soul or spirit nor an internal female identity. I know I am a woman when I observe my body, remember giving birth to my children or when I am treated in a particular way in our society. To the extent I have an identity, it is just a series of labels applied by society in respect of my sex, my sexuality, my nationality, my job, my religion, my class, being a mother etc. None of these things feel innate to me, I understand them as biology and socialisation. The links you provided tend to persuade me further that a feeling of gender would be nothing more than internalising stereotypes.

Even if I were to accept that internal or innate identity exists in some people, I'm not sure how much it matters as a political issue. I don't believe people face oppression based on their internal sense of themselves but rather on how they interact with or are perceived by others, whether due to unavoidable categorisation (I would never be mistaken for a man) or because of the way one expresses aspects of intersectionality which are not immediately visible e.g. class, religion or gender non-conformity.

I am aware that some cultures (I don't think many) have a concept of a third sex. I read at one point that this tends to be cultures in which women have low status and therefore being a male with "female attributes" is considered abhorrent. I know very little about this however in modern day Iran, for example, it is illegal for a man to be gay but it is acceptable for a man to transition to live as a woman and then have sex with men. I don't think that a concept of a third sex is necessarily a good thing from a feminist perspective. As for animals, we are very clearly a binary species as far as sex is concerned, regardless of what other species may be.

As far as fighting for women as a class is concerned, I do believe that feminism has achieved great things for all women and I don't agree that it is impossible to ignore other intersections at any time. It depends on the issue. Some feminists in the past may have had significant flaws but the expression "perfection is the enemy of progress" is very apt. I know nothing about the history of feminism and the civil rights movement in the US but I would not throw away the progress for women that has been achieved even if the women who achieved it may have held some views which I would consider abhorrent.

I fully agree that there are many women whose oppression from other factors has a greater impact on them than their oppression as women (although women always seem to do worse than the men in any group) and I fully respect their decision to work in whatever way they deem fit to fight their oppression even if that means they refuse to stand under a feminist banner.

I am strongly against trying to tear down efforts made by other women to advance the position of women as they see fit, whether it is by shouting down people who are not fighting all oppression all the time or worse, by denying their right to meet, discuss and fight their oppression. I don't really care about Lena Dunham. I don't need to trust her as she is just an actor on television. She seems to be intensely navel-gazing and I find the exploration of self very boring and self-centred. There are lots of plain actors on UK television but I guess in the US she must be considered quite shocking for having the temerity to appear on television whilst being an ordinary looking woman. If all she achieves is a greater acceptance of plain women on television, it's hardly earth shattering but I'm not going to attack her for it just as I am not going to ask any other woman fighting oppression to justify to me how her fight benefits or includes me.

I don't know if I have a "female identity", or if I have a neutral identity that happens to be in a female body.

I guess it's pretty hard to notice when you only have the one.

Maybe men do feel differently to women, but how would I know, and how would they know?

When you feel that you are in the "right" body, it doesn't feel like anything. It doesn't feel nice or good or comfortable, it just feels like being.

But when people tell me that they feel that they are in the wrong body, I believe them. Even if I don't understand it. Even if they describe it poorly.

Let's face it, the only non-sexist explanation would be "I just feel it, and I can't describe it" because every other explanation will be expressed in terms of gender norms, and many people choose not to follow those norms without feeling that they inhabit the "wrong" body.

I felt wrong. Now I feel right.

and everyone who has always "felt right" probably doesn't even know that there is anything to feel...

That is why I cannot confidently say "I don't believe in male/female identities", because of course I wouldn't notice it.

Trills if this was just about people dealing with their own lives and trying to get along in peace, I don't think it would make any difference whether anyone believed that a person might feel that they are in the wrong body. However this is not the case. I am thinking of three issues:

1. Does belief in self-expressed identity create a legal status as a woman and, in fact, trump biological reality? If a woman told me she had been raped, I would generally believe her but it does not mean that I would favour abolishing trials and having punishment meted out without a trial. If someone told me they felt they were in the wrong body, I would generally believe that the feeling is genuine although I don't agree that this feeling supercedes biological reality. I don't agree that that person should be treated as the other sex for all purposes e.g. access to women's spaces, playing women's sports, women's scholarships etc. I would also assume that some people may be lying because some people really are assholes or behave in ways that are difficult to understand. If people were not assholes, we would not need laws.

1. Why is it acceptable to force everyone to also believe that these feelings are real and genuine and should result in a person being treated as a person of the other sex? I am thinking here about shutting down radfem meetings and generally shouting down and abusing people who are sceptical, particularly those who are sceptical about the political consequences rather than individuals' lives. You have said yourself that you are proceeding just on a belief that people are telling the truth. That to me is very similar to religious believers who will not accept or permit any critical thinking of their faith.

1. The issues are increasingly moving beyond "in the wrong body" onto a plane that "I feel female even though I have a penis therefore my penis is female" - this comes out most strongly in the non-op and cotton ceiling issue. This position was strongly defended even on MN over the recent McNally decision. A number of posters here and elsewhere said it was a heterosexual act because McNally identified as a male and therefore had a male body and therefore the sex was heterosexual. In previous discussions on MN this was described as a marginal transactivist view but I have to say it was certainly vocally expressed by many people following the McNally decision.

And so it goes round again.

I do wish that

1. People would stop using "cotton-ceiling" as something to bash the entire trans community with. You wouldn't scapegoat an entire community of any other kind like that, so why is it OK with trans people?

2. Not everyone can have gender reassignment surgery. Cost, access, previous poor health are all reasons why someone may not be able to have the surgery. It's also not a one off procedure and requires lots of follow-up and there may be complications, so again you can see why someone on a low income, who is insecurely housed (a situation many trans ppl are in) may not be able to have surgery.

The penis thing is a red herring anyway, trans-critical people sadly don't accept trans women as women, regardless of what surgery they've had.