Following on from the TERF thread...

[CailinDana]

Trying to get my head straight on this. Surely the whole malarkey around transwomen wanting to be recognised as women even though they have penises will eventually actually help to break down the idea of gender?

What I mean is, if a person with a penis can be labelled a woman simply because they want to be labelled in that way, surely gender becomes meaningless as it tells you nothing meaningful about a person except perhaps the clothes they like to wear?

This is a half-formed thought, feel free to develop/challenge.

If your definition of people making slurs is saying "biologically male" I question your definition of attacked. However as I said above every female I know has been actually attacked so these discussions mean a to me. But fuck it, I've been meaning to take a break from MN so think I will do it now as I'm spending way too much time online anyway

I used to regularly Kim, so as not to hurt your feelings. And that is genuinely true. Anyway

I've been on here for years too, and have had personal attacks. It sucks, but it happens online a lot in my experience. I don't use those personal attacks as sort of cloak of invisibility though that allows me to say whatever I like and then refuse to discuss it.

Your main point was that we shouldn't just all transpeople from the voices of a few vocal activists. Which is a fair point. But then when we ask you your perspective on the issues at hand (such as the changing rooms one) you refuse to answer. Which means we are none the wiser. So there's no point in coming on and complaining about us listening to the only people who have anything to say about it.

Sorry, shouldn't judge

Also, for me, the only way I can begin to understand someone else is to understand their motivations, to get to the crux of what they think and believe. I honestly have no idea what you believe Kim, because so many of your answers contradict each other. Perhaps that's because your feelings are contradictory.

I have to say too, Kim, that the PMing does very much feel like a silencing tactic. Because you can say what you like there and no one can quote you, plus it's a way of getting "close" to a poster so they feel they can't challenge you any more on the thread. You mentioned our PM conversation a few times here on the thread and it came across to me like a reminder, a sort of subtle "shut up" warning.

I don't really understand why we are moving from what trans activists are thinking and doing to what trans women are thinking and doing.

Surely the people who are harming women in this situation are trans activists as a group?

"I have my opinions - but I know what will happen. In truth, I'm scared to air them because of the response."

So we're automatically the bad guys, without even being able to know or respond to your opinions. What a great way to win an argument.

"Maybe it's a way of discussing stuff with someone who's interested without the rest of the world knowing."

Why would you want me to know though? You don't know me at all, so why is it better that I know and not everyone else?

"Feel free to discuss it though."

Thanks for that, we will. But don't get involved if you're not actually going to discuss it. And don't PM me again please.

Thanks.

Kim you are right that many discussions of gender politics on here end up the same way - they end up being rather a lot about Kim.

If you are sick and tired of repeating the same things to the point that it causes you distress, perhaps you should stop causing yourself that distress.

Gender politics is a class issue. We all have a right to discuss it and we have the right to discuss it in a trans critical manner if we see fit. Doing so is not a personal attack on you Kim.

I think generally on here it is understood that there are basically two sorts of threads; support threads/threads about an individual's issues, and general discussion/analysis threads. It can be silencing when a poster posts stuff about individual distress on an analysis thread because most people don't want others to be distressed. Especially when we are women because we are socialised to be caring of others and to not prioritize ourselves. We are also socialized to think that we must express ourselves in ways that don't rock the boat or cause upset, particularly to men/males/male bodied people/people who are not female.

I doubt there are many (indeed any) posters who would be crass enough to post class analysis or radical feminist views on a support thread for a trans person who started an individual thread about transgenderism with regards to them and their personal distress, issues and difficulties.

On the other hand it is silencing when an individual insists that their personal distress be a major factor in how a political/analysis/general discussion thread may or may not be framed.

I sincerely doubt that a transman attempting to do the above in a male dominated space would be given much attention or accommodated. But then that dynamic is so much less likely to occur than the other way round...

Agreed Beachcomber.

Kim, you said

"I have my opinions - but I know what will happen. In truth, I'm scared to air them because of the response."

(this is very similar to what I remember you saying on the other thread - so there is no point in telling people to go there to find out what you think)

Can I just say that this attitude is actually making things more hurtful to you than they need to be, not less.

If you come out and state your views, clearly, even if they are anti-rad-fem, we will all have to respect you, even if some posters argue with you.

If you deliberately refrain from stating them, even as you know what they are in your own head, then you are making everything personal. You are putting yourself in a position where you feel disliked instead of disagreed with.

You are also making it hard for everyone to respect you or your position, because you won't say what it is. It makes you look vague, inconsistent and whiny.

Here is what I said on the other thread:

• Just go and start a support thread, it can be all about you and no one will argue with you on it.

• Stop trying to make threads that are feminist threads about trans issues into support threads for kim.

UNLESS

• you actually want to discuss trans issues with feminists, including radical feminists, in which case just come out and say what you think and stand by it.

This is what I think you think, Kim.

• That cis privilege greatly outweighs male privilege
• That feminists who place greatest importance on the liberation of women, as opposed to being sensitive to trans women, are wrong and unkind
• That everyone should be more concerned about making trans women feel better than anything else, as they are “top victims” in the victim hierarchy (a misunderstood notion I don’t hold, but ascribe to you, because you keep telling us how bad your victim hood is as an argument towards how right you are)
• Which means that trans women of all kinds should be fully integrated into all existing female spaces; and any attempts, for whatever reason, by women to retreat and separate themselves from transwomen with penises, are unkind and damaging as they cast doubt on the womanhood of transwomen, which is a very great injury to do to transwomen, greater or more important than any other real or potential injury to anyone else

What really bothers me about this position – whether or not Kim holds it, I may of course be wrong and am guessing, but some transwomen hold it – is the fourth part. What gets me about this is not that we should all be sensitive to transwomen, of course we should. But that the way that women must do this is to make themselves absolutely available – their spaces and communities must not just not be offensive but must be actively open and available with no further space to retreat to. This is exactly the lot of women through history under patriarchy. Hate us if you must; laugh at us if you must; but that we must be simultaneously hated, laughed at and always willingly available, offering ourselves up to the abuse is what is so difficult.

If men really hate us and they do - why don’t they leave us alone? I used to think. I understand it better now: that masculinity depends upon femininity for its very existence; that women exist in society in a certain way vis a vis men is a huge part of how they define themselves, and for some, what makes life worth living (barely an exaggeration).

And this being-available-as-an-instrument-for-someone-else’s-gender-identity is what is happening here. It isn’t enough not to insult transwomen, to use correct pronouns and so on. We have to be willingly passively available, as a group, as a class, as a community, to make sense of that person’s gender identity – for that person, it is as if we exist entirely to perform that role. As if: the individuals who make up the class “women” exist, in a particularly gendered way in society, in order to be a body that the transwoman can be part of and thereby define herself.

I sometimes feel as if, for Kim, the Feminist section exists for her to demand full acceptance into it, and thereby validate herself, rather than as a bunch of posters who may or may not agree with her and have all their own personal and political agendas; and all the terrible hurt she feels is because, by failing to do so, we have just not done our job.

Kim, if you start a support thread, support is what you will get.

On top of that, being a man, you have never experienced the same level of threat that biological women have experienced. In fact, you are a threat. And women will treat you that way, for our own safety.

I picked that out of a brilliant post by CaillinDana not because I disagree, but because it's true. I've stopped asking women out since I started reading MN because I don't want to be the cause of a woman's discomfort.