Any appetite for further discussion on 'trans-feminism'?

[CrewElla]

I made the mistake this morning of reading the comments on an article on the Guardian website re Kellie Maloney being 'outed' in the tabloids which led to me googling trans-feminism and coming across this article from the New Yorker: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/woman-2

I haven't considered myself radical in the past and, at times, even (naively) said I had no need of feminism. Reading the New Yorker article I felt they so missed the point and tried to marginalise a view (woman have a need for spaces free from penises, whether the penis belongs to a man or a transwoman) that I don't think is that radical.

Am I being naive? Does anyone have the time/interest to read the article and share their views on it?

For me it's nothing to do with looks, and I don't think you should judge like that.

Personally, I don't care if my nurse is male or female, gay or straight, etc. But I think a woman who has (for example) been traumatized through rape, should be able to say if she does not want someone with a penis to do her smear test. In the same way I'd say if a man had been a victim of sexual violence from women, he should be able to express the same preference.

It is about the victims.

(Why nurses, particularly? Sorry, not being picky just knackered and failing to see the post it's referring back to.)

Cross post with gin. I admit, I hadn't thought of that possibility.

But basically, is it not the same as with other things? If someone is going to be performing an internal examination on your private parts, and you've been raped, in my book you should be accommodated as much as possible.

But how would you know?

I didn't say I would know. My question was about whose rights would take precedence: the right of a eoman to not let a man put something into her vagina, or the right of a man who wants to put something into women's vaginas without them knowing that he is a man (although obviously, we live under patriarchy so it's a stupid question - we all know whose rights would be given priority).

I would LIKE to know because the idea of a man dressing up as a woman so he can have access to women's vaginas is extremely distressing to me.

OP there was a thread here about radfem2012 and only FAAB women being invited which might be interesting to you, there was quite a lot of ground covered. It would be interesting to re-read and see whether teh conversation has moved on in the last 2 years - certainly some of the posters on that thread are still posting now

If you do an advanced search on FWR and transfeminist manifesto or other likely phrases there are quite a few really thought provoking threads and a few massive barneys

Equally, you can't tell if a woman is lesbian or straight. But if someone has been sexually abused by a woman, then you can surely understand they might be very traumatized by the idea of a lesbian OB?

No one is suggesting that this would be pleasant for lesbian nurse, but I find it hard to imagine anyone who's a medic wanting to traumatize a patient in that situation. Yes, you might say 'hmm, she'll never find out, I'll lie' or 'she'll never find out, I'll keep quiet'. But how ethical is that?

And of course, that is a horrible decision because you will also be up against the bog-standard homophobic 'ergh, lesbians must be doing this job to get kicks' kind of bullshit. So I'm not saying this is in any way a good situation. I'm just saying, IMO, the trauma of a rape victim would come first, and the hurt of the professional second.

Ideally, of course, we'd get rid of sexual violence, but ...

On the note of kim's last post ... erm, it does strike me this discussion is a bit unlikely, isn't it?

How many MtoF nurses specializing in smear tests can there possibly be? I don't exactly see an epidemic of it!

TBF gin a man doesn't need to go to those lengths to have access to a woman's vagina. There are a number of professions he can go into as a bloke which will get the same result. Or if he is a sex offender (as you are talking about) then there are various non-legal means also. All without having to dress as a woman and risk abuse, discrimination and violence.

YY, seven put it much better than me. I don't find it very plausible.

You can not tell if a transwoman has had surgery. It's understandable that women don't want someone with a penis but you don't know

Yes, that's pretty much the problem: I am not allowed to know and I want to know. So if my surgery was not allowed to tell me whether the person who was supposed to be performing my smear had a dick or not, my choice is to have a smear and be fucking traumatised, or run the risk of dying of cervical cancer. In other words, right of man to pretend to be a woman > right of woman to essential medical care in a setting that will not traumatise her unnecessarily.

That is my entire point. I want access to medical care provided by a woman (as in a person born with a vagina). If no one can guarantee that that's what I'm getting, I would rather take the risk of dying. Similarly, if my PTSD became bad again and I needed therapy, and I was not allowed to specify that I wanted a female counsellor, I would rather just live with the flashbacks and nightmares.

it does strike me this discussion is a bit unlikely, isn't it?

Are we only allowed to talk about things that have actually happened to us, ie no hypotheticals? Sorry, I didn't realise.

kim147 it's not about thinking a transwoman is a sex offender but it is about being sensitive to any woman who wants the choice.

Or if he is a sex offender (as you are talking about)

I'm not talking about sex offenders - where did you get that from?

I will say, if we take a far less emotive example than nursing, this is something women deal with on a fairly regular basis, I think.

In HE teaching, it's not unheard of to find if you are female and have male students from cultures where women are not accorded much respect, you'll get a request they not have you as a pastoral tutor. In that situation you could, I suppose, force them to have you and claim there's no-one else. But I think people generally don't - because however hurtful this is to us as women, and however much you may explain that in the UK we have laws about discrimination, you also have to recognize that you're a professional who can roll your eyes and hand over said student to your male colleague.

Far more often, you don't get explicit challenge, but you find male students choose not to come to you for advice.

I am sure this is true also of medics, and lawyers, and all sorts of professions where people come to you in a relatively vulnerable position and your job is to help them.

It's shit, but it's extremely pervasive.

gin - no, of course we can talk about hypotheticals. I was talking about them myself.

To then extrapolate from that that all transpeople are being labelled sex offenders, or to imply that they'd dress us as women in order to abuse women, seems to me not so much dealing in hypotheticals as going completely off the rails.

That's right. We're all sex offenders. Seems to be the impression on this thread

What are you talking about? Have I called anyone a sex offender?

I don't want a man doing a smear on me and it's nothing to do with their status as a sex offender, it's to do with their status as someone born and socialised male.

to imply that they'd dress us as women in order to abuse women

I am not talking about transwomen abusing women.

I am talking about women not wanting people born and socialised male to perform certain medical procedures on them.

I must have expressed myself very very poorly at some point because everyone thinks I'm talking about nurses sexually abusing women during smears: I'm not!

I'd say talking about a man dressing up as a woman to have access to women's vaginas sounds like a description of abuse.

I've never heard someone with a vocation to be a midwife, a nurse or an OB describe it as 'having access to women's vaginas'. Therefore, I didn't read it as a neutral job description at all - I read it as you suggesting this was somewhat sinister.

I apologize if I misread, but that's where I was coming from.

I dunno, maybe this is because I'm not a medic, or maybe this is a naive view I'd soon lose if I were a medic and it were my career suffering - but I am trying to imagine a situation in which I would want to perform a medical procedure on a terrified man who was terrified because I was raised female.

Even if he was the worst kind of misogynist who was terrified because he believed all women were incompetent and would butcher him - I just cannot see how I could want to put him through that terror.

(Incidentally, not to make light of a serious subjects, but if it's you lot who just clicked through to my blog with 'nurses with penises' and 'nuns with penises', wow, did you get that search wrong. ).

Excuse me if I just land on here to have a quick STEAM about that quote!
"It’s your place to stay out of spaces where transgender male-to-female people go. It’s not our job to avoid you."

NO, mate. That being your attitude, let me emphasise that it's your place to stay out of places where bio women go. It's neither our job to avoid you, nor to welcome you.

You don't get all the fucking privilege now. You're a woman? This is what it's like. Get used to it or change back.

LRD you didn't misread, I did word it that way at one point. That's not actually what I meant (I do know that there is no other way to tell what someone "really" means on a forum apart from reading what they've written, obviously!) so I'll try and explain what I failed to say.

I was responding to kim saying "but you can't know if someone has a penis," which I read as "as long as you don't know, what's the harm?" or, "how do you know that the last person who performed a smear test on you wasn't a pre-operative transwoman?"

What I was trying to say in response to that was, if someone is willing to present themselves as female in a nurse-patient smear test scenario, that alone is alarming and distressing to me, because it suggests to me that there is a serious lack of understanding of how traumatic and unpleasant smear tests can be, and the potential emotional impact of finding out that the person who has performed a smear test is male.
To me, being "stealth" in this context would demonstrate a horrible lack of respect and a serious pushing of boundaries, and would - to me - represent a willingness to prioritise "passing" over respecting women.

I completely failed to say any of that, obviously. It might be time for bed.

See, that's the problem

Accusing women of saying that a trans woman is a sex offender just because they don't want a person with a penis performing intimate acts on them like smears.

If you were actually a woman, or had empathy with women, or wanted to be an actual feminist as opposed to just recognised as 'female' (how limiting is that!) you'd get it.

Fine, I get it - you 'feel' like a woman, you think you're a woman, you will have radical surgery to become a version of the female.

But you have missed being socialised as a woman. As a child female, as a teenage female. And as an adult female.

So you haven't had something because you couldn't have had it - not blaming obviously.

But I feel like I was assaulted by a nurse, I felt deceived and manipulated by him during a smear and an unnecessary anal 'exam' so I choose not to have male HCP's exam me - not because I think that all males are assaulters or that it would happen again. Just that it is my choice.

So let me have that choice please. If you have a penis please tell me so I can make an informed choice.

Because trust me, if you've got fingers in my vagina and I notice you've got an Adam's apple I'm going to feel deceived and manipulated again.

the notion of being a sex offender is a red herring. you don't have to think someone is a criminal or have bad intentions, to not like that person doing something to you and want them to stop it.

it's like the notion of privacy - if someone was snooping in your personal documents and you objected and they said, "what's the problem? What do you have to hide? What do you think I am going to do, to hurt you, with this information?" - that person is missing the point. Yes, maybe you were once in a relationship with a financial scammer and now you are nervous; but it doesn't have to be that. You have boundaries. your partner and your solicitor get to see all your financial dealings, maybe your parents if you're that type, no one else unless you choose to have that kind of relationship with them.

Similarly for many of us there is a relationship of physical trust between us and women born women such that we are comfortable being physically exposed to them in a unique way, for medical purposes or others. knowing what you are dealing with is important in this societal context, in the same way that is wrong to lie to a muslim about whether there is bacon fat in the stew or not. If I happen to think that eating bacon is actually morally fine, that doesn't give me the right to serve it to an unknowing Muslim or Jew.