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?

SPLPA: That's a fair point, and I know from some of the discussions about 'cis' it's presumptuous of me - I apologise.

But it's my belief we should treat trans people as we do others with MH issues: with compassion.

Sure, everyone needs to take a gentle and humane approach to other people. Definitely. Not an issue. Also, one needs to know when an aspect of another person's life is their own business. For sure. It doesn't affect me if a man wants to present themselves as a woman, if someone requires surgery on their own body to feel better, certainly it's not my place to oppose or deride that.

However, I do think we need to accept that there's a real line here. Dressing as a woman, feeling like a woman (whatever that means), asking people to call you Crystalle Babydoll McPornteen and refer to you as "she", all fine. But to pretend that's where being a woman starts and ends? No. Female penis? No. Cotton ceiling? No. Avoiding discussion of female biological realities and functions? No. Pretending that women aren't abused and systematically discriminated against across the world because of their biology? No. Agreeing that women who opt out feminine performance aren't proper women? No. Compromising the safety, comfort and community women have strived to carve out in the minimal way we have out of deference to ill defined feelings? No.

Referring to trans people as having mental illnesses has been deemed extremely transphobic.

Women are constantly asked to ignore our boundaries and instincts on grounds of compassion. I'm not a fan, personally.

Quite, and given that trans people have specifically targeted women's crisis centres for crimes as heinous as daring to ask for gender recognition certificates, why should anyone treat them with anything other than contempt or caution?

That blog post you linked to, gin is amazing and terrifying in equal measure. Amazingly articulate and highlights the problem and the pain really well. Terrifying in how little she support she had and in fact how any support she had was used against her.

"On one hand I struggle with the idea that any of us should be placing boundaries on what our partners do; surely we have to either accept their individual choices or decide we don't want to (and leave them)." You see I didn't read that into the blog post at all. At no time in that post did I think that she was trying to impose boundaries on the trans woman (other than impose her own boundaries). In fact I felt it was the other way round that the problem lay. The trans woman was ignoring and stepping over her boundaries left, right and centre. If she did try and impose boundaries on her partner (and I don't think that was implied in the post at all) then it was only to gain some kind of control back again. This was an abusive person she was living with. Suggesting that she was the one placing boundaries on him is erasing what she went through and suggesting there was more of a mutual problem going on. There wasn't.

Fair point, I read that blog ages ago and didn't re-read it this time. The imposing boundaries thing is my experience of being in a relationship.

andie I'm really glad you've joined this discussion, it's so interesting to have your point of view.

However your latest post makes me very uneasy.

This, for instance: you only need to look at suicide rates to see how desperately unhappy they are.

I can't get on board with the idea that trans people kill themselves because they are discriminated against. If people suicided because of discrimination then (as pointed out in one of the completely brilliant comments thread over on GT) there would basically be no black people left in most of the western world. There would certainly have been no black South Africans left by about 1980. Trans people do kill themselves at an alarming rate but I think that's because they have very profound underlying mental health problems, not simply because people won't pretend that they're women. There is definitely serious trauma behind a lot of gender dysphoria I think; and personally I believe that offering to surgically remove healthy parts of their bodies instead of giving them the mental health care they very obviously need is fucking barbaric, abusive and intensely cruel. I do think that at some point in the future SRS will be viewed with the same horror and disgust that we now feel towards lobotomy, and people will wonder how society could ever have been so fucking stupid.

Should that influence how you treat trans people? That's genuinely a question of personal ethics, as the whole 'be nice to me or i'll commit suicide' rhetoric that trans resort to is undoubtedly the language of abuse.

"I'm unhappy" isn't a get out of jail free card (if it was then women would be having a fucking field day) and no, threatening suicide should not influence how trans people are treated by women.

But it's my belief we should treat trans people as we do others with MH issues: with compassion

People with mental health issues are by and large not treated with compassion and they are certainly not afforded rights which infringe on others'. AFAIK no laws have been passed which give me special privileges because I'm bipolar.

I know many people say they don't why they should indulge these people's fantasies, but I can hand on heart say it's only because I was either percieved as being female, or believed I was percieved as such, that I was able to reach a point where I could accept I wasn't one

How would this work, practically? Are all women obliged to play along with the fantasies of every disordered man they encounter for as long as it takes him to resolve his issues? Do we each have a quota of disordered men that we have to indulge and mollycoddle in our lives, and once we've filled it we can be honest with any further ones we meet?
Women are given no leeway whatsoever, no allowances are made for us, we are not afforded the time or space to work through our own pain and confusion. It would not cross our minds to suggest that the rest of the world dances around our psychic pain. Absolutely mind boggling that you think this is a reasonable suggestion.
Imagine if I suggested an equivalent "solution" to my delusions when I'm having a psychotic break: "guys, you should really just let me be the minister for education for a couple of years, ok? Just go along with it!" The response would (rightly) be "Fuck off, you're mad."

Of course as someone who isn't female I can say that; the impact on me (even as someone who suports feminism) is nothing like the same as it is for women.

The impact on you is zero - completely nonexistant. The impact on women is devastating. I am gobsmacked that you're even suggesting it.

I know many people say they don't why they should indulge these people's fantasies, but I can hand on heart say it's only because I was either percieved as being female, or believed I was percieved as such, that I was able to reach a point where I could accept I wasn't one

I'm obsessed with this!

What you are describing is work: women working, for men. It's not passive, it's very much active.
I have been in a social situation with three female friends and a transwoman. On the surface it was just a group of women sitting around in a garden smoking cigarettes and chatting amiably. It lasted about an hour. In that time, none of the women made eye contact with each other. Because we all knew what was happening. We all knew we were pretending and lying. We were all complicit. And you know what? It was humiliating; and making eye contact with each other would have meant acknowledging that. It would have meant acknowledging that we were being made to perform.
I'm not a means to an end, no matter how fragile someone's psyche is.

I can't get on board with the idea that trans people kill themselves because they are discriminated against.

Nor I, at least not to the extent that the campaigners say - I know too many trans people who passed as their desired sex and were completely accepted as such who've done so. And i quite agree that many have severe MH issues - as I hope I've made clear (desperately unhappy/mentally unwell are synonyms for me, as I don't really believe in mental illness as it's typically conceptualised). As for the ethics of trans surgery - again I'm inclined to agree with you, but I do know some trans people who appear to live perfectly happy, functional, lives after having their delusion made medically concrete.

Tell me though - how do you feel about the campaigns to stamp out homophobia? surely if discrimination can kill people who aren't mentally unwell then surely it can do the same to those that are?

Of course explicit threats to commit suicide are abuse, and as such should be treated as that. However If we concieve of trans as an at risk group, and if we find no cause for concern in their individual behaviour, then is humouring their delusion to some degree (no matter what you you actually believe them to be, or what your political position is) really so terrible? Again, please don't think I'm telling you what to do, as you say the impact on me is nil, and I know many feminists who I greatly respect who disagree with me very strongly on the matter.

Have you read the rageagainstthemanchine posts on trans? I think they best exemplify the approach I try to take to this issue.

If we concieve of trans as an at risk group, and if we find no cause for concern in their individual behaviour, then is humouring their delusion to some degree (no matter what you you actually believe them to be, or what your political position is) really so terrible?

To me, yes it really is so terrible. Asking me to lie and pretend is terrible, to me. Asking me to submit to this is terrible. It is humiliating. It is degrading. It involves asking me to pretend that I believe that womanhood is about appearance as opposed to experience. It debases me by implying that womanhood is a desirable state, something exciting and exotic, as opposed to the burden that it actually often is. It is asking me to pretend that ladybrain exists. It requires me to budge up, move over, make space. All of this is a violation of MY sense of identity. It is asking me to abandon MY identity to allow someone else to feel secure in theirs. It is asking me to abandon my own boundaries for someone else's comfort. So yes, to me that is terrible and unacceptable. That is how I feel about it, and of course I recognise that plenty of other women are absolutely fine with it and share none of my reservations, and that's great. I think that I should be allowed to decide for myself whether I indulge people or not though, and a lot of vocal transactivists don't agree with that.

I don't really believe in mental illness as it's typically conceptualised

This is really interesting. I'm coming round to this view myself but it's only very recent for me. I have a diagnosed "mental illness" and I periodically really struggle with the diagnosis - the labelling/pathologising of what just feels like my self, if that makes sense - but luckily I have an incredibly good, intelligent psychiatrist who really gets it and actively engages with me on it.

What you are describing is work: women working, for men. It's not passive, it's very much active.

Yeah - been there, fucking horrible experience. I realised pretty much then that even if I did reach a point where I was accepted as a woman I was always gonna feel like a fraud (because I was one).

Can you link to the rageagainstthemachine posts? I've googled but I'm just getting links to lyrics sites.

To me, yes it really is so terrible. Asking me to lie and pretend is terrible, to me. Asking me to submit to this is terrible. It is humiliating. It is degrading. It involves asking me to pretend that I believe that womanhood is about appearance as opposed to experience. It debases me by implying that womanhood is a desirable state, something exciting and exotic, as opposed to the burden that it actually often is. It is asking me to pretend that ladybrain exists. It requires me to budge up, move over, make space. All of this is a violation of MY sense of identity. It is asking me to abandon MY identity to allow someone else to feel secure in theirs. It is asking me to abandon my own boundaries for someone else's comfort. So yes, to me that is terrible and unacceptable. That is how I feel about it, and of course I recognise that plenty of other women are absolutely fine with it and share none of my reservations, and that's great. I think that I should be allowed to decide for myself whether I indulge people or not though, and a lot of vocal transactivists don't agree with that.

And I would never expect you to do so. Personally I always took the position that I don't get to decide how someone else views me.

I've just had a further thought w/regard to the existential phenomological approach, but I don't think it belongs here (despite being about trans)

Gin - rageagainsttheMANchine.com - I can't link as the library I'm at filters it.

I would never expect you to do so.

But then what do you men by "indulge"? How do I accommodate mentally fragile gender dysphoric men and also not transgress my own boundaries?

Remember that a lot of the situations relating to transwomen being indulged are totally out of my control: I don't get to make policy about who gets to go into the changing rooms in the bra department in Debenhams, or who gets to use the women's toilets at the cinema, or the women's changing room at the council pool, etc etc. I do not want preoperative transwomen in those spaces but if Debenhams/Vue/the council decide that they're allowed then I'm fucked. I have to stop using those spaces. Someone has to lose, right? Someone's feelings are going to get hurt.

I have a gay male friend who's started attending a local knitting group. At first I thought "aw, sweet," but having thought on it I'm actually quite unsettled by it. Obviously there's nothing stopping him going: it's a knitting group, not a women's group. But if you think about it for more than about 5 seconds, knitting is very obviously not the primary purpose of the meetings. Knitting is not a social activity. All of the women who attend are in their 50s or 60s and they've all been knitting for a long time - they're not going there for help or instruction. They're going there to be around other women and talk to each other in a space without men in it. And now there's a man there. Don't get me wrong: he's great, he's very funny and I love being around him. But are those women going to be able to casually go off at a tangent about their uterine cancer scare or their daughter's abusive shit of a boyfriend if they want to now? No, they're not. They're not going to feel comfortable doing that any more. And of course that's not all women talk about when they're together but they do SOMETIMES talk about stuff like that and they generally don't do it when men are around. And transwomen are men. So even if by "indulge" we're talking about something as seemingly benign as having a transwoman in a knitting group, it involves born women making a sacrifice; and it's the women in the group who don't want to have meetings with transwomen in them have to leave and make their own arrangements.

rageagainsttheMANchine.com

Thanks!

But then what do you men by "indulge"?

To use female pronouns?

The issue of female spaces is important, and I think you make a very important point. But honestly sometimes I wonder whether I'm in the wrong about this issue (and yes - by implication I wondering/suggesting that you are too, something I can't really do anything about). The younger, gender-queer, pro-trans, po-mo, sex is a construct, 'masculinities and femininities', all seem to be saying this isn't an issue for them - so perhaps I am being old-fashioned/transphobic/whatthehellever. And maybe these are the first steps toward a genuinely equal society?

Referring to trans people as having mental illnesses has been deemed extremely transphobic.

Being offended by mental illness could be seen as extremely disablist.

If I met a transwoman, I'd go along with it because it isn't in me to hurt people outright. I wouldn't like it and I would feel like gin that it was me accepting their definition of woman.

I'd think a black man was being ridiculous for accepting a white man as black because he "felt like a black man". I'd expect him to feel insulted and to comment but that's because I expect men to not put up with that sort of thing.

When women have no fear of men in their spaces then we will have mixed spaces. I don't believe that most younger feminist believe the stuff they are spouting, I think it feels unnatural for them to be on the other side of the "oppressed". Feminism distilled in to one line would just be "there is no such thing as a female brain" but for some reason women are falling over themselves to say "Of course we all have women's brains". Our vagina have nothing to do with our shared experiences, our periods our births our infertility, it's all about woman brains now"

There's a couple of things I've never understood: why women aren't a protected class; and why MTF transgenderism isn't considered cultural appropriation?

The reason I have been given is because women born as women are "cis" and therefore the "oppressors" of trans people so apparently it isn't a correct analogy.

And when I have disagreed that "cis women" wern't in a position to opress anyone having no legal or political powers I was told I was a trans phobic bigot. You really can't win this argument no matter how ridiculous it feels sometime. And the bit really upsets me is the more I get involved the more angry I get at trans people. When previously I don't think I'd have ever felt anything but sympathetic to someone who felt out of place in their body (like so many "cis" women do)

maybe these are the first steps toward a genuinely equal society?

It is built on (a) setting very old, tired gender stereotypes in stone; and (b) giving men absolutely everything they want regardless of the cost to women. So no, it's not anything to do with equality, it's to do with hatred of women. Think about the Cotton Ceiling. About lesbians being pushed to have sex with men and called bigots and threatened with rape and death if they raise objections. How does that fit into this "genuinely equal society"?

andie have you read Some Reflections on Separatism and Power by Marilyn Frye? It's a really well written piece about women-only spaces and men demanding access to them. Link here

You really can't win this argument no matter how ridiculous it feels sometime

I was just thinking on the way home that the two standard responses to any objection to trans theory are "I will rape/kill you/your children" and "I will kill myself."

Death, destruction. How can you "argue" against that?

And also all the "I was misgendered and now I'm locked in a cupboard shaking and crying" - imagine if women locked themselves in the cupboard crying and shaking every time someone upset them! PMSL. We'd all have to take a wardrobe with us every time we left the house!