Being silenced/feeling voiceless

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

Can we talk about this?

There were some amazing threads on here a few years ago, about rape and about 'small' sexual assaults, and I remember so many posters saying they'd suddenly found a way to talk about something that had shaped them as people. It seemed really powerful to me. But I was wondering if we're actually going backwards in terms of feeling able to speak up.

I was in a meeting yesterday, and noticing how some women (including me) do that classic 'I don't know if I'm saying this very well' kind of minimising of their own points. I was really struck that someone said 'I need to learn the language to say this' - as if she was being inarticulate, rather than as if people weren't bothering to listen to what she was saying (which was closer to the case).

I keep on feeling this way, especially about all the debates raging around gender identity issues - I just don't have the language to say what I want to say. I can't help feeling as if all of us who disagree are just miscommunicating. Does anyone else feel that? I don't feel as if I have the language to talk about what makes me feel hurt and upset by words like 'cis' - I think it's a real feeling, and I think it is related to sexual violence, but I don't feel very able to put it into words, especially outside MN.

Does anyone else feel like this?

"Boys who are seen as 'less' than male, ie- a bit 'female', are subjected to misogynist bullying - sissy, pussy, girlie... etc. "

Well put.

Thank you, Jeanne :)

I'm still catching up, and will probably have to leave it until tomorrow. This is a small burble prompted by your early posts about 'cis'.

The last time I went clubbing with my gay (ex) best friend, the DJ put on something that every single person wants to dance to and then yelled out "No hetties on the dance floor!" I thought I'd misheard but, not only did he repeat it; several other dancers came up to tactfully tell me to sit the hell down. In the end I compromised by doing my thing off the main floor, but that's not the story.

My friend really didn't get why I was so massively outraged. No DJ would ever shout "No poofs on the dance floor" would they? If one were that stupid, the other clubbers would be having a go at the DJ not the dancing poof, wouldn't they?

But I was the straight, female woman in a roomful of gay men. I am part of the majority which oppresses gay men. Therefore it's alright to ostentatiously exclude me and to enforce that exclusion. Because ... well, minorities and oppression.

This is like the way I feel about 'cis'. I've felt similarly when being subjected to racial violence by groups black people, but actually this felt worse. I don't know whether that's purely due to the environment or differing levels of cultural guilt - maybe both.

If other people perceive me (even rightly) as more privileged than them, this doesn't give them carte blanche to re-name me as Hetty, Betty, Milky, Whitey or Cis. It doesn't relieve them of their civil obligations to treat all other humans with basic respect.

• Suddenly feeling I should add - I didn't trick, force or sneak my way into said gatherings of gay men or black people. I'd paid at the door and was behaving appropriately. It was pure prejudice.

Garlick, that must have been really unsettling.

she was attracted to the physical bodies of women born women - so she wasn't a lesbian, because that would mean being attracted to women as a gender

I've read this sentence a few times and, um, I genuinely don't understand. I'm not even saying I don't agree… I just don't understand what this person is saying! Sorry for being dense… can please someone explain?

ah.. ok… a lesbian would be equally attracted to a male-bodied person who identified as a woman...

so are we supposed to be doing away with terms such as heterosexual and homosexual in the context of being only attracted to one sex or the other?

See, that doesn't make any sense to me. When I'm attracted to someone, it's physical. I like something about their body. I might also really like their personality, their values, share their interests, but that's separate (to me at least) from their sexual attractiveness. I thought that sexual orientation was about being attracted a person of the same or opposite biological sex (or both).

It's a massive can o' worms, Jessica - still the same issue of whether gender is a biological thing or not.

I have no gender identity that I'm aware of - or, more likely, a fairly weak one - but have a definite sexual identity. My body responds to (some) biologically male bodies in a way it simply does not to (any) female ones.
If I were lesbian my life would be simpler in some ways, but I've tried it and I'm not.

Many women have told me very strongly that sexuality is a choice, at least for women. Even though my perceptions of sexuality and gender are sliding scales, I can't relate to their argument. I can only suppose their sexual identity's a lot weaker or more flexible than mine. Their gender identity might be stronger & more definite, I don't know.

I wish we would do the fuck away with all concepts of gender (not sex). If we refuse to forget it altogether - how soon can we expand it from a binary to something far more varied and optional?

I wanted to know how a transgender person would explain the homosexual/heterosexual thing and found this:

There are girls with all sorts of genitals, just as boys and non-binary people do. Having sex with a girl if you're a girl will not necessarily ensure that you won't get pregnant. To imply that being homosexual will mean that you will never encounter a partner that could potentially make you pregnant or that you could make them pregnant is cissexist. A better way this conversation could have gone would be "I'm a lesbian and my girlfriend's cis." Or anything that doesn't equate gender to having a certain kind of genital

On the same blog I found this

Q do you have to have dysphoria to be trans?

A No, you don’t need dysphoria to be trans.

A transgender person is someone who doesn’t agree/identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

A cisgender person is someone who agrees/identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth.

All you need to do in order to be trans is to not identify with the gender you were assigned.There are trans people without dysphoria of any kind

I honestly don't understand

A transgender person is someone who doesn’t agree/identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

Then I'm transgender?! Along with the millions - nay, billions - of people who dislike being shoved into social & behavioural boxes due to their gender.

I am really fucking resenting this instruction to re-label myself because of a 'feeling' OTHER PEOPLE SAY I HAVE but haven't

I don't agree with gender full-stop.

This doesn't make me transgender.

And I can just imagine how welcome I'd be at a trans* conference where I stood up and introduced myself as a transwoman who was assigned female at birth

I read something the other day, I think in the guardian, saying that being cis means that your sex matches the way you are perceived. So I am clearly cis because I am obviously female, am treated as female, have all the bullshit that comes from being perceived as female, have been socialised and oppressed as a female, would be described as female by someone who saw me walking in the street etc.

I can actually accept this as a definition of cis and am happy for it to be applied to me. On the other hand the idea of identifying as a gender and having the label of cis forced on to me I find deeply offensive.

I am obviously female, am treated as female, have all the bullshit that comes from being perceived as female, have been socialised and oppressed as a female, would be described as female by someone who saw me walking in the street etc.

All that applies to a 'passing' transwoman, too, except the socialisation & oppression - which she might say she did suffer, due to her dysphoria. And doesn't obviously impact on being perceived as female anyway.

So it's a rubbish definition!

cis means that your sex matches the way you are perceived

that would make a lot of trans people cis though… even those who feel that "pass" 99% of the time.

I found this blog from a transactivist (self-proclaimed), who is the Woman's Officer for the NUS. In this account she is doing something nice and caring and looking out for a woman she thought was vulnerable:

"I wandered into the ladies’ to check if a somewhat inebriated woman (who’d been in there for a while) was okay. It turned out she was fine and just about to leave, but she gave me a funny look as I walked in. “This isn’t the men’s, is it?”

I don’t think there’s a single trans woman who hasn’t had this experience, or something very similar. Many have to endure being misgendered every day. I’m very lucky these days: I suspect that I “pass” as a cis woman around 99% of the time. Still, that doesn’t mean I’m always gendered correctly: now and again, there are always those who mistake me for a man.

Those who misgender me are usually either drunk adults, or children. Some might think that sober adults are more likely to figure I’m trans and gender me correctly out of politeness, but I’m not convinced this entirely accounts for it. I’ve been misgendered a number of times in front of people who don’t know I’m trans, and they always greet such incidences with incomprehension and amusement. How could anyone be so stupid as to think I’m a man, they wonder? After all, I’m obviously a woman"

This woman was undoubtedly being a nice and considerate person in her actions. But she doesn't make any reference to how a different drunk woman might have felt in that situation. I personally don't mind transwomen coming into female loos and changing rooms (and, like many other women, I have been sexually assaulted more than once), but I can see the arguments from women on here about why they feel very uncomfortable with it.

Yes, it's all to do with the body. That's what lots of people have been saying over many, many threads.

If that is what "cis" means then surely it would be expressed as "cissex" - that is someone who is in accord mentally with the reality of their biology.

As in i have a female body and I mentally know that I have a female body. Fine, don't have a problem with that.

But "cis" isn't short for "cissex" - it is short for "cisgender".

In my experience in trans politics sometimes gender is used when the person actually means "sex" and sometimes it is used to mean "sex role" or "sex stereotype" - I think this confusion is deliberate and dishonest.

Gender just means sex role or status.

Therefore to label me as "cisgender" is to label me as someone who accepts the sex role and sex status society awards my female body. But i vehemently don't accept those things (which is why I'm a feminist, duh).

If people mean "cissex" by "cis" they should say that. But of course they don't because then we might have to examine inconvenient biological realities.

A transgender person is someone who doesn’t agree/identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

No. That is not what transgender is

I assume that most people understand what transgender actually means. It's got fuck all to do with gender assigned at birth

But hey, why not start yet another fucking thread on stuff you don't really know about

I've been clear about the fact that I don't understand and am trying to find out information so I can understand and not just looking at 'radfem' interpretations but those of transgender people themselves. The definition of a transgender person that has been quoted was taken from this blog: thispostiscissexist.tumblr.com

How else am I supposed to try to understand what, very obviously, isn't clear (how can it be when transgender people disagree?!) without finding information and then discussing it?

It's not like there's a shortage of information out there

I'm looking at all sorts of information. Feel free to recommend any sources you want. Why not try to be helpful?!