What is going on with the Feminist Library in London?

[ArcheryAnnie]

This isn't a rhetorical question. I am seeing on twitter that loads of sensible gender-crit women and transwomen have been banned and blocked from the FB message boards, including pre-emptive bans, and that posts on such things as, er, the menopause have been deleted as transphobic.

The Feminist Library was set up by second-wavers decades ago, and I thought it was still run by second-wavers. What's going on?

(I'm not on FB so don't know if I am pre-emptively banned or not.)

Biologically a woman, wanders around every day not being worried about people thinking I'm a woman (because, you know, I am), but don't have a gender identity of 'woman' - I don't have a gender identity at all according to the definitions available, therefore, I'm trans or gender queer or some other pointless label.

Oh hey, me too. Does this mean we can all be trans if we just identify as trans, without any need for all that unnecessary transitioning business? Cool.

transgender
adjective
denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender.

Straight from the mouth of Google

You don't even need to identify as trans - in fact, by the general definition, the vast majority of people are trans - I don't know anyone who 'unambiguously conforms to conventional notions of male or female'

I've been reading this thread and am now utterly befuddled. I cannot get my head around how Emrys Travis can call themself (?) trans. Is it because s/he doesn't identify with being female gender whilst also not identifying as being male gendered? So the conclusion that s/he has come to is that s/he is trans, rather than concluding that gender as a concept is incorrect?

As for the statement from the admin of the library... I'm amazed that they are happy to shut down all discussion about gender like this. I don't believe in gender, in that I don't think that there are any brain differences between men and women. I am quite happy with the idea that biology makes you male or female, and what you "present" as to the world is entirely a social construct. So, as a result of this, the Feminist Library doesn't want to have any interaction with me! Sod that.

Isabelle wow! What an answer that is!

You’re allowed to have preferences about what sex acts you want to indulge in and which ones you don’t

Why thank you! So generous.

but don't conflate that with attraction.

I'd imagine not wanting a penis anywhere near you would preclude quite a lot of sex acts involving male-bodied people.

I'm sure you personally aren't violently transmisogynistic, but the same things that lead you to ask these questions are the things that lead to trans women's deaths.

Yup. All those lesbians not wanting to have sex with men means trans people die. The meanies!

I usually try to stay out of the whole trans thing as I feel it's one big derailing of feminism, but I'm just rapidly losing patience in the face of this blatant homophobia, misogyny and attack on women in radical feminism. Sigh.

Ohh, hang on! From that ask.fm page:

a genderqueer/fluid/flux person whose ID is mostly neither male nor female at all

Hooray! I'm genderqueer! Now I can call anyone who disagrees with me transphobic and cissexist. Sorted.

"transgender
adjective
denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender"

You're right Chunky, it makes pretty much everyone trans. And someone who may conform to all conventional notions of the gender relating to their sex will be trans in different parts of the world where the conventions differ...

Christ, what a clusterfuck.

That sound they hear is the sound of second-wavers hurriedly writing them out of their wills.

I usually try to stay out of the whole trans thing as I feel it's one big derailing of feminism, but I'm just rapidly losing patience in the face of this blatant homophobia, misogyny and attack on women in radical feminism. Sigh.

I agree with you there NiNo. I think this kind of stuff probably puts some people against all trans people, when the truth is not all trans people think this way. Many have total respect for women and feminsim and wouldn't dream of saying a lesbian should have to sleep with anyone they weren't attracted to. It's sad that they probably get caught up in all this. Equally sad for any lesbian who thinks there is something wrong with her for feeling how she feels. I wonder if there is any pressure on gay men to sleep with transmen. I doubt there is.

Is she the admin of the library or just an admin of the Facebook group?

Countess as I understand it, E- T- is no longer an admin of the FB group, making that the shortest administration since Lady Jane Grey.

The one who is now trying to deal with concepts she clearly knows nothing about is someone else. I shan't name her because I suspect that in a few years she will look back at this and cringe.

According to the baffling array of genders I can now choose from, I'm probably "agender" but since that doesn't stop people from treating me like a woman, i.e. inferior, I've chosen "feminist" as an identity instead.

YY I was looking at (a different?) thread on here and after a bit of a lightening bolt moment on another thread as to why I (and apparently oodles of other women) have a total failure to understand the whole internal gender thing, is because I am what is called in modern parlance "agender".

Well that's all fine and AOK. I think it means I'm not a woman now though? Which is a bit odd. Am I still female? I don't think so?

I think the problem that has been hit is that actually ^loads of people are not "cis" and so the only way you can tell what someone is, is to first explain what it's all about, and then ask them what their internal ID is. The assumption seems to be that most people who are not trans, are cis. Turns out they aren't. So then the whole "who's more privileged than who" competition falls flat on it's arse. Turns out there are hardly any actual women anyway. (I have no idea about men, this is going by a great big thread on MN where the vast majority of respondents said they had no internal feeling of being female. Or male).

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Don't know where that gets us. What I do know is that I need a name for the people around the world who are born with cunts and the people around the world who are born with cocks so I can say who is doing what to who, who is not getting educated where, who is being married off at 10 and so on and so forth.

At this point I don't care what the name is. They can have "women" and "female" and "girl", looks like they are a fairly small number of people anyway and you won't know who they are until you ask them (you can't tell by looking). The group with vaginas and that could be called Bibbles. Or Spreeks. Or, I don't know, Cunts (we're used to that anyway). Or Non-People (to reflect the global situation).

Whole thing is fucking idiotic.

Totally. All radfems and other gender-critical women and women who've never even thought about it (and men, I presume) are actually trans by trans rules (or genderqueer or wheteverthefuck).

Now what?

Isabelle

I wonder if there is any pressure on gay men to sleep with transmen. I doubt there is.

There was a rather illuminating Twitter exchange a while back where, IIRC, a radfem asked Owen Jones (after he told women [oops! I mean bibbles] we were doing feminism wrong) whether he'd sleep with a transman. His utter, utter spluttering outrage was fucking hilarious.

The interesting thing for me is that, that thread highlighted why I have always been a feminist. I noticed that boys and girls / men and women were treated differently, and I didn't like it. I didn't understand it. I didn't like the way I was treated. I saw that I was expected to fit in a box called "pretty little girl" and externally I fitted very well which may have exacerbated things because I couldn't give a fuck about the things people wanted me to give a fuck about and so on.

So OK sure it does look like I have no internal gender. I have no idea what it means when people talk about it, I don't have any feelings whatsoever inside that link to male / female / masculine / feminine. I literally, just don't get it.

Ironically, this is why I said "yes that's me" when I first even heard what a feminist was, as a young teen, and again when I was introduced to the RadFem ideas, I thought, well most of that chimes with how I feel

So the fact that I am not cis is what led me to radical feminism (at least I think that's what I am, I haven't done a quiz to check or anything ).

So you're right. Where next?

Well one of the reasons.

The other being that as I grew older I watched the news and read the papers and experienced street harassment and so on and so forth and say how badly women and girls are treated all the time everywhere.

But before that, I didn't fit in my box, at all. I didn't understand why the box was even there. Many many girls and women report the same.

Of course there are women and girls who do have an internal self identity of female, they can be feminists and so forth. Just for me, this is what happened, and it's interesting.

What happens in these arguments if a "Terf" points out she is not cis???

What happens in these arguments if a "Terf" points out she is not cis???

We (now we're trans) can call her a TERF anyway, since the TERF-caller is the infallible expert on cis people's gender identity or lack of it. Or if they're trans, they're then tru-scum. Marvellous, isn't it? It's almost like it was designed to shut down discussion and silence detractors.

FWIW, my story is similar to yours Whirlpool, and both my parents brought me up in a relatively gender-neutral if not outright feminist way. My mum uterus-bearing parent read me the Feminist Fairy Tales (still trying to track down a copy - wonder if the Feminist Library has one?) and I played with Lego back when it was just blocks, not all these ridiculously gendered totally appropriate kits. When I was 7, I went out of my way not to like pink and made yellow my favourite colour (see how early I was genderqueer?!).

I'm now going to grow my PCOS beard, stick on a sparkly dress and be so non-binary it fucking hurts. That'll sort the world out!

If we wanted to write to the Feminist Library, would it be seen by one of the old guard, or binned by one of these PoMo babies?

The other thing that is confusing is that apparently I am not a woman, nor am I female. I am also not a man, nor am I male.

It is other people who have told me this, I was quite happy ticking the boxes saying "F" on forms and being referred to as a pregnant woman for example. This was because I was under the impression that my being in possession of a female reproductive system & etc put me in those categories.

Now it turns out, these descriptors should not be used by me. That feels kind of, not right? It really feels like a lot of my history has been removed. I was never a little girl, or a woman who got catcalled, or a female who got blank looks when she wanted to watch sci-fi films, or whatever.

Does anyone know what I am supposed to be now?

And what does that mean for the fact that everyone I meet perceives me and therefore treats me as 100% female and they always have done, and all the shit that goes with that.

Someone on the facebook said that we are oppressed as women not because of what's between our legs. OK. I'm not a woman. So why did all these things happen to me?

Is it a kind of victim blaming thing, I must have done something to invite this stuff? Or what? Because apparently it didn't happen because of my body / features.

Oh Whirlpool, everyone knows you can just identify your way out of oppression! Gender identity does not equal gender expression. Why are you so interested in the contents of other people's pants anyway?! Misogyny is totes not as bad as transmisogyny.

OK, so I'm pissing my own self off now

Annie, get an email like [email protected] and mail them asking about books on the menopause, see what happens.

I used to be "that" kind of feminist. I fell over myself to use gender accommodating language and was appalled if someone associated vaginas with women because don't you know its important we centre penises over vagina??!! Also the wider world centres penises over vagina. Everyone must centre around penis. But thanks to Mumsnet, a gender critical trans woman and a few other rad fems I'm seeing sense. I just wanna say thanks.

I had never actually heard of the feminist library but I'm gutted it has gone the same way as so many other spaces. It's horrendously McCarthyist. You can't even associate with anyone who has been condemned.

My biggest issue is the dictation on how OTHERS see their own fucking body. Everyone MUST "identify" as a gender, even if this is completely meaningless to you! I don't "identify as" a fucking woman! I just am one! I have a body and a personality. My vagina and sex characteristics determine how people treat me, not some vague personality traits and things I've been socialised into liking.

I'm sorry to offload here. I honestly can't speak about these things without "violating safe space rules" and getting kicked out of feminist groups and losing friends.

Apparently wanting to acknowledge that I don't "identify as" anything, that i was socialised into liking dresses and make up and that same socialisation has been the cause of abuse, anorexia, depression, and horrible interpersonal relations... Apparently acknowledging my sex and sex based oppression is entirely based on biology, accepting other people may feel different but refusing to let others take that away from ME and other women is "violent".

Also whirlpool don't you know that those with cunts are uterus-havers and those with penises are penis-havers. These terms are much better than male and female because they aren't biology obsessed or focus on anatomy. Penis-haver is also definitely not upsetting for a dysphoric trans person. Nope. Also uterus bearer is better than female, since it doesn't exclude women who've had hysterectomies (which is such a rad fem thing to do!!). Also the clit and the penis are anatomically identical, so if you havent been pissing from your clit, see a doctor - although medics and rad fems have such bad understanding of biology!

Annie, get an email like [email protected] and mail them asking about books on the menopause, see what happens.

NiNoKuni I am inspired, thank you!

< cracks knuckles, opens new tab >

I don't really get out and about on the net that much, when I see what is going on out there I realise how good it is that we have this space here. What are other spaces that are more old school?

Fauchelevent out of interest, why did you used to believe those things? Genuinely interested I'm very glad that you have come round to the sensible way of thinking

Also on that library site, if talk of sex based oppression is banned, what the actual fuck are they going to do with what must be a massive proportion of their books? Chuck them out? Give them away? Destroy them?

whirlpool believe it or not when I first became a feminist, at 13 I was a rad fem and proud! Then about 16 I was like most teens, laughing about misogyny and saying "women can't drive" because I wanted to fit in I guess. Anyway a few years later I was very vocally into what I now call "tumblr feminism". Waging war against the white cis able anti-sex worker straight anti-fat......[redacted] capitalist supremacy... It was about who was most oppressed being the most correct, what they said HAD to go, if you found it empowering it was empowering, female celebs were the be all and end all of who can change this society, call outs and blah blah blah... Because we were all students and everyone felt the same? And it's very insular, you don't want to oppress anyone so you act careful and polite and make room again and again because you don't want to be problematic. To be problematic is a fate irredeemable. Once you're problematic you're ousted. If you socialise with problematics you're ousted. Unless you're a poor, "queer", black, fat trans woman sex worker. Then you are never wrong and everyone must flagellate themselves for having so much privilege. It doesn't matter if your menses caused eating disorders, self hate and overcoming that is a big feminist step. You might trigger someone with your disgusting vile period, so put a tw - as if you were discussing rape, abuse or paedophilia.

It's shockingly cultish. I could, for example, share advice for abuse survivors but if a "terf" wrote it, I'd be told to delete it else I was supporting the deaths of thousands of trans women. Other sins include listening to any pop music that isn't beyonce - the queen feminist, watching shows that aren't orange is the new black..
So as you can imagine it's not easy to think anything else. Until you start reading about facts and logic, not just the circular logic that you're forced to repeat and never question.

Wow. This thread has... well, it's made me think a lot.

"...this group does not support feminism that excludes or marginalises transwomen."

And they're deleting posts about the menopause. So they're saying that anything that discusses female bodies (menopause) is transphobic? In spite of the fact that the vast majority of women will, in fact, go through said menopause?

There is a difference between something not being relevant to everyone in a given group, and actively excluding the people to whom it's not relevant, right?

I'm not saying feminism is all about female bodies. But... a pretty large chunk of it is. Why does caring about and discussing those things preclude interaction with and concern for trans issues?

As an aside, Archery, you could consider the Glasgow Women's Library in your will instead...