Is it actually possible to be a feminist and completely embrace trans rights?

[BertrandRussell]

Because I am beginning to think that i will never be able to say anything about trans issues without being accused of being transphobic.

It seems to me that in some cases trans rights are just incompatible with women's rights. Obviously then, someone has to step aside- and if I want the ones stepping aside to be transwomen then I am being, I suppose, transphobic.

So has the time come for feminists to say to trans women "I support you to live the life you want to. I will stand up to and with you against people who abuse you and are violent to you. I will call you what you want to be called. I will defend your employment rights, your right to housing and any other "social" service. I will defend your right to appropriate medical treatment. In fact, I will defend you and support you in anything up to the point where your rights conflict with and take precedence over the rights of women. From that point, my allegiance is with women.

If this causes you to call me transphobic so be it. I will continue to support you up to that point regardless."

I agree with micro

As a lurker who had my mind changed I have to say it was the fact that it's NOT an echo chamber that convinced me. Seeing arguments, challenges and counter challenges (and cold logic of poster like cote) was enlightening. I would never have stuck around reading an 'echo chamber'.

"this is a conflict about what the dictionary will say in the future when you look up the word 'woman'... It doesn't matter what the dictionary or the textbook says now, that's the whole fucking point. Those words in those books are the disputed territory."

We all know that TAs are disputing those definitions. What you portray as the simplistic (as opposed to your "nuanced") arguments of pointing at dictionary definitions is in fact the indisputable biological reality that quickly and effectively informs people and wakes up fence sitters.

There is nothing stopping you from treating this subject as "something as fiendishly complex and multidisciplinary as the study of gender" because that is what you studied and presumably got used to writing/reading long-winded articles about. I will stick to biology which is clear-cut, concise, unambiguous, and frankly impossible to argue against.

Neither of us need to take anything "on the chin".

Buffy I'm not sure getting together with the quiet, reasonable trans people is likely to get us anywhere. We should ask Helen and Miranda, but my understanding is that the majority of MTTs who just want a quiet life keep well out of politics precisely because the activists will make their lives hell if they pipe up. They have nothing to gain and much to lose.

In the long term I suspect that the trans lobby will continue to get their way until gradually a tide of events linked to the erosion of our rights, whether it's attacks on women, blatant cheating in sport, or distress caused to children, will cause a proper public debate. All it takes is some cases of serious abuse in what should be women-only spaces and the media will be buzzing. Can you imagine the coverage if an MTT sex offender raped and impregnated someone in a women's prison?

I'm not reading the thread but I'm a lesbian feminist with a afab-masc partner on the trans spectrum and I embrace all trans rights. I know a lot of trans people and they are not men trying to take womens rights. A lot of them are bio female and ftm. Moat of them are not politically minded at all and just want to be left in peace to be themselves. I find it so sad. Its just people hating :(

All that's great and yes, we understand gender roles are based on biology but that is a separate subject than TAs efforts to change the definitions of the words Female and Woman, both of which are biological descriptions.

I agree with microferret - All this is derailing. Feel free to start your own thread about how exactly you feel we should be talking on this subject and why. It might turn out to be an interesting one.

I'm not sure it's that complicated, Buffy. I mean I know people spend their whole lives studying gender, but most of us - most people in general - find it quite easy to understand that biology is fixed, male and female, while gender is about what society expects of men and women, how the sexes are treated.

All you need to say is that, for example, in the Middle Ages men wore this and did that, while women were only allowed to do x. Even a child can understand the basics of gender.

"I'm not reading the thread but I'm a lesbian feminist with a afab-masc partner on the trans spectrum and I embrace all trans rights. I know a lot of trans people and they are not men trying to take womens rights. A lot of them are bio female and ftm. Moat of them are not politically minded at all and just want to be left in peace to be themselves. I find it so sad. Its just people hating sad"

If you're not reading the thread, can I ask how you know it's people hating?

Buffy, great post. All I will say is that the pragmatic, strategic discussions and measured action plans don't happen on Mumsnet, they happen in groups elsewhere where all efforts are made to ensure members' privacy is secured to avoid the worst of the death and rape threats that inevitably are targeted at women who speak out to resist this stuff. Also where speech can be freer because people aren't restricted by talk rules that threaten to shut down discussion if misgendering occurs.

Mumsnet is an open discussion forum, and many of us desperately want it to remain a place where (mostly) free discussion happens and minds are changed. As such it has limitations.

The venting seen here, the blunt and undiplomatic discussions may take an entirely different form from the same author in a different context. But that won't always be seen on Mumsnet. I don't think it needs to be.

Bert. I'm afraid i avoid threads on mumsnet involving trans discussions because everyone I've read has has me in tears. I just saw the title and wanted to say I call myself a feminist but have strong ties in the trans community :)

Oh, right. So you are happy to comment on a thread you haven't read and accuse it of being "people hating".

I was refering to many other posts I've read on MN and the general hype around trans rights in the media at the moment.

I don't always read threads but still comment, this one is very long too, but as the title was a question i just thought i would answer with my own experiences. Apologies if this isn't the done thing but I just answered on a whim.

That's fine. However, reading the opening post at least would have been courteous.

And perhaps a more nuanced response than "I don't see a problem- you are people hating"?

The hype comes from the activists - what you would be reading here is an utterly unforgiving rebuttal of their arguments. Not people hating - that's just people hating prejudice of your own.

I am struggling to equate the vulnerable young people I know with the strident activists much talked about on MN
I do wonder how much of an influence these strident activists have had on creating some of these vulnerable young people. Who in some cases I suspect would in the past "simply" have come out.

Youra FWIW I thought your contribution was useful. My experience with tans teens is very similar.

Yeah buffy I know there is a lot to discuss around gender which is why I named a specific poster. Well thought through posts about the nature of gender are good and enlightening. Pontificating wanky bollocks is not

biology was just super simple and didn't have any consequences for how people were treated, then there would never have been any need for feminism at all.

Conversely my view is if you take female biology out of the definition of "woman/female" then it's impossible to discuss those consequences and therefore feminism becomes redundant and replaced by "egalitarianism". I'm sure lots of people are fine with that but I'm not!

youra why not read the thread then post your thoughts? I would like to know how I can discuss trans stuff without coming across as "people hating" that's absolutely not my intent

Buffy - that issue of "trans" historiography - saying retrospectively "so-and-so was really trans" is a very interesting one. Did Joan of Arc don men's armour because she felt she was a man, or because given the restrictions on women's behaviour at the time, it was the only way she could gain political agency? (My answer would be "of course it's the latter" - but presumably this answer isn't self-evident to someone engaged in historical revisionism).

I think the "academic" answer to this sort of historical revisionism would surely to be to ask the anthropological question "is this a one-off, or occasional and sporadic behaviour with no socially organised ideology (for want of a better term) behind it, like the women soldiers in WWI; or is it a socially sanctioned behaviour pattern, like Bacha Posh in Afghanistan or Sworn Virgins in Albania." The former seems to me better described as women as individuals bucking against gender constraints (understood in the old-fashioned social sciences meaning of "gender stereotypes" rather than the newer identity politics sense of "what I feel like inside"). The latter might allow for trans-revisionism, but only if you take it to mean that these social categories actually map onto some reality, rather than being (as many anthropologists take them to be) constructed categories to provide a sort of sanctioned safety valve in societies which have otherwise incredibly rigid and ruthlessly enforced gender roles. (As an aside, I gather in some circles even talking about anthropology in such terms is seen as transphobic).

Good feminist work.

Infuriating trans advocates
.

Bollocks... not that link

Although I do love that.