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."

lol*. I thought that link was sort of a classical rickroll. What's the actual link? you've piqued my interest

*just wondering... do we say "lol" on MN?

I know I sometimes do but don't think it's the done thing I refrain from ROFLMAO.

Because of my age, my circumstances and the people I know I'm not much worried about real life backlash from trans activists. I'm prepared to say publicly what I think.

I know being outspoken is hard, sometimes impossible, for some people. People lose their jobs over opposition to trans ideology. The fact that health professionals have to blog anonymously on www.youthtranscriticalprofessionals.org is, of itself, deeply troubling. I can't think of any other area of medicine where debate is utterly forbidden.

I have none of these considerations. No skin of my nose if I speak up. Perhaps we could get a group of people who don't mind being the "public face" of gender critical feminism? (I know all feminism is gender critical, but perhaps it's easier if we spell it out.)

Off my nose. (You can tell I'm an ex journalist.)

prawn I suppose we've got Julie Bindel, Sheila Jeffreys, Greer, Raymond et al and all the other old-school radfems trying to speak up about this, but they get no-platformed a LOT. The more people who do speak up though, the better - they can't ignore us all (can they?). I'm in my early thirties, and I haven't come out publicly as gender-critical, mainly because my cousin came out as transgender recently, and I just can't bring myself to rock the boat. I get the feeling that I would get a negative response on platforms like FB but if I broach the subject one-on-one with people they are usually receptive to at least hear the arguments. The one person I couldn't convince was a decade younger - a lovely girl, but very much a member of the Tumblr generation. She wouldn't even listen to the points I was making and got very upset. There is definitely a massive age divide here. I think the awkward thing is that it's easy to get cast as the old fuddy duddy who can't adapt to the brave new world, something that the older generations are often guilty of. The difference in this case is that this is just the same old world dressed up in a sparklier outfit.

I think the young are more grounded than you think. My DSs thought the cotton ceiling business was ridiculous. Said the lesbians should just laugh at the TAs until I pointed out the TAs were blokes and that might not end well. Still thought the lesbians should mock the predatory thinking online rather than engage.

However one of them couldn't see the problem of calling MTTs women. He felt, as I used to, that it was the kind thing to do. So I asked him to come up with a definition of the word "woman" that covers both us and MTTs.

He's a logical little bugger, gave it a ponder and said you're right. He's come down firmly on the feminist side.

The young are very aware of homophobia. If you you frame trans activism as intrinsically homophobic you get a better reception. Young lesbians being persuaded that they'll be better off as men is just heartbreaking, and there are 100s of detransitioners now. No shortage of videos.

Feminists who believe that feminism is about liberating every person from every type of oppression can unconditionally embrace all trans people, all trans rights and belief in the concept of gender identity ("I feel like a woman therefore I am a woman"). I'd be very surprised if these feminists did not do this.

Feminists who believe that feminism is about liberating women and girls from the system of oppression called gender, which puts women and girls at the bottom of a gender status hierarchy because of their female biology, usually cannot unconditionally embrace all transwomen and all trans rights. I think these feminists can, and do, support improvement of many trans rights e.g. employment rights or freedom to be safe from violence. Their support for trans people runs into difficulties when trans rights and women's rights conflict. I call this gender-identity-critical (GIC) feminism.

The political ideology of transgenderism is about the colonisation of women's space by a subset of male people. This is incompatible with GIC feminism which centres the rights of female people.

Transgenderism is not like GIC feminism or some other well-known social movements. e.g. civil rights and gay rights, in which the activists campaign to be acknowledged as human and equal to the oppressor. Much of transgenderism is about appropriating the space of another oppressed group (women and girls) and removing or at least trumping their rights.

Extremist transactivists campaign for transgenderism, not the human rights of trans people.

Has the GIC feminism versus transgenderism debate already passed the point of no-return? Currently, GIC feminists say transwomen are never women, transactivists say transwomen are always women. What should a debate about women hope to achieve? Perhaps a compromise that agrees that all transwomen are women is some ways. e.g. no transwomen in women's refuges or women's sport? Perhaps a compromise that only some transwomen are women e.g. only castrated transwomen who take hormones and who look "pretty" enough?

A shift in emphasis by GIC feminists would be very difficult because, as many MNers already know, GIC feminism is already seen as bigoted and transphobic. I think this is a highlight in the achievements of patriarchal backlash. It's the perfect storm for women's rights. Acceptance by society that transwomen are women is the perfect patriarchal tool. It is enabling the removal or restriction of rights that women and girls have fought for on our path to liberation from oppression that is based on female biology.

At the moment, I think a major problem for GIC feminism is the transphobia and bigotry labelling of anything short of total unconditional agreement with the transactivist belief that anyone who claims to feel like a woman is a woman in every way. Therefore, I think the only way for GIC feminists to be seen as not transphobic and not bigoted is either unconditional surrender to this demand or a drastic reduction in the scope of what can be labelled as transphobic or bigoted. Total surrender would make debate unnecessary so I'd prefer the starting point to be a redefinition of transphobia. Only then do I think any constructive debate could begin.

A huge obstacle to overcome is the current deadlock over who is a woman. GIC feminists insist that transwomen are not women, because they are not female. I don't see how framing the debate around women would free it from the current deadlock, because if a person thinks that transwomen are women, then all debate around women and gender will still centre transwomen because, according to transactivists, transwomen are the most oppressed group and lack the "cis-privilege" of "other" women. Even if the debate is changed to be about female people instead of women, transactivists just play their "transwomen are female" card.

I agree with a lot of that, Vesuvia, as being accused of being transphobic undoubtedly causes many to step back from the argument.

I'd like to see those in positions of influence being forced to define gender and sex before any debate starts if for no other reason than to highlight that transphobia cannot be as open ended as claimed otherwise it's completely nonsensical.

Prawn, that's very encouraging to hear. I suppose our childminder, an irascible Scot who is almost a decade younger than me, is pretty much a radfem too and she's never bought into any of the special snowflake bullshit. I think in general it's really hard to gauge what the actual overall mood of the public is. This happened during the general election - in my lefty-liberal echo chamber on FB, it looked like the Tories were gone, but the silent majority decided otherwise. People often make a lot of noise on Twitter and other social platforms, but they don't really represent the masses. It was refreshing to see that HuffPost UK article somebody linked, and to see the FB responses are all supportive of the author. I'm expecting that there will be a backlash though.... Just wait until Cher gets hold of her

Interesting point re. framing it as homophobia, which is often what it is, and it's odd that society at large hasn't yet made that connection. It's so frustrating when an ideology that is so profoundly conservative cloaks itself in progressivism, thus making itself untouchable to those who are best placed to fight it! Arghhhh.

I've watched a lot of detransitioner videos and read blogs too - Cari Stella, Maria Catt, Miriam Afloat, Third Way Trans, many more whose names I can't recall. It's awful to hear the way that they were promised that transition would be a cure-all panacea, and how they weren't offered other options, how nobody discussed the fact that it may not help them but rather might exacerbate their internal problems. This is another big problem with the trans lobby - the way they marginalise, erase and ignore detransitioners. If you detransition, your help and support network - at least from the transgender community - dries up. Because you don't validate other people's identity any more, and in fact cast aspersions on the whole ideology - so you've got to be "disappeared". So a lot of these detransitioners end up scarred, potentially infertile, with broken voices and facial hair, or with breasts, and the people who led them there are nowhere to be seen.

Vesuvia I don't think women should ever concede the word "woman". For a start it's a nonsense, and, for a second, we know exactly where that concession leads us. If MTTs are defined as women they go on to demand to be treated exactly as us in terms of showers, prisons, refuges, every single thing no matter how preposterous.

I usually use the term "MTT" and sometimes transwoman. But I never use trans woman ever since it was pointed out to me that this framed MTTs as a type of woman, the word "trans" being used as an adjective, the same as "old woman" or "tall".

It's awful to read about the detransitioners, micro. So sad. It must be such a lonely position to be in.

I support trans rights the way I support animals rights. We all deserve to be healthy and unharrassed in our daily lives. But two are unrelated to feminism which is about humans with vaginas.

It is sad - they do often however seem to be pretty resilient, and they often speak of having great support networks of friends and family outside the trans bubble. Their level of unflinching, warts-and-all self-awareness is staggering. I think it's the kind of self-knowledge that can only come about after a prolonged period of having tried to live within a delusion.

For me it just cements the point of view that we are not doing anybody any favours by sugar-coating the hard realities of life. I don't mean that we shouldn't be gentle with these people - we absolutely should. But we also shouldn't lie to them, or construct an entirely new universe that centres their feelings - because cracks are bound to appear in that universe, and when they do, for the fragile individual whose whole self-perception is based on its existence, the results can be devastating.

YY micro. Whatever people do to validate the feelings of trans people, those cracks will still appear. I think there needs to be some responsible managing of expectations by the professionals when transitioning is first discussed. What I've seen of organisations like Mermaids deeply concerns me.

I've been thinking about this and I see the point that people are making. It's almost too easy to win the argument, on what a woman is. But even when one demonstrates that a woman is a woman, and shows the damage done to young people by gender stereotypes and early transing, and proves that there IS no new class of women to be defined or justified, people just react with a 'meh', say it's still mean anyway, and don't change their thinking. Quite often they just disappear from the conversation with their views intact. So yes, a new approach on tactics would be a positive direction.

But I still believe there is a value in going over the same ground over and over again when it comes to that very basic case for defining 'woman' and refusing to allow men to erase that definition, especially here, where the conversation is the freest and fullest I have seen on the net. There is a silent but growing population of people who are agreeing and changing their minds who never join the conversation at all, but just begin to resist, and that population hopefully will find a voice when and if this ever comes to a full legislative debate.

Prawnofthepatriarchy wrote - "I usually use the term "MTT" and sometimes transwoman. But I never use trans woman ever since it was pointed out to me that this framed MTTs as a type of woman"

My reasoning for my use of the term transwoman not trans woman is the same as yours. Also, last time I checked, transwoman is in the Oxford English Dictionary.

I don't use the abbreviation MTT because it is often taken to mean "male-to-trans" which I think implies that a male person can remove their maleness. This meaning is not compatible with my belief that it is impossible for a person to change their sex i.e. a male person without a penis is still male. Also, trans isn't a sex. I can, however, see the logic of MTT meaning "man-to-transwoman" or "masculine-to-transgendered" in some cases, if it was alluding to a transwoman's performance of some aspects of femininity.

Isn't there great outrage if one says transwoman instead of trans woman?
As in - the first one doesn't say you're a woman, while the second one does say you're a woman. I would use transwoman. It's not surprising that people are put off the debate when there are howls of transpohobia over a space bar.

Yes, Winchester, that's the reason for the outrage. I used to be far softer in my attitude. Felt it was unkind not to let them call themselves women. "Sad bastards who want to wear stilettos and take overdoses. Heavy makeup. Five o'clock shadow. Mother issues." That pretty much covers my initial impression. Live and let live. Then they started enemy action.

Now I will go to war over a space bar. I will not use trans as an adjective for the noun woman. Transwoman is a different noun.

Yy prawn - we have a dog in this fight but we didn't ask for the battle lines to be drawn. It still really annoys me to think that all that time women were nice and tolerant and tried not to mind despite discomfort and awkwardness - out of pity or sympathy - trans supporters quote that back to us say 'well nobody's minded for years why are you making a fuss now'. Well lots of us did mind and had no idea and they were planning to exploit our socialised nature to be accommodating.

The fuss now is because the goalposts are being moved.

And the fuss now is because of whats now being thrown at kids - eg the gobsmacking 'Science' Museum thing, 'Just a girl' on CBBC .... I'm glad my DD is 17 not 7.

vesuvia, I would think accusations of transphobia would only really mean something if the person accused actually believed in the ideology. If one does not then it is meaningless, and the woman accused just sees it as a silencing tactic. For example women who talk about how male invented religions, particularly islam, harms women are called phobic. So are woman who talk about the harm prostitution does to women. This 'phobia' accusation is usually a tactic used to shut down debate when someone can not defend their position. Or more accurately when a woman is getting too close to naming how harmful mens actions are to women.

Women used to be called man-haters and lesbians when they spoke up against the harms men do to women (and often still are). Those words were/are used because hating men and rejecting them sexually are the worst crimes in mens eyes. And it often works, women usually shut up. Many uni feminist groups disbanded in the early days of women's liberation due to being called those names. Once women found the courage to not care about being called man-haters or lesbians, women's liberation became strong. Calling women 'phobic' (along with terf) is just the latest silencing tactic leftist men use, it is the equivalent of calling women man-haters.

The solution is the same now, as it was then. Women have to find the courage speak out and stop being frighted of being called phobic, which really translates as man-hater. This is the only thing that will change things. I certainly speak out in real life to other women.

Women have tried to convince men to stop oppressing us for centuries, it has not worked. Including men in feminism also never works, they just find more insidious ways of manipulating women into doing what they want. Like they have already done. i.e. selling the sexual exploitation of women back to us as 'liberating', and 'fun', and that if we don't like being oppressed we can trans.

It grates on me when women gas-light other women. By telling them to ignore their instinct that a male is manipulating their socialisation to his own gain. That they are just bigoted for being suspicious of males motives for wanting to enter the women's toilets etc. And I almost despair, when some say male sexual fetishes like AGP are fine and should be accepted, and any woman who objects is a meanie.

I would hope that most women can see that these are the same old lines women have been fed by men for centuries. i.e. trust men, men know best, NAMALT, don't hurt males egos, women should just submit to males sexual demands, etc. Sadly there is less concern for women or what they may feel or want. It also says something that these 'right on' women have no problem supporting an ideology that converts young gays and lesbians to het with a surgeons scalpel and hormones.

I think now is the time to form feminist groups in real life, online there are some women who have just fallen for this ideology, sure. There are also a lot of men using woman's names, who often go onto sites and try to police women. In real life many women will openly agree that men can never be women. I also do not believe that most of the people claiming to be 'lesbian women' online are really lesbians. Nearly all the lesbians I know who are over 25, are not fans of trans ideology to put it mildly.

The thing is most women think it will not personally affect them. As most women think trans is about gay men they do not see it as a threat. Once they realise most are not gay men they change their minds completely.

Ultimately, I think women must stand together and support women over hurting mens feelings and egos. That has always been the only way to fight male entitlement. When other women see that they will be supported, many will feel encouraged to stand up too. Being mealy-mouthed and conciliatory never gets women or any civil rights movement anywhere.

Great posts witch.
I was just walking the dog with my husband in an isolated area. Along came a lone man. We talked about how that would feel for me instantly if I was alone ( having endured what seems to be a fairly standard amount of sexual assault, chased, dragged down an alley etc in my lifetime). He agreed that he as a man could barely conceive of the immediate tension and automatic defence response (route of escape, awareness of positioning and direction, feeling for the keys in the pocket). So men who think we shouldn't mind men in spaces where women should be safe and private have demonstrated they have no idea, no idea at all, what it is to be born a woman.

WitchingHour666 - wrote "I would think accusations of transphobia would only really mean something if the person accused actually believed in the ideology. If one does not then it is meaningless, and the woman accused just sees it as a silencing tactic."

I agree it's about silencing.

I'm also thinking of accusations of transphobia that discredit gender-identity-critical feminist in the eyes of powerful pro-gender-identity law makers ranging from the UK Parliament's Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee all the way up to the President of the USA.

I suppose it depends on whether one includes discrediting as just a form of silencing or not.