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."

Errol you would be off base about some of them.

Dolly- could you tell us about the rights that men don't have?

Buffy has just said pretty much what I came to say. In relation to children, the rights should be soley theirs and parents should have responsibilities.

Where men lack actual rights in relation to eg parental leave, thats the flip side of women having to bear the responsibility for infants. By all means equalise that.

Great link Buffy.

Where men lack actual rights in relation to eg parental leave, thats the flip side of women having to bear the responsibility for infants. By all means equalise that.

That lack of rights is the consequence of men not wanting those rights in the first place. If they wanted them, they'd have campaigned for them, and gotten them already. We live in patriarchy. The reason there is no men's rights movement (I mean, no real one) is because there is no NEED for one.

And I don't see why feminists should waste of time with doing men's work for them. If women just refused to stay with men who won't do their half of the childcare work, then men would soon demand parental leave. But as long as they can get away with not doing so, they'll likely not even take the parental leave they got through the hard work of feminists.

Witching
Fantastic posts.

Postmodernism and queer theory are neoliberal to the core

Can you expand on how queer theory is neoliberal? Very interested in this

Vestal - exactly so. If the majority of men had wanted the responsibilities, they would already have the associated 'rights'.

If I had a pound for every absent dad who yelled and screamed about "not being allowed to see my child", but who never bloody turned up (or showed up late, or showed up and immediately passed the kid to grandma and went down the pub) when they did have a chance to see their child...

Buffy, I agree with Noam Chomsky et al, that at best postmodernists use jargon to say simple things that other theorists have already said. There are much more effective ways of analysing power structures than pomo. Radical feminist theory does the best job of analysing the power dynamics between men and women.

Pomo benefits privileged white men, hardly surprising since they are at the centre of it, it is part of the backlash against feminism. Many feminists wrote about this when it was becoming popular, like Somer Brodribb in her book Nothing Matters. It is no coincidence or mystery why this ideology gained traction in the early 90's after the feminist gains of the 70's, had been implemented into practice throughout the 80's. Men needed a way to push women back.

It has gotten much worse now with queer theory completely replacing feminism in the academy. Queer theory also only benefits men, it has been sold back to young women as 'liberal', and 'sex positive' feminism. Now we have many social science text books with no mention of feminism in at all. The sex and gender chapters, that used to include it, have now been replaced by 'gender and sexuality'. So it is not surprising most young women know nothing about a real class analysis of sexual oppression.

Pomo is full of moral relativism, this allows leftist men to claim things like FGM are ok, because it's just part of a different culture and that should be respected. It also uses relativism in regards to science, which enables them to justify right wing ideas like 'brain sex' and still seem 'progressive'. It is libertarian to the point of being nihilist; individual choices should be respected, regardless of how they harm classes of people (usually women).

It also denies/ignores that only those on top of the hierarchy have the power and privlege to really create their own 'choice biographies'. It is like the secret millionaire program; a millionaire can slum it for a while, then just quit and resume their privileged lifestyle anytime they want. In contrast someone living in poverty can not live like a millionaire, because they think it may be fun, or to see how the other half live, it is just not possible. These ideologies only benefit the ruling class (men), to the detriment of the subordinate class (women). Additionally, these ideologies enable the oppressor class to colonise the oppressed class, by actually claiming to be one of them. The oppressor class then oppresses the subordinate class completely. Which is what we are seeing now.

Pomo and queer theory can never be of benefit to women as a class, these ideologies just enable men to oppress women further. When it comes to fighting oppression it is a necessity to have words that actually mean something. Those on top of the hierarchy always try to control language, as they do everything else, and force those on the bottom to submit. The brilliant feminist writer Mary Daly wrote: "women have had the power of naming stolen from us" in the 70's. Ever since it has been considered an important feminist act for women to reclaim the power to name, and to not allow men to dictate. It is not a concept that is new to feminism, far from it.

Prawn: "Regarding creating a strong women's movement, I'm up for that"

Great :). I think the first thing is to raise awareness, keeping our views visible on sites like this, will always be needed. I think we also need to talk to women we know in real life, and women who have kids of school age could talk to other mothers. We can then organise to meet regularly with those who are interested, this could form the foundation of a feminist group in our areas. I think this will especially help women in more rural areas, where there are hardly any feminists groups at all. Though, even in cities feminist groups at present tend to be more queer theory based, than feminist. We could join existing groups and try to change them, but I think it'll be more effective to start from the ground up.

We could just meet informally with interested women at first, and discuss these issues with a few women over coffee or lunch, etc. Not just trans ideology, but sexualisation of children, porn etc. If they also speak to their friends, then things spread and soon we have reasonable numbers meeting. These groups would be like consciousness raising groups of the 70's, I suppose. We can then form more formal groups, I think these should be the first steps. After we have small groups set up, we can start advertising more in our areas, for example we could make our own flyers. I think this is how we could build the movement up initially. Others may have more suggestions?

Once that is underway and we have formed small feminist groups, we can do things like hold discussion panels at town halls, schools sports halls etc for interested people. Everyone, women and men should be invited to come, some women in the 70's did this to raise awareness. If we take care what we call these events we can get more people to attend, and then they will be exposed to what we have to say. We can then advertise our feminist groups to women who attend i.e. we could give them a flyer with our contact details on. This could help to raise awareness whilst also enlarging our feminist groups. Once we have these smaller groups formed in our local areas, we can organise for them to all meet up together at various points to discuss strategy, so that all our groups are working together on the same goals. Then I think anything we do will be more effective, because there is power in numbers. I think we need to look at what has worked previously for women's movements, and use similar methods to expand our movement.

You seem fine with theory to me. There are quite a few books available for free in pdf and some articles online. My personal favourite feminist authors are Mary Daly, have you read Gyn/ecology? (its available free as a pdf.) And sheila Jeffreys, Gender hurts was a great book, some of her other books are available online in pdf also.

I went to a conference in London in July too, I also thought it was great. :) I live fairly far away from London, so I can not afford to go there again so soon, but I hope you have fun.

IBelieve: "Can you expand on how queer theory is neoliberal?"

Queer theory is founded on postmodernism, which talks about how social classes of people do not exist anymore, or that they are no longer as important as they once were. Instead they argue that we are all equal now, so we can forge 'choice biographies', and can shape our own destinies. Because of this they argue a person is totally responsible for whatever happens to their self through this ‘individualisation’. It is a fundamentally neoliberal idea that social classes of people do not exist, and that someone can be anything they want, that as long as an individual is doing ok personally, then all is well. If you are not, then that is your own fault and you should have made better choices. It could have been lifted from a speech by Thatcher herself.

The idea of 'destabilising' categories, also promotes libertarian individualism. With its idea that people can move from one sex to the other as is their preference or 'feeling'. It assumes that both sexes are valued equally to start with, that females are not oppressed, just that the female sex role ('femininity') is devalued. Queer theory assumes that femininity is a harmless preference, ultimately it reclassifies oppression into whether an individual performs it or not. This obviously works for men, who face negativity if they perform it and so gay men embrace it. What they refuse to comprehend is that the root cause of why gay men are hated by het men is misogyny. Women are supposed to be the sexual underclass; for men to use as mothers to male heirs and sexual objects. Men are only hated for performing femininity, as they are assumed to be gay. And gay men are hated for not assuming their rightful role on top of the social hierarchy. i.e. Men are supposed to use others, not be used themselves.

Queer theory does not comprehend the power dynamics between men and women. It focuses on individual choices and aims to rehabilitate being submissive, as being a harmless choice/preference, hence it's promotion of BDSM. And arguing that participants in it are oppressed because of their choice. This is because it is really a mans ideology, so it is a choice for them, it is not a political theory based on an analysis of class oppression. It is also why queer theory promotes porn and prostitution as harmless.

What this means in practice is we end up with a situation, where women can only escape sex oppression by 'identifying as men' and the oppressor can actually colonise the oppressed and claim to be one of them. It is libertarian individualism taken to the extreme, it is new (neo) because before those who called themselves liberal recognised that social classes of people existed. And, with the possible exception of economic class, people in those social groups were in them for life, that is no longer the case, at least in regards to sex. Queer theory aims to erase that the sex class female is static and unchangeable, by doing this it is erasing that the sex class female is oppressed. And therefore, makes it impossible to fight our oppression.

What has also developed from queer theory is an emphasis on 'agency', which is then readily used as a way of blaming someone for their situation. Whilst people do have choices these are restricted by their circumstances, and their social position, this is usually ignored. Queer theory (like pomo) tends to be very nihilist, since it is founded on the idea that the individual is of prime importance. i.e. If the actions someone takes makes that individual happy, then that is fine, and there is no problem. This is why we get the 'you are just being mean' accusations if you point out how someones actions negatively affects other groups of people. The individual is given prime importance and people should respect all their choices.

Since there is no serious analysis of sexual power dynamics between men and women, as everyone can make their own 'choices' to free themselves from oppression. Women can never free themselves form oppression under this theory, short of transitioning. This is because pomo and extreme libertarian individualism is part of the backlash against real social change, especially feminist gains. I don't think it's coincidental that neolib governments had been in place, both here in the UK and the US for a long time, when queer theory started gaining traction in the early 90's. Indeed the official political left embraced neolib politics at around the time queer theory was really taking hold.

Queer theory also has a very commercial, market place way of encouraging people to pick an identity. i.e. You can pick and choose who and what you want to be from a selection of 50+ genders. Queer theory proponents are also funnelling money into the pharmaceutical industry's pocket; with their promotion of hormone consumption, to achieve these identities. It also advocates the buying and selling of individuals as commodities through its promotion of porn and prostitution. I would say it is free market capitalism and social neoliberalism taken to the nth degree.

Queer theory ultimately encourages people to change themselves so they can assimilate into an unequal society better. It does not challenge the inequalities present in society itself, the system remains unchanged. This is why the establishment so readily ushered it into the academy and ditched feminism.

Witching - thank you for that absolutely brilliant set of posts. That's one of the best take-downs of pomo and queer theory I've ever seen, and fabulous at making the connection with the political right and neoliberalism (as I said, under a different name, the real question is always cui bono). As a student, I went through Cambridge in the days of Germaine Greer opposing Rachel Padman's fellowship, and my supervisor was one of the non placets for Derrida's honorary degree. I did not get it at all! (Bloody young naive liberal wishy washy twerp that I was back then). I changed my views as the real world came back to bite me. One of my first moments was in an EC working group in Brussels. The various national delegates were in agreement (a rare thing) that what the Commission was proposing was bloody daft. I remember the Italian delegate saying "but you've got to think of the reality at the ports." The Commission chairman came back with "Reality? What reality? The reality is the text." That was the moment at which I realised pomo wasn't a game played in ivory towers for the participants' private intellectual masturbatory amusement, it was actually a political ideology with devastating consequences. It took me longer to realise that Germaine Greer was right - but again, the reality of the way my biology is used to justify my oppression, and the way it is being appropriated by people having a "Common People" moment about playing at being the opposite sex (people like Alex Drummond and Daniele Muscato) has made me realise that this is a dangerous piece of political ideology too.

Witching, your posts provided a lovely clear analysis of how it all works.

I have found what people call the funfems baffling. Their ideas seem to have no substance. Anything a woman wants to do is a feminist action, from sex work to labiaplasty. Your analysis makes it easier to understand where they're coming from, though it's still bollocks.

Makes a nonsense of feminism to me. As someone who grew up in the 70s/80s class analysis is fundamental to my understanding of women's place in the world. Does pomo and neoliberalism apply to race as well, ignoring the stats?

I think, and have always thought, that the feminism l grew up with lost a lot of women as soon as they heard the word "patriarchy." When a woman says she's not a feminist it often turns out that it's the idea that you have to hate men that turns her off.

The concept needs to be explained carefully, that feminism talks about huge groups rather than individuals, and that feminists can have relationships with men, whether inside the family or without. I think the race analogy is a good one, but it doesn't cover everything. Women are the only oppressed group who can only reproduce with the help of their oppressors.

I meant to say that getting feminist groups going is a great idea. There don't seem to be many around. Where I live, university town, quite big, there doesn't seem to be anything going.

If we have any success in founding groups, of course, TAs are likely to colonize them. Activists have shut down women's events on both sides of the Atlantic. Tackling that is tricky.

Witching
Thank you! I am absorbing your posts and certainly need to do some more reading on this.

Thank you Buffy and Witching.

I think for me the problem is that postmodernism does half the job. It does a fantastic job of critiquing the way we construct knowledge in response to power and as a means of control - and Buffy's right: with trans issues the whole struggle is around who gets to define woman within a context of grabbing at issues round anti-oppression which quite conveniently seems to lead in this case to an end result which lines up rather neatly with anti-feminism.

Why I say it does half a job is because although it gives us the resources to critique the way power shapes and is facilitated by the definition of knowledge, it doesn't give us the resources to push back when we realise that power is being abused to oppress us (get back in your pink ladybrain box, dammit!)

But I was reflecting on what one could put in its place. It might be tempting to head back towards some form of scientific realism (and ultimately I think that might help - there is a strong strand of the biological about whether one is drawn to vulvas or penises, sexually - and ultimately the cotton ceiling might yet prove to be the transactivists' downfall). But scientific realism is incredibly hard to defend even in the physical science and really starts to look incredibly flakey in the social sciences and psychology. (And arguably it is the sociology of gender and the psychology of sense-of-selfhood that are the battlegrounds here).

Furthermore there's a strong sense in which scientific realism and its institutionalisation in terms of the whole peer-review process, supposed norms (Merton) of sharing information openly and critiquing, etc. go hand in hand with a certain liberal (not necessarily neo-liberal) attitude to politics, so (as Michael Mulcahy pointed out way back in the 1980s in his critique of Merton) it's not so much that science just happens coincidentally to have a similar set of values to liberal political structures, but that it models itself on those structures to make itself appealing, because the people high up in the liberal political structures are the ones with the funding ready to be doled out.

I mean, my instinctive reaction is to say "defend free speech, defend the scientific method, and it'll all come out in the wash", but we know that there's more to it than that. Free speech depends on where you are in the power structure - at its starkest, think of McKinnon getting arrested for reading chunks of American Psycho aloud outside a bookshop in which it was being sold - Brett Easton Ellis' right to write what he likes is sacrosanct, her right to draw attention to how hideously misogynistic it is by reading the actual text aloud in a public place appears to be rather more negotiable. And the scientific method is similarly conditioned by and shaped by power structures - at the most obvious level, there's some stuff it's easy to get grants for, other stuff it's much harder to get grants for. Imagine trying to get a grant to look at "rates of completed transition according to different treatment protocols", comparing hormone blockers versus talking therapy for pre teens/teens - there's actually a good chance (given the comparison now being made between talking therapies and "conversion therapies" used on gay people) that you wouldn't get that sort of study past an ethics committee these days. Even though past data suggests that left to themselves, 80% of pre-teens going through a period of identifying with the opposite gender do not transition as adults.

Dolly, interesting, because as your DH is a family law barrister, he must be aware of the changes made to family law in October 2014 which enshrined a presumption of contact, even in cases where there has been proven violence.

The family law thing is always brought up, and it's always a red herring.

I started looking for local feminist groups (ie within my county) - the first hit turned up two uni ones. The second ...shire Womens Book Group caught my eye but it's for women who identify as lesbian or bisexual. Haven't found anything yet for straight grownups!

"women who identify as lesbian or bisexual"
Here's another bit of language metamorphosis that really annoys me!
As far as I can recall, 'men who have sex with men', as opposed to 'men who identify as gay' arose as an issue during the HIV years (since it was recognised that if you just targeted men who called themselves gay, you missed out the men who had sex with men but didn't call themselves gay ('cos they weren't camp, or cos they had a wife and kids at home, or just viewed sex with men as an enjoyable hobby, like trainspotting -- but that is another issue!)).

But then with trans 'identifying as' became more important, than just being. Unnecessary in this case, call it a bookgroup for lesbian and bisexual women, and women who have sex with women but don't identify as lez or bi won't want to come anyway! They won't feel any less excluded because you stuck 'identify as' in front! So why the change of language unless the 'identify as' tag has become more important that the (unspoken) are in lesbians = lesbian women = women who are lesbians?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37312338
Even the BBC getting in on the game in the latest report about trans characters in films not being played by trans actors (fair enough). Even though they stick some terms in quotes ("assigned" sex, which at least partly admits that sex might be real, not just assigned!), still uses cisgendered. Representation of lesbians and gays and older women in Hollywood -- boring! Trans is the new, sexy, edgy character 'identity'....................

That Eddie Redmayne .... I mean, its outrageous having someone with a degree in the History of Art playing a leading cosmologist, I'm sure he doesn't have a maths brain.

(or maybe he's just a bloody good actor?)

Thank you, NonPlacet. Thats a funny and interesting story. :)

Though, yes it is dangerous, it's startling that young people are being indoctrinated into it in universities. I had to write a paper once about the sexualisation of children and in the text books the explanations were: 1) Kids have 'agency' and whatever they choose to do should be respected. And kids are sexual from young ages, so adults should not shame them for it. Or 2) a religious puritan, view point. You were permitted to argue from another view point if you could support it, I argued from a radical feminist perspective.

This did not go down very well at all, I was marked down, from previously being in the 80's (when I had been using arguments from the text books), to being in the 60's. The tutor wrote in the feedback that I had not shown 'critical thinking', or 'analytical skills'. Yet they could not say why it lacked these things, or provide any further explanation. I was a mature student, what chance do kids have in resisting this indoctrination.

Thanks Prawn. The thing is these queer theory feminists or funfems understand that women are a class up to a point, but they can not agree on what constitutes a class. Because the 'destablising' bs in queer theory, and the pomo 'everything is relative', doesn't really allow them to. Mostly they think that it is performing 'femininity' that makes them an oppressed group. That is why these women think it is empowering to do things associated with the women's sex role, like having plastic surgery to look 'good' etc. They think they are taking pride in something that is unfairly maligned. They do not understand it is a socialised role that only women are supposed to fulfil for a reason. And that there are social implications for women if they refuse to perform it. Of course then it would have to be admitted that it is enforced on women for mens benefit, which queer theory does not want to acknowledge. What they don't grasp is that by refusing to define women as a class based on biology, they allow the oppressor to colonise them, it is in reality saying there is no oppressor. It just does not have a proper class analysis about sex oppression at all.

They do understand about race, and why someone white can not just declare themselves black. There was the case of Rachel Dolenz, the white women who pretended to be black and got to be in a black civil rights group. But when she was found out there was uproar, and media hubbub. Yet she was doing essentially the same as Mtt do. Why they do not understand it about sex, comes back to this idea that choosing to perform 'femininity' is the cause of oppression.

I agree women can hardly say anything about mens actions without being accused of being man hating can they, and women avoid being accused of being a man hater like the plague. You are right it needs to be explained carefully that of course they can still date men if they want to. I think it is imperative to understand feminism is a class analysis, (based on material realities) above anything else.

I think feminism, as well as being a movement, is also a process for women. It is like Germaine Greer said: "Women have very little idea of how much men hate them." When I first read about feminism, I was a young teen and a lot of it was difficult to accept at first. I denied it was true for a while, but I knew deep down that the things I read were correct. I think women often have that conflicted feeling of knowing, but not wanting to accept it, because it is too painful. When we do then we have righteous anger and that spurs us on to fight for women. We are the only ones who are highly policed about expressing anger about our oppression. I do think we need to get angry in order to be motivated into action.

It is awful, about the TA's shutting things down. Thats why I think it is good to start forming groups from women we know initially. Like just arranging to meet up with a few women to talk about these issues, regularly, say once a week. Then grow it from there, by getting them to ask their friends and so on, then we are in control of who we allow in. Because really it is just a group of women friends and acquaintances meeting privately, they can not demand access to that. Regarding more formal groups, if it is a private meeting organised by an individual that does not charge a fee, I do not think they can demand entrance. But I think there are ways around it even if they can. Such as, when I said we could give talks in town halls and school sports halls, to people of both sexes to raise awareness. We could then give out flyers only to women who attend that showed interest, that would greatly diminish the problem I think.