Does anyone listen to The Guilty Feminist podcast? Trans stuff.

[CloudPerson]

I listened to their latest podcast yesterday, the general theme was The Handmaid's Tale.
They brought up some interesting stuff about trans issues and I wanted to discuss them.
On the whole I enjoy the podcast, it's entertaining, their use of cis irritates me, but I do enjoy it.

Their view of transwomen/men was one I generally agree with. Some interesting points about encouraging fluid genders and non binary as this will confuse the patriarchy, which I agree with. People should be who they are, live and dress how they want to be, take away gender, because is damaging bullshit.

However, when I read about things happening now, erasure of women, lesbians etc, the small/vocal/aggressive/homophobic minority, isn't this actively encouraging misogyny and the patriarchy? Keeping people in their neat gender boxes? Encouraging strict gender roles, sexism? It isn't encouraging a more open, welcoming society at all.

If current trans issues were as harmless as TGF podcast says it is, there wouldn't be the opposition. Sure you'd still get your bigots who don't like trans people because they're not fitting in the box, but I certainly wouldn't have any issue at all if it was simply a case of people campaigning to live happily and having a right not to be targeted. But the way it's going I do have a problem, because TRAs campaigns could actively harm women and womens' rights.

Someone on the podcast also mentioned the lack of trans people in The Handmaid's Tale, or they were referenced to as gender traitors and not a big part of the story? (I haven't watched the tv adaptation but read the book a while ago and can't really remember this bit). My take on that is that if current loud TRAs get their way then trans people will be erased anyway, because transwomen are women, I on the face of it, it looks like a purely binary society is their aim? So a potential future could look like some women having fertility issues and not being able to carry babies, but because they are born men, except that won't be spoken of because it's deadnaming/violence/bigotry?

Anyway, not had much sleep, rambling a bit. Just wondered if anyone else had listened to this and what they thought.

I'm sure Ive said before, but if I was a teenager now, I'd probably be feeling the pressure to become a man.
I'm autistic, I do not wear "girly" clothes, don't do makeup (last time I did I had a makeover before my wedding, the makeup lasted about half an hour before I wiped it off), I have short hair and no interest in fashion.
I'm a woman though, just not one that fits into the correct stereotype.

Where would trans people fit in The Handmaid’s Tale? I assume everyone who had taken any kind of surgical/chemical steps to be seen as other than their birth sex would have been executed/sent to the Colonies, and anyone who hadn’t would just have been treated as their biological sex regardless of how they identified. It’s not like a handmaid who felt male would have been able to opt out of being a handmaid on that basis, is it?

9 minutes into Minefields and it's starting to grate.

The regime doesn’t care how you identify just whether you are fertile so if you were a trans man but could still bear children you’d become a handmaid and everyone else would be executed or sent to the colonies.
The regime strips your identity, they take everything everything that is yours including your name, they’re hardly going to let you keep your gender identity.
All women in that regime are stripped of their personal identities, that’s the point you become a womb rather than a person.

And they are hardly going to care if the womb identifies as male as long as it can bear fruit.

Surely in handmaids tale, the transwomen are the ones who are married to the men, in positions of relative authority (considering dystopia n'all...), and unable to have children?

How do they know Serena wasn't trans? After all, it wasn't specified that she wasn't. Maybe she just passed really well? (Personally I think that would have been a good way to go with the series version, as they made her younger anyway, so her infertility was less obvious)

I'm sure I remember that in the book they specify that the "gender traitors" are gay and lesbian, not trans?

And yes, I imagine transmen who were still fertile would be handmaids, whether they liked it or not.

Ooh beyond that’s a good point.

Though I would have been saddened if she’d turned out to be trans as I love the way she fought for a system that ultimately opressed her. I love her as a woman as it shows that there are no female winners in the system.

I respect that you believe that transwomen are women. I don't believe it, and my view is equally valid. I also don't believe that the word 'privilege' should translate as women surrendering a century of hard won rights and boundaries to self identification.

And yes, that's the fundamental point of disagreement.

In the podcast Fizzy the trans contributor said something along the lines of

'If this book had been written by

And yes I guess the point is that in the system of Gilead trans-people wouldn't exist. There are just wombs that function, wombs that don't, and men,

Thursday it was Ursula LeGuin.
I recall wondering at that point what it would have been like written by Jilly Cooper...

Oh Ursula LeGuin who thinks that male pronouns are gender nuetral, great.

I would love to read a version by Jilly Cooper though

I was just about to create a post on this! I only found this podcast in the last week or so and loved it at first. Then I suddenly hit lots of episodes about trans people and today listened to the most recent one. A few points really grated. The idea that being non binary will confuse the patriarchy so they won't know who to oppress, how laughable! They never struggled in oppressing several groups at the same time before, women, anyone not white, disabled people, gay people....yeah, they'll be so confused by trans people that they'll stop oppressing all of us, sure.

The person whining about trans people not be represented in the TV show or book, because life must revolve around this tiny minority now. In fact, why was a trans person even given a place on the panel? It wasn't about them, the whole theme is biological women being oppressed.

Then there was someone reminding us that we must keep in mind that some prostitutes are very happy in their jobs...

I'm so disappointed that yet another, feminist outlet, one with such amazing potential, is putting trans people first. I mean the main presenter even mentioned in another episode how she edits out anything to do with periods, reproductive organs etc because it might upset trans women. How can you talk about feminism if you can't mention the very biology which takes centre stage in our historical oppression?

Someone made a great point the other day on another thread that lots of women have reproductive problems but would never ask for people to never mention their bodies. I mean whenever there’s a thread on here along the lines of ‘I’ve had loads of miscarriages and I can’t cope with people mentioning babies’ the advise is always, it’s tough but you can’t stop people mentioning their babies, you maybe should remove yourself from that group for a while. It’s not no one ever mention their pregnancy because some women have had miscarriages.

To think that if you can’t have something then everyone should shut up about it is so weird

"To think that if you can’t have something then everyone should shut up about it is so weird"

The reason MTT don't want women talking about their bodies is because they don't want 'woman' to be linked to women's biology.

Yeah and that’s weird, not all females have the same biology. I have a friend who was born with a transverse uterus so she can never give birth without a c section , she doesn’t ask people to not talk about vaginal birth or ask people to not say ‘women’ give birth with their vaginas.
It just shows their insecurities because they know the whole thing falls down if people start looking at it so they get us to shut up.

Remember 'when' Ursula LeGuin wrote her books, especially The Left Hand of Darkness (one of my favourite books btw). Also that her point was that these beings were BOTH male and female, not transgender. You couldn't choose which you were, as it depended on who you were with and their current state. Consistent maleness or femaleness was considered abhorrent. I think she used the male pronoun because that was the best choice at that time to convey this ambivalence. In fact, we still use male descriptions and apply them to both sexes e.g. chairman etc. A female pronoun would have been interpreted as only female, and would not have had the same impact.

Yes I read an interview with her about the pronoun thing as I was confused to why she’d made that decision, she said she might not necessarily have made the same decision if she had written it later.

I read it very recently though so I think it was difficult for me to get the impact of it as I wasn’t reading it in its time.

I don’t agree that male pro nouns are nuetral though.

Bertrand, I'm about 50 minutes in (TGF episode 64 minefields, if anyone wants to listen), I have been making notes, my earphones have died so I'll tell you what I think at this point while they charge up so I can then move on and listen to the rest.

They've been talking about the women's March and pussy hats. The discussion seems to have completely missed the point of why so many women stood together. As I understand it it was a stand against male violence, not just about Trump, although he and his comments were maybe a catalyst. Wearing the pussy hats was not about having perfect, fully functioning female sex organs, it was about what being the owner of such organs means in societal terms, wrt to oppression, violence, sexual harassment etc. so a man could wear one, and stand side by side protesting against this, and it would be fine.

The discussion on TGF appeared to make it about perfect functioning female vaginas, so the FGM lady who was also on said she wondered if women who had lost most of their external clitorises felt uncomfortable and excluded, to me that sounded like they'd missed the point of it. Infertile women are still women, women who have suffered FGM are still women, women who dress like men are women. As a group all are disadvantaged. And that was what they were marching about.
To then turn the discussion into whether there should have been penis hats to represent those with "alternative" female genitalia was laughable, and quite frightening that they seemed to be so careful about saying the right thing, and that they couldn't adequately explain what the March and the hats were about without it having to have a fully immersed trans view on it. In fact so far I'm getting the impression that they're being extra careful and pandering to Reubs J Walsh, and are talking in a way that I haven't heard when they're talking to other women, in other episodes, where the whole feel of it is relaxed and fun. This episode isn't as free and flowing, although maybe covering a subject like this it never could be.

I don't know any statistics about transwomen being groped, sexually harassed, raped etc, but I will hazard a guess (correct me if I'm wrong) that it won't be as widespread as assault that women face. I'm sure they face harassment, but it will be of a different kind, which definitely needs to be addressed, but I'm not sure it can be addressed under the same umbrella as the type of abuse that women face. I also don't know for sure, but suspect that the abuse trans men face will be the same as women, so perhaps this could be under the same umbrella.

One of the women (I think the main one - Debra?) then started talking about how she will edit out talk of periods and things that are exclusively female, I can't remember exactly why she said that she does, possibly because she's trying too hard not to offend people to,whom talk of such things is perceived as violence, but anyway, she edits this out, and I think I have lost respect for her completely. She's a feminist. She edits out female issues? How cowardly, how dismissive of real issues that women face. If she's choosing not to air real life nitty gritty female stuff in a feminist podcast so as not to offend people who want to be called female yet don't face these issues, well, what a fucking cop out! And how frigging arrogant of these people to think that talk of periods and boobs and smear tests shouldn't be talked about because it offends them. If they want to be women, surely the first rule of being in the woman club (and I don't mean the WI) is to accept that women need solidarity not silencing, we need to talk about these issues. I only learnt not long ago that some medicines have unknown side effects on women because they've only been trialled on men, and crash test dummies were all based on male heights and weights, so we definitely need to talk about exclusively female issues, which of course excludes men, no matter how they want to identify. The silencing of these issues should raise massive red flags everywhere, and I can't understand why they're not. People are so worried about saying what they should be saying that it's like they're walking straight into a trap.
(I have to point out that this was the point where the earphones died, so my interpretation might be a little off and it may improve and my blood pressure may be soaring for no reason!)

‘And then I grab her right by the female penis’

Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

I've not RTFT yet because I have to go to work but gender traitors in The Handmaid's Tale were actually homosexuals (like Ofglen) not trans. Trans isn't mentioned, I guess if you really wanted to you could infer that from the text (doing a biased reading or taking a queer p.o.v) but it really isn't about that. I suppose you could subvert the text, hell, the trans agenda subverts everything, so why not eh?

Fucking hell Cloud I'm glad I abandoned it earlier. I'm fizzing just reading your post.

Editing out periods? What is the actual point of saying you are a feminist if you edit out women's issues?