Miranda Yardley's contribution to the Woman's Place meeting on Tuesday

[LifelongVaginaOwner]

I've always tended toward using 'transwomen' and preferred pronouns - if only out of courtesy. Miranda's points though have really made me reconsider. I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on this.

mirandayardley.com/en/contribution-discussion-womens-place-uk-meeting-27-february-2018/

So what do these terms mean? What are they supposed to be referring to?

This is a really interesting question. If we were only allowed to answer it properly through honest discussion and properly conducted research we would have the key to the society-wide psychological crisis that Donkey refers to.

What we need to establish, first and foremost, is that they don't refer to sex, which remains the signifier of sex class and the determiner of sex-based protections. If we can succeed in this, the whole question will be somewhat depoliticised which might render it more amenable to disinterested investigation.

Terf exactly. All the feminists who have gone before. All the women currently speaking out.

Praising him for activism against TRA is as bizarre as praising the TRIC who says she is White for her activism against those 'bad TRICs' who say they are Black. As bizarre as praising her for her actions in defence of opportunities ear-marked for BAME.

Miranda's campaigning is augmented by the fact of his 'whatever the hell it is'. His voice as a 'feminist ally' is augmented by the same delusion. Yet that delusion both participates in the thing he is campaigning against (TRA) and undermines the feminism we claims to support.

It just does.

When I said: what do these terms mean, what are they supposed to be referring to?

What I meant was: What do WE mean by them and what are WE referring to? Why are they used here?

I am not interested in what TRAs mean by them, or even the wider population. I want to examine what it is that we are conceptualising when we use these terms, because I am fearful for us.

Lang - absolutely.

They could mean anything. They could mean trauma survivor who underwent srs because they couldn't cope with their own adult male genitalia due to childhood sexual abuse. They could mean feminist ally at the end of a journey. They could mean confused male who rejects masculinity and has been brainwashed by patriarchy into thinking this means he can't be a man. They could mean misogynist trying to appropriate womanhood or sex offender trying to offend.

But as long as they don't mean 'woman', why does it matter? In my mind they signify 'one of the above subsets of men'

A transsexual person is someone who has undergone bodily modifications to more closely resemble the opposite sex.

A trans-identified person is someone who conceptualises their sexed identity under the rubric of trans ideology. It includes transsexual people as well as those who have undergone no or minimal bodily modifications but still wish to be regarded as the opposite sex, and people who claim to be neither male nor female ('non-binaries').

These terms exist because trans-identified people exist and we need to have some words to describe them. You seem to be very hung up on the idea that the cultural phenomenon of transgenderism is all about weird people being weird, whereas I think it is inextricable from wider cultural beliefs about sex and gender.

I agree that we need to be very careful with how we use language. I use these terms because IMO they are the most precise and most likely to bring clarity to the debate, although I grant that 'transsexual' is a misnomer. Nevertheless since it refers to an objectively definable category of persons (unlike 'transgender'), I'll use it.

'Gender non-conforming man' doesn't work as a term for a man who identifies as trans, because any man can be gender non-conforming. Also, most trans-identified men are NOT gender non-conforming. A truly gender non-conforming man rejects male dominance and entitlement to women's labour and deference, which most TIMs certainly do not. It is precisely because I am careful about language that I never refer to TIMs as 'gender non-conforming'. And I have zero problem with referring to TIMs as men (which was the original topic of this thread). However, sometimes it is necessary to distinguish them from non-trans-identified men.

Then why have a separate term for them?

Why don't we just call them men?

Why do we, including here, call them 'trans' anything? There is no trans. Why reify it?

How does using 'trans' change our way of thinking and relating to these men? Do we end up reifying their transness, such that we see it as A Thing, and not merely a delusion (cause irrelevant)?

That is what I am getting it. Why do we use 'trans' and prefix it to something and what does that mean for us? Language is powerful - it both expresses and shapes thought. It provides the concepts through which we can access reality. What does it do to us - to our thought, our concepts when we use words like 'transwomen', 'transsexual', 'TIM', 'MtT'?

The power of language + our female socialisation + their male socialisation makes me concerned for us.

Are we gaslighting ourselves?

(Posted before Donkey...)

Great thread. I've also had conflicting feelings. I admire Miranda's writing and support for women. I'm also a bit uncomfortable at the adulation the "good trans" people attract and how much of that is our female socialisation.

I was at the meeting and was also a bit uncomfortable that Miranda got more positive attention than Julia Long for basically saying the same thing. It also struck me how -and I'm not being unkind here - extremely male he and Kristina and Debbie look; none of them remotely pass as female. So the way we behave around them, whether we want it consciously or not, is always coloured by that.

Whatever personal journey Miranda is on, who knows? But he no longer seems to see himself as female in any way to be honest. And where does this leave us, I don't know. It's a strange process the whole thing.

What we need to establish, first and foremost, is that they don't refer to sex, which remains the signifier of sex class and the determiner of sex-based protections. If we can succeed in this, the whole question will be somewhat depoliticised which might render it more amenable to disinterested investigation.

Absolutely, Tallulah (is your name a Maisie reference - specifically, the one where she drives a bus?). I think this is the key line of attack that feminists need to focus on when attempting to change the narrative.

I might start a thread on this topic as I think it is such an important point.

Are we gaslighting ourselves?

Sometimes we are. But I do think the insistence on sex is what will save us from getting confused.

I actually find the concept of 'transgenderism' something of a relief to the extent that it makes visible the problem of gender. I found the previous mainstream position that men and women have achieved equality and all this gender stuff is some kind of feminist delusion even more insidious and gaslighty.

Then why have a separate term for them?

Why don't we just call them men?

(sighs) Because we sometimes need to distinguish them from non-trans-identified men for the purposes of a political conversation around this issue.

People who call themselves 'trans', who identify with this ideology, exist, and we need the language to discuss that. You can't ban feminists from referring to 'trans' anything and then expect us to be able to participate in this debate.

I take your point about not wanting to reify the ideology by adopting its terms uncritically. That's why (as I explained upthread), I use 'trans-identified' rather than 'trans' - to highlight that being 'trans' is about identification with a belief system, rather than an inherent characteristic of human beings.

Good spot DonkeySkin

Thanks Tallulah! I have a 2-year-old, so I'm an expert in the Maisie canon

Donkey so say: men who have the delusion that they are women.

Easy.

Using 'trans' in any form, is dangerous. It is reifying it. It is making it into A Thing. It complicates things. And, importantly, it is using the preferred terminology of TRA (even if the exact way 'trans' is used is not to their liking).

It shapes our thought.

And where we are now is, even in gender critical feminist circles, women look for the good ones, they differentiate, they fawn over them. THAT needs to be examined. And we need to be on guard against it.

And - you don't need to sigh at me, and I am not 'banning' anyone from using any word.

I'm perfectly capable of liking someone, and appreciating their contribution to the debate, without having to "fawn" over them, I don't think it's an either/or opportunity, and as much as I appreciate where you are on this, I don't think it helps characterising it in that way.

And I will resist any insistence on ideological purity by "our" side, just as I will ridicule it in theirs.

It's OK if we don't all agree on this. It really is.

I just want us to think about it, question it and examine what we are saying and doing, why we are saying and doing it and what the risks are.

Just marking the thread... sorry.

Actually I agree with everyone

I agree with Donkey's analysis, ArcheryAnnie's position wrt Miranda Yardley and TheUterati's warning that we must watch our female socialisation like a hawk.

I'm sighing because I feel like I'm making the same points over and over.

And feminists wouldn't get very far in advancing our arguments using the language you suggest. Not just because it would instantly get most people's backs up, but because it suggests the problem is with a few delusional men, when in fact the problem is ultimately about societal beliefs around sex and sex roles (including sexuality). That is what feminists need to keep the focus on.

And of course we mustn't use Newspeak like 'transwoman'. You are right that language shapes cognition. We need to be as precise as possible and as neutral as possible (hence 'delusional' not really being helpful), always dragging the language back to the material reality of sex, which is what trans Newspeak aims to obscure.

That post above was responding to TheUterati, if that wasn't clear.

And where does this leave us, I don't know. It's a strange process the whole thing.

It is. But it's here and it's real. I don't think there are any right answers. But I do take TheUterati's point that we must guard feminist spaces.

We (as in society we, not feminist we) need multiple approaches to this. But it seems, at the moment, only feminist space has even begun to approach it.

WPUK, although run by socialist feminists, seems to want to build solidarity bridges through a multi-community approach. This is not a bad thing. But I completely understand why some women would only want to be active in exclusively feminist ways and spaces.

There is a guy on Twitter, Michael Conroy, who is organising gender critical meet-ups for men. Very early days but you know - there's another approach in the works separate to feminism that may eventually grow and develop to an extent it takes some of the pressure off feminists.

I like this thread. It's quite challenging but it's drawing out some excellent posts that are helping me to develop my own thinking.

I'm perfectly capable of liking someone, and appreciating their contribution to the debate, without having to "fawn" over them, I don't think it's an either/or opportunity, and as much as I appreciate where you are on this, I don't think it helps characterising it in that way

Thanks Annie. I agree.

TheUterati I agree with you that this debate needs to be led by women. If Miranda Yardley is now of the opinion that we should call a spade a spade, why the surgery, the feminine name and the insistence that we use female pronouns up until now? I am deeply sceptical- surely it's like a turkey voting for Christmas and I really wonder whether Miranda Yardley has the same aims and objectives as women. It could be something akin to India Willoughby's aversion for drag queens on BB- some sort of feeling that her kind of trans is okay but others are not. I am not sure, but surely if Miranda Yardley believed that it was all bollocks, why transition in the first place?

I do think there is a large degree of delusion here but I think we have gone too far to be able to simply refuse to acknowledge the existence of trans people altogether. That ship has sailed and that fight should have been made 20 years ago. Instead, it is important to stress that the rights of trans people cannot encroach on the rights of women and to maintain the right to segregate on the basis of biological sex in appropriate circumstances.

I was really pleased to see Michael Conroy announce the meetings for GC men LangCleg

We can tell men they aren't women but men have to be the ones to figure out what they are instead.