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/

Miranda - but using the word transsexual to refer to a man post surgery is problematic. If it is not, then using the words transracial to refer to RD or that other woman who has made actual surgical and medical changes to her appearance also makes sense.

Transracial does not make sense and has no meaningful use. Transsexual also does not make sense and has no meaningful use.

TheUterati

What do you think would be a workable solution?

Miranda - the trans in respect of children vs adults was more directed to other posters, but thanks for re-stating your position.

Miranda - solution to what? Language use? The general (initially mis-typed as genderal - LOL) shit storm we are in? Where you sit in things? Workable for whom?

loveyouradvice - I think the really important thing is that we will NOT win unless we build broad alliances... and it feels crucial to give transpeople support when they speak out against the mainstream transspeak of today... I strongly believe we need to find more of them so that people begin to understand that transdogma is NOT coming from the whole transcommunity, and then start to question the dogma itself, rather than just accepting it .... SO I ACTIVELY WELCOME ANY TRANSPERSON WHO IS PREPARED TO CONTRIBUTE TO OUR DISCUSSIONS and applaud them for working alongside us to create real change on this which affects BOTH groups - trans and women (and men if they but knew it - but that is a whole bigger campaign!)

I think this is a bit arse about face. I absolutely agree we need to be building broad alliances. I disagree that 'we need to find more of them'. GC transsexuals need to be finding each other so it's no longer just a case of them contributing to 'our' discussions, but of building their own movement, producing their own 'reasonable demands', which may overlap significantly with feminists' concerns but will also address concerns unique to them. THEN we can build broad alliances because there will be something to build an alliance with, if that makes sense.

None of this is to say that trans people should not speak at WPUK or similar events. At the moment though, it's very much 'our' discussion, with a few 'good ones' kind of wheeled out to show we are not transphobic. It all feels a bit awkward to me.

I agree with what you say about language TheUterati but we need some words to describe what's happening that people new to the debate can relate to, and that won't instantly alienate them.

Also, disagreement is OK!

THIS. It doesn't make us terrible. It's OK (and indeed necessary) to disagree on the substance, to thrash it all out, without claiming that some of us are letting the side down.

Transsexual also does not make sense and has no meaningful use

Transsexual (in the sense that Miranda has used it) does have a meaningful referent. I feel strongly that women are right to refuse to allow non-women to define 'woman' and I think it's equally problematic for people who aren't transsexuals to decide what 'transsexual' means and whether it's a useful category.

TheUterati

It’s always better to fight from the inside.

Miranda - me or you?

Pencilsinspace I do agree with what you say ... and I am bemused that this isn't already happening in a more powerful way.... So do agree that my approach is just making the best of what we have at the moment - although I do believe that in welcoming and giving a voice to people like Miranda , in giving them support and welcoming their speaking it will help accelerate the growth of an alternative transmovement... and even if it doesn't, I believe it does help women by making this current debate about both us and them, while not centring transpeople

I think we're going to have a hard time explaining the issue with self-ID to the general public if we abandon the word "transsexual". This remains the case even if, like me, you don't think it's possible for a person to change sex.

I'm sure that once self-ID sails through parliament whilst everyone is busy fighting, there will be plenty of time to discuss problematic language, terminology and who is allowed to speak for whatever.
In the meantime I don't care who comes out to support women, even an arsehole like Rod Liddle. We shouldn't forget that Miranda and a few others are saying things when people like Stella Creasey are not.

I think TheUterati (love the name) has made many good points and I am mulling them over. I am with LangCleg on the points she made about my feminism being women centred and not including men BUT I don't think this particular political issue is just a feminist issue. Yes, it is a significant feminist issue but it also affects the LGB community (without the other alphabetty spaghetti) and children and ultimately society at large. When we are forced to repeat lies in the form of mantras and accept them as truths, where does that stop? And what will we be asked to accept next. I fight for women as a woman but I can see the socialisation aspect and I will be more aware of it post this discussion. That said, in the same way I thank others on this board for valuable contributions (and thanks to TheUterati for making me think) I have to acknowledge this and I don't think it is socialisation - though maybe it is - but more because I do value alternative viewpoints:

So basically if we were involved it would help the campaign more, but now I can totally see why this is felt as another attempted encroachment. I’m truly sorry if I’ve come across like that.

I don't think you have and I can only speak personally and say the contributions are valuable because they are a different perspective. I value all the contributions on this board from all the eloquent women but I happen to agree that if transexuals spoke out more it would add something to the debate because it adds a very particular perspective. I'm not sure this issue benefits from being exclusive about who can speak out. It doesn't have to a feminist voice, just another voice with skin in the game.

This isn't a fawning response to Miranda or Truscum it is just acceptance that this issue needs LOTS of voices - we aren't winning this right now and we won't win it alone.

There are a lot of misnomers in this debate.

But they are the misnomers that people understand, and before we abandon them completely we need to bring the audience with us, not leave them behind.

Sea horses aren't horses, but if I start talking about a swimming hippocampus most people won't be able to engage with what I'm saying at all.

We do need to get to the point that these misnomers are relics of redundant language, but we are not there yet. Right now, these words have already become familiar and are the ONLY way most people can frame the argument in their heads, so unless we are only interested in discussing this with people who already have their gender studies degree, we have to communicate effectively and introduce these ideas at the rate people can comprehend them.

Put simply, I'm interested in the marketing campaign that has the highest conversion rate, not the one with academic purity that no-one buys.

But I think the political campaign against trans ideology should include people other than feminists.

I agree with others who have said that this isn't just women's fight. Women will be the most severely impacted (along with children), but ultimately the movement to legally and ontologically obliterate sex in favour of 'gender identity' impacts us all because of the ways our society must be reshaped in order to accomodate such an anti-reality ideal. As MadamMinacious said, where does it stop?

It must be brought to public attention that the trans movement is not about protecting a tiny vulnerable minority, but a totalitarian movement that aims to forcibly redefine reality for everyone (which partly explains its popularity with the resurgent authoritarian left), and transsexual people speaking up critically about what's happening helps to raise awareness of this.

Forcing everyone to pretend that bio sex doesn't exist inhibits critical thinking and makes it impossible to analyse society and formulate effective public policy, as well as ushering in the potential for massive interference by the state in people's lives and even thoughts. All thinking, rational people should be concerned about this. (Once they've achieved self-ID of legal sex in most Western countries, the TRAs will move on to pushing for laws that both restrict and mandate speech around gender [already in place in Canada] and policies that facilitate the removal of children from parents who refuse to consent to sterilising medical interventions for them, as well as lowering the age at which children can legally consent to such interventions - which, if successful, will shift attitudes around the very concept of age of consent.)

Whatever you think of Jordan Peterson, he zeroed in on something important in the debate over state enforcement of recognition of 'non-binary' identities in Canada. Peterson realised that Bill C16 wasn't just about restricting speech - it was also about mandating certain forms of speech, something that previous laws around speech had never attempted to do. He noticed that 'gender identity' ideology opened the door for forms of authoritarianism that had hitherto not been attempted, on the level of forcing people to repeat 2 + 2 = 5. Thus men should be worried about this too, however delighted some of them may be to see women put in our place by the extreme misogyny of the trans movement.

At this point 'gender identity' is a cultural juggernaut that, as I said earlier, seems to be driven by a collective cultural madness which includes women as well as men (including, sadly, many feminists). Therefore IMO we do need to form a coalition of the sane that involves everyone who can see this harmful nonsense for what it is, while also doing feminist activism and making space for women-only consciousness raising about sex and gender (sex roles).

It reminds me of something Magdalen Berns said at the end of one of her videos (paraphrasing):

This is a women's rights issue, but it's not only a women's rights issue. It's a child protection issue, it's a free speech issue, it's a human rights issue.

DonkeySkin

This is a women's rights issue, but it's not only a women's rights issue. It's a child protection issue, it's a free speech issue, it's a human rights issue.

QFT

This is a women's rights issue, but it's not only a women's rights issue. It's a child protection issue, it's a free speech issue, it's a human rights issue.

Exactly.

Unfortunately, feminism is the main vanguard of opposition to this movement and it needs to go mainstream.

This is something feminists must grapple with - how to send it mainstream without compromising feminist values.

No easy answers.

Right now, these words have already become familiar and are the ONLY way most people can frame the argument in their heads, so unless we are only interested in discussing this with people who already have their gender studies degree, we have to communicate effectively and introduce these ideas at the rate people can comprehend them.

Barracker, I understand what you're saying and I do agree that we need to be comprehensible to people, but at the same time it's crucial that we don't use the Newspeak that TRAs have set up, because that language is deliberately designed to disappear and indeed reverse the reality of what we are trying to highlight.

Therefore we do need to pay attention to our language, being careful about what concepts we are endorsing, as theUterati said, because otherwise we aren't communicating our ideas effectively. Language is the key to this whole issue, that's why the TRAs are so militant about everyone using their terms.

Consider the difference between this sentence from the Times on Labour's AWS furore:

The founder of a crowdfunding campaign to bar transgender women from all-women shortlists has been suspended from the Labour Party

And this one from the Mail on Sunday on the WEP sacking Heather Brunskell-Evans:

The Mail on Sunday understands that the party received several complaints about the academic’s comments on the programme, including one from a man who identifies as a woman.

Notice how starkly the language in the Mail brings into view the absurdity of what the WEP - and Labour - are doing to women, and the power relations at play here. There it is, in black and white: what's going on is that women are being persecuted and hounded out of politics for the benefit of men who say they are women. Whereas in the Times article, this is completely obscured by the use of the word 'transwoman' (or worse, 'transgender women'); and not just obscured, but the power dynamics are actually reversed, with women becoming the persecutors of (supposedly) marginalised men, in the guise of 'transgender women'.

I just don't think this needs to go as far as refusing to use the word 'trans', because contra TheUterati, 'trans' is a thing, but it's a cultural thing, it's an ideological thing - hence why I use 'trans-identified' instead. That said, language that highlights the absurdity of TRA claims also works when appropriate, e.g. 'men who claim to 'feel like' women' or as per the Mail on Sunday 'men who identify as women'.

I sent quite believe some of what I've read in this thread. Bordering on exclusionary and even transphobic

Ffs. I'm sick of hearing fucking transphobia and exclusionary bull shit used to describe women simply talking. Are you able to quote some of the transphobia comments? I'm sick of having language monitored.

Theuterati has made some excellent points here.

I agree, I do.

My concessions are chosen carefully.
I won't use she for men
I avoid using female first names where surnames are acceptable instead
I use trans identified males
or just males
or TIMs
and less frequently, transwomen, even though I know trans isn't a thing and they aren't women.

But I've been blocked and banned and kicked out of enough groups and to know that sometimes I will temporarily concede language just to have my voice heard at all. And I include Mumsnet in that, hence my username. I was suspended for 'barracking'. Which is the newspeak for asking a webchat guest "what is a woman?"

I'm not the one making the rules about who gets to speak and who doesn't. I'm treading a fine line between getting my message over and not being shut down entirely.

I'm still grappling with what I'm reading in this thread. It's fantastically interesting, all, so thank you for the thoughtful contributions. I have a feeling I may change my mind and change it back again on some of the issues raised. As an introvert, I need to time to process before I opine!

@Donkeyskin I think the points you make about communication to general public are imperative. TBH as a relative newcomer to GC and radfem, though life long feminist, I hate a lot of the language - it's very difficult to find people who speak in plain English i.e. they want to force feed hormones to our kids and we don't agree.

I know a lot of the terminology has been defined by TRAs plus the intersectionality studies people, but it's exclusive and puts folks off. KIS (keep it simple) needs to be the forefront of amy communication - not trans identified men, not feminism even but about protecting kids and women's right to safety as they see fit, not defined for them.

I don't actually see it as about sex as such or about MY making it OK for women to believe what women have been saying for a while.

I think it is more about;

We are told that we must support Target Group x even though we don't want to and even though this disadvantages us.

We discuss this. Many disagree taking Target Group x's concerns to heart as they do.

Someone from Target Group speaks up and says "actually this is wrong on all these levels."

The speaker from Target Group x is important because they are from Target Group X not because they are man.

Interestingly we don't appear to have any 'questioning TIFs' on FWR, although they do exist elsewhere on the internet.

YetAnotherSpartacus

The reality is that this whole issue is so complex that most people on both sides know so little factual information about it. Classic case is autogynephilia: it so obviously is ‘a thing’ yet we have one side say8mg it doesn’t exist (even though they’ll admit to a wealth of paraphilias) and the other side stating ‘well it’s a fetish, a perversion’. As usually the truth is much more subtle.

There’s a load of misinformation around the GRA and the Equalities Act, and the whole GRC process.

The reality is that this whole issue is so complex that most people on both sides know so little factual information about it. Classic case is autogynephilia: it so obviously is ‘a thing’ yet we have one side say8mg it doesn’t exist (even though they’ll admit to a wealth of paraphilias) and the other side stating ‘well it’s a fetish, a perversion’. As usually the truth is much more subtle

I totally agree and have been saying something similar on these boards for a while now.