My feed
Premium

Please
or
to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

When/How did the transgender debate start?

145 replies

FunderAnna · 23/04/2018 19:57

Can people tell me the date/s when plans to change the Gender Recognition Act and go for self ID started being discussed? When did moving to self ID become the declared policy of parties in the UK?

OP posts:
Report
RosenbergW · 24/04/2018 00:39

As if on cue, here is Sisters Uncut tonight tweeting solidarity to SWARM ('sexworkershive'). Google SWARM and ECP and see how they organise demos together and release statements together. Connecting dot to dot to dot.

I bet they don't answer that question.

When/How did the transgender debate start?
Report
R0wantrees · 24/04/2018 01:23
Report
R0wantrees · 24/04/2018 01:41

& reminder of thread with discussion of presentation at NUS Women's 18 associated with EH's breach of MN member's data.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3222263-Slide-show-on-How-to-Deal-with-TERFs

Report
Trumpdump · 24/04/2018 02:43

Bruce/ Caitlyn Jenner did it for me

Report
IdentifiesAsMiddleAged · 24/04/2018 05:29

Thank you so much for the history lesson, everyone. Very timely

Report
Anlaf · 24/04/2018 08:03

This thread is fascinating.

One thing that amazed me when I v recently got into feminist activism through this very feminism board was that you can just set up a group, call it Women For This Thing To Happen (say) and then use it to write to mps and newspapers, print leaflets, hold events. With hard work and organising mind.

And I was like but don't we have to ask someone first and there must be rules and no. It turns out we can do more or less whatever the fuck we want.

Twas a revelation.

And if some people choose to advocate for housewives being prostituted, then that's their lookout.

Report
RaininSummer · 24/04/2018 08:35

Marking my place as there is lots of interesting stuff here.

Report
LaSqrrl · 24/04/2018 08:55

Look back towards Janice Raymond's 'Transsexual Empire' (1979). I would date that as the start of the critique of transsexualism from a feminist perspective. Of course, this very much pre-dates 'transgenderism' which is reasonably distinct from transsexualism (most so-called 'tru-scum' come from the latter). Neither is good for females though. But transgenderism is far more aggressive and worse for female-kind.

As for the ECP, they are 'guns for hire', and will (and do) protest any issue their sex-poz male backers tell them to. A rather interesting history if you look at the financing of their building in Kings Cross. No actual feminist org has that kind of money. Also, an ECP member attacked a woman at Million Women Rise back in the early 2010s. I was there at the time.

Report
SuperLoudPoppingAction · 24/04/2018 09:27

You can read The Transexual Empire in different ways. I think that at the time JR meant to criticise the industry and institutions relating to transsexuality but the way it's interpreted now, you would think it was worse than Mein Kampf.
I think she consulted with transexual people

Report
xxmarksthespot · 24/04/2018 09:49

It has been going on for a long time. Lots of good links already given, including the Kimberley Nixon case, a man setting out to destroy a rape crisis centre for his own selfish fantasies. I've been around long enough to remember this at the time and have been horrified at how things have got steadily worse and worse since then, while women have been pushed aside and our spaces and rights harmed so much.

It's been lesbians, the old second wavers and women working in crisis situations who have been warning about this for all that time and we are still being pushed aside by the "why can't we all get along, misgendering is so rude, eeew lesbians" crowd. Well, this is where it's got us.

Report
xxmarksthespot · 24/04/2018 09:56
Report
R0wantrees · 24/04/2018 10:15

This 2014 article is interesting as it explains how Press for Change started and also features some of those who have played/play such influential roles within the transgender community.
www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jan/22/voices-from-trans-community-prejudice

Report
RosenbergW · 24/04/2018 10:19

Helen Lewis providing a recent case in point on Twitter. And the opaque rules here on Mumsnet around pronouns and identifying males and male violence when they say they are women.

When/How did the transgender debate start?
Report
LaSqrrl · 24/04/2018 10:20

It's been lesbians, the old second wavers and women working in crisis situations who have been warning about this for all that time and we are still being pushed aside by the "why can't we all get along, misgendering is so rude, eeew lesbians" crowd. Well, this is where it's got us.

Thank you so much xxmarks.

For the longest time, we did think we were 'pissing into the wind' on this one. But now it has fully revealed itself, the agenda. And even 'outsiders' looking in can see it, and do. We are really just waiting for 'the average woman' to shirk her brainwashing and see what is really going on.

Report
LaSqrrl · 24/04/2018 10:26

BTW, 'brainwashing' is not a personal insult. Even I was brainwashed until my 20s (with compulsory heterosexuality). It really is liberating to see through the malestream brainwashing.

Report
LaSqrrl · 24/04/2018 10:29

Is that our main crime, Rosenberg? The 'misgendering'? And that 'misgendering' is equated with "literal violence" (totally fabricated)?

If that is what you have 'got' for 'proof' that radical feminists are 'just as bad', then I urge you to look again.

Report
RosenbergW · 24/04/2018 10:35

That is a very interesting article R0wantrees. A couple of bits that stood out to me -

  1. Christine Burns admitting that they got the 2004 GRA through by deliberately trying to keep people from knowing it was happening or talking about it, something they are trying hard to do again with self ID:

    Much of their campaigning remained on the quiet. The passage of the 2004 law to give trans people legal status was "remarkable," says Burns, because "the government was able to pass an entire act in parliament without anyone throwing a fit in the press"

  2. This bit alluding to a network of trans activists using social media to 'transform' society to their liking, which also mentions Trans Media Action, a pressure group who were responsible for imposing the new trans definitions and guidelines on mainstream media reporting:

    In 25 years, Barrett has seen trans people become "a networked bunch" – more so than other people, he thinks – thanks to the internet. Lees, who also works for Trans Media Action, says social media is the "essential catalyst" for the transformation of trans people in society.
Report
RosenbergW · 24/04/2018 10:39

LaSqqrl

I think our main crime appears to be telling the truth, which includes correctly identifying men. I think you have misunderstood me, I'm a radical feminist pissed off with the constant erasure of women's work because it is 'rude/mean'. I think we are on the same side :)

Report
SuperLoudPoppingAction · 24/04/2018 10:40

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/woman-2

Robin Morgan quoted here about something that might be called misgendering. There is a political argument for women being able to name things accurately.
Particularly when it comes to gender politics.

That quote and speech by Robin Morgan in 1973 is the earliest reference I can find to the debate.

Report
xxmarksthespot · 24/04/2018 11:04

Helen Lewis providing a recent case in point on Twitter.

That exact tweet was what I was thinking of when I posted. The "both sides are as bad and radfems are being rude by misgendering" stance is such a wilful misunderstanding, propagation of a lie really.

Report
RosenbergW · 24/04/2018 11:30

XX did you ever see this?
www.newstatesman.com/helen-lewis/2014/05/rereading-second-wave-why-feminism-needs-respect-its-elders

It's a bit of a mess to say the least. This was the time when Helen Lewis and the New Statesman commissioned a bunch of writers to look at second wave texts, but forgot to ask any radical feminists to get involved.

And then this: medium.com/@helenlewis/a-ok-my-reading-list-on-sex-and-gender-5d77a0d073d3

Helen Lewis provides a handy booklist of where she got all her info on the trans debate from, it's basically a whos who of trans and queer activists, with Sheila Jeffrey's tacked on at the end as a "controversial" background- filler.

Not to have a go at Helen Lewis but after years of being called a TERF herself for expressing a very mildly gender critical libfem view, you'd have hoped by now she would've stopped trashing radical feminists :/

Report
drwitch · 24/04/2018 11:37

There was also the michigan womyns musical festival "for womyn born womyn"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Womyn%27s_Music_Festival

Report

Don’t want to miss threads like this?

Weekly

Sign up to our weekly round up and get all the best threads sent straight to your inbox!

Log in to update your newsletter preferences.

You've subscribed!

YetAnotherSpartacus · 24/04/2018 11:52

And in those days the English Collective Of Prostitutes was much more open about the fact that 99% of them had never worked as prostitutes, but were taking a political stand. (Actual prostitutes hated them

Really? I did some research re them and didn't know this. At the time, it was pre-Nordic and the debate was very different (from memory). It was about decriminalisation (the favoured option over criminalisation) and police entrapment and scary Johns. I don't recall anyone glamorising prostitution or saying it was a choice until the mid 90s. There were connections with the French collective too from memory.

Report
AngryAttackKittens · 24/04/2018 12:07

Turn Out The Red Light (or whatever it's called, something like that) is also a pimp-run group, isn't it?

Report
R0wantrees · 24/04/2018 12:20

"both sides are as bad and radfems are being rude by misgendering" stance is such a wilful misunderstanding, propagation of a lie really.

In recent months, much of the 'evidence' of radfem's 'rudeness' has also often been deliberately provoked on social media (especially Twitter) by a few activists. Screenshot and broadcast as the proof of the 'evil' nature of terfs...

Report
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.