Transphobia or truths?

[TwittleBee]

Hi there!

First, apologise if this has been really over discussed already.

I'm pretty new to the whole self ID and trans issues and pretty shocked to discover I'm probably classed as a "Radical" feminist.

How comes it's seen as transphobia when women talk about women's rights or sex or gender?

Perhaps I'm being naive, but I haven't seen anything i would class as transphobic on MN yet? Just a lot of feminists discussing their concerns for women and girls' rights?

Looking for answers so I can see both points of view but also so I can attempt to understand what is going on here.

Thanks x

@TwittleBee
Thanks to the board for letting me engage with you on this.

"there isn't one society though and so there cant be a "basic" understanding of it "
OK, I was trying to say something like 'any and all societies throughout history' which would include many societies with room for "third genders" or similar non-binary status.

This kind of error is to be expected if you start Philosophising before puberty, without yet realising how long it will take or how futile it will be. (I'd made it into my teens by that point)

MadBadDaddy I feel, as do many feminists, though that there shouldn't be a need to state someone is non-binary because they'll still have a penis or a vagina (so either a man or woman) and that shouldn't prevent them from being able to identify neither as feminine/masculine/both. Instead a man or a woman can have whatever characteristics they desire without the feel to either confirm to society's constructs or openly reject them - these constructs should just be totally broken.

@ TwittleBee
"these constructs should just be totally broken"
I accept Feminism's long established and carefully considered position, and it seems fundamental to most consensus' here. For the sake of Women's health, safety, and contentment, it is the only logical long-term solution.

To me (Mr. Thinks-in-Pictures), it looks like a mountain that will take (has taken) more than any single lifetime to climb. Sometimes it looks like a cliff, but never a hill. Women unite for strength, and will carry anyone they think needs it. My little life and my little troubles with my little group have nothing whatsoever to offer to your expedition. I'm not standing up to halt your progress, I'm waiting for you to move past me.

This can't happen while SelfID, TRA etc. are the loudest and most pressing issues. You can (and do) deny the shared nature of this problem and it's need for a solution to suit all of us, but I can't.

My enemy has always been anyone who tries to push me into a category or an ill-fitting pigeon-hole: Parents, Politicians, Pundits, 80s Casuals, and now TRA, & Feminists.... I've never cared who was doing it, the effects were much the same. Poor little Boho me Boohoo."A nail that stands out gets hammered first", was a lesson I've never learned.

Feminists were simply late to my party, but you are the first group I've encountered that could even form a coherent, structured, reasonable, arguable, intelligent, humane thought on the matter. Disagreeing with me is a trivial detail. I can take being wrong!

If I ever feel that you hate me, not for being Trans, but b/c I'm an annoying smartarse, then that wouldn't seem more important than watching the Rational Collective Non-Hive Mind in full swing. If you're human and humane, you will find a way around and away from us without putting us all in camps or hospitals first.

(PS I'm still seeing posts that see my words as selling nothing other than a shopping list of clichéd male Ideaology. I especially like how my preferred pronoun seems to be 'they' instead of 'he' or 'you'. SO respectful! Not at all like I've heard....)

My little life and my little troubles with my little group have nothing whatsoever to offer to your expedition.

Really? Why? The one thing I want from other humans is a commitment to justice. As a feminist I want to see a commitment to feminism from trans women. Some might need to do a bit of reading. But as a fence-sitting radfem I'm very open to trans women who have done the research and joined the struggle. I just don't see as many as I'd like to see.

When most strident voices demanding access to women's spaces, are also those talking about hurting TERFs, it's not difficult to see why women are resisting. Indeed, we'd be foolish not to.

This.

Transwomen are demanding of women a degree of trust that is not warranted.

This is the point I keep coming back to.
Male violence is the greatest human rights crisis the world has ever known.
Some demand that we share their beliefs or be punished as heretics while others argue that there must be some compromise of women's rights to accommodate the transgender identified males who wish to be viewed as the exceptions. Why, we ask. Because of male violence, they respond.

The fact is that what is being demanded is "a degree of trust that is not warranted."

If you are afraid of violent men, why not campaign against violent men?

You would find a lot of transwomen who are more than willing to stand right there beside you.

Many of us have suffered male violence too, you know. I've been relatively lucky compared with many, but I vividly remember limping home from my all-male school with my uniform ripped and and bloodied and my face bruised after yet another day being "socialised" into "male privilege".

But you're not.
You're allying yourselves with organisations that promote the idea that Older women ... are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, to make trans lives a misery.

You ally yourselves with extreme right wing activists such as Mail journalist Richard Littlejohn who — having hounded a trans teacher to suicide — is now turning his hatred on Alison Saunders (the retiring head of the CPS) because (shock! horror!) she has been working to "to secure more rape convictions, to appease the feminist lobby"

And — within feminism's own ranks -- famous transphobe Germaine Greer describes GRS carried out by an expert surgeon as "mutilation" but reckons that FGM is like "getting a tattoo" and that arranged child marriages are OK.

Maybe someone can explain how any of these are compatible with feminism? From where I stand, it looks more like a pack, hunting down the weakest.

It's a bit of a tedious conversation stopper when people imagine that because women align themself with a viewpoint, it means they align themselves with the people having those viewpoints and all the rest of their viewpoints.

There must be a word for that Bewilderedness?

Bewilderness, sorry!

every police force in the uk considers transphobia a hate crime like racism. Only one considers misogyny.

But how do they define transphobia?

Mermaids provided the training for the police, the schools, both teachers and students, as well as politicians.
That is the training that informed the investigation of women who say things on twitter about women's rights that transgender advocates view as transphobic.

Many of us have suffered male violence too, you know.

We are perfectly aware that men kill one another more often than they kill women.
10th rule of misogyny: The worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad.

There must be a word for that Bewilderedness?
While it does smack of the 1st rule, the fact is that it is such a common logical fallacy that it didn't even make the list.

When we opposed porn and prostitution in the early eighties the lefty d00dbros frequently beat us down with this guilt by association fallacy.
"A guilt by association fallacy occurs when someone connects an opponent to a demonized group of people or to a bad person in order to discredit his or her argument."
It is used so often by the transgender advocates here on FWR that it is a bit frayed around the edges.

Datun Deflection?

[wave's goodbye to the topic as it disappears over the horizon]

Thanks all for a sincere, humane chat. I don't take any of this lightly. I came for better questions, not answers. If this is you, please don't bother with the next bit.
**
Also thanks for all the prejudicial, hidden-agenda-sniffing, mysogynising, suspicious, cliched comments. Thanks for reading my requests as demands, for reading my motives as disguises, for listening to your fear rather than me or anyone else in the room. I can see through your BS as easily as you see through mine, you think no-one else can? Keep on keeping on! Homogametic Good! Heterogametic Bad!
Everyone keeps telling me how Women are when some overbearing entitled opinion decides to reframe everything and won't be told no. Today that wasn't only me. :)
x

Agreed with everyone else that it's best to just scroll past those who there's no point engaging with. That being said, on MadBad's comment about feminists being the only people who have a useful analysis of how gender works (which is true) and therefore being somehow obligated to solve MadBad's existential problem (which is not true)...this is exactly why many of us find many transwomen so aggravating to deal with. I mean, when you openly state that you realize that we do not view something as a shared problem, but then demand that we do so and fix it (for you rather than for ourselves - remember that we do not agree that this is a shared problem) anyway, do you see how that comes across? And makes the woman on the receiving end feel like she's dealing with a demanding toddler, except the toddler has a better excuse because their cognitive development and emotional regulation are limited due to being a toddler, whereas with adults we generally expect them to be a bit more advanced in both areas?

The feminist analysis of gender is essentially a toolkit. Other people can use it too, and are welcome to do so if it's useful to them. The problem comes when the other person instead hangs around going "yeah but that's so hard, can't you just do it for me?" - it's not entirely certain that we could, and even if it was we have our own tasks to be getting on with.

The few trans people who engage on this forum who're not doing that generally get a much more positive reception. One of them DMd me during the last round of the ongoing MNHQ is really struggling to deal with being under attack and also isn't great at internet security and a bunch of people are debating leaving for that reason mess, to ask where I was considering going as an alternative and if I'd mind sharing. Which I did, because I like that particular person and therefore don't mind sharing resources, chatting privately, etc. That's how social interactions on forums work, people who like each other form relationships over time and are willing to help each other out, or just socialize/vent about shared frustrations.

Now compare that to what happens when someone shows up and completely ignores that normal process of forming relationships and instead posts increasingly baffling comments that swing between "you're horrible" and "do this thing for me because nobody else can" and "is this performance art or am I just trolling?". And also fails to read other people or ignores what they are reading and therefore ends up sending entirely unwelcome DMs that come across as intrusive and confusing rather than as a natural evolution of the interactions that they're already having with others.

I know writing this out is probably a waste of time, because you can't teach social skills via the internet and people's personalities are what they are. But, you know, lurkers and all, may be useful to some of them.

AngryAttackKittens Super post. Sadly, I suspect it will go clean over the heads of the people you hope may read it.

Well said, AAK.
I suspect you are right that aggrieved entitlement is impervious to correction.

@AngryAttackKittens
Please to be keeping grubby paws OFF my existential problems, ta. We are just dandy as we are.
x

Nice to know that what I thought would happen did in fact happen. Personalities, nothing you can do to change them if the person themselves doesn't want to change.

thebewilderness
But how do they define transphobia?
They don't. "Transphobia" is not a crime, nor (so far as I know, is it legally defined)

Mermaids provided the training for the police, the schools, both teachers and students, as well as politicians.
Mermaids have provided some training to all sorts of people, but their primary purpose is to support young trans people and their families. Police investigations are governed by law, not by any advice they receive from charities — whether it is Mermaids or from anti-trans campaigners such as Christian Concern.

We are perfectly aware that men kill one another more often than they kill women
Man-on-man violence is a separate issue (related perhaps, but not the same as man-on-transwoman violence).

The fundamental misunderstanding tat seems to underpin this whole argument is your belief that transwomen are "men". We are not.

10th rule of misogyny: The worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad. Maybe to misogynists. The worst thing about male violence to everyone else is that it hurts, injures, and kills people. Or are you suggesting that transwomen are non-people?

There must be a word for that Bewilderedness?
While it does smack of the 1st rule, the fact is that it is such a common logical fallacy that it didn't even make the list.

"A guilt by association fallacy occurs when someone connects an opponent to a demonized group of people or to a bad person in order to discredit his or her argument."
A neat trick on your part, but flawed. I'm not connecting feminists to alt right or religious fundamentalists: I'm saying that from the point of view of the target of transphobic abuse or violence, what we see is a group of transphobes, who could be separated into at least three overlapping and interwoven sub-groups. But they all trot out the same abuse, the same misleading so-called "facts", and the same flawed arguments in an effort to justify their hatred and recruit others.

It would be nonsense to suggest that all feminists are connected to all funds because the vast majority of feminists are not transphobes. Apart from anything else, most MtoF transsexuals are feminists. How could we possibly not be?

hahhaha, that last line made me LOL

Anyway, perhaps read this and stop whining about yourselves for five minutes.

reneejg.net/2018/05/14/rnz-censored/

Who you gonna believe? Damnthatonestakentryanother2 or your lying eyes?

Everyone here saw your switch from male violence, which is the greatest human rights crisis the world has ever known, to men on men violence. Then comes your claim that your beliefs trump material reality.

It is my firm belief that discussion with true believers, be they gender advocates or evangelicals, is counterproductive. Similar reasons to decline "pig wrestling".

Picassospaintbrush
hahhaha, that last line made me LOL
It wasn't a joke.

Anyway, perhaps read this and stop whining about yourselves for five minutes.
Read it. It's horrible. I don't see how it's relevant, to this discussion, which has so far centred on hatred directed towards transwomen.

Where it does impinge on broader trans issues is that it is one of the many arguments for adequate, early and appropriate support for young transmen — something else that is opposed by some so-called "feminists".

thebewilderness
Everyone here saw your switch from male violence, which is the greatest human rights crisis the world has ever known, to men on men violence.
Hardly a switch. It is you that seems to want to ignore the fact of man-on-trans violence. It seems that you regard transwomen as non-people?
Then comes your claim that your beliefs trump material reality.
By "material reality" I presume you are referring your belief that women's brains are irrelevant, and that women should be defined solely as egg producers. That's not a belief that I am prepared accept... but I think you are very brave to suggest it on a feminist forum.

It is my firm belief that discussion with true believers, be they gender advocates or evangelicals, is counterproductive.
At last we have found something we can agree on. I really don't know why I am bothering to try to discuss the issues to someone with such firmly-held prejudices.

Here's the thing. Feminism is a political movement which understands that the oppression of women is rooted in their biology; in patriarchal control of women's sexuality and reproductive capacity.

If you refuse to believe in biology and are unwilling to confront the reality of sex-based oppression, you cannot be a feminist, or a feminist ally.

The comment that transwomen will support women in their fight against male violence if they choose to engage is telling. Women and men are already engaged in a vast struggle against male violence. Should you wish to join the struggle you have only to pick a cause and front up.

Or, if, as you say, male violence against transwomen is a different strand, start your own cause. The expectation that women should do your work for you, while women are being persecuted for not being willing to deny their biological reality, and at the same time pushing to remove women's hard-won spaces, smells like the patriarchy to me.