Effects of self-ID upon working class women?

[CourageEverywhere]

I've seen it mentioned quite a few times that self-ID will disproportionately affect working class women. Why is this? Is it purely because a higher proportion will need access to refuges etc. because they're less likely to have a financial buffer?

There's a good thread here that gives some background and it's a timely topic in the light of more recent developments:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3203804-The-Deptford-People-Project-and-the-impact-of-self-ID-and-transactivism-on-working-class-women

Marvellous! Thanks very much.

I have said this in a few threads on here: if you are MC you can ‘buy’ yourself out of it by accessing a private gym, healthcare etc.

f you are MC you can ‘buy’ yourself out of it by accessing a private gym, healthcare etc.

I've just created a new thread for this but Mark Fisher's Exiting the Vampire Castle (2013) is an interesting essay about class and identity politics (some of the original formatting lost from quotation):

The danger in attacking the Vampires’ Castle is that it can look as if – and it will do everything it can to reinforce this thought – that one is also attacking the struggles against racism, sexism, heterosexism. But, far from being the only legitimate expression of such struggles, the Vampires’ Castle is best understood as a bourgeois-liberal perversion and appropriation of the energy of these movements. The Vampires’ Castle was born the moment when the struggle not to be defined by identitarian categories became the quest to have ‘identities’ recognised by a bourgeois big Other.

The privilege I certainly enjoy as a white male consists in part in my not being aware of my ethnicity and my gender, and it is a sobering and revelatory experience to occasionally be made aware of these blind-spots. But, rather than seeking a world in which everyone achieves freedom from identitarian classification, the Vampires’ Castle seeks to corral people back into identi-camps, where they are forever defined in the terms set by dominant power, crippled by self-consciousness and isolated by a logic of solipsism which insists that we cannot understand one another unless we belong to the same identity group.

I’ve noticed a fascinating magical inversion projection-disavowal mechanism whereby the sheer mention of class is now automatically treated as if that means one is trying to downgrade the importance of race and gender. In fact, the exact opposite is the case, as the Vampires’ Castle uses an ultimately liberal understanding of race and gender to obfuscate class. In all of the absurd and traumatic twitterstorms about privilege earlier this year it was noticeable that the discussion of class privilege was entirely absent. The task, as ever, remains the articulation of class, gender and race – but the founding move of the Vampires’ Castle is the dis-articulation of class from other categories.

www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/mark-fisher/exiting-vampire-castle

I think there are issues outwith the legislative proposals for self-ID. Which Vampire's Castle plays into. With social self-ID, as it were, what you get is a bunch of sharp-elbowed middle class people commandeering resources intended for actually vulnerable and marginalised people. This isn't just cash resources for services such as the Deptford People's Project. It's also column inches, attention, awareness and everything else.

I have said this in a few threads on here: if you are MC you can ‘buy’ yourself out of it by accessing a private gym, healthcare etc. But would even private gyms be legally allowed to refuse entry into a women's changing rooms to men who self-ID as women if self-ID becomes law?

No, but there will be a looong period of time where: ‘Oh well, there is no one like that around here’ holds sway. Services catering to the rich and powerful won’t give a toss about identity politics.

Do you honestly think that naice golf and tennis clubs out in the shires are suddenly going to start re-labelling their changing rooms to gender-neutral when they still insist on a dress code for Sunday lunch?

I live in a socially conservative, middle-class area and the word ‘trans’ hasn’t even surfaced locally. This is why many people, including women, just don’t believe it is happening.

That's really interesting, MaybeDoctor, because I assumed it to be the other way around.

I live in a left wing, deprived, working class area of the north east, and no one here seems to have any confusion over what men & women are, and the trans subject is never brought up, because similarly people think that 'there's no one like that round here'. I cannot imagine a social club or amateur football club or local dance classes suddenly starting to re-label their changing rooms/toilets to gender neutral either. I had assumed it was the middle classes who were the driving force for GRA change.

Where is it happening? Who is steering the ship?

It's a town/city thing as well as a middle class/working class thing, I think.

It’s a particular sub-section of the left-wing middle class intelligentsia, with students leading the way.

Funnily enough, I would have previously categorised myself as belonging to the above group, but perhaps I am becoming more conservative in my old age!

With social self-ID, as it were, what you get is a bunch of sharp-elbowed middle class people commandeering resources intended for actually vulnerable and marginalised people. This isn't just cash resources for services such as the Deptford People's Project. It's also column inches, attention, awareness and everything else.

Yes, this.

It's notable that very few of the voices in the self-id debate are those of working class women. And of the few who do attempt to speak are deemed not to be worthy of that right, such as the 'outrage' that Julie Bindel might speak about the experience of growing up as a working class lesbian at an event organised by the Working Class Museum. Oddly, (not at all odd) all the people I saw speaking against this were middle class, and their opinions were given more credence.

Or see any of the recent Twitter statements from middle class people disgusted with the idea that anyone would speak to working class people about self-id, on the basis that working class people are likely to become violent.

Or, LOJ who, as previously stated here, has built a whole career out of claiming to speak on behalf of working class people because he has more idea of what is in their best interests.

Or see this thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3413550-Alaskan-Battered-Women-s-Shelter-Is-Being-Investigated-For-Turning-Away-A-Drunk-Injured-Man

Do you honestly think that naice golf and tennis clubs out in the shires are suddenly going to start re-labelling their changing rooms to gender-neutral when they still insist on a dress code for Sunday lunch?

I was just chatting about this with a friend who lives near Charleston (is it a National Trust property? Or owned privately? I don't know).

Now I know Charleston is possibly different to those naice tennis or golf clubs because it's associated with the 'queer' Bloomsbury set (see their statement below) but they are visited largely by the same clientele. Aka wealthy retired white people for the most part. Charleston have just made their loos gender neutral, my friend was saying, although she was laughing that some loos have a sticker on the door to indicate they have urinals and how the many friends she takes round it are automatically going to then use those loos or not according to whether they're male or not. She was saying how ridiculous it was and how 99% of the paying visitors would think it was ridiculous too. That or they'd be completely clueless about what gender-neutral actually means.

Obviously this isn't an example that has any serious impact but I do get the impression it is just seen as a bit of nonsense that won't be taken seriously by anyone more privileged. Her immediate reaction to it was just interesting.

I've never been to Charleston but I won't be going now. Their statement is ridiculous.

www.charleston.org.uk/equality-diversity-charleston/

It’s a particular sub-section of the left-wing middle class intelligentsia, with students leading the way

Yes it definitely is, but then it's a right wing government consulting on whether to actually change the law.

At the moment there is a layer of woke young ex-students reaching managerial positions in pubs and bars. It will be interesting to see them trying to no-platform their customers when the latter laugh at the some-women-have-cocks nonsense, and how long the business owners let them get away with it.

I've seen the "gender neutral" and "gender neutral with urinals" in Australia too. We need to push really hard against this because in practice, no woman would ever go into the urinal one. Effectively it means "men only" and "hey men, a cleaner option woo hoo".

There are very distinct differences in behavior and attitude between middle class and lower class people. I have seen things from both sides, from having a very nice home on a lake to living three streets away from... very very poor.

For instance, in poorer neighborhoods, you frequently hear a lot of loud angry shouting from your neighbor's yard and from people just walking down the street. I always wonder when someone is going to wind up beating up or stabbing the other person.

In poorer neighborhoods, I don't put decorative things on my front porch which are particularly nice, as I'm worried someone would steal them.

Poorer men are a lot more likely to slap a woman's ass as she walks by, hurl verbal abuse (always of a sexual nature) or just turn into a stalker-crazy type thing.

I've needed some work done on my house for the last few years but everytime I call various contractors, as a single woman all that happens is the contractors are massively patronizing, want to charge me 4 times as much as they'd charge a man or married couple, think I'm so stupid that I don't notice the contract they want me to sign has a few thousand loopholes which would enable them to completely screw me over.

The last contractor I called who has a very good to excellent reputation immediately decided over the phone during our initial contact, magically expected that we should talk dirty and have sex. I kid you not. He's sent me a couple dozen text messages making sex jokes and kissy face emoticons. He did all that, after only one phone call!

I could go on, but hope you get the idea. Whenever I am in middle class neighborhoods or upper middle class businesses etc, I never worry about professional men making insanely offensive remarks or gropey behavior towards me. (Not saying mc never engage in that sort of behavior but they do tend to save it for women they know).

That is not to imply that all or most poor people are like that, but... you just don't see that sort of thing in the upper classes. I'd also like to say the nicest people I've ever met, the most compassionate, the most "real", have been poor.

oh. I grew up poor working class btw. I'm not looking down my nose at them from the outside. I just read a lot and made a lot of money early on in life, but then had health issues.

Ohello your experience is interesting. I grew up in a pit village, and live in white van man land. I’ve only ever been groped by white posh boys. Working class men probably do talk more filthy but are less gropey. I suspect that’s there attempt at flirting, although completely failing and inappropriate.

What will happen when MC or WC women vote with their feet and stop going somewhere that doesn’t consider them just women but a category or women and redefines them? What if they just leave those spaces to biological men however they gender define?

Some places we would still have to use but those we wouldn’t would just get boycotted and then what happens?

When I think with so much sadness of Michfest that decided to close rather than redefine their mission. These MRAs just don’t care that they are destroying what women have built over decades. I can see women retreating to private spaces just so women can be together.

As mentioned up thread there are vast parts of our society that have been untouched by this insanity so far, whether they be WC or MC. I can’t imagine the backlash when people realise that MRAs expect all of society to prioritize a tiny% of the population over the whole sex category of women.

There are gropey men at all echelons of society, and they don't just save it for women they know - I doubt that a single member of the Bullingdon Club was raised on a council estate.

Now I know Charleston is possibly different to those naice tennis or golf clubs because it's associated with the 'queer' Bloomsbury set (see their statement below) but they are visited largely by the same clientele. Aka wealthy retired white people for the most part.

I suspect that Charleston is the exception that proves the rule - it's the liberal outpost of that heritage sphere.

I am a National Trust member and, alongside my genuine love of the historical properties, rather enjoy the contrast between the liberal/diverse messages in the magazine and communications and the actual experience of visiting a NT property, where the world seems the same as it ever was.....