That it's not just what you say, it's also how much you talk about it.

[NicolaHare]

Surprise, another trans thread! But the dynamics of online spaces fascinates me.

Take MWR. Some stats. Feminism Chat has been active since 2010. At this moment 364 pages of threads have been generated. 144 of those pages contain threads that were created or active since January this year. At the beginning of 2018 a significant portion of threads were trans themed and these threads tended to contain the most posts, and the board has only grown more fixated with the topic since then. You have to go quite a ways back to find a page of threads that isn’t 90-95% to do with trans people.

Nowhere else on the site is so obsessed. For example: on the LGBT themed boards you only have to go back 1 or 2 pages to find threads from 2017 and earlier. There aren’t any trans threads in the 1 and a fraction page of threads from 2018 on the politics board. There are, I think, about 2 in the half dozen pages of threads from this year in the currents affairs and news forum. And in 2018, all the education forums combined have generated about 5 trans threads.

This is weird, right? Why is a general feminism board with an overwhelmingly non trans userbase so fixated on a group of people they don't belong to and the issues surrounding them? It would be weird regardless of what anyone in any thread had to say on the subject.

Not surprising, though. Trans sceptical feminism ironically almost always ends up focusing on the transgender question to the exclusion of all other topics that its proponents believe that trans inclusive feminisms are neglecting, and so neglects them to an even greater degree. Honestly, I’m sceptical that they are being neglected at all: it seems to me that conversations about pregnancy, menstruation ect are happening in public view at far greater volume than ever before, taboos surrounding bodily functions are increasingly discarded by the discourse and pop culture, and that when we talk about erasure we’re actually quibbling about terminology, the trappings of language and not the substance of the conversation. To assign a motivation to the common theme on feminism chat of “We are being silenced elsewhere!” a significant part of it might be the catharsis of imagined persecution. “We are saying the truths THEY don’t want you to hear! We are rebels!”

(This interview with a former gender critical trans woman is worth reading. It’s American and several years old, but it describes the many of the other toxic intellectual cul-de-sacs you can observe in MWR. www.transadvocate.com/is-sadism-popular-with-terfs-a-chat-with-an-ex-gendercrit_n_18568.htm)

But to set aside the discussion of substance. Do you think that the mere volume of trans threads in feminism chat is indicative of a kind of transphobia? If it were a forum of straight people talking about nothing but same sex attracted people, even if what they had to say was positive would we not be inclined to see in it's users a troubling insecurity with regards to queerness. If it were a forum of white people talking about nothing but people of colour in the most effusive terms, would we take this at face value or would we assign sinister motives (as the resonance of Get Out suggests many would)?

I'd welcome a trans indifferent feminism along these lines into the world. I'm not sure how feminists that claims this aim and then spends all their time talking in circles about the transgender question help anyone though; except the forces of backlash that really like to appropriate the talking points of these gender critical feminists, almost certainly not with an end of gender abolition in mind.

I didn't even understand what gender was (DUH!) until I came up against the concept of 'trans'. I had no interest in the subject, either, until I saw some very supportive-of-trans news items about the situation in the US, about how nasty women were being so nasty to lovely trans people who only wanted to pee. So...I really was indifferent to the trans question until I realised that a lot of people out there thought it was OK for women to have to share female spaces with people who were not female. That's when I realised I was a feminist.

I'm not sure how feminists that claims this aim and then spends all their time talking in circles about the transgender question help anyone though; except the forces of backlash that really like to appropriate the talking points of these gender critical feminists, almost certainly not with an end of gender abolition in mind.

I'm trying to interpret all your posts still.
Are you saying we shouldn't speak because what we say might be used by people with a different endgame? That could be said of every sentence ever written. Context is always important.
Anyway, you can't keep quiet for fear of someone, somewhere, misappropriating your words.
I thought that misappropriating women's words was more the style of the trawling TRAs and MRAs anyway, you know, the ones who love a bit of gender stereotyping.

Time has already proven you wrong.

Self reflection starts and ends with reflecting on whether we can actually define the words we use. - Germaine Bunburry

Narnia feminist

Nicola I don't know what you mean by a GC critique of gender. AFAIK (not an academic feminist) critiquing gender is central to all feminism. You should be able to find ample reading
Personally I see it a bit like an atheist and a believer debating. One is coming from a position of faith and arguing that if you believe that, then xyz are true. One is coming from a position of fact and arguing that abc are true so there is no evidence for the faith.
I don't bother arguing about evolution with fundamental Christians, similarly I'm not going to waste my breath arguing about gender with TRAs. Suffice to say that I (and most people here i guess) came to a GC position after a lot of reading, thinking and analysing facts. I'm not likely to be swayed by a faith based argument

But if it doesn't, would you reconsider, in the light of this hypothetical, my point that the volume of trans threads on this board suggests a kind of transphobia.

Would you reconsider that the volume of trans threads on this board means that it's a subject that women are very worried about, and it's the only place where we can speak relatively safely? On twitter women get abused and threatened and doxxed. On Facebook we get banned. This is the last bastion of sanity.

It's proven to be very useful indeed to individuals like the person suing 16 different women in Canada for refusing to wax their balls, and may yet prove to be so useful that the person in question's documented history of troubling behavior towards underage girls isn't taken into account at all in how those cases play out.

One thing is for sure. I will never again look at a tampon string in the same way. And we all know why this paedoparaphilic creep can creep on.

Hi NicolaHare, I see you have returned but not engaged with my questions. I'm really interested in understanding why you hold the views you do, so I'd really appreciate an answer

reposted below for your convenience

Could you give some examples of traits that will help me to identify people with a masculine or feminine gender?

you say I'd also argue that there is a political utility to gender as I define it

what is the political usefulness of gender please?

An explanation of gender as you define it would also be very helpful here

Nicola, perhaps you'd like to engage with my last post before reiterating your disputed initial point. I, sadly, don't doubt you probably won't be posting here long, which is a shame, because I genuinely welcome the conversation.

To briefly answer your final sentence about transphobia - frankly, I haven't a clear idea of what constitutes 'transphobia' in a narrative where reality itself is often called transphobic, so I don't know.

AngryAttackKittens

Your subconscious knows that there's probably a Butler quote coming up soon and is trying to protect you from the inevitable migraines.

I think you're right. It's now telling me to walk away and put the kettle on

I'm not sure how feminists that claims this aim and then spends all their time talking in circles about the transgender question help anyone though

Again couldn’t care less about ‘the transgender question’. It’s as relevant to me as Scientology. This is a current issue being discussed in parliament that affects women. You seem to be quite detached from the practical implications of the GRA or the Equalities Act so I suspect you are not in the U.K.

I don't think it's useful for us to seek meanings of sex and gender that will hold true forever.

In the case of sex the reality, if not the individual word, has had the same meaning for about 6 million years. I’d be happy to put money in it holding true for a wee while longer.

As for gender. I’ve started to believe it exists only on a macro level. The inculcation of behaviours and characteristics supposed to default to male of female, and the construction of those stereotypes, is a social endeavour.

The way in which our personalities then interpret those stereotypes and the extent to which we perform them, are unique to every person in the world.

I’ll give you that the meaning of gender will change over time, as societies, shape and reshape stereotype attributes.

But as something innate and identifiable? I don’t believe gender exists.

FloralBunting

To briefly answer your final sentence about transphobia - frankly, I haven't a clear idea of what constitutes 'transphobia' in a narrative where reality itself is often called transphobic, so I don't know.

Hats off Floral. So perfectly put.

I'd really love, just once, to have a conversation with someone who identifies as a trans inclusive feminist without having to deal with the periodic accusations of transphobia

I just want to understand how people arrive at this sort of view. I'd really like someone to provide a coherent explanation in their own words.

NicolaHare - do you fancy making my wishes come true?

But if it doesn't, would you reconsider, in the light of this hypothetical, my point that the volume of trans threads on this board suggests a kind of transphobia.

At least define transphobia, for a change. If it again means whatever you feel it means you do understand that your request is Through the Looking Glass material, yes?

It's like seeking a definition of gravity - no need to, it will make itself known, and will continue to exist whether you believe in it or not.

My jumper today is dark green, which isn't really a very strongly gendered color. How will anyone figure out if I'm a woman or a man?

I’m wearing triple (!) denim.

Perhaps I will miscitizened as a Canadian?

Or a member of Dexy's Midnight Runners?

BettyDuMonde
or a time traveller?

I'm now thinking of some cracking pale stonewashed peg jeans with matching bolero denim jacket I owned in the early eighties...

Seriously considering a mullet now.

A nice red neckerchief to set it all off too.

OP, how many of those threads were started by people who do not identify as GC feminists and started specifically to either a) plop a link and never return again or b) to berate the posters on FWR for being 'transphobic'?

Don't forget, you're going to have to count your own thread in your stats now you're adding to the transphobia.

I'm assuming that your statistical analysis involves more than just counting threads with the word 'trans' in the title.

But if it doesn't, would you reconsider, in the light of this hypothetical, my point that the volume of trans threads on this board suggests a kind of transphobia.

Did you take in the statistics uphread? Mumsnet confirms that in one month, June 2017, the people accessing this site via the feminist boards was 15,000.

One year later, same month, it was 177,000.

Are you really so self-obsessed to think people would have the slightest interest in transgenderism, if it wasn't directly affecting them?

You do know, don't you, that youngsters showing up at gender identity clinics (mainly girls) has increased by 4000%? What do you think the mothers of those girls are doing? Or the mothers of those girls' peers?

Or, you know, women with children?

What resources do you think they might be accessing, could it possibly be a site called Mumsnet?

Spanna must have started at least a few dozen threads by now.

I had a home (badly) cut mullet for years. And my 5 brothers and sisters.
It's a haircut I hope never comes back in 'fashion'....

You'll still need a violin and some espadrilles.