TRA ideology using oppressed minorty groups

[Floomph]

I have long been appalled at the racism in the TRA movement and the willingness to exploit and co-opt black women's struggles to further the TRA cause. I saw an article posted twice on FB this week and it has further angered me. Two friends shared it on the basis it seemingly lends support to the fact that trans people have been around forever, I suppose because they want to push the line that to be trans is an innate and objective thing and that it has always been part of the human condition (totally accept being gender non-conforming is but we all know the trans thing is far more complex especially with ROGD and autogynephilia thrown into the mix)

I saw someone flag up in comments that a)ideas around being 'two-spirit' are really much more complex than the article is claiming and that b)a photograph of either a Filipino woman or a Pacific Islander has been erroneously used in the article which is all about Native Americans.

I've only just had a moment to google, but a reverse image search has confirmed that woman is from the Philippines. The search shows the image was at some point tagged on Pinterest as Native American, which is clearly where the writer or editor of the article lifted it from.

I think this is awful. I fully appreciate that many news articles are written very hastily these days, I really do, but this is disrespectful. If you write an article about an oppressed group which has a history of people attempting to eradicate them and you have any genuine care about their struggles you don't make an error like this. And if you do, you rectify your mistake when people flag it up on FB. That whole community has suffered genuine attempted erasure. Indigenous women experience dreadful sexism too and dreadful abuse within their own communities even if their societies have long magically embraced gender non-conforming people. I'm going to have a guess that the author of the article doesn't actually care one bit about Native American culture or their rights or opinions. It's so insensitive and downright racist to casually use Native Americans in this manner - i.e just when it suits the author's ideology. When you really scrutinise the photo in question, there are clear pointers that the woman can't be Native American.

I think I am angry as much as anything that my otherwise intelligent thoughtful friends don't see how wrong this article is. They think they are being woke and thoughtful towards Native American culture by sharing the piece. Why aren't people engaging more critically with all this?

If anyone has any in-depth knowledge about the concept of two-spirit people, I'd be interested to hear more. I can't find the original FB argument but the person making it seemed thoughtful and against TRAs bringing it into the debate in the same vein that you shouldn't use intersex people in the trans debate.

dailyplug.com/before-european-christians-forced-gender-roles-native-americans-acknowledged-5-genders/?fbclid=IwAR0M_9KB_aYiWUccge9HPnTSd1xrAnOOcCE9BooS6uUN7W3I6CjBCeFtENs

Agree totally. I'm far from being an expert, but even if the author hadn't used the wrong photo, treating all Native American cultures and tribes as one monolithic mass is pretty racist in itself (a bit like people who make sweeping generalisations about "Africans").

My understanding, from talking to an anthropologist friend, is that third genders/two spirit concepts were far from universal. There is a slight correlation between the strength of enforcement of gender roles (in the "sex stereotype"sense) and third genders (this seems to be quite common anthropologically: if you really force people into boxes, you may need an additional box as a kind of societal safety valve for those who don't fit, whereas if you're fairly laid back, people just quietly get on with doing what they feel most comfortable with).

Even this isn't universal though. The impacts of rigid gender roles can to some extent be offset by more egalitarian power structures. The Iroquois for example had quite delineated sex roles, but we're matrilineal, had women in positions of power and even had the women of the tribe hold the right of veto over decisions to go to war. (Some of the 19th century white suffragists in the US held the Iroquois up as a model of what they'd like to see). The Iroquois seem to have had no need of a third gender.
It does seem to be a bit of a common feature of traditional (or pre pomo bullshit) third genders that they pop up in societies which tend to be homophobic/deeply misogynistic. Sworn Virgins in Albania, Bacha Posh in Afghanistan (and the male equivalent, who get an even worse deal as they are effectively kept as child sex slaves), Hijra in India, Fa-afine (apologies, have probably misremembered the correct word entirely) in Polynesia.

Thank you, that's really interesting. And it's such a fundamental point, isn't it, that there were/are multiple cultures and tribes? People are getting better at understanding that Africans aren't all exactly the same but clearly looking beyond that lots still struggle.

Possibly an interesting link to be made here with the history of homosexuality, particularly given the insistence of some people that sexual orientation is innate (and given the seeming attempt to reproduce the innate argument that seems to have worked on the lesbian and gay side on the TRA side). For example, on the gay male side, most people can understand that the uses of male homosexual acts in ancient Greece etc don't simple mean that being gay is innate, but also indicate that sex acts and relationships between males could be used to fulfill other needs in society. And then perhaps a parallel with that would be that 'two-spirit' etc don't necessarily means that trans is innate, but that various societies incorporated same -sex sexual attraction, and non-conformity to societal gender roles in various ways. And that perhaps all that we are seeing here is the various ways that different societies dealt with same-sex sexual acts and those who refused to obey gender expectations. You either make some room for such, and make some societal use of it, or you try to prohibit it.

rewire.news/article/2016/10/13/two-spirit-tradition-far-ubiquitous-among-tribes/

This article was written by an Ojibwe woman and she points out that not all tribes (including her own) had a two-spirit tradition.

SomeDyke

Yes, I agree with you on that and I think it needs to be talked about more to have any real clarity on this.

I had typed out a long post but I deleted it as I've had people be pretty aggressive here when I've talked about it before. But it reminds me very much of Harold Bloom saying that people now (or actually 25 years ago now) are educated about other cultures not so much to actually learn about other cultures, but as a way of supporting or undermining certain ideas within our own culture. Which only really requires a fairly shallow type of knowledge - more understanding is detrimental in fact. So we are allowed to have a shallow understanding of sexuality because it supports the narrative we want to believe.

Generally I find the tendency to try and win the oppression Olympics as a way to make your voice the most important one pretty disappointing. It's just another kind of power play.

There was a good post from a two-spirit woman doing the rounds on fb. I don’t know the original source, but with that in mind, I will quote it in its entirety.

“
FROM A TWO-SPIRIT INDIGENOUS SISTER—

(Last year, transactivists deleted and blocked a lot of us who were commenting on the Vancouver Dyke March FB page. Just before I was blocked, I found this amazing comment.)

"I am 2 spirit and I do not support this (transgenderism, Vancouver Dyke March). First of all I don't like my culture being amalgamated into your giant colonial acronym. 2 spirit is not trans or gender queer or any of your other colonial labels. 2 spirit is cultural and does not make sense from a colonial viewpoint. So please stop throwing the word 2 spirit around like it wins you indigenous treats. Second of all, we don't always have to be inclusive of everyone even if that is how women are typically brought up. Sometimes I want Indigenous space only and that means no allies, no people playing Indian, and no one who ‘feels’ Indigenous. just people who get me. I do not see why we cannot allow the same thing for lesbian females. you do not speak for me Vancouver Dyke March."”

Isn't part of the problem that while you have comments like the oe above, their are also people who are two-spirited that embrace the whole trans approach?
In fact almost every issue is like this. I woke up this morning to "indigenous groups want to buy a controversial pipeline, this is a new era and totally changes the conversation! " Before that it was "Hereditary chiefs oppose the pipeline". All of which descends into arguments about who really represents indigenous people and their interests and who can claim them as their poster children.
And yet here I am, an absolutely European woman who has lived in this country my whole life, as have my kids and my parents, and I have my own thoughts on the pipeline and what it means for the future which are just as good (or bad) as any of theirs, and I want to talk about those things and not how legitimate a hereditary chief is compared to an elected one. Because guess what, that is not talking about oil and climate change and whether my kids and grandkids are likely to starve in a world where most of North America is a desert.

It's the same for all of these issues, and it increasingly pisses me off. No wonder people are being radicalised in all kinds of directions.

Gosh, sorry about the typos and spelling mistakes, that's what I get for posting in a bad frame of mind.

"Isn't part of the problem that while you have comments like the oe above, their are also people who are two-spirited that embrace the whole trans approach?"
That is only a problem if you think there has to be one approach applicable to all. Which is itself the problem.......

Frankly, I don't have a problem with some people believing homosexual acts are a sin, as long as I am allowed to say I find that view daft. I don't have a problem with some people believing homosexuality is innate, as long as I am allowed to say 'Are you quite sure it matters that much? Why should that alter the way we treat homosexuality as a society?'. The problem with current TRA approach is the whole nodebate nonsense, and a range of views (such as my lesbianism not including people who currently have or ever had a penis) explicitly not being acceptable.

I’m a Pacific Islander, I’m Māori, there’s quite a few different Polynesian islands but the specific appropriation used by TRA’s is of the Samoan Fa’afafine. Fa’afafine is rooted in homophobia, it is not any kind of acknowledgement of a third sex or transgenderism. To make that suggestion is both racist and ignorant. In Samoan culture, only girls can do housework and boys work outside the home. There are instances of families swapping children if they have all boys and all girls- Matt Toomoa from the wallabies rugby team talked about it recently as he found out his father was swapped with his female cousin and his last name is actually Papali’i. If they cannot swap with relatives or friends like that, then they would trans a boy child and make him fa’afafine. It is also true they would trans gay boys. It’s notable that it doesn’t go in the other direction- anyone seen or heard of Samoan trans men? There’s a reason for that.

In Samoa, homosexual sex between men is still illegal. They are not a progressive society at all, they’re homophobic and extremely sexist and that is where Fa’afafine originally comes from. Ask older gay Samoan men who were transed like this.

Before I’m accused of racism, Māori culture is traditionally similarly sexist ( still is, I can’t talk on all Marae) and homophobic, although not quite to the same extent.

It is a fair point, ie who is allowed to dish out approriation passes on behalf of a culture.

Side note, why is this turning up in UK based LGBTQ+ discourse? Do we have loads of 2 spirit people over here, or has the rhetoric been uncritically imported from the US without checking if it’s actually applicable?

Now I’m wondering if there are some natively British transgressive gender roles. Northern birds maybe...

Side note, why is this turning up in UK based LGBTQ+ discourse? Do we have loads of 2 spirit people over here, or has the rhetoric been uncritically imported from the US without checking if it’s actually applicable?

Uncritically imported, I'm afraid. If you look at any young, woke person/community online, people are gaining woke cookies for being seen to tackle racism generally. I mean, caring about racism is admirable and so much still needs to be done to rid society of it, except that so many of those people are just parroting things to virtue signal. You see a lot of people talking about 'BIPOC' in debates online - including British people who have given the term very little thought. It is an American term (I think!) which covers indigenous people as well as other ethnic minorities, and I know I sound cynical but I highly doubt most people throwing that term around know very much about Native Americans, say, beyond using the concepts mentioned in this thread. So many of those same people are TRAs too and are getting aggressive online about white feminism and transphobia.

Fa’afafine is rooted in homophobia, it is not any kind of acknowledgement of a third sex or transgenderism.

Thank you for your input. I think it's very interesting that some people will look at these kind of concepts and be far more interested in looking liberal and woke though discussing them than they are in learning anything about the actual reality. It sounds really homophobic and a little like Iran where gay people are transed because of homophobia. You'd be very mistaken if you looked at Iran and just thought they were a wonderfully woke country because people are supported in transitioning.

Yes, there's always something absurd about some woke studenty type saying "we must centre the rights of indigenous peoples" while speaking in the Students' Union in Barnsley.

The other community that is often included in this discussion is the hijras from India. They are definitely marginalised and discriminated against, despite their role in wedding or birth celebrations. I have seen assertions that they were only marginalised after British colonialism but I don't know enough to know whether this is true or not. I do wonder how much some of these assertions stand up to scrutiny, especially if they are considered, as other posters say, without acknowledging the existence of other homophobic attitudes.

In Australia I've seen Aboriginal concepts celebrated as part of transgender ideology. TRAs have been very vocal supporters of Indigenous rights. I was at a demo and there seemed to be more (non-indigenous supporters) men in eyeshadow than not.
They are called "brother boys" (tomboys) and "sistagirls" (effeminate males). I don't know anything else beyond this.

To be fair it's not just TRA's. A FWR poster just posted the following in one of the current threads, likening feminists'.struggle to that if black people, which I think is a bit personally.

A woman complaining about patriarchy is not being sexist.

A black woman complaining about white supremacy is not being racist.

I do actually get the point, but co-opting the struggle of black people is a bit distasteful IMO, especially from a well-educated and likely middle class graduate.

Side note, why is this turning up in UK based LGBTQ+ discourse? Do we have loads of 2 spirit people over here, or has the rhetoric been uncritically imported from the US without checking if it’s actually applicable?

Imported, like the obsession with the ‘cultural appropriation’ of Mexican food. You’d think they were the most oppressed ethnic minority in the UK.

This blog is useful.