A question worth considering.

[Creepster]

“Is excluding trans widows from feminism a price worth paying for having our opinions validated by “transexuals?”

This question has come up several times over the past few weeks.
Where do the wives go for community and support when the transitioned husbands occupy the feminist community?

The blind spot is, on reflection, pretty much the same phenomenon as the 'well, I'm ok with TW in women's loos, what's the problem' idiocy.

There are also mothers, sisters, and daughters who may want to unpack their feelings about the transition of males in their lives - regardless of whether their relative is a full-blown TRA or a gender critical ally - and will need a firmly woman-centred, preferably woman-only space to do that with absolute freedom.

No purges are necessary. I dont understand why this issue, which has been raised on here, and on Spinster and even places on Facebook recently, is being met by some feminists saying "I haven't seen that" and quite a bit of skepticism.

This isn't hard. If a number of rape victims were telling you something was an issue, you wouldn't say you haven't noticed and dismiss the topic.

I think the hope is from those of us raising this - the transwidows themselves and the other women who have had an epiphany about it after listening to the transwidows issues - is not a purge, but that other feminists will each personally reflect on our their responses to certain men unintentionally exclude other women.

You don't have to start a witch hunt of a specific trans identifying male person, for example. But you could certainly think before you rush gratefully to thank them profusely for saying what other women have been saying and ignored over, just as you may decide not to give huge praise to any other man over and above women.

Personally, I see it like this - I don't fall over myself to praise Glinner anymore. I'm ok with his contribution, but I prefer to boost female voices, as I would hope he does too.

Boosting Trans identified male voices who have left women in their wake should be even less appealing to me. Rod Liddle writes occasionally useful things, and I see they might have purpose - but he's not feted as an ally here, and in fact if an article is shared, it will be mentioned that he's quite the nasty misogynist.

The request here is to consider whether your response to a man will effectively exclude the women in his life from support, even if you would never mean it to. This kind of self-awareness is a very feminist response, as far as I can see.

Exactly that.

Part of the reason that awareness of this mechanism of exclusion is low is presumably because (fortunately) there aren't massive numbers of transwidows, but unfortunately because some of them may be self excluding from places which should be prioritising their needs.

I guess it depends on the focus of FWR. For the past few years we have put alot of energy into trying to push back the TRA agenda. Mumsnet is the only widely accessible platform on which we can have these discussions.

Is the focus on the general fight or on supporting the casualties? I think we can do both. I don't think praise for a gender critical article by a TW should be read as complete support for their choices and their actions.

I would hope trans widows always feel welcome in spaces like MN.

Its more complex and nuanced than not feeling welcome to join or post. We self censor. Its what we are used to doing and we are pretty ruthless about it because the cost of not self censoring is so high.

I guess it depends on the focus of FWR. For the past few years we have put alot of energy into trying to push back the TRA agenda. Mumsnet is the only widely accessible platform on which we can have these discussions.

Is the focus on the general fight or on supporting the casualties? I think we can do both. I don't think praise for a gender critical article by a TW should be read as complete support for their choices and their actions.

This is FWR. It's supposed to be focused on feminism and women's rights. This is not a place that is focused on supporting men who feel better if they and everyone else pretend they are women.

We are being told by the women in these men's lives that by 'supporting' these men, we are often excluding the women in their lives.

We therefore cannot do both, and it's not any feminism I recognize to support men at the expense of women.

The both is fighting against TRA regulatory capture and supporting those damaged by the TRA agenda.
I think we have to find a way to do both. No-one is suggesting FWR centres males.

I don't think praise for a gender critical article by a TW should be read as complete support for their choices and their actions.

I reckon it should be possible to even-handedly critique an article by anyone on here, without supporting the writer of it. Cf Rod Liddell, as mentioned upthread. But if the writer is a TW, do it mindfully ... eg not implicitly supporting the idea they're actually a woman by use of a feminine forename or missexed pronoun. I'd hope that any TW who do want to participate constructively with women are similarly mindful. Ditching an NN which includes a feminine forename would be a small token of awareness, perhaps?

Nappy, I will certainly support the women and children damaged by Transideology here, because that is most definitely a feminist issue. I feel absolutely no need to find a way to 'balance' that unequivocal support of them by also supporting the male people whose desires have caused the problems for those women in the first place, and I am struggling to see why any feminist would think a feminist message board was the appropriate venue for such an idea.

I think this debate exposes a fault line between people who are (for want of a better phrase) anti-genderist, and people who are feminists and also anti genderist.

If you're concern is solely to argue against self ID you can do this consistently and still include male transexuals on your platform.

If you are coming from a feminist stand point and your concern is for all women, then you can't.

Placemarking because I'd really really like to know more about this.

I think this debate exposes a fault line between people who are (for want of a better phrase) anti-genderist, and people who are feminists and also anti genderist.

I've been thinking about this too.

There are plenty of non-feminist reasons to oppose queer theory/wokeism/genderism - free speech, child safeguarding, erasure of homosexuality, etc etc. Men, however they identify, obviously as welcome as anyone.

Then there are the feminist reasons, which we discuss here a lot. Men, however they identify, can be supportive allies. But they can't - even inadvertently - be allowed to influence feminism. Because then it's not feminism. Sandwich-making role only for me, sorry boys.

It's hard to sit and reflect that an eagerness to welcome men, including GC transsexuals, because they oppose the excesses of genderism, may be excluding groups of women from free and confident participation from the feminism in all this. Especially when those males are friends for some of us.

But it's got to be done.

It's not a criticism of or reflection on those males. We need to get past this way of thinking. It's a criticism of and reflection on ourselves. If we are to call ourselves feminists, the onus is on us to consider the women whose voices face barriers in order to be heard and make spaces where they are not only heard but welcomed, and not corralled off into "special" threads or corners.

What do you mean by supporting males? Is saying 'great article - good to get the GC message out' is supporting males? Feels like shooting ourselves in the foot never to draw attention to when someone in the public eye produces a useful GC article. Purity doesn't work when the other side fight so dirty. There is alot at stake.

Purity doesn't work when the other side fight so dirty.

This is key: so by this argument, excluding trans widows from the debate is a price worth paying?

No I don't think it is a price worth paying. Does it have to be either/or? Can't we draw attention to and recognise the existence of GC articles written by a range of people and find ways to better include transwidows?

I don't have the answers. I am just saying that this board has a valuable function that goes beyond the people who post here. I don't want to see that reduced too much by us over policing ourselves in this way.

This is what I said on the other thread:

*not talking about anybody specific, but you have presumably seen how badly many of the women on the trans widows threads are treated by their husbands?

Imagine then if a transsexual with a wife got here first and was not only welcomed but lauded here as a stunning and brave feminist.

How then could his wife post here? If she tried to do it anonymously she would know he was already here and watching. If she did it openly as her husbands wife, knowing what the dynamics of these relationships often are, we would never know if it is her voice or her husbands's.

I can only reiterate if I had been in this situation there would be no trans widows thread, and it's only by sheer good luck that my ex is a TRA not a brave and stunning gender Critical feminist.

If this had happened to me, would you consider it to be a price worth paying for validation?

We talk a lot about men in women's spaces. The ultimate appropriation is allowing transsexuals to appropriate feminism and thus exclude their wives from the help of other women.

I don't think I can spell it out any clearer than this*

Thanks for this thread and for articulating the dissonances so clearly Tinsel.

It's so important and I'm glad you're feeling heard at last. Your trans widows threads are so important.

I read Katelyn Burns tweets about his wife the other day and I think I would have felt a bit of sympathy if I hadn't seen the pattern of behaviour repeated over and over again.

Dworkin:
"Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don’t like,
including all the women you don’t want to be around,
including all the women who used to be your best friends whom you don’t want anything to do with any more.
It doesn’t matter who the individual women are."

There is a tendency to conflate being gender critical with Feminism, probably because abolishing gender roles and sex role stereotypes has been a tenet of Feminism for a very long time.
There are millions of women who are gender critical who are ignorant of or even opposed to Feminism.
Feminists will make common cause with them when we oppose pornography and prostitution as well as when we oppose stripping away women's rights by replacing sex protections with gender identity in the law.
Those are the women called right wing extremists and alt right that Feminists are being demonized for collaborating with.
Mind you there are also ordinary middle of the road political conservative and politically liberal organizations being labeled extremists because they do not subscribe to gender ideology quite the same way as their political opposition's gender ideologists do.

I am very glad that Tinsel raised this issue so we could think it through.

I think a lot of this has been driven by people having insufficient courage of their convictions. They are so worried about being considered transphobic, they need to cover themselves by saying "Look, this trans person agrees with me too"

Some are so worried about appearing transphobic that they are excessively grateful for any evidence that a trans person agrees with them, so they can't help posting threads here fawning over every article written, or inviting a transsexual to speak at their feminist meeting.

They need to consider whether they're actually damaging other women in order to feel better about themselves.

This is a great thread. I agree wholeheartedly with this.

Mostly I think it is important to take on board what transwidows like TinselAngel are telling us and be careful not to come across as 'fawning' towards those TW who have swung a wrecking ball across the lives of their families and expect to be applauded for it.

And I'd add, with people like Hayton, also presumably swung a wrecking ball through the boundaries of the girls Hayton teaches since Hayton requires them (I've read, would be delighted to be corrected) to use incorrect pronouns.

I find it difficult to read any common sense article by Hayton without thinking of the girls Hayton teaches and think about how my lovely pre pubescent DD would feel about coercion like this.

And then I wonder why the fuck someone like Tinsel isn't invited to write a piece instead of Hayton.

And then I wonder why the fuck someone like Tinsel isn't invited to write a piece instead of Hayton.

We've probably got about the same amount of expertise on the subject of women's sport.

Or at least, in addition to Hayton. In this particular case, the whine of the TW 'b-but I just wanna play sport, what am I supposed to dooo?' really isn't a problem any woman ought to be tasked with solving (though to be sure we've suggested exactly the obvious solution DH did). Men in general and TW in particular should be responsible for working out how they play sport, it should never have been owt to do with us in the first place.

But aside from that, absolutely, wtf have the media so comprehensively ignored the people like tinsel harmed by this when they're happy to give column inches to hayton (and worse, that bloke in the telegraph).

And I'd add, with people like Hayton, also presumably swung a wrecking ball through the boundaries of the girls Hayton teaches since Hayton requires them (I've read, would be delighted to be corrected) to use incorrect pronouns.

Probably not great for the boys either, implicitly inculcating 'real men and non-men' I fear.

On sport, I bet there are women who aren't in the least bit happy about male team-mates who are very much silenced - we've heard one or two brave women and girls speaking out particularly in the US but they really do need to be given a proper platform, not the just the misogynistic bearpit of social media.

I mean current athletes, as well as the older greats like martina Navratilova and Sharron Davies etc

Come on, the Times - find those silenced women.