(Very long post alert - have been trying to formulate these thoughts since the guidelines first came out, and it has been very challenging... but here goes!)
My problem with the guidelines - apart from the lack of clarity and consistency - is that they are predicated upon a fallacy.
The fallacy is that it is biologically male trans people who are the vulnerable and oppressed minority, and, ergo, women who are the invulnerable/powerful and oppressive majority.
That is the clear subtext of the opening statement. Trans people are the “vulnerable and oppressed minority”; women - not vulnerable or oppressed - are just cross at having our free speech curtailed.
This denies and disregards entirely the reality of so many women’s lives, not just in the rest of the world but here in the UK. Women as a group are still ourselves vulnerable and oppressed. Despite being just over half the population, we are still a minority when it comes to positions of power and influence, political representation, equal wealth and status; our freedoms and rights are still massively curtailed and blighted by the shocking levels of male harassment, violence and sexual violence against women and girls.
This denial is the TRA narrative, canonised. It’s propaganda, and it’s untrue.
I know Justine made that comment about her life would have been a zillion times harder if she’d been trans. I don’t even understand what she meant. Did she mean if she’d still been a female person who was trans, or a male person who was trans? Because they’re very different realities.
And the reality of the life of the truly vulnerable biologically male trans people - the ones who really do, or did, live their lives in fear of attack and assault (by men), who were/are constant subjects of ridicule, who really couldn’t find a safe place in society - that reality is very different also from the lives of people like “call me Caitlyn” Jenner, Pips Bunce, Dr R McKinnon, Shon Faye etc etc etc.
As a society, we have been so quick to embrace the narrative that biologically male trans people are the most vulnerable, oppressed minority ever; and yet we are in stubborn denial about the extent to which misogyny is still embedded in our culture. (And correspondingly about the extent to which male privilege is enjoyed by all males relative to females.)
The very fact that “transphobia” is now an excommunicable offence in the liberal world of today, while “misogyny” barely elicits a yawn, is a direct result of that male privilege.
We still live in a male-dominated world, a world where it’s written into our everyday language that the default human is male, where male people are vastly over represented in positions of power, the media, the creative industries, sport... everywhere. (Except childcare and “sex work”, of course.)
We still live in a world where women are vulnerable relative to men, where a woman’s word is worth less than a man’s, where all the existing societal structures have been created by and for men.
Women still can’t get justice when we’re raped, sexually assaulted or abused. Or killed in a “sex game gone wrong”. We still disproportionately bear the impact of austerity measures, are still the ones more likely to be the carers if our child has a disability or SEN, still far more likely to be the victims of DV, still have to struggle to make our voices heard in so many settings - remember Obama bringing in that policy of affirming what women were saying in meetings because otherwise they were just being talked over and the credit for their ideas given to men? How many times have we heard women telling the same story right here on MN?
I don’t even know how to begin and end a list of the ways in which women are still negatively impacted by being female in a society which is intrinsically biased against us, and of the ways our female socialisation works against us, it is so extensive and far reaching. Women write whole books about it, FGS. There even used to be entire uni courses about it - till they all became “Gender Studies”, of course. Because heaven forbid we women have anything for ourselves.
This is the backdrop against which a minority group of male people is being positioned as vulnerable and oppressed, and female people as all-powerful oppressors.
This is the backdrop against which women are, once again, being silenced, told to watch our words, told our opinions and the way we express them are unacceptable.
The guidelines say “We don’t allow posts which are derogatory or aggressive towards trans people.” (Nothing about posts which are derogatory or aggressive towards women.)
But this is NOT a conflict between “vulnerable trans” and “powerful women”, with the concomitant expectation of women that they cede some of their “power”, and tread softly around trans vulnerability. That is the lie that has been peddled by trans rights activists, the lie on which the whole edifice rests.
Trans rights activism must necessarily hide and distort the true power relations between the sexes, it must invent the notion of female people having “cis privilege” over biologically male trans people, it must make us out to be the aggressors and trans people our defenceless victims. There is no trans rights activism without this conjuring trick; the reality of the power relations between the sexes is too stark otherwise, to those who would see themselves as liberal and progressive, at least.
This is why we HAVE to be able to talk about and name the sex of those activists. This is why it is pertinent to every single part of the discussion. It is not being “mean” or “uncivil”; it is the single most vital piece of information there is on this topic. MN guidelines say we mustn’t go on about it because it is “an aspect of their identity that they have explicitly rejected”; I say a person’s sex in not an aspect of their identity but a matter of physical and sociological reality, and in terms of this “debate” it is the one thing that MUST be transparent, that HAS to be constantly referred to.
It is women who are under attack here. Female people under attack from male people, male domination of and control over female people, just like the rest of the sodding history of the world.
All the threats of violence - actual, literal, physical violence - have been one way. As have the acts of violence. All the attempts to shut down the “debate”, to silence the opposition - one way. GC feminists have never tried to stop any trans people from speaking; trans rights activists are hell bent on trying to stop women who challenge them from speaking.
What is actually happening to women here is a form of persecution.
There is a concerted attempt by members of the group that already has more power to take away rights and protections from the group that has less power. It is bullying and emotional abuse of women and girls. And, in a classic display of DARVO, we - the genuinely less powerful victims - are being framed as the bullies, the mean girls, the ones who just don’t want to give our “power” up. And then being monstered, threatened, vilified for trying to speak up.
So - not only are we being abused, we are being punished for protesting about our abuse.
That’s what’s going on here. That’s the point that the Guidelines ignore or deny.
This is a familiar pattern for those of us with too much experience of abuse from those with more power than us. Look at what happened to Savile’s victims, the ones who tried to speak out before the world was ready to acknowledge what he was. The girls in the home that he abused, who were punished for saying he’d abused them.
The reason we have to keep referring to the fact that biologically male trans people are male is because that’s the whole crux of the matter. It’s not their “transness” that’s the issue here, that was ever the issue. This isn’t about “transphobia”. The issue is their maleness. And the privilege and power that gives them in relation to those of us who are female.
Why is it that there are literally no ways in which men as a group have been negatively impacted by the current trans rights movement? What rights, freedoms, protections have they lost, do they stand to lose? None whatsoever.
Men who don’t want to share their gym changing rooms with a “transman” don’t have to. Gay men who don’t want to let “transmen” into their sauna don’t have to. Men’s sports records are perfectly safe from biologically female athletes, no matter how much testosterone they take. Male primogeniture was specifically safeguarded and excluded from the GRA.
Men are not being referred to in NHS/charity information as “ejaculators” or “prostate havers”. They can still use the word “man” to describe themselves, without being accused of being exclusionary to anybody.
Unlike their male counterparts, biologically female trans prisoners are not clamouring to be housed with prisoners of the opposite sex - and we all know why that is. It is disingenuous to pretend we don’t.
We live in a world where male people hold the balance of power. Where male people still have power, both physically and socially, over female people. Where female people are still very much the second sex. You cannot take this historical and ongoing reality out of the equation.
There is no symmetry. And because there is no symmetry, it is not and never can be socially just for any male person to “identify into” womanhood/femaleness.
It would be good not to be the second sex on our own forum, in the movement for our own liberation, in our own consciousness. In other women’s consciousness. Obviously MN wasn’t founded to be a feminist rallying point, but the FWR board is intended to provide that space. And MN wouldn’t exist at all without the work of all the feminists who went before.
Come on Justine and MNHQ. Wake up. Please. You will actually one day find yourselves on the right side of history if you do.