Why do women support gender identity ideology?

[DonkeySkin]

Saw a tweet saying the no-platforming of Selina Todd at a feminist conference was ‘patriarchy in action’, and it got me thinking. The conference was run by women, and it was the female organisers who no-platformed Todd after several other women threatened to withdraw if she appeared. I don’t think it’s right to blame this on ‘patriarchy’, IMO something else is going on.

I’ve also seen some GC feminists dismiss TRA-supporting women as ‘pandering to men for cool girl points’, and I don’t think that’s accurate either. ‘Cool girls’ most often deny sexism is a problem at all, which these women usually don’t do. Indeed, feminists are MORE likely to support gender identity ideology than non-feminist women, and not only to support it, but to advocate ardently for it.

IMO, there are three main reasons for this:

1. There seems to be an assumption on the part of many women that men who are coded as feminine share a basic political condition with women. Men who adopt feminine appearance norms and/or men have sex with men are often derided as ‘woman-like’ by other men. I think this is the real logic behind the slogan ‘trans women are women’. I don’t think the women parroting this truly believe that men are women if they say so; they can still tell the difference between male and female human beings. But I do think they believe that women and men who ‘identify as women’ share a common condition and therefore a common cause. Many women also assume that a man declaring he wants to be one of us is performing the ultimate act of solidarity, and it would be churlish to refuse to offer solidarity in return.

However, this analysis is in error. If you look closely at what is done to women and girls under male domination, you can see that it is quite distinct in both degree and kind from what is done to feminine-coded men. Further, there’s little evidence that men who are excluded from traditional ‘manhood’ have any special sympathy with women or understanding of our lives. These men seem just as capable as any of assuming that women exist to serve their needs. You can see this in the sexist attitudes of many gay men, and in extremis in the current trans movement, which displays a sociopathic disregard for how its demands will impact on women and girls, all the while expecting boundless empathy from us.

2. A central tenet of second-wave feminism, liberal AND radical, has been that sexual biology is largely irrelevant to who we are as human beings. I don’t often agree with Camille Paglia, but she said something a while back that struck me as very insightful: she said that when women’s studies were first being established at universities, she was surprised that none of the programs included a module on female biology. Paglia said that if you were purporting to be studying women, surely you could not ignore biology – but that is exactly what the feminist academics did. They assumed it was either of little importance, or a danger zone to be avoided because of the way men had used it as an excuse for excluding us from the public sphere.

I think that most women in the West have internalised this message: to be treated as equal in the world means that we should be regarded, and regard ourselves, as basically interchangeable with men, bar some superficial gendered coding. It’s therefore not surprising that many women assume that having male biology should be no barrier to being regarded as a ‘woman’.

3. Finally, at the heart of the appeal of gender ideology to women is utopianism: transgender ideology offers a dream in which humans can transcend our bodies, a world where being male or female truly no longer matters. It’s easy to see why this vision holds irresistible appeal for many women, when it is our sexed bodies that have been used as the reason for our subordination for millennia, and the targets of so much violence and scorn. Nor are the (mostly young) women who take up this dream the first to do so. In Right Wing Women, Andrea Dworkin offers a scathing account of the 60s anti-war/free love movement, which she joined enthusiastically as a young woman (pp.88-91):

It was simple. A bunch of nasty bastards who hated making love were making war. A bunch of boys who liked flowers were making love and refusing to make war. These boys were wonderful and beautiful. They wanted peace. They talked love, love, love, not romantic love but love of mankind (translated by women: humankind). They grew their hair long and painted their faces and wore colorful clothes and risked being treated like girls. In resisting going to war, they were cowardly and sissies and weak, like girls. No wonder the girls of the sixties thought that these boys were their special friends, their special allies, lovers each and every one…

The dream for the girls at base was a dream of a sexual and social empathy that negated the strictures of gender, a dream of sexual equality based on what men and women had in common, what the adults tried to kill in you as they made you grow up. It was a desire for a sexual community more like childhood—before girls were crushed under and segregated. It was a dream of sexual transcendence: transcending the absolutely dichotomized male-female world of the adults who made war not love. It was—for the girls—a dream of being less female in a world less male; an eroticization of sibling equality, not the traditional male dominance.

I know that women are a very broad group, and there are no doubt other dynamics at play, but I think the ones I’ve articulated here are important to understand, because otherwise we will keep having the wrong arguments with other women. Our disagreement with TRA-supporting women isn’t a genuine disagreement over whether sex can be changed, or whether men can be female if they say so. They know as well as we do that it can’t, and they can’t. Like the girls of the 60s, they have a dream of sexual transcendence, of being in sibling solidarity with males, and naturally they hate the women who would spoil this dream.

I think that most women in the West have internalised this message: to be treated as equal in the world means that we should be regarded, and regard ourselves, as basically interchangeable with men, bar some superficial gendered coding. It’s therefore not surprising that many women assume that having male biology should be no barrier to being regarded as a ‘woman’.

I think this is an important point. Most of us pretty much see male as the default without realising, and the world generally is set up with the male body in mind. If men can do it, then we should be able to do it too, in exactly the same way. And often we can, but there should be no shame in the fact that women are generally physically smaller and weaker than the average man, or that we have biological functions which can affect us in a particular way, and I think we need to recognise and acknowledge more that the problem isn't with us, it's that the world has been set up with men in mind.

I think it's partly because we have had to fight against certain stereotypes, things like hysteria, and the idea that women aren't cut out for manual labour and so on, in fighting against that it's like the reality that there are differences was pushed aside by some.

Also a reason some women promote gender identity, is fear of the results of the alternative. They've seen other people get ostracised etc and they don't want to be next. Also they're used to being on the "right side" and this sounds (if you don't think too hard), like the next equal rights campaign. Plus the cult like element kinds of enforces it all, encourages ostracism and shuts down debate. I do wonder if some of the younger/more vulnerable/impressionable people (men and women) genuinely believe that TWAW. I think some believe in the brain sex stuff and think it's scientifically proven.

There seems to be an assumption on the part of many women that men who are coded as feminine share a basic political condition with women

Do you think that therefore, they believe that masculine women are not women?

It really is just straight up sexism IMO, internalised, yes, but I think quite obvious (and I'm not saying I'm immune either).

Very smart post. I agree with all your points on this. There’s a youngish journalist I admire called Marie Le Comte who is very bright and insightful and has somehow gone down the TWAW route - I think via your first route.

She asked a while ago why there was such a division between older and younger feminists on this and it’s a good question. I think the answer is twofold:

1. We’re more battle scarred. Have literally had more life experience and have been screwed around by all manner of men. We don’t buy the idea that gender non conforming men are like us.

1. We are more likely to have had some of the sucker punches of female biology remind us who we are. Pregnancy and childbirth being the obvious one but also abortion, miscarriage, endo, cervical cells gone wrong, etc etc. Few of us get to middle age without a few of these under our belts. And then you truly feel the burden of female reproductive capacity. You pay the price. It’s quite radicalising to find that you have become a vessel for a foetus, to step out of economic labour, to become an unpaid support human. And then since you are already an unpaid support human you might as well do the same unpaid carer role for your parents and even your in laws. I was always a feminist but it was childbirth that really clarified my thinking.

I’d love Marie to read this thread but I think she’s too invested in being caring to her trans friends who have a hard time in male toilets.

I agree with everything you've said. I also think the "wrong side of history" argument and the constant analogies with the gay rights movement has confused a lot of people (men and women). There are many, many people (especially on what we would call the left) who seem to viee human progress as a Hollywood-style battle between good and evil. The idea that the trans issue is more subtle and complex than that is really throwing people. The fact that "the oppressed" can, in some situations, be "the oppressors" just does not compute in many people's brains. You see this played out over and over and over again.

Great posts, lots of food for thought.

I think it's possible to overestimate the critical thinking effort that's assumed of people who espouse TWAW.

I think it's peer group parroting coupled with very effective carrot and stick. Nothing more, nothing less.
They all seem to believe it so I will too.
The more fervent I sound, the more approval I receive.
The more I denounce non-believers, the safer I am.
It's not much different to a Derren Brown exercise, where suggestible people can be manipulated to do abhorrent things because everyone else is doing them too and it is far too terrifying to be the odd one out.

I don't think people rationalise their way into this position. They are herded into it.
You rationalise your way out of it when you cannot bear to bleat like a herded sheep a moment longer, when you give yourself permission to reason for yourself.

@Barracker I think a lot of people aren't able to rationalise their way out of it because they are never allowed to talk to anyone about it. I remember being in the pub a few years ago and saying "I've been thinking... what does it mean to be born in the wrong body?". Everyone just looked at me in horrified silence and eventually someone said something along the lines of "I don't think it's our place to question that". I was mortified.

I think some people, women included, genuinely believe in the concept of trans, that people have a quirk in their brain that truly makes them believe/feel like the opposite sex. I think some people on this board still believe that too. The only difference being that some people think this qualifies transpeople for inclusion in single sex spaces and others don't.

The other issue is the way it is intertwined cleverly with LGB and gains validity by comparing itself to that.

As someone who was on board until I started properly looking into the facts, Barracker has it in one.

It was the crime stats that blew it for me. That was the point at which I was jolted out of blind acceptance. If gendered/sexed crime patterns sustain past transition, then transition as a reality seems improbable. If your group's violence is the same after saying, "I am a woman" then you are not a woman. You are a man who identifies with women's gender expectations, and that's something altogether different.

And once you started thinking that way, the whole thing falls apart. Because it's just bollocks, and the cognitive dissonance of believing it starts to erode any capacity to continue.

We are all trained to care for vulnerable men, too. And we're told transwomen are terribly vulnerable. So questioning this... we're all trained into feeling reflexively awful about that because we're told it's bigotry akin to homophobia, or racism. The idea that not challenging this is misogynist somehow wasn't widely considered until the past few months.

Encountering transpeople has also shifted my views. Several are perfectly nice, but all, in my experience, present as entirely male - and I don't mean their looks or sound or mannerisms, either. I mean the way they interact, and the social space they feel entitled to command. As well as the dismissive disinterest in what women feel, need or want, when those feelings, needs or wants contradict their own.

The fact that "the oppressed" can, in some situations, be "the oppressors" just does not compute in many people's brains

Also, claiming someone enjoys privilege is a canny way of silencing them. If they deny they have privilege, the oppressed will just dismiss their objections on the basis they're merely blinded by their own privilege. Because this is the case with many power structures, it's not a huge leap to believe that 'cis' privilege is another one of these and and that TRAs are absolutely right to silence the objections of any biological woman who questions the trans narrative.

No-one wants to be accused of not checking their privilege, and women especially are socialised to move out of the way of others and to quietly fit in only where there's permitted space for them. Women are socialised to be conciliatory caretakers and generally, women have an easier life socially if they agree with men and don't rock the boat. It's not nice to be mean to people or to criticise the trans narrative. And it's not nice for a woman to demand rights for herself or her class. I've had a couple of occasions recently where I've objected to decisions made by other women in the name of inclusivity and have been made to feel completely unreasonable for even daring to (very politely) voice my opinion.

Then when you throw in the idea that if you're bothered by gender oppression, it means you're probably trans or non-binary, it's easy to see how so many oppressed women are attracted to this narrative.

I tend to agree with those points, particularly number two. It's interesting that you quote Paglia talking about lack of syudy of biology in women's studies departments - she is right IMO and but Paglia, despite being a NGC lesbian herself, believes that women as a group have some significant differences from men as a group. Her implication is that the feminists who chose that direction didn't really want to find out about the biology beyond the obvious, in case it contradicted their ideological claims. You can't do science with that mindset, you have to be open to the possibility that your ideology will be challenged by material reality, even welcoming of that.

I think at the academic level that is the heart of the issue.

Two other things that strike me other than what people have said: one is that there were quite a few years of lobbying on the part of feminists, gay rights activists, and to some extent other groups, which cemented in people's minds slogans and ideas that were then taken up and used by the trans rights movement. They were no longer ideas that we were allowed to question in public because they were associated with causes only bigots fail to support. That habit of not thinking them through was well established and even those who say they were problematic accepted them to get the political traction they wanted.

The other issue which it may be easy for people here to forget is that many people believe that science supports gender ideology.

On my way out so can only leave a quick post but I think the "be kind" mantra may have a big part to play in all this.

Someone said to me the other day that it must be true becasue doctors and the medical proffession go along with it.

It was the rude awakening that the demands wouldn't stop.

First it was the requests to share our spaces and ask for our support - fine.

Then it was the requests for our support and activism to lobby for increased legal protections and recognition - fine.

After that came the demands that we re-name and re-classify ourselves because our identity was triggering - not fine.

Then came the shaming of lesbians and the creation of the cotton ceiling theory - not fine.

Capped by violence, threats and intimidation against women who were understandably expressing concern about the practicalities of self-ID - not fine.

Every agreement, every accommodation and agreement to 'be kind' has been met with further demands, to the point where I have to wonder whether some activists will ever rest until they erase natal women completely.

It took me a decade to go from being a supporter of TWAW to being gender critical - and that was achieved purely based on the above. My 'peak' came about when an activist took me to task for being offended because they referred to me as a 'menstruator' and a 'uterus haver'. I suspect I was not the only one.

And I am one of many left leaning activist women who have ended up here. Which is why the Labour party's position pisses me off so much. I marched at Pride as an ally in the years when it was still a political protest rather than the commercial sponsorship event it is now. I campaigned for the repeal of S.28, raised money for HIV and AIDS awareness and outreach programmes back when the infection prevalence was with gay men. I've happily shared bathrooms with transwomen and supported them with their struggle to be recognised. However the difference between then and now is that there wasn't a single transwoman who believed in 'cis privilege'.

Someone said to me the other day that it must be true becasue doctors and the medical proffession go along with

Well, quite - it would be untenable to think that the medical profession is sterilising children and performing mastectomies on physically healthy teenagers without a firm understanding of what these children are experiencing and why.

Really interesting post - I think it's definitely to do with nice liberal lefty types (like me!) wanting to be nice and inclusive and yes seeing 'transphobia' akin to homophobia or racism and lumping GC women in with right wing fundamentalist types.

I also used to find it hard to get worked up and about trans women using women's toilets - then I really thought about the reality of what we stood to lose.

Like a pp said, it's the crime stats that made me stop and think what the fuck. Recording crimes based on self ID is ridiculous and makes the whole thing utterly meaningless.

The last few weeks have felt like the tide is slowly turning though - hope it continues!

I also think it's easy to imagine that all or most nice liberal lefty types have good, well thought out reasons for the other causes they support, because they seem to be causes we agree with. But there are a lot of people, if you dig down, you realise their reasons are shallow, or don't make sense, or are outright bad and wrong. Even when people agree with the "right" things it can be for poor reasons, so no wonder when they add something that really is poorly thought out to that list.

Gosh, what a good and thoughtful conversation.
I've said it before, but my theory is that many young women are as crap at feminism as I was at their age. I was too busy trying to ingratiate myself with males, for fairly obvious evolutionary reasons. And, since it's instinctive rather than logical, that applies whatever the males in question are wearing.

I think this is a case where "patriarchy in action" is shorthand for an example of the cultural conditioning we all experience from the time we are born and desperately need to unpack.

Someone said to me the other day that it must be true becasue doctors and the medical proffession go along with

That is the point where they need to be reminded that the inventor of the lobotomy received the Nobel Prize in medicine.

There is also some real discomfort in hearing and agreeing with arguments from sources where you would normally passionately disagree.

At first it was easy to fall back on the old trope that even a stopped clock is correct twice daily, but this is rather dismissive.

There's a wider issue here around free speech which has forced me to have to confront some of my own prejudices around it being fine to silence and no-platform people that I don't agree with, but it not being OK to do it to GC women when they are trying to self-organise.

It's made me realise that there are going to be times when I'm going to have to listen to people who believe things that I strongly disagree with, but that this is an essential price of a society where information and ideas can flow freely.

“Several are perfectly nice, but all, in my experience, present as entirely male - and I don't mean their looks or sound or mannerisms, either. I mean the way they interact, and the social space they feel entitled to command. As well as the dismissive disinterest in what women feel, need or want, when those feelings, needs or wants contradict their own.” @wellbehavedwomen

Doesn’t a point like this just stereotype performative gender traits into binary categories. A man does this, a women does this, etc. It’s not entirely gender critical and reinforces current systems.

One might think that, in actuality, saying something like this is just a way of being mean to trans people.