This has landed in my email box. It comes from a friend of a friend who came across it on FB.
The person who posted it on FB is someone who has a background in science and is in a position to be pretty influential in certain quarters. This person who posted it is a woman of the 'be kind and shut up' persuasion. Questioned over yet another 'Please, just stop going on about this' statement, she said that she has a friend, a sociologist and employed academic, whose wisdom on this subject she follows. And then she linked to this citing it as a model of clarity that GC women could learn from. I've tried to italicise the content but it won't work.
^I had to unfriend a former academic colleague yesterday. I've been really surprised at the position on the Gender Recognition Act and trans rights that some of my academic friends take, apparently in denial of so much of the sociology that they have read, taught, and written over the years. So I just want to make something really clear to people.
The ONLY problem I have with the Gender Recognition Act is that we would even need one. My hope would be that at some point we have enough structural change that we no longer need special arrangements for women to counterbalance centuries of oppression. We still need it now. Gender still has legal importance in some areas. And thus we need people to have an official gender. The reification of gender as a binary category is bullshit and if you have a PhD in sociology you should know that.
While we're here, sex as a binary category is also a social construct. Science is a social practice.
Okay for those who do not have PhDs in anything at all, I've been a feminist of some kind for over 40 years. I don't know when you date the beginning of that kind of thing, but probably arguing with the minister about why the call for new altar servers was only addressed to boys would be a notable start. (He didn't have an argument. I became an altar server. He decided a few years later that girls were more reliable anyway.)
I have attended a lot of women only events -- political meetings, dances, etc. I've even hosted a women only workshop in the past 3 years. I am known to a cohort of Essex University Students for being the woman in dungarees and purple hair who got up in front of a packed lecture theatre at a Student Union meeting to passionately argue the case for the women's officer to be elected only by women. I have been the women's officer of the union.
One every single one of those occasions entry was by self-id. I mean we didn't call it that at the time but that's what it was. It was a women only event. Women turned up and they were admitted on the basis that they said they were women.
Yeah, every once in a while a man will turn up and argue about why it's a women only event and isn't it sexist not to let him in. And we say "No, go away." And sometimes men say "I see this says women but I think it would really help me, I'll understand if it's really only for women but thought I'd ask" and I politely explain and they are okay. I don't know of any occasion where one of the men who knows they aren't supposed to be there and wants to disrupt the event or endanger the women there has gone to the trouble of pretending to be a woman to get in. It's a made up worst case scenario that, while theoretically possible, is just NOT a real issue that anyone faces.
You know what, I've travelled a lot and used a lot of public washrooms and changing rooms at pools and whatnot. And I've never been asked for ID to get in there. Even when there are washroom attendants, their job is to clean and make sure the queues are orderly if it's busy.
I have been in a changing room when another woman has asked me about a 3rd woman (who was kind of butch) "Is that really a woman? Should she be in here?" and I responded that I know lots of women who look like that and she's not doing us any harm and she should chill.
That occasion tells me that the ONLY way anyone is going to police whose in bathrooms is by their own prejudices about what "real women" look like. That's sexism. Plain and simple.
My over 40 years of feminism has taught me that the people you need to be REALLY scared of are the ones trying to tell you who the "real women" are. In the past that's been directed at lesbians, childless women, or feminists in general. This is why the position some of my feminist colleagues (some of whom are lesbian) take on this is so horrifying to me. Also, if you are struggling to find a term for the women you think are "real women" while also refusing to use the terms cis-women or afab, which are now in common parlance, you need to reflect on what you're doing.
Gender based violence is a huge problem women (all women) are disportionately victims of intimate partner violence and other forms of gender based violence by a large margin. Having a penis doesn't save anyone from it (and might make it worse). Penises are also not the cause of that violence, patriarchal beliefs are a much better predictor. Homophobic violence is coming from the same place. (The violent bastards that are bashing gays and women aren't interested in your nuanced understanding of the difference between sexuality and gender. Saying you aren't really gay won't save you either.)
We need to be working together to solve the real problems. Recognising the existence and rights of trans and non-binary folks is going to help us do that.
I am NOT open to debating this. You cannot persuade me that I'm wrong and the GRA is a travesty that must be stopped. If you are also not open to be persuaded of my position, it's best you just unfriend me.
If, on the other hand, you would like clarification of anything I've said here with the goal of understanding better, I'm open to discussion. It's hard to figure stuff out. It's a process. We do our best. We learn. We do better. I'm here for that.
Also, big hugs to all my friends who are directly affected by the kind of bullshit being promulgated. I know the recent flare up due to celebrity author statements is hard to take.^
Tell me it's a spoof because if anyone regards that as a model of clarity and thinks I would do well to read and learn from it we really are lost.
And yes, I have the name of the person who apparently wrote it and they appear to be a real person and working in academia. And that's another cause for despair. What happened to academia? What has an idiot like this got to teach young people?