What can we do?

[BrandineDelRoy]

I felt empowered tonight (by some wine) to challenge what Biden's done this week. I (in the US) approached two law school friends, one former boyfriend, my best friend from high school, and my sister in law on the trans women in sport issue.

None of them seemed to know what I was talking about. And when I tried to explain it, they didn't care because TW are so few.

How can we fight this?

As I said, I'm perfectly happy for you to use the word differently from me. I would point out though that when males who identify as trans claim to be oppressed by females because of our "cis privilege", I don't just consider this a ridiculous claim, and I don't just stop taking seriously anyone who makes that claim, I think it's offensive, contemptuous and wholly ignorant of what it means to be female. Proof positive as it were that no male can ever be female because they cannot understand what it means to be female. Which they demonstrate with that ludicrous claim.

I think that's a lot like saying that white women can't possess privilege because they are oppressed as women. It's not that non trans women oppress trans women directly, but that society oppresses trans people and women can play a role in that. You agree that trans women face what you may not call oppression, but discrimination, hardship, marginalisation whatever based on appearing as you would say are feminine males (and I'd argue the same applies to trans men in the other direction). To that extent cis or non trans, or even gender conforming privilege exists in that those who are broadly, and visibly gender conforming do not face that hardship or discrimination. And I don't think you can say that's all just down to men - it's not, if a woman refuses to employ a trans women because she disapproves of them on religious grounds, or pays her less because she knows she's desperate for a job, or abuses her in the street then she is part of the system of oppression trans people face. It's not an indictment on all women, just a recognition that oppression or discrimination based on gender identity/reassignment exists and both men and women can play a role in that.

if a woman refuses to employ a trans women because she disapproves of them on religious grounds, or pays her less because she knows she's desperate for a job, or abuses her in the street then she is part of the system of oppression trans people face.

Have you witnessed a lot of women abusing males in the street jj?

@OldCrone

if a woman refuses to employ a trans women because she disapproves of them on religious grounds, or pays her less because she knows she's desperate for a job, or abuses her in the street then she is part of the system of oppression trans people face.

Have you witnessed a lot of women abusing males in the street jj?

I've been on the end of it, although it's more commonly tutting and eye rolling as opposed to the death stares from men. It still doesn't make the world feel very welcoming for gender nonconforming people though.

It still doesn't make the world feel very welcoming for gender nonconforming people though.

Because most of us are so 'gender conforming'. Is that it? What does a gender non-conforming woman look like jj?

You really don't understand us when we say that gender (aka the sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes associated with the female sex) is a tool of our oppression, jj1968.

Or you wouldn't be presenting it as something we are privileged to be able to conform to. So I'll spell it out again: most if not all of the sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes associated with the female sex come in a binary, that is a hierarchical pair, of which the stereotypes coded masculine and associated with the male sex are denoted as superior and those stereotypes coded feminine and associated with the female sex are denoted inferior. What this means for our lives is that we lose either way - we lose when we conform to those feminine stereotypes and we lose when we don't conform to them. We lose different things, it's true, but we lose nonetheless. What we gain if we conform is often of limited benefit and the punishment for not conforming can outweigh the benefits of doing so too.

Most of us here know this because we have tried both, which is why we have such a profoundly negative reaction to any attempts to enshrine the doctrine of gender identity in law. The international treaty devoted solely to women's sex-based rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women or CEDAW, recognises the damage that sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes do to the female sex and therefore calls on all member states to work to eradicate them. That would not be the case if stereotypes were beneficial to us.

And the stereotypes based on our sex are not the only issue we face, of course. Violent males attack gender-conforming women as much as gender-non-conforming ones, because of our sex. (And while the rates of male-on-male violence have reduced in recent years, the rates of male-on-female violence continue to rise.) Add to that the reality of our female biology, and all of the challenges it brings and we are dealing with a whole range of issues - many of which are again made harder to deal with because of the stereotypes associated with them. But all arise from our sex.

So no, females do not oppress males who identify as trans on the basis of easier gender conforming.

And it would make this discussion so much clearer if we could have a commonly agreed definition of what members of that group of males have in common beyond identifying as trans. The blokey bloke delivering a verbal declaration of identity is different from a crossdresser is different from a socially transitioned man claiming womanhood on the basis of adopting the stereotypes associated with the female sex is different from a post-op transsexual. All of these males identify as trans. Most of them are very obviously male to even a casual observer and none will be discriminated against on the basis of their gender identity because that is their innermost feeling invisible to the outside.

So is it transsexuals you are thinking of when you claim that women participate in their oppression? But if - as you are wont to claim - we cannot tell them from women, how can we do that? Is it crossdressers you're thinking of? Which of these males fall within the group you are claiming is oppressed by women and which do not? I would in all honesty be grateful for a clarification.

And this is not at all like claiming that white women cannot have an advantage over people of colour because they are female btw. We do know how intersectionality works. We do understand axes of inequality and that we can be on them or not, depending on what power system we're analysing. An individual is positioned alongside an axis of inequality depending on their possession (or not) of the dominant characteristic within a given power system. And sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes (aka gender) are not a power system in and of themselves, but an expression of the power system of sex.

Finally, I've yet to meet an actual "cis-gender" woman. And I've met thousands of women and girls. I've met a few who call themselves "cis" but none of them are. In order for a power system to exist, its proposed dominant class really ought to be more than a theoretical concept dreamt up by sexologists in the 90s who described gender-conformity as healthy and beneficial. (None of them considered the role that stereotypes play in oppressing women. Obviously.)

I've been on the end of it, although it's more commonly tutting and eye rolling as opposed to the death stares from men.

So what you're upset about is people giving you 'looks' in the street. Is that it? I really don't know what to say to someone who is so fragile that people giving them odd looks in the street is such a cause for concern. I'm sure we've all experienced odd looks from strangers occasionally - and most women have experienced much worse when we're just walking around minding our own business - from obscenities shouted at us to being physically assaulted.

You do seem very hung up on what people think of you. You should try just being yourself and ignoring people who don't like it. Works for me.

I'm just making the point that people who think differently are not necessarily stupid or brainwashed.

I agree with you there, jj. It seems to me that TRAs are a group that know exactly what they are doing and are ruthlessly defending their own interests, using a range of tactics including obfuscation and emotional manipulation. It just happens that these interests run counter to the interests of female people. You say there is complementarity. There is not.

To come back to the OP, what can we do? Normalise a politics in which women are entitled to defending their interests. Keep talking. Keep asking questions, especially that very old question “cui bono?” Resist manipulation.

@OldCrone

I've been on the end of it, although it's more commonly tutting and eye rolling as opposed to the death stares from men.

So what you're upset about is people giving you 'looks' in the street. Is that it? I really don't know what to say to someone who is so fragile that people giving them odd looks in the street is such a cause for concern. I'm sure we've all experienced odd looks from strangers occasionally - and most women have experienced much worse when we're just walking around minding our own business - from obscenities shouted at us to being physically assaulted.

You do seem very hung up on what people think of you. You should try just being yourself and ignoring people who don't like it. Works for me.

jj1968, I've never done 'woman' properly. I'm a lesbian and I've never been comfortable in traditional feminine clothing. I've always worn trousers and men's shirts and t-shirts and am happy looking androgynous. I've been stared at, eye-rolled at, shouted at, called a lesbian and a dyke, approached by men, women and transwomen and asked (sometimes in a very upfront way) why I don't try to make myself look more feminine for most of my adult life. I've been offered help to find a feminine style to suit me by two transwomen — one a complete stranger at a party who felt they had the right to challenge me because, in their words 'You should be making more of yourself.'

This is normal life for loads of women who don't conform and only a man wouldn't know that. Only a man wouldn't know that women take it for granted that people stare at us, however we're dressed or presented, and pass judgment verbally and non-verbally every day. The other women, the women who cut the mustard in the feminine style stakes, get a different kind of look and assessment — they get rated on how well they've styled themselves, how good they look and how much the male observer would like to fuck them.

As Old Crone says, this is just a fact of life for women and you learn to ignore it and be yourself. The good news is that once you get into your 50s and 60s and go a bit grey and wrinkly, you become invisible and no one feels the need to look or rate or comment any more. You can even go to a wedding in trousers and not have half the other women tut at you.

There should be more campaigning for third spaces if the primary concern is safety for (mainly) transwomen. It would take a little time to implement but it would ensure safety for everyone. It is telling that this rarely comes up as a desirable solution from the other side.

What part of No does jj not understand?

That question never goes away does it? Generation after sodding generation the word "no" is simply ignored by these entitled, misogynistic dinosaurs.

The point is that yes, male born people may experience the issues of gender stereotyping and patriarchy: it's not an exclusive experience to female people.

However the experience is not the same. The experience of female people is exclusive to female people, and trying to generalise and force team the experience of some male people with all female people is solely to the benefit of those male people's agenda in claiming women's single sex rights and spaces. Against the consent of many females. And with absolute disrespect for those females to say they have their own experience which is specific to them.

It's appropriation. It's again the sex with political power using their entitlement and power to try and do this quiet snatch and grab raid on female people's identities and lives. Because they feel entitled to it. It is patriarchy in action.

And it's ruddy offensive, and an experience female people are very familiar with in many ways, and makes female people have to draw the lines more and more distinctly because it's plain how little they, their lives and their boundaries are respected by male people.

Not helpful really.

Because most of us are so 'gender conforming'. Is that it? What does a gender non-conforming woman look like jj?

If you don't face social consequences for your gender non-conformity then that suggests you conform perfectly adequately to maintain the system of gender.

You can't have it both ways and claim that gender is the tool that patriarchy uses to oppress women but also that everyone's gender non-conforming really. Apart from it being an outright falsehood which you only have to walk down a busy High Street to establish (and gender is about so much more than just how you look) then if no-one does gender how can it be the defining tool of the patriarchy?

In this forced teaming which is to seek removal of/access to female people's sex based rights, the aim is to prove that everyone in the group is the same .

However note the actions and how they contrast. One set of this group gets to choose. One set gets to make the rules. One set gets to dictate to the other that their needs and identities and language and particular lived experience is unique to them and must be respected by the other set at all times or consequences (threats of violence, rape and death often included here) but the other set's unique experience and needs is of no interest or relevancy at all and is just getting in the way.

No, not the same.

Not in the interests of females to act as if they are the same.

In this forced teaming which is to seek removal of/access to female people's sex based rights, the aim is to prove that everyone in the group is the same.

I find the easiest way to illustrate this point is by setting aside the argument about the meaning of 'woman', noting that whatever this phenomenon is that the label's being used for apparently comes in male and female forms, and looking at how the two groups interact.

Male "women" get to make the rules. Male "women" get to choose. Male "women" get to dictate, and demand respect. Male "women" have the entire bloody establishment fighting their corner and championing their rights.

Female "women" get to be ignored, and threatened. Female "women" have their experiences and needs belittled and ignored. Female "women" must shut up and move over, or else.

Male "women" take precedence over female "women" every single time.

@OldCrone

I've been on the end of it, although it's more commonly tutting and eye rolling as opposed to the death stares from men.

So what you're upset about is people giving you 'looks' in the street. Is that it? I really don't know what to say to someone who is so fragile that people giving them odd looks in the street is such a cause for concern. I'm sure we've all experienced odd looks from strangers occasionally - and most women have experienced much worse when we're just walking around minding our own business - from obscenities shouted at us to being physically assaulted.

You do seem very hung up on what people think of you. You should try just being yourself and ignoring people who don't like it. Works for me.

You have no idea. It's not the odd look. If you are visibly trans then everybody looks at you, not always with hostility but often, everytime you leave the house. Sometimes that may descend into violence or abusive comments, sometimes it may be sexual - in the last few months before lockdown I had one guy come up right into my face and tell me I was fucking disgusting, another pissed bloke bump into me, apologise and then we he realised I was trans square up to me - thankfully his friends pulled him off - and another guy aggressively sexually preposition me and then follow me around all night - we get both. And that's just in a couple of months. I've been sexually assaulted to the point it was legally rape, I've been groped, I've been sexually harassed more often than I can count and when I was younger I've had the shit kicked out of me for being gender nonconforming - or a poof as was assumed back then.

Trans people lose friends and family when they come out. When I came out as trans one of the first things that happens was my landlord who lived upstairs (a woman) served an eviction notice. I know people who've lost jobs, people denied healthcare (and not just trans healthcare) and trans kids, outside of posh public schools in Brighton or somewhere, can face relentless bullying at school. And of course other things can intersect with this, if you are poor, black, perceived as LGB then it will be worse.

You can wish all this away or claim we are making it all up if you want. You can claim we're the most privileged and even trendy and the safest demographic and all that crap you come out with to make you feel better about being shitty to trans people. But all it shows it you don't really know any trans people and you know nothing of trans lives despite spending half your life obsessing over us. We know, as do those who know us and spend time with us and thankfully a generation is emerging that is starting to challenge some of that behaviour which I believe will be to the betterment of everyone in the end because gender harms us all and particularly harms women - including trans women.

jj1968, I've never done 'woman' properly. I'm a lesbian and I've never been comfortable in traditional feminine clothing. I've always worn trousers and men's shirts and t-shirts and am happy looking androgynous. I've been stared at, eye-rolled at, shouted at, called a lesbian and a dyke, approached by men, women and transwomen and asked (sometimes in a very upfront way) why I don't try to make myself look more feminine for most of my adult life. I've been offered help to find a feminine style to suit me by two transwomen — one a complete stranger at a party who felt they had the right to challenge me because, in their words 'You should be making more of yourself.'

And I think that's shit, isn't it? Is this something we should just accept? I know there are probably spaces and environments where you wouldn't feel safe showing physical affection to your partner, and yes it might just be looks at stares or muttered comments, or it might be something else. I know LGB people who've been sacked, or denied housing due to their sexuality. Often transphobia and homophobia comes from the same place and the same people, shouldn;t we be fighting for something better. Because I've got your back, I think it's shit you have to put up with that.

You can wish all this away or claim we are making it all up if you want.

I don't think anyone's denying that this happens to trans people. You however are doing exactly that to female people saying "Our experience is sex specific and different to yours."

Two separate groups experiencing two separate specific experiences to their group, in parallel. Both equally valid. Both equally in need of recognition and support.

However only one of those groups is trying to subsume the other to its own interests and to the disadvantage of that group which they can only do by their ownership of male privilege. Live and let live, accept that female people have their own specific issues and lived experience too, and that's the end of the issue.

Where is your interest as a woman in other women's experiences? Your intersectionalism that female women have specific experiences, needs, perspectives? Your inclusiveness of those females and their needs in your view?

This is normal life for loads of women who don't conform and only a man wouldn't know that. Only a man wouldn't know that women take it for granted that people stare at us, however we're dressed or presented, and pass judgment verbally and non-verbally every day. The other women, the women who cut the mustard in the feminine style stakes, get a different kind of look and assessment — they get rated on how well they've styled themselves, how good they look and how much the male observer would like to fuck them.

Do you honestly believe trans women don't know this - that it doesn't happen to us? I've seen it on here, people making snide comments about people who don't pass, or snider comments about what someone like Monroe Bergdorf is wearing on her latest photoshoot. Every trans woman is assessed on multiple levels on her appearance and as you say if she's not gender conforming or passing enough then everyone who looks at her will pass judegement and if she cuts the mustard as you say in the feminine stakes when she will receive a different kind of judgement based on her fuckability. It may not be exactly the same because judgements about 'passing' will also be a factor, but you've just described what trans women experience everyday and in the same breath accused us of not possibly having any understanding of it.

@CharlieParley

I'm thinking about your comment btw, I'll respond later.

I'm going back to your own post jj as you said it - you just won't extend the same courtesy to people born female.

You can wish all this away or claim female people are making it all up if you want. You can claim we're the most privileged and the safest demographic and all that crap you come out with to make you feel better about being shitty to female people. But all it shows it you don't really know any female people who are not able to put your needs over theirs and have the points of view you want them to have and you know nothing of female lives.

It goes both ways.

What you call 'obsessing' over trans people's lives is the self defence of female people defending their rights from the endless onslaught. Which you represent here by continually trying to argue female people out of their lived experience and definitions because you want female to mean what you mean and to not exclude you by your biology. I understand that, I really do. I do sympathise. But no more than I can claim to be a male identifying as a woman with all the very specific experiences, feelings, experience of other people's perceptions and reactions, prejudices, physical experience of living in that biology - can you claim to know better than female people what their experience is, and that it's very definitely one you share. Ergo you can take their spaces and rights whether they consent or not, because the same. Which is the whole purpose really.

If you are visibly trans then everybody looks at you...

Only a very, very few men who have transitioned are visibly trans.

I know this because I have heard many times that "we have been using your toilets/changing rooms for years without anyone noticing...."

You can't have it both ways.

@jj1968

Because most of us are so 'gender conforming'. Is that it? What does a gender non-conforming woman look like jj?

If you don't face social consequences for your gender non-conformity then that suggests you conform perfectly adequately to maintain the system of gender.

You can't have it both ways and claim that gender is the tool that patriarchy uses to oppress women but also that everyone's gender non-conforming really. Apart from it being an outright falsehood which you only have to walk down a busy High Street to establish (and gender is about so much more than just how you look) then if no-one does gender how can it be the defining tool of the patriarchy?

Social consequences? What sort of social consequences? Can you give some examples? And how would I know whether these social consequences were because I was 'gender nonconforming' or because I was a woman?

And you seem to have misunderstood how 'gender' oppresses women. No matter how 'gender nonconforming' I might be, I'm recognised as female, therefore I have been subjected to the gendered expectations of the female sex for my entire life. For example, in school, my physics teacher told my parents that I shouldn't be studying physics because 'it's not a girls' subject'.

This is how gender oppresses women, and it's not something we can identify out of or escape from no matter how much we want to or how much we might try. It's nothing to do with appearance.

It may not be exactly the same because judgements about 'passing' will also be a factor, but you've just described what trans women experience everyday and in the same breath accused us of not possibly having any understanding of it.

You were complaining about being looked at and judged as if you were a special case and the looks you were getting were transphobic. What you're experiencing is the same as women experience, so they can't be transphobic looks.

What sort of social consequences?

jj faces social consequences from men, for not conforming to their conception of masculinity.

I face social consequences from other women, for not conforming to their conception of femininity.

jj does not face social consequences from women for failing to conform to masculinity - people like jj are generally welcomed and accepted by women, whether as a transwoman or a nonconforming male.

I, however, do face consequences from men for failing to conform to femininity.

As a person born female who doesn't conform, I get shit from both sexes. But people born male who don't conform don't. They may be rejected by their own sex but they are coddled by the opposite sex.

This disparity matters, yet it is made invisible by the insistence on treating males as females for the purposes of comparison.

You can wish all this away or claim we are making it all up if you want. You can claim we're the most privileged and even trendy and the safest demographic and all that crap you come out with to make you feel better about being shitty to trans people.

jj is ignoring me (not sure what I've done) but I would like to comment on this passage. You are extrapolating from your own experience to the general. This doesn't make your own experience any less valid but statistically, trans people are a very safe demographic in the UK. It's not crap, it's true. And it's a good thing that the UK is a safe place for trans people, much safer than other places. The reason the GC side is making this point is because public policy in the UK is being made on the basis of inaccurate assumptions about violence against trans people.

And while people may say mean things about Munroe Bergdorf (as they also say about Katie Price or other people in the public eye), this has not prevented MB from doing well overall - for what, really? What special talents does MB have?

In your universe, being "shitty" includes stating facts. I wish you well but if your well-being depends on my redefinition and erasure, then refusing to go along with your desires is just basic self-respect.