Is using TRA rude and dismissive (a bit like how the word T**F) is used?

[dyslek]

I was wondering if using the term TRA to describe people is unhelpful. Does it entrench the idea that there are only two positions, and that we are not nuanced?
Obviously its not the most important point in this debate but it just struck me that maybe its not helpful and plays in to their hands.

I have often referred to TRAs as "transgenderism ideology supporters" or "gender identity supporters".

Isn't it OK to be rude and dismissive in political debate? Talking about Brexiteers and Remoaners, for instance, isn't polite but it isn't hate speech.

I really dislike terms like Brexiterr or Remoaner. Not helpful or constructive. I suppose it depends if you want to express your feelings or aim for a productive discussion.

I am not a big fan of all the labels, even say GC, but I end up using them sometimes for brevity. My main objection to terf is the association with threats, plus it makes no sense, not many that get called it are radical feminists for a start.

I have never seen TRA associated with threats in the same way. However is there was ever a situation where someone asked me not to use it, I would respect that.

I agree with PPs who say that the word 'rights' in the phrase 'trans rights activist' is misleading because trans people do have a full complement of sex-based rights (including the right to obtain a gender recognition certificate). The problem is that many TWs want women's sex-based rights in addition to those to which their (male) sex entitles them.

I don't think any of these acronyms or shorthand phrases are comprehensible to people new to the debate. In those situations I talk about 'people who believe you can change sex' and 'people who believe in sex stereotypes'.

since I learned about queer theory in my early 20s I always saw feminism as being not only about advancing women’s rights in formal terms (that battle being pretty much won in this country) but about challenging the gender binary and gender norms, and recognising how damaging they are to everyone, not just women. So I always saw respecting and supporting trans people as part of feminism, just like respecting and supporting anyone else who is gender non-confirming, regardless of how they identify.

Would you mind explaining a bit more Helen?

I agree that gender norms are damaging but think that the key to getting rid of them would be people expressing themselves how they wish without that being anything to do their sex.

It is not challenging gender norms to say I like things traditionally associated with women therefore I have a woman brain. It is reinforcing them surely?

TRA appeared in response to Terf though it was , like Terf just a normally used word and descriptor until people started taking offence. Once you take offence then it does become an insult because though words have meanings, its the intent in the use that determines whetehr its an insult. Queer is a great example. Amongst LGBT, its not a n insult but when spat out by a homophobe it is. In my experience, most people being called a TRA tend to think its a bit meh, an attempt at an insult but not much of one.

Since I learned about queer theory in my early 20s I always saw feminism as being not only about advancing women’s rights in formal terms (that battle being pretty much won in this country) but about challenging the gender binary and gender norms, and recognising how damaging they are to everyone, not just women. So I always saw respecting and supporting trans people as part of feminism, just like respecting and supporting anyone else who is gender non-confirming, regardless of how they identify

The best way to support gender non conformity is not to suggest that certain expressions or feelings are the sole preserve of one sex or the other, surely?

Can you really not see that what 'trans' is trying to achieve is tomake the person fit the gender expectations and stereotypes by altering the body or by insisting on cross sex pronouns etc?

I've never tried to use TRA as an insult, more like as a description for a particular 'strand' of the trans movement.

For instance, I would not put Rose of Dawn and Blair White in the same category as, say, Veronica Ivy (formerly Rachel McKinnon).

I used to frequent a board, many years ago, where there were a lot of debates about abortion (it was an American site). The moderators made it clear that the acceptable terms to use were 'pro-choice' and 'anti-abortion' as both sides were happy with those labels. The pro-choice side didn't like being called 'pro-abortion', because a lot of them felt that they weren't 'pro' abortion - they just wanted it to be legally available to women. The anti-abortion side didn't like the term 'anti-choice' because they felt that there were other choices available (in terms of contraception or adoption). By setting neutral language which both sides could accept in advance, the ideas could be debated without being detailed.

I am happy to use neutral terms in order to move the discussion forward.

However, I do like words to have clearly defined meanings

Derailed not detailed, thank you autocorrect.

TRA appeared in response to Terf though it was , like Terf just a normally used word and descriptor until people started taking offence

TRA is an acronym for trans rights activist. TERF is an acronym for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.

There are two issues with this term TERF:

Firstly, it puts the emphasis on exclusion - which is a value judgement based on an existing ideology ( transgender ideology). It fails to recognise that what Gender Critical feminism is is about doing away with repressive gender stereotypes. And feminism is about centring women and girls in your political view and action.

Secondly, not all people who are Gender Critical identify as feminists. I don't use that label myself; although I am woman/female centred in certain respects.

You say exclusion whereas women say privacy and protection of their own discrete reality and of the spaces, services and sports which have been hard won.

What happened for groups campaigning for their own services and provisions?

what happened to groups

Queer is a great example. Amongst LGBT, its not a n insult but when spat out by a homophobe it is

There are plenty of gay people who reject the term 'Queer'.

Was there ever a time when the term T**F was considered neutral by those who use it to describe their opponents?

Was there ever a time when those who use it to describe their opponents thought that it was a perfectly valid position to want to keep laws, sports and safe spaces based on biology even if it differed from their own?

Because the first time I ever saw the term was on a badge which said T**F be gone with a picture of a spray bottle. That didn’t seem neutral to me.

I wouldn’t wear a badge with a similar phrase about anyone holding a different opinion to mine. It seems unnecessarily hostile and mocking and not at all conducive to peaceful coexistence. It also seems rather childish.

i think the term T**f was maybe even coined by radical feminists, way back when. But it has since been used as a slur so much and so violently that it is not a term that one can use in good faith.

Like very many words, it's the way its used that's key - plenty of words that were harmless descriptors become derogatory over time because they have been used specifically to dehumanise, degrade, debase people. Coupled with violent imagery, threats and so on (as evidenced on about a million tweets), they become trigger words and harmful.

This is what's happened with T**f, which is now used to target particularly women and very often the people using it are using it in a threatening and/or abusive manner.

T**F is a word invented by one group of people to describe another group of people.

The group who invented the term do not like the group for whom they invented it. In fact by using the word exclusionary they hoped to turn others against this group too.

People who believe in the importance of sex rather than gender did not invent the term T**F for themselves.

As others have said the term seems to have been used with varying degrees of threats since it was invented, it has never been in a neutral way by those who used it.

To claim it is a neutral adjective is disingenuous.

I defer to you Arabella perhaps then I am mistaken in thinking it was invented by those who use it now as a slur.

That is when I first heard it.

Oh, I could well be wrong. This woman claims to have coined it - www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/29/im-credited-with-having-coined-the-acronym-terf-heres-how-it-happened

She says she intended it as neutral:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF

sorry, Daisies, you were quite right!

Would you mind explaining a bit more Helen?

I agree that gender norms are damaging but think that the key to getting rid of them would be people expressing themselves how they wish without that being anything to do their sex.

It is not challenging gender norms to say I like things traditionally associated with women therefore I have a woman brain. It is reinforcing them surely?

I completely agree that we should be working towards an end point where biological sex is not seen as in any way predicting or determining personality, tastes, values etc. I envisage that in that future world there will be no gendered names, clothes or pronouns, no sex (or gender) -based segregation (though I realise competitive sports may still present difficult issues), and we would for the most part interact with other people without wondering or caring what chromosomes or genitalia they have.

I think it’s possible to work towards that future (by challenging people when they make sex/gender based assumptions etc) while at the same time accepting that our current society and culture make it very, very difficult to be radically gender non-confirming, and therefore some people find it almost impossible to live with people perceiving them to be a particular sex/gender.

I would say again that it's not the words themselves that are the problem.

Many words that started out as just terms end up used as slurs or in a horrible way.

For this in action a good example is words to describe people with learning/ physical disabilities over the years.

Then there is a drive to stop the words being used because they are used as insults. And then the new words go through the same cycle.

The problem is not the words it's the antipathy towards the people they describe. Until that is addressed, any words will become used as insults etc.

For women especially feminists we've had words thrown at us for years.
Bitch
Witch
Strident
Dyke
Ugly
Etc

The interesting ones are where women are labelled as not womaning properly. Things like unladylike, unfeminine, mannish. The suggestion is that to be judged as not adhering to these ideas is a massive insult. Of course the women in question often don't find that very insulting, and it says more about the person saying it and what they think women are like, than anything else.

If terms like GC or TRA or TE*F are suddenly vanished, then new ones with the same meaning will simply take their place.

It's a side track really to me. However I suppose the focus on language and labels seems to be important in lots of different areas and has been for a fair while. So while i have my view I totally understand why this conversation is happening.

'I completely agree that we should be working towards an end point where biological sex is not seen as in any way predicting or determining personality, tastes, values etc'

Totally agree and this is what feminists around the world have been striving for, for a very very long time.

On this there should have been accord between feminists who think sex roles are a sack of shit, usually because they themselves have struggled against them, and trans people who want to step outside their sex roles. It would have been great. But look what has happened.

' I envisage that in that future world there will be no gendered names, clothes or pronouns, no sex (or gender) -based segregation (though I realise competitive sports may still present difficult issues), and we would for the most part interact with other people without wondering or caring what chromosomes or genitalia they have.'

This bit I am less sure about. How will non gendered clothes work when they need to fit the different bodies of the different sexes? How will the labelling work etc, in practical terms? What about maternity clothes, how will they be labelled?

I also assume it's meant that there would still be loads of interesting clothes to choose from, not that everyone would wear the same?

On the last part, I'm not sure how it will work. It's usually pretty obvious who is male and who is female. I'm not sure why or how this would become not known? And while people don't go around wondering about genitals the fact is that sexuality exists. An obvious challenge would be porn. I can't see most men losing their preferences for certain types of bodies/ genitals in what they consume.

What's your view on that?

'while at the same time accepting that our current society and culture make it very, very difficult to be radically gender non-confirming, and therefore some people find it almost impossible to live with people perceiving them to be a particular sex/gender.'

I think society has gone backwards hasn't it? In terms of the level of flexibility. It was the mid 90s. Before that you had all sorts of exciting stuff going on. Then BAM oasis, lads mags, and the clothes suddenly went really fucking boring. I assume it was backlash against the previous couple of decades, pushing everyone back into gender boxes. It felt like a male driven change... What the average blokes think of all this is not really considered. I don't think they'll like it much, will they. How can that be changed.

In the end if I shave all my hair off and wear 'men's' clothes (which I can't cos I'm a short woman) I'll still be easily recognised as a woman. Because the clothes hair etc is a really small part of it.

I completely agree that we should be working towards an end point where biological sex is not seen as in any way predicting or determining personality, tastes, values etc. I envisage that in that future world there will be no gendered names, clothes or pronouns, no sex (or gender) -based segregation (though I realise competitive sports may still present difficult issues), and we would for the most part interact with other people without wondering or caring what chromosomes or genitalia they have

That sounds laudable and very idealistic, but not at all realistic. Life on earth is about the basic instincts too- no matter how we as human beings, with the possibility for transcendence, can rise above our more instinctive natures. Sex and sexuality is just a fact; and the urge for reproduction too.

I'm certainly not one, myself, who believes there are no essential differences between the sexes and that the body/ biological sex is neutral; even as I do recognise that that within each sex there is a spectrum possible expressions, based on the fact that apart from being sexed beings on earth, we are also individuals with individual aptitudes, talents and so on......

i get that the 'trans urge' is an urge for transcendence - but feel that this can be achieved in less physically damaging ways; as well as in ways which also respect and honour the facts of human life on earth in a body. that males and females have some basic natural differences, and that on account of these differences, women and girls ( being more vulnerable in certain ways), require their own private spaces & services, and also the provision of discrete sporting categories in which the female of the species can excel.

At the same time accepting that our current society and culture make it very, very difficult to be radically gender non-confirming, and therefore some people find it almost impossible to live with people perceiving them to be a particular sex/gender

I don't accept that this is any more difficult now than it ever has been. In fact we seem to have regressed into more confining roles and expectations- which seems totally in contradiction to the movement of society and the increasing freedom of opportunity for expression of the two sexes.

What has changed is the the advent of Queer Theory and the development of surgery and medical treatment. This, though, to my mind, does not seem very progressive at all. It seems to be at odds with nature and the natural world.

Almost impossible to live with people perceiving them to be a particular sex/gender

Sex and gender are not the exact same thing. This is the problem.

Gender is a set of expectations around sex role and behaviour - which one may, or may not, conform to; or only conform to in small degrees and so on....

Gender ideology is the problem.

Do trans women need the presence of other women to validate their identities? And I wonder if the same is true of trans men. Do they need the company of other men to feel validated?