Catherine McKinnon on Transgender Law and Politics

[ArabeIIaScott]

This has had an inordinately enthusiastic reception among some academics.

So sharing it in case its of interest.

https://signsjournal.org/exploring-transgender-law-and-politics/

'seeing “women” as a turf to be defended, as opposed to a set of imperatives and limitations to be criticized, challenged, changed, or transcended, has been pretty startling'

Odd take, really. I don't see my own body and self as 'turf'. I just live in it, mate.

Anyway, I have to say I started it but drifted off. I will persevere, although it seems like that kind of opaque academic-speak that I really struggle to get though.

'Defining women by biology—adult is biological age, human is biological species, female is biological sex—used to be criticized as biological essentialism.'

Did it?! I thought that suggesting women were entirely bound and defined and limited by their biology was essentialism? Not just stating their sex.

If it's the latter then fine, I'm an essentialist.

I'm really surprised at CMK. I think she has missed a lot of nuances.

'Those of us who do not take our politics from the dictionary want to know: Why are women unequal to men? What keeps women second-class citizens? How are women distinctively subordinated?'

Because 'might is right' still rules, and the powerful exercise that power. Because men are bigger and stronger, and women do the childbearing, at base, Catherine. What else?

I dunno, I'm reading it but the meanings keep slipping.

'It is core male-dominant ideology that attributes the source of women’s inequality to our nature, our biological sex, which for male dominance makes it inevitable, immutable, unchangeable, on us. As if our bodies, rather than male dominant social systems, do it to us.'

And these systems are based on and around what, though? They're all built on bodies, by bodies. They're not disembodied theoretical AI systems, at least not yet. We're all still animals living in our mortal, limited animal bodies with all their miraculous and difficult peculiarities.

Is this all some Cartesian split stuff?

It could well be that I'm just not clever enough to understand what the fuck she's on about.

I had a skim through, not impressed.

One might think that trans women—assigned male at birth, leaving masculinity behind, drawn to and embracing womanhood for themselves—would be welcomed.

Why might one think that? Bizarre assumption.

There is no evidence that trans women remain “men” for purposes of all women’s safety from sexual abuse in bathrooms and elsewhere or fair competition in all sports as many who oppose them in these spaces insist there is.

Not true at all. The authors are simply ignoring the evidence.

If this concern was real, trans women would have cleaned up at the Olympics for the past couple of decades, and they have not.

Up until recently, the Olympics required these men to have had cosmetic genital surgery, which hardly any of them get done. And what about all the other competitions, in which these men are beginning to dominate - the Olympics aren't the be all and end all.

The dangers incarceration poses for women do not begin with the trans women prisoners who seek to be housed there, in order to keep from being systematically raped in men’s prisons, or possibly seeking to serve time in a less brutal overall environment, if one with far fewer opportunities for work or what is euphemistically termed rehabilitation.

More misogynistic nonsense. Women don't exist solely to be shields against male-on-male violence. Many women have already been sexually assaulted, raped and even impregnated by male prisoners housed in the female prison estate, in jurisdictions that allow this.

The essay goes on like this with more of the usual rubbish transactivist arguments.

On my analysis of the real world—a feminist analysis I reckon—the linchpin of the subordination of women, the impetus and structure of women’s gendered status as second class, is sexuality, socially gendered through sexualized misogyny.[9] We are placed on the bottom of the gender hierarchy by the misogynistic meanings that male dominant societies create, project onto us, attribute to us, which, in my observation and analysis, center on women’s sexuality. This has nothing whatsoever to do with biology, which serves, however powerfully, as sexuality’s after-the-fact attributed naturalized rationalization and supposed ratification.

I would have written this as ...

On my analysis of the real world—a feminist analysis I reckon—the linchpin of the subordination of women, the impetus and structure of women’s gendered status as second class to men, is sexuality, socially gendered through sexualized misogyny by men.[9] Men place us on the bottom of the gender hierarchy by the misogynistic meanings that male dominant societies create, project onto us, attribute to us, which, in my observation and analysis, men center on women’s sexuality.

... otherwise the active agent of the 'doing' is invisible. Women's oppression just happens. That male power is an attribute of men needs to be spelled out.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with biology, which serves, however powerfully, as sexuality’s after-the-fact attributed naturalized rationalization and supposed ratification.

The key here is really about the relationship between men, male power and biology. Second-wave feminists, of which I am one, were rightfully wary of biological essentialism. But I don't assume that just because men are bigger, stronger, faster, can (and do) rape, and do not bear live young that this means that women will always be oppressed. I think it does involve biology but this does not make it essentialist.

Dworkin would never have let her get away with that.

Thanks for posting that and for everyone taking apart some of the lies and double meanings. It’s awful. I’m so shocked - I would think that the writer must be aware she’s being duplicitous, but given her history of genuine pro-women activism that’s a wild thought.

'Defining women by biology… used to be criticized as biological essentialism.'

How could a law professor not realise she’s relying on a double meaning of “define”?

seeing “women” as… a set of imperatives and limitations to be criticized, challenged, changed, or transcended,

I think you are right, this is a person completely disconnected from the body. That’s how she interprets “women”? It’s very sad. Like obviously we live in a social system that has created those “imperatives and limitations” but for me, the strength and power to say “fuck that and fuck you” to it all comes from my female body.

One might think that trans women—assigned male at birth, leaving masculinity behind, drawn to and embracing womanhood for themselves—would be welcomed.

It assumes that they do leave masculinity behind for a start...

I'm also not sure how this statement does not make her guilty of this:

Yet a group of philosophers purporting feminism slide sloppily from “female sex” through “feminine gender” straight to “women” as if no move has been made

I can't figure if the old MacKinnon works were rooted in reality (as I was certain Are Women Human? was) or I misunderstood them at the time, of if she's essentially sold out but my feeling is that something changed at some point with her.

I think she's read the room wrongly and is assuming the 'nice old transexual' type.

I think that she has sold out effectively - she has looked at the way the winds been blowing in academia and chosen to ally herself with the dominant narrative rather than risk her position. Intellectual cowardice albeit hiding behind obtuse elitist academic jargon. Sell out. Listen instead to Camille Paglia who is not afraid to challenge this ideology and does so in plain honest discourse.

I guess that I'd ask her in relation to this ...

One might think that trans women—assigned male at birth, leaving masculinity behind, drawn to and embracing womanhood for themselves—would be welcomed.

... what's in it for us if we welcome it?

Will it stop men from assaulting and killing us?
Will it stop men raping us?
Will it stop the porn industry?
Will it stop the exploitation of women through prostitution?
Will it convince men to do 50% of the household labour?
Will it guarantee women reproductive rights including termination of pregnancy and ending forced pregnancy?
Will it stop female genital mutilation?
Will it stop child brides?
Will it stop what is happening to women in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Will it increase girls' literacy rates in some developing nations?
Will it even up men's and women's wages?

Yes? No?

If not, what is in it for us?

'On the technical meaning of sex as physical and gender as its social meaning, sex is equal. It is gender that is unequal. Women are not men’s biological inferiors; we are constrained to be men’s social inferiors.'

On that point I sort of agree, yes. Morally we're not 'inferior'. But phsycially, we are more vulnerable, both in terms of weight, size, strength and in terms of our vulnerability to getting pregnant.

She seems to be misunderstanding and thinks that 'gender critical ideas' posit that women being physically 'weaker' is a moral judgement.

It's not, Catherine. Women's bodies are different from men's bodies, for obvious reasons. We're better at some stuff, like long distance running (in theory ho ho) but men are better at, say, violence.

Indeed.👌🏻

Must be nice to live in an Ivory Tower such as CMK does where she has the luxury of pontificating like the bishops and bible thumpers of old on ideas and theories that have real live negative consequences on women's actual daily lives.

Here it is again:

'It is gender that constructs women as men’s inferiors, as valued less to worthless, as weak and dependent, as stupid and illogical and emotional, as soft and yielding and receptive, as bitchy and ditsy, whiny, seductive, and manipulative, destined only to reproduce.'

Strawman bollocks. Don't conflate 'physically weaker/less able in some instances' with 'weak'.

Gender does not do this by itself. Something is giving it a good hard push. Pronouns (traditionally) he/him.

She's just muddling 'weak' in the moral sense with 'weak' in the physical sense.

She does not really believe any of what she is saying. She has gone to a lot of trouble to flesh out an intellectually bankrupt position with sophistry but she has to prop up her stance with something so that she can appear to be intellectually credible and objective - but mainly so that she doesn't get cancelled and keeps her status.

It's simultaneous cynical and craven cowardice.

Like [Catharine], I would have expected all those who self-identify as women to be welcomed, and that has always been my firmly held position.

So it is extraordinary to find that biological definitions are now being used in ways that set back crucial insights in the history of feminism, and polarize and implode the solidarity we so desperately need. After all, it is nearly seventy-five years since Simone de Beauvoir stated so powerfully: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

Always very revealing when they bring up that Simone de Beauvoir quote, as the rest of the passage it is from completely undermines what they assume it's about - she talks about "the figure that the human female presents in society" and then goes on to critique how "woman" is a harmful social construct that ends up being forced upon all who are female:

« On ne naît pas femme : on le devient. Aucun destin biologique, psychique, économique ne définit la figure que revêt au sein de la société la femelle humaine ; c'est l'ensemble de la civilisation qui élabore ce produit intermédiaire entre le mâle et le castrat qu'on qualifie de féminin. Seule la médiation d'autrui peut constituer un individu comme un Autre. En tant qu'il existe pour soi, l'enfant ne saurait se saisir comme sexuellement différencié. »

Obviously this cannot apply to males who call themselves women, because firstly, they are not female, and secondly, they are not forced into womanhood.

One might think that trans women—assigned male at birth, leaving masculinity behind, drawn to and embracing womanhood for themselves—would be welcomed.

What does she mean by womanhood? Having a female body? Or a set of stereotypes that go with being female?

If she engaged her brain for a nanosecond she'd realise that neither of these options would make a male who 'embraced womanhood' very welcome amongst many women, particularly feminists.

Either such a male desires to have a female body (why? Fetishistic purposes, perhaps?) or he wants to embrace the stereotypes that many of us have spent our lives trying to escape. Why on earth would he be 'welcomed'?

Yes exactly - on the one hand she is saying we should welcome transwomen who embrace womenhood yet at the same time she states that womenhood is a social construct. Which is it Catherine?

This article is an almost perfect example of just saying "something". It could be anything. It has no merit. It does nothing except detract.

The adage, better not to say anything if you've got nothing to say.

I'm not a woman, but I can only imagine this is so fucking tiring. Now even previous voices on the side of women are happy to ditch worthy principles and allyship for worthless word salads like this.

All I can think is that the TRA grift is more lucrative, or, y'know, think of the trans/NB kids, and those lovely transwomen being misgendered.

It's all about money and status. Academia is captured by Trans Ideology, and it is hard to swim against that tide. CMK is not able to, Kathleen Stock did, and look what happened to her 🙁

"the impetus and structure of women’s gendered status as second class, is sexuality, socially gendered through sexualized misogyny.[9] We are placed on the bottom of the gender hierarchy by the misogynistic meanings that male dominant societies create, project onto us, attribute to us, which, in my observation and analysis, center on women’s sexuality."

If that were true, lesbians would be further up the hierarchy than straight women.