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.

My overall impression is that McKinnon is well-read in only one part of the relevant literature and statistics. To give an example of that, she approvingly quotes:

Trans theorists from Jan Morris to Andrea Long Chu have asked, essentially, if I could live the life I wanted, would I have transitioned?[8]

Recently, a man who new Jan Morris recounted an anecdote about visiting the Morris family after Jan had transitioned and having lunch with Morris. After the lunch, the man visiting got up to clear the table, but Jan told him to sit down as clearing the table was women's work. Yet Jan stayed seated, too.

And we all should know, by now, that Long Chu views femaleness as being penetrated, and the essence of femaleness being an expectant asshole and dull eyes or something similar.

So when McKinnon argues that transitioning, for males, means abandoning masculinity I would argue that this might not always be the case, that the bits abandoned might not be what makes masculinity problematic for the female sex, and that reading more widely would be good for her, too.

Because reading her piece was good for me! It gave me some mental exercise and a nice testing of my views.

Thanks, nepeta, for your patient unravelling.

I read the thing about transwomen being attacked by women more often than the reverse and my response was ... less measured.

You are most welcome. I'm going to dig up the survey, just to make sure that it only asked transgender victims. If it did (as does seem to be the case), then it gives us nothing to base McKinnon's argument on.

In any case, comparing assault risks from various groups can't be done by just counting absolute numbers at the possible perpetrator groups are of widely varying sizes.

If a low-assault-risk group of one type of possible perpetrators is very large and a high-assault-risk group of other possible perpetrators is very small we might well see more examples, in total, from the former, just because of the very large numbers, even if the latter group is far more dangerous in terms of safeguarding etcetera.

This is McKinnon's reference:

https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/pubs/forge/tips_gender.html

'When FORGE first analyzed its sexual violence study findings, it appeared there was a transgender-specific anomaly: 29 percent of respondents said at least one of their perpetrators was female.25 In researching this "anomaly," FORGE found that multiple studies have shown that about one-quarter of all sexual violence victims report a female assailant.26'

Really? This sounds so wildly different from the stats I've found - women representing 1% of sexual assault perpetrators.

I can't find the study referenced (by 'Forge') at all.

I think it's this:

FORGE's 2004 "Sexual Violence in the Transgender Community Survey" (n=254).

A study of 254 people?

I feel like I say this a lot at the moment but it feels like CMK is struggling with the fact that we’re animals

and female animals are generally less physically strong than male animals

and female mammals bear live young and that imposes restrictions on our lives

and that’s not fair

and this isn’t a computer game or a book, it’s real life, and the universe doesn’t give a shit about fairness

but nonetheless we have amazing human minds, and men’s minds and women’s minds are equally amazing regardless of the restrictions our monkey bodies place upon us

that’s just the human condition. Something we’ve all got to learn to live with

I agree, Bernard. It's weird.

Congratulations to the posters that got to the end of this and have extracted anything from it. I set out reading it online but kept losing my place as I scrolled back to check an inconsistency. So I printed it out and got out my pencil. I had scribbled more in the first five paragraphs than was originally written, had a mass of arrows with question marks and a real sense of "fuck, I can't see any sense in this".

I reprinted it and set off to read it straight through. I failed miserably.

Either I am totally stupid or it is an opaque pile of incoherent but clever words.

I don't think that I am stupid.

Also being picked apart on Ovarit: https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/376367/disappointing-catherine-mackinnon-goes-all-out-for-trans-woo

While being mindful of the risk of victim blaming, transwidow stories have opened my eyes to what their spouses consider "abuse" (ie less than 100% compliance). So, yeah.

It's transhumanism innit. Is it the inevitable consequence of life lived online do you think? The online, internal self is more "real" than the nasty, messy, boring, disappointing physical self.

It reminds me again of that series Years and Years. The irony that so many involved in it have completely swallowed the kool aid and see no parallels.

She really was this feminist hero as mentioned in replies?

'Academia is where radical feminism goes to die.'

Sounds about right. Because struggling through that essay, it just doesn't ring true to life for me at all. It only works if you're working it out purely on paper, blowing smoke rings and creating elaborate fantasies and strawmen as you go.

Sorry, that quote was from Ovarit. Thanks for the link. I didn't know much about McKinnon before reading - probably easier!

You can just envisage the scene as these elites discuss the meaning of feminism and what it is to be a woman, rearranging rights and duties like pieces on a chess board, and ranking grievances like a game of Top Trumps.

If you're stupid Jane that makes two of us...

It does seem to be an argument constructed like rickety Heath Robinson bridge constructed from toothpicks and wishful thinking ,to help CmK clamber her way nervously from where she stands with her feet on the ground, up to the cloud cuckoo land otherwise known as The Right Side Of History.

The right side of history stinks.

I wonder how many of those tweeting so enthustically about it could actually make head or tail of it. Its such an alice in wonderland case of "words mean exactly what I want them to mean, no more and no less" and chopping and changing from one paragraph to the next. Really made no sense (the bit I struggled through, at any rate)

ArabeIIaScott · Yesterday 20:32

I read the thing about transwomen being attacked by women more often than the reverse and my response was ... less measured.

What do they mean by "attacked," anyway? A nervous glance on a train? Asking them why they're in the Ladies? And are they including transw attacking other transw?

Well, I've so far been unable to find the study referenced, SinnerBoy, so it's anyone's guess. As far as I can see, this was from a 2004 study of around 200 people. There's no mention of it on the organisation's webpage. It's not clear if it was actually published.

And are they including transw attacking other transw?

All really good questions but especially that one. Members of the trans community are often vulnerable and the “glitter family” rhetoric can’t help.

I’ve seen old articles by HSTS transwomen lamenting how predatory some other TW are. Modern versions of the same complaint seem to be more often written by trans men - unsurprising as the demographics of the “trans community” have shifted.

That question was briefly mentioned in the mysterious research study, fwiw.

'Twelve percent of the FORGE survey respondents' perpetrators were transgender. This, too, can be ideologically difficult for some people to believe. This is particularly true if someone believes that transgender people are relatively powerless and that sexual violence is an act of a more powerful person against a less powerful person.30 According to one FORGE survey respondent, "I never expected it from a fellow FTM [female-to-male]."31'

I mean, it's a bit pointless to cite it, because there's no record of it anywhere, or not one that I can find. But that's what I have.

'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'

The colonisers (trans women) that feminists are 'defending' against, are not trying to change or challenge the imperatives or limitations imposed on us by the gender 'woman'. They advance nothing for us, instead the entire rhetoric is about embracing those stereotypes by 'living as a woman' - what does she think this means? Acting as man would in a manufactured simulation of the female body? Of course not, its about gathering up every pejorative stereotype imposed on women by culture, society and history and play acting it out in your cosmetically altered male body. Its insulting.

The only push from trans women to change the narrative around what it is to be a woman relate to the limitations of cosmetic surgery (or their willingness to partake in it), hence the nonsense that is bearded women with a 'female' penis.

I think she is still working, and has complied with campus orthodoxy for some time now on gender ideology, and refers to GC women as "bigots". Which is so sad given the work she's done in the past.

Her accommodation of men doesn't spare her from being included in bogus MRA 'feminists have always worked with the Christian right" memes, referencing her anti-porn work.