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.

Yes. She was always linked in my mind with Andrea Dworkin.

This is very depressing. More needs to be done on how legal academics are responding to this in general. Law is the tool used to implement damaging gender madness in the real world and there seems to be a blindness to the responsibility they hold, weak theoretical engagement and an overwhelming accommodation of men.

Agreed that it seems to be the 2004 study of 254 trans-identifying people responding. The only reference I saw to it on the site was to "unpublished data", but the survey must have been published at the time. I Googled the name it's given and get sent back to this site, pretty much.

Here's the problem: McKinnon wants to compare sexual assaults against (bio) women by transgender women to sexual assaults against transgender women by (bio) women.

But the data she links to does not give us information on both sides of that, because it never asks (bio) women about who assaulted them.

Such data may exist, but not in the link McKinnon gives us, because it only gives us a number for, possibly, the second of the bits she wants to compare. I write 'possibly', because the attacking 'women' may have been defined by gender identity and not by sex there, too.

Even if such a data for both parts of the comparison existed and was vetted so that it doesn't reflect different ways of defining 'assault' by women and trans people, say, we would still need to evaluate it in comparison to the sizes of the populations we are talking about here, because the total number of assaults by a small population does not mean the same thing as, say, the same or slightly larger number of assaults by a vastly larger population. The former population would have a higher percentage of perpetrators.

As an aside, I hatehatehate the way language has been taken away from us so that writing about this problem, and so many others, leaves me feeling as if I no longer can't be clear at all.

It's interesting to note, by the way, that McKinnon refuses to use 'cis'! Her reasons for that are quite gender critical. She also refuses to support prostitution as a good career path for girls.

So I believe she is trying to be kind and inclusive AND has not done the strenuous thinking this topic actually demands.

And she has nothing to say about the disappearance of language, about what it means for feminist analysis that sex-based oppression now applies to people in all the new gender categories (because nonbinary female people, say, will experience the same sexism and will need reproductive rights, only they tell us that we can't mention those have anything to do with belonging to the female sex).

I don't think that she has read much about the various reasons I see online for why people transition. For some male people they certainly include reasons which have absolutely zero to do with relinquishing masculinity, and something to do with porn and misogyny. And such weird motivations as believing that being a woman is easier as women get sex all the time and don't have to support a family etc.

That's very clear, nepeta. Thank you.

It makes me very uneasy when someone who presumably understand evidence (?) uses such vague and ill defined data to try and bolster a bullshit argument.

'a blindness to the responsibility they hold, weak theoretical engagement and an overwhelming accommodation of men.'

Absolutely. It's fucking enraging. I am incandescent at how she has slurred and libelled women in this article, without apparently even bothering to understand the arguments being made. What a fucking insult. What a fucking cop out. What a fucking outrage.

. For some male people they certainly include reasons which have absolutely zero to do with relinquishing masculinity, and something to do with porn and misogyny.

She's waxing lyrical about Julia Serrano, so she can't claim ignorance of this.

https://twitter.com/WomenReadWomen/status/1270036915492753408

"While I never really believed the cliché about women being good for only one thing, I found that that sentiment kept creeping into my fantasies...I would imagine myself being sold into sex slavery and having strange men take advantage of me." - "Whipping Girl," by Julia Serano

I have been disappointed with her and several other women who I believe actually know better, including Hilary Clinton and Rebecca Solnit.

But it had the benefit that I went through all the arguments in my head again, for the umpteenth time, to make sure I am not missing something essential which would make them right in their new opinions.

I am not missing anything. So it is sad. And also watching the different trends affecting the changing of 'woman' and the changing of 'man'. The latter is not being changed to anywhere near the level the former is, which shows how very alive sexism is.

Solnit's 'The Mother of All Questions' equated, in a very bald, clumsy, and insulting fashion, writing a book with having a child. I've not been able to take her seriously since that.

Those winging to the Right are thrilled by this putatively feminist reduction of women to female body parts, preferably chromosomes and reproductive apparatus, qualities chosen so that whatever is considered definitive of sex is not only physical but cannot be physically changed into.

This is the core problem with academia, that anyone who doesn't agree with their position is "winging to the right" and therefore to be denigrated.

Thrilled we are apparently with a "reduction" said only by them. Being female is not a "reduction".

They could try speaking and writing with some neutrality, it won't kill them.

Being female is not a "reduction".

I wonder if academics in particular tend to be more vulnerable to this Cartesian split and apparent distate for acknowledging our animal, biological nature? Firstly they're moving in a somewhat rarified, and cerebral world where mind is presumably ranked more important than body, and secondly they are public sector so rather removed from the basic muddy transactional gruntwork and exigencies of day to day life.

A sweeping generalisation of course, and I make exceptions for the many based academics there are out there. I'm just wondering how people can choke down this waffly wordsalad with such apparent gusto.

Arabella, it's because it's exciting.
As a legal type you get to be at the sharp end of reconciling the apparently great social justice issue of the era (alongside anti-racism critical theory), you create whole new swathes of law and advice for all the new litigation coming down the track, you get brownie points amongst the young, your peers, corporate governance, for being on the right side of history, you stop a generation of teens and Gen Z being existentially threatened, you look fashionable and hip being at the cutting edge of post modernist refashioning of society.

whatever is considered definitive of sex is not only physical but cannot be physically changed into

Well, yes.

Exactly.

The only error in that part is thinking that it's a choice rather than a fact.

Is it?! I find bullshit and lies and waffle execrably boring. It 'does not taste of salt'.

responding to RealityFan, there.

Hey, you and me both.

Exactly @RealityFan Unfortunately law academics advise courts and countries so they can have a real world effect, rather than just generating more word salad. During the Helen Joyce talk controversy in Cambridge I noted this Law Prof listed at the college in question: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Legal-Status-Transsexual-Transgender-Persons/dp/1780681968

Quoting from:
https://www.myscience.uk/news/wire/boy_girl_or_intersexe_law_and_gender-2017-cambridge
"Scherpe carries out research within one of the most controversial and sensitive areas of family law - jurisprudence and gender. His introduction to the topic came when he was working at the Max Planck Institute in his native Germany and was asked to carry out research into nationality and change of legal gender for a case heard by the Constitutional Court. He began talking to transgender people and learning about their experiences.
"Once you meet people directly affected by laws which discriminate against them, you begin to feel differently and I’ve become a passionate advocate for change in the law in this area. I began to question the way in which we seek to categorise people and apply labels. What right does the state have to classify people as male or female in official documents such as birth certificates and passports - and do we actually need gender categories?"

His advice to Hong Kong makes interesting reading https://www.family.law.cam.ac.uk/press/news/2018/01/scherpe-and-dunne-submit-consultation-response-hong-kong-inter-departmental

What right does the state have to classify people as male or female in official documents such as birth certificates and passports - and do we actually need gender categories?"

Did he even think about possible answers for his question for even one minute?

"As an aside, I hatehatehate the way language has been taken away from us so that writing about this problem, and so many others, leaves me feeling as if I no longer can't be clear at all."

🖕🏻🖕🏻and that is a feature and not a bug of this ideology, that is deliberate and highly effective. 🙁

Mmm, I sure Dentons are a constant travel companion for Scherpe as well.

I had a friend in Grammar school in 70s early 80s who's gone on to a stellar law career. I can imagine we'd have nothing in common if we met up and talked trans and women's rights.

I'm thinking he'd try to bamboozle me with genderwoo word salad as well.

How do you get one of these jobs where you are paid serious money to spout bollocks and never be held to account?

This.

Even if you believe a biological definition isn't perfect, it is absolutely bizarre to called it "biological essentialism" while pushing for a definition that is subjective and circular and really only boils down to personal stereotypes.

I don't know if I'm just too thick to understand what she means by essentialism. I've read the wiki and it gets VERY confusing if you use 'sex' and 'gender' interchangeably - to the point that it makes no sense at all, in fact.

This is all ONLY plausible if you define gender as socially constructed. That's fine.

But the critique seems to be suggesting that either 'gender critical' views are suggesting socially constructed roles are biologically determined - which is guff, and the opposite of what 'gc' views are saying, or that sex/biology is 'socially constructed', which is also obviously utter nonsense.

I do normally try to do the background reading for these threads but I'm afraid I just couldn't face it

I frankly regard Butler, Peterson and CMK as all in the same incomprehensible boat. If people can't write with brevity and clarity it makes me strongly suspect that they're making shit up