Friends suggesting transphobia and misogyny both rooted in policing gender roles

[Pyjamatimenow]

Friend of mine has posted on her social media ( a very long detailed post) that basically trans rights are women’s rights and that what she sees as transphobia is akin to people who ‘punish’ women who don’t fit into gender stereotypes, don’t get married, don’t look ‘feminine’, don’t have children…Says she’s a feminist and defends the rights of trans women to live safely etc …whatever that means. Cis women mentioned several times. I don’t normally comment on these kinds of things on FB but struggling with this particular post! If I were to say something what would you say?

There is concern too that single sex spaces which have historically been patriarchal tools of oppression will disappear

Can we have some evidence that the rape crisis services and domestic violence shelters that women set up for themselves were tools of patriarchal oppression?

But transwomens rights aren't women's rights, They're mens rights

There is concern too that single sex spaces which have historically been patriarchal tools of oppression will disappear as they are now weirdly seen as spaces of safety and refuge (although no criminal has ever respected these invisible boundaries nor will they ever)

What is it with TRAs claiming everything is "weird" or "odd", as if no one had every really noticed there are quite significant difference between the physical capabilities and social outcomes until Gender Critical Feminists starting pointing out that trans women are not actually female people and just calling them "women" isn't actually an argument for why we should have to treat them as if they are interchangeable with female people?

It isn't weird.

A single sex space can be a prison or a refuge and place of empowerment.

You need to think about what side of the door the lock is on.

A bow in his hair and a pair of ballet flats?

As long as the clothing is appropriate for the situation, I don't think GC women give much of a toss what anyone's wearing.

There's a difference between wearing clothes typically associated with the opposite sex as an act of defiance or fashion, and wearing them because you identify as or get a thrill from dressing as the opposite sex.

The first: Clearly they aren't actually women's clothes because I'm a man and I'm wearing them too

The second: They are definitely women's clothes, and wearing them says something about either hiw I see myself or how I see women.

J K Rowling said 'Dress however you please' - that has been challenged more recently, notably by specifically because of men who insisted on wearing fetish gear in public or who adopted a 'womanface' parody of women (for instance Oxford plastic breasts man, every drag queen).

The price of freedom from male oppression is constant vigilance.

The nuance for me is whether the man is wearing women's clothes to break the gendered connotations or because he wants to enjoy the gendered connotations.

To me the latter is just as sexist as a T shirt saying "make me a sammich" and if women shouldn't have to accept the T shirt from a friend or colleague they shouldn't have to accept the fancy dress.

I respectfully disagree. Much as we can't and shouldn't have to judge anyone's inner feelings about what sex they feel they are, we can't and shouldn't have to judge anyone's inner motivations for wearing any specific kind of clothing.

yeah but visible 🍆🍆under fluffy skirts of inside pink lycra leggings are an unwelcome revelation

I think we can judge clothing by what it reveals without having to decide what the intention behind it is.

It's not appropriate for a man to flash his penis in public for any reason at all. We don't have to ask why he does it.

Within reason, yes. As long as people are wearing clothes within the normal bounds of decency and conventions for the situation/occasion then I don’t care what arrangements and colours of fabric you use to clothe your body, how you style your hair or whether you wear make up. If a man wears a nice frock and hat to a wedding or a skirt and blouse that conforms to the business dress code to the office then go ahead, I don’t care.

For me the distinction between fetish wear and gender non-conforming clothes for men is bras. There is absolutely no need for a man to wear a bra. Most of the women I know regard them as a necessary evil and men will never know that relief of walking through your front door and unhooking your bra.

Do we know what a “gender realist” is? Has @LoremIpsumCici got confused and mashed up the terms gender critical and sex realist?

I'm not saying anyone should have to do anything.

I'm saying there are valid reasons why GC women may not unconditionally agree that clothes are just clothes. They should be, but in the gendered social context they often aren't.

I think that DeanElderberry's examples of sexualised play clothes, exhibitionist costume, bondage gear etc worn other than in privacy is good, and that objecting to these involves an element of judging motivations.

We're human and survival depends on being able to discern someone's motive and intent from their behaviour. Two different people dressed alike can be intending to signal very different things (a man in a dress and a woman in the same dress) and we can draw appropriate conclusions from that. We will form our own conclusions about what that means, and that person's intentions, and it's right and proper to do so.

But when it comes to put boundaries around dress, especially where those boundaries have consequences, I don't think someone's inner intent is something that should be taken into account. If a dress is too short to meet an "at work" dress code then it's too short for both men and women.

So when you say there's "a difference between wearing clothes typically associated with the opposite sex as an act of defiance or fashion, and wearing them because you identify as or get a thrill from dressing as the opposite sex" that's true, but I don't think it makes much practical difference.

The sexism of a "make me a sammich" t-shirt isn't excused by the intention of a radical feminist activist wearing it in an ironic sense. In an arena where sexist t-shirts aren't permitted, they aren't permitted. Where they are permitted then anyone can wear one.

Wouldn't "artificial Oxford boobs" be just as poor behaviour if a woman wore them, and wouldn't it be just as sexist?

I think there are places where those clothes are appropriate and places where they're not. Why someone is wearing them isn't relevant.

Thank you

No, "hate crime" won't work. Hate crimes include things like refusing to share female bathroom with a transwoman, refusing to use preferred pronouns, voicing the opinion that transwoman should stay out of women's refuges, etc... None of that is violence. Also, "hate crimes" committed against women for being women aren't recorded, so we can't compare like with like.

Let's compare the number of women who are raped, assaulted and murdered every year with the number of transwomen.

Instinctively I agree with you, but I think our judgement of the motivation is relevant to the reason why we would find bondage gear acceptable in a club but not in a workplace.

I agree that the Oxford boobs wouldn't be acceptable whoever wore them, but I also think we judge men and women differently because we are more likely to assume that a man is motivated by sexual arousal, and men are the biggest consumers of porn and more likely to be convicted of sex related offences.

Hate crime is a criminal offence aggravated by hate, so not related to pronoun use.

Thankfully the police are no longer recording 'non crime hate incidents'.

Actually, to be fair to @LoremIpsumCici , there is an old association between blue and protection in some cultures. Those blue glass eye things you see in Greece and the Middle East are an example. And wearing a string of blue beads.

But as far as I know, it wasn't and isn't a gendered system of "blue for boys, pink for girls". It was just "blue for protection".

I am quite prepared to believe that in some sexist societies and families boys got their blue protection and girls got not-blue/nothing.

Pink/blue coding is quite recent and is really a function of mass production of consumer goods.

Until recently most of the population would have had little choice about their clothing.

Yes. Mass availability of affordable cheap cloth in a wide range of colours is a comparatively recent phenomenon.

We in the UK have leant heavily into it. My then colleague was horrified that our Dutch office sent me a blue teddy and baby outfit for a baby I didn't know the sex of. She couldn't comprehend that I was happy to give a baby girl a blue teddy and was relieved that I had a boy so some poor girl wasn't made to touch blue things. She also couldn't wrap her head around me dressing him in orange, lime green or red, because how would people know he was a boy if he wasn't wearing blue? I don't think she ever really believed I'd bought a years worth of clothes and decorated the nursery without knowing the sex.

Blue was strongly associated with the Virgin Mary, who is depicted in a blue dress. She is certainly a protective figure.

Her shade of blue is hers alone.

Jesus is sometimes shown robed in red.

The folklore collector Edward Lovett found blue bead necklaces and bracelets being worn in the East End of London around the time of the First World War. They were supposed to be a protection against bronchitis. I wonder if there is a connection?