Recommend me a book!

[RibenaBerry]

Right, reading these boards recently has given me a bit of a kick up the arse on my feminist principles. I've done a bit of 'light' reading in the area (think The Beauty Myth as a teenager) but think I need something a bit more serious without being so weighty I never pick it up. I'd rather have something published in, say, the last 15 years than any of the 'classics'.

Any ideas?

So wtf is transphobia?

How does MN define it?

I don't see that you have anything to apologise for Prolesworth

I just want to register my vote for an individual with a penis clearly being a man and it being an abrogation of womanhood for any state to declare otherwise.

has anyone actually asked MN Towers why they deleted the posts? I think I will go and start a thread in site stuff if no-one else has yet.

Emskaboo beat me to it.

My intro to feminism was The Whole Woman, so I'm a little that it's controversial within feminist circles!

Divide and Rule, wastingaway; oldest trick in the book.
Just ask the ex-colonies.

PRoles, love, you didn't do anything! And even if you had said something, we WANT people to speak their mind, even if we disagree with them.
We have a warped version of free speech here whereby
misogyny= free-for-all
Trans-phobia (which effectively comes from straight men refusing to accept men as being part of their own sex, but has somehow morphed into Trans-men attacking women instead)
I mean, if they were women, surely they'd at least be able to see our POV

I'll finish the post:
Trans-phobia (whatever that is)= is a case for libel

IT's interesting, when I was backpacking in Thailand with my best mate at the time ( a homosexual man) we were fascinated by the ladyboys; but we couldn't quite understand who would be attracted to them. Obviously not straight women, who like men. And not homosexual men either, because, as my mate explained, gay men are actually attracted to the male physique.
So we came to the conclusion that it must be straight men who are attracted to trans-gender men.
Which is fine, great, each to their own.

But I can understand why men who are straight (or believe they are straight) feel they have to insist that ladyboys and trans-gender males are women. Because if they believe they're women, they don't have to expand the definition of what a masculine male is.

I've never heard of Julia Serrano, but I do think it's a little disingenous to judge transfolk by hir schtick. Rather like dismissing feminists on the basis of Phyllis Schafly, surely?

I also think a lot of what's been said on this thread is transphobic bigotry, and - although I know that this is a current and ongoing schism - I'm pretty flabbergasted to come across some of the comments on this thread, from women with whom I usually agree.

Describing trans issues as a bloke "putting on lippy and a frock" is appallingly dismissive, and betrays a total lack of understanding.

I just don't even understand the argument against transgender people. What are you actually worried about? You're not actually arguing that the patriarchal establishment is supportive of transgender issues, are you? This seems like a strange sort of ring-fencing of identity to me, with no actual benefit to anyone and a whole lot of cruelty towards transgender people.

HerBeatitude wrote "So wtf is transphobia? How does MN define it?"

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a detailed article about feminist perspectives on trans issues at plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-trans/.

tortoise - the Julia Serano video has been utterly misinterpreted. I don't know if this is due to reasons of malice or ignorance.

It's been said to me elsewhere that transfeminism hasn't come up on Mumsnet before so that could be the reason for some of the ignorance that is found on this thread. otoh, there is deliberate bigotry too such as the dog-whistle between rape and trans women.

Comparing 'lady-boys' with trans women. Ha ha ha ha ha!

earwicga,
If you have a logical argument to counteract Greer's then please put it forward, and I will consider it. I'm sorry, it's true I don't know exactly what a ladyboy is because understanding different male sexualities and the variety of ways they manifest doesn't really interest me. Women's issues interest me.

A bigot is a very strong accusation, and of course if you believe the feminist arguments on this thread are bigotted then please explain in detail. Nobody wants to be called a bigot without good reason.

You do understand that there is a long history of patriarchy re-defining women to be non-beings and it is therefore a very sore spot for feminists. From Naploean to Freud, men have tried to say that women have no sex of their own; they are defined in relation to the male, as a negative; and is the reason feminism took root in the first place.

I do not have anything against anybody's sexuality or the way they view the world, or who they are. That would be bigotry.
I do have something against somebody telling me that I am a trans-gender male.

All I am trying to establish is that women have a sex of their own, and exist in their own right, nothing more.
YOu appear not to understand that feminists are trying to break down gender constraints, we are trying to convince our daughters they don't need breast implants, or to shave their legs to be women, and yet it seems that for trans-gender males looking feminine is a huge part of the deal. Can you get your head round how this could be oppressive to women?

Umm earwicga, you're mistaken about ladyboys. From SDG's link:

"Transgender is often used to refer to people who ?do not conform to prevailing expectations about gender? by presenting and living genders that were not assigned to them at birth or by presenting and living genders in ways that may not be readily intelligible in terms of more traditional conceptions of gender"

Do you know what a ladyboy is?

Ah, I see. ladyboys still believe that they're men, whereas trans women believe they're women.

Sakura - thank you for your comments. It's funny in a way that at one hand you say you have no desire to find out what transgender means, but on the other hand you have already defined and decided everything.

Most definitions of transgender show it is an umbrella term in which transsexualism is included.

NO, you misunderstand.
I am not defining anyone.
Trans-gender males are defining me. THIs is what I take issue with. Feminists take issue with being defined as the other the way that women have been for centuries.

I am a woman, therefore I have no idea what or who a trans-gender male is, unless I research about it.
But you are saying I AM one myself

Either I am not a trans-gender male, or a trans-gender male is not a woman.

I would have no issue with trans-gender males if it wasn't for the fact that they believe they represent me, my life experiences, and what it means to grow up as a girl in our society.

earwicga, can you honestly not see that the only way society can accept a trans-gender male as a woman is if they believe women aren't whole?

Provide your own counter-argument against my above points and I will seriously consider it and I may even convert.

I've thought long and hard about whether to post on this thread, but what the heck, you only live once...

I think it highly unlikely that anything on this thread would have been libel. For a libel (this is a very rough outline, and I'm not using the technical legal terms), you need to show that a comment lowered someone's professional standing or lowered them in the eyes of normal people generally. That's show to a jury. I think that the state of awareness in the UK generally of this issue is such that a large number of jury members would simply say that a transexual MTF was 'still a man'. Although more from ignornance (or transphobia as one side of the argument would label it) than any nuanced feminist argument to that effect (as the other side of the argument would). If it is libel, there is a defence of 'fair comment' designed to protect vigourous debate and opinion - see the recent cases on medical libel. Finally, and this is just a practical point, I've seen no evidence that Julia Serano has any interest in our message board, and it's the person that the statement is made about who has to sue.

The other point I wondered about is, how much of a debate is this type of issue in the feminist community? Because I think that this is the sort of debate that, whilst I am not undermining its interest to those who are heavily involved in feminist issues and I would defend to the death your right to have the argument if you so choose, puts women off identifying themselves as feminists and/or involving themselves in the area. Put simply, it is such a niche area involving so few men/women (depending on how you label them) and has no real bearing on the lives of most women and how they want to see them improved.

I suppose what I am trying to say is, I hear so many women say "I'm not a feminist but.." and I want to shake them and say "wanting to be paid the same as the men is feminist, wanting the same life chances is feminist, wanting it not to be called 'babysitting' when the kids are looked after by their father is feminist". I am keen to learn more about feminism, but to feel that I have to have a 'position' on transexuals to do so makes me back away.

Is there a risk that, if this issue is a real 'big split' issue in the feminist movement that it risks clouding the bigger issues? A bit like the way Christians go on and on about gays and sex before marriage, but if you actually read the bible it shows that Jesus saw that as a low ranking issue and spent most of his time talking about greed and poverty.

Sorry for butting in and, as I said, I'm not attacking the right to debate these points. I'm just interested in your views on the bigger picture.

Well, I personally don't think there is much of a split among feminists. As with muslims, Shiite or Sunni, they have a lot more in common than they have differences.

And it's a good point about this issue being less relevant than other issues. It's like muslim women's argument that there are far more pressing issues than whether or not they cover themselves.

In fact I don't so much have a problem with trans-gender males believing they're women, as I have with patriarchal society jumping to regard them as women. I see both trans-gender males and women as being oppressed under our current system. In this sense they have a lot in common with women.

I do hope that in the future, trans-gender males will be able to find a niche and a space for themselves in society, where they can be fully accepted.
The problem is that until the "woman question" is resolved, and until women are regarded as actual people by society, rather than objects or in relation to men, it is going to be difficult for feminists to accept yet another group re-defining their truth. We are a long way off from women being regarded as human. Take a look at the rape threads and how women are treated in court and by the police, and society in general. Women's experiences and truths are rebuffed again and again.

But yes, I agree that this particular issue is not the number one priority.

I'll start by qualifying that I'm a radical feminist. Most radical feminists are horrendously transphobic; I think I am one of very few who isn't.

Feminism is supposed to be for all women. Fifty years ago, Black women weren't considered to be 'real' women (see Soujourner Truth's "Ain't I A Woman?") and now the feminist movement is finally beginning to try to be inclusive of Black and ethnic minority women. It is my hope that eventually this anti-trans sentiment will be weeded out of the feminist movement.

I thought radical feminism - all feminism really - was supposed to be about breaking down the gender binary and deconstructing gender. How can we do that if we're so biologically essentialist?

No, for me, feminism is for all women, and that includes trans women.