Transphobia and Sophistry
I remember back in the 90s getting into arguments with homophobes about how they couldn’t be homophobic because they weren’t afraid of gay men and lesbian women. Rather than address the substance of the statement – homophobia means you’re prejudiced against gay men, lesbian women, and probably bisexual people – these prejudiced people would shift the goalposts and make it not about whether or not they hated GLB people, but how they weren’t afraid. Belledame compares this kind of argument to a more recent post from a radical feminist proclaiming that she’s not afraid of trans people.
Transphobia is not strictly defined as a “fear of transsexual or transgender people.” Its usage is directly related to “homophobia,” which is also not strictly defined as a “fear of GLB people.” It’s about bigotry. If someone is transphobic – or homophobic – they’re bigoted against trans people – or GLB people. Pisaquari writes:
I am not comfortable being my radical feminist self amongst transpersons. Reading transperson accounts online and in books does not help it either–in fact, it heightens my inability to speak freely. How can I, a gender abolitionist, feel comfortable speaking out against gender and its manifestations in the company of a transperson? How can I, a gender abolitionist, feel comfortable talking about my frustrations and hardships with the idea that what our bodies are born has anything to do with how we should express ourselves, in the company of a transperson? I think gender is woefully destructive and I put it to blame for so much of what pits us against our bodies. But what I am arguing for and about smacks against what transpersons feel is their reality and experience. In recognizing their daily trauma and very real oppression they receive I don’t have the *guts* to sit in a room and speak the truths I feel about gender with a transperson.
And why would I? What have radical feminists ever gotten by speaking their minds about gender as it applies to transitioning besides a stinking diagnosis? Add “transphobia” to the list of reasons why I am not down with trans at a radical feminist conference. (Perhaps we could come to some bull shit truce yes? Wherein you agree to label the problem accurately and we let you keep your silly name call: “genderphobia.” Because I wouldn’t dare ask anyone to part with “phobia.” How would you get through your day without vilifying radical feminists as hateful panicbots?)
I personally don’t vilify all radical feminists as hateful panicbots – just those who are hateful panicbots, and I’m down with saying Pisaquari is being a hateful panicbot in this post. I do recognize that transphobia (I will not stop using the word that’s been used to label your bigotry just because you don’t like it) seems to be a common trait among radical feminists, to the point that I wonder why so many are obsessed with us. Why does Heart flip out when a trans woman posts that she was groped on a bus, but then a few days later post about how women are groped on buses? Why does Heart say that a t rans woman using goddess imagery is plagiarizing womanhood? Why does Lucky Nkl try troll trans discussions and compare us to serial killers? Why was Maia attacked as being a ringer because she defended trans women? Why does M Andrea insist that she has the right to interrogate trans people as to our identities and motives and when we refuse to indulge her petty questions, she thinks that means we can’t? Why do so many radical feminists waste their time trying to define trans women as not women, trying to characterize us in insulting, offensive, misogynist ways if you’re not transphobic? I mean the actual meaning of the word, not your shifted goalposts meaning. If that’s still too much for you, why the hell are you such bigots about us? Are we oppressing you? Are we perpetrating sexism? Does our position as migrants from one sex to the other (or, as with many transgender people, outside the gender binary entirely) grant us some unique patriarchal power?
There’s one thing that’s true about bigotry and prejudice that has always been true – you can’t trust the privileged to deny their privilege to the oppressed. You can’t trust this because the privileged are blind to their privilege, protective of it, or both. Men don’t like to admit to sexism, white people don’t like to admit to racism, and cis people don’t like to admit to transbigotry, transphobia, transmisogyny, you name it.
So when anyone – not just radical feminists, but anyone – proudly proclaims how they don’t accept trans women as real women, or don’t want us around, or construct elaborate theories about how we’re really patriarchal and gender oppressors, I find it difficult to take them at their word when they turn around and say “Oh, I’m not a bigot.” Please forgive me, but you’re not in a position to be the judge of that.
When you say
In recognizing their daily trauma and very real oppression they receive I don’t have the *guts* to sit in a room and speak the truths I feel about gender with a transperson.
it shows me that you don’t understand the oppression trans people receive (it’s about gender), you know the truths you feel about gender do not allow for the existence of trans people and are thus in some way wrong, and since you’re primarily talking about transsexual people here, you don’t understand that transsexualism isn’t about gender.
My oppression comes from the fact that women are supposed to be A and men are supposed to be B, and while I was born male-bodied, I am A and that is wrong and bad, and I get this from mainstream society, from religion, from talk show hosts, from people cheering on the murder of trans women, from people who casually joke about the murder of trans women, and so on. From radical feminsts, I get, “No, you’re really B, and you can never ever change, nor should you want to, because changing like that is wrong!” And then some of them accuse me of being a gender essentialist.
If you think that transgender, genderqueer, etc are about upholding the gender binary, you don’t understand that either.
Pisaquari also talks about how she only wants radfem events to be for those who were born and raised female, and nothing else, but she’s not talking in a vacuum. Many of the women who post at the MWMF forum (and many of those who identify as radical feminists) like to say that MWMF is one week out of the year – but they also talk about how there needs to be more exclusion in the feminist community, in the lesbian community, about how there needs to be fewer spaces that trans women are welcome in. They blog about this, and their commenters support them. This is the face of radical feminism that I see – one that doesn’t want me around, one that doesn’t want me to exist.
The truth is, about a year into my transition, I came across some radical feminist literature, and I liked it. I liked what it had to say about sexism – I was on the receiving end of sexism and had been for a few months, so I was new to experiencing it personally, but I knew it wasn’t temporary, that I was at risk for sexual assault, harrassment, would be treated as inferior and lesser just because I was a woman – and never how much worse that got when someone knew I was trans (and believe me, if I was required to pick one, I’d rather have just the sexism, thank you). I’d read several issues of Off Our Backs, read a few books . . . then I came across the transphobia. I came across the pure venom and hatred many radical feminists have for trans women. I assimilated the concepts that I thought had value, and otherwise left radical feminism behind. Every time I’ve encountered radical feminism since, it’s largely been characterized by how I’m a horrible person because of a list of “facts” that really have nothing to do with my life. Being told that my own life history is irrelevant and wrong because it doesn’t agree with the “theory.” That I shouldn’t be allowed to gather with so-called “real” women because my male birth means I’m a threat and a danger to them, because I can only be seen as a man and thus a potential rapist, or whatever you want to say.
That is my experience with radical feminism. If you don’t want to be considered a trans-hating movement, then it would probably help to start respecting trans people as people, respecting our histories, not imposing your own prejudices and narratives on our lives, using us to symbolize your oppression, and otherwise othering us so you can discriminate against us with a clean conscience.
Until then, you’re just as transphobic as any fundamentalist.
I know there are radical feminists who are not transphobic, who don’t have to contort their feminism into pretzels to justify hating an oppressed minority, who listened and learned about us, rather than following Janice Raymond’s example and outright lying about who we are, what we believe, and why we do what we do. I assume that bigoted hatred of transsexual people is separable from radical feminism and not intrinsic to the ideals of radical feminism.
So why not give it a try? Give up that stupid “against the sin, not the sinner” – whoops, I mean “against the politics, not the people” – ex-gay ministry-like rhetoric of “Questioning Transgender Politics” and try to deal with us honestly, not as caricatures you get to invent and warp as you please.
Until then, when you say and do transphobic things, you’ll get called on it.
Oh, one of the commenters:
Janice Raymond suffers from the same level of ‘critique’ as Andrea Dworkin- ridiculously hateful screeds by those who have never read anything by either of them, and never intend to. Shame on them. Those muppets should actually read Raymond and Dworkin… and get a spine and a clue.
I own a copy of The Transsexual Empire and have read it. I’ve read Raymond’s attempt to redefine lesbian sex into something politically acceptable to radical feminism. I’ve read Dworkin, but not a lot. I’m not impressed with Janice Raymond, as I’m sure you’re not (and truly, I’m not either) impressed with Warren Farrell’s writings on father’s and men’s rights.
Late addition: I found this on the Americans for Truth website. Compare and contrast with the radfem blogger’s language:
Are we afraid of transsexuals, bisexual, homosexuals? No. Do we disagree with their lifestyle choices and the ideologies and agendas they would foist on the nation — even on impressionable children through the public schools? You bet. (Never forget that homosexual/trans activists promote the notion of ‘transgender’ youth — the ‘T’ in the destructive “GLBT youth” equation.) The deliberate conflation of disagreement with fear is one of the more sinister ways in which sexual revolutionaries have “normalized” homosexual ideology and behavior in America.
Lovely post.
A.W.
March 17, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I sometimes think that transphobia is a good description of the dynamic even if you do take it literally. I mean, they insist that we are and always will be members of the sex we were assigned at birth – that looks like fear and hostility (phobia) towards the idea that crossing over is possible (trans).
Nick Kiddle
March 17, 2008 at 7:18 pm
This post rocks, Lisa, and shoudl be require reading.
And pisaquari’s post really doesn’t make sense. If she’s really such a strident “gender abolitionist,” why is the mere presence of a transperson in the room enough to shut her up?
I mean, just supposing for a minute that there actually is a “political stance” on a set of “transgender politics”: I’m passionate about causes I care about. I can, and have, stood in rooms full of anti-porn feminists and announced that I use pornography, that I find their critiques wrongheaded, and that I’m not sure their slideshows present a representative picture of mainstream pornography.
When I’m in those spaces, I do feel a bit intimidated, queasy, etc. But the fact that the whole room disagrees with me is not silencing, not if the issue is one I actually think is worth debating.
As I read pisaquarise, she’s actually admitting to a serious character flaw even if transphobia “doesn’t exist.” She’s claiming that her sense of self is so fragile it gets broken down among people who she disagrees with. And while it’s true that constantly being invalidated by a group around you can be a kind of erasure, lively debates around the Internet about who should be let in to a festival for women are not that.
Trin
March 17, 2008 at 7:28 pm
shouLD be requireD. bloody fingers.
Trin
March 17, 2008 at 7:37 pm
“So when anyone – not just radical feminists, but anyone – proudly proclaims how they don’t accept trans women as real women, or don’t want us around, or construct elaborate theories about how we’re really patriarchal and gender oppressors, I find it difficult to take them at their word when they turn around and say “Oh, I’m not a bigot.” Please forgive me, but you’re not in a position to be the judge of that.”
It’s like Freud. There are “theories” about why people are gay. Our dismissing them meant, perhaps, that we have a less nuanced story about where gayness comes from. Some people do bemoan this. But we got rid of that “theory” because, however internally consistent and elegant it seemed, it had nothing to do with anything.
Critiques of “transgender politics” could perhaps look internally coherent, even elegant to some… but they are not about anything, because there is no “transgender politics.” It’s like coming up with a theory about exactly how Santa Claus is capable of traveling around the world and leaving toys for every child in one night. One might well come up with a brilliant explanation of how this is possible — but one is *wasting one’s breath* because there is no Santa Claus.
Trin
March 17, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Yeah, actual transgender politics are identical to actual feminist politics – seeking equality and equitable treatment in society and under the law.
Of course, as we know, some radical feminists oppose such rights for trans people under the pretense that they would somehow lessen civil rights protections for women.
And yes, it’s a pretense. A lawyer came into that thread and told them it wouldn’t happen, but they blew her off because she was trans and they didn’t like what she had to say.
Lisa Harney
March 17, 2008 at 7:48 pm
I’m not sure it is always a pretense. I think of posts like Maia’s and Cicely’s from way back when, and they make me think that some people really do believe this not out of maliciousness but out of ignorance (and sometimes come to see their ignorance for what it is.) I think some people just do believe in “Santa Clauses”, simply because they’re very ignorant, and too nervous or frightened to see their ignorance for what it is. I’ve run into countless people, for example, who are anti-SM on “principle,” to whom I can talk for ten minutes about what SM is actually like, and who respond very quickly with, “oh, well if it’s like THAT, that’s fine. Actually, that’s really interesting. I thought it was like this [rattles off common narrative floating in the culture that scared hir]!”
But yeah, for the people who hold to the same line no matter what and attack others for questioning it, I totally agree that it’s a pretense.
Trin
March 17, 2008 at 7:53 pm
In Heart’s case, the line about it lessening rights for women was a pretense. She knows better, but she hates trans people so much she’s against us making any progress ever. The commenters on her blog are largely the same – they’re anti-trans as a matter of principle (or really, a lack of principles). They don’t care about the truth, they care about tearing us down whenever they can. We’re an easier target than the actual patriarchy, after all.
So yeah, I guess I should just come out and say they’re bullies, or wannabe bullies.
BTW, I have to apologize for forgetting to mention BDSM in my posts today. :(
Lisa Harney
March 17, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Oh, and from pisa’s post:
“I should have you know there is a P word I give to instances wherein a group of dissenting women are “diagnosed”–hysteria of some sort usually does the trick–and then told their paranoia can/must be solved by forcing the very thing/person they “fear” around them (5 homemade brownies in the next life to the person who gets it).”
So if a man has fear of women, and decides to start a business and only hire men so he doesn’t have to be around people he fears, and I step in and say that forcing him to be around women will not do him harm so he should learn to deal with it, does this P word apply?
If a white woman has fear of WOC, and decides to set up her own little enclaves so she can be herself without being around people she fears as ugly, brutish, uncivilized, loud, and otherwise threatening, and I say that this is her problem, does this P word apply?
Also, why do I see comparisons between transphobia and diagnosable fears ALL THE TIME, but yet never seem to see the same people refusing to use the word “homophobia” or coining neologisms that recognize the difference between homophobia and panic-inducing phobias?
Trin
March 17, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Also, I do realize a lot of people accept this stuff without holding onto it strongly enough that they won’t change their minds. That they’re not educated rather than malicious.
And yeah, her comparison of personal bigotry to hysteria is pretty self-serving.
Lisa Harney
March 17, 2008 at 8:23 pm
My father once came up with a short paper — with equations — about how this was accomplishable with pixie dust. (Given the necessary speed to achieve the second star to the right by morning.)
The thing is, when Dad does stuff like that, he knows full well he looks ridiculous.
Dw3t-Hthr
March 17, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Nick, sorry about your post getting caught in the spam trap. Anyway, yeah, I agree with what you say there.
They’re also engaged in essentialism of a sort they accuse us of doing.
Lisa Harney
March 18, 2008 at 1:16 am
I added a bit to the end of the post. It’s sort of interesting how they’re recycling fundamentalist homophobic and transphobic arguments to construct their own transphobic arguments.
Lisa Harney
March 18, 2008 at 5:07 am
“My father once came up with a short paper — with equations — about how this was accomplishable with pixie dust. (Given the necessary speed to achieve the second star to the right by morning.)”
Nice! But is he defending the theories which show that pixie dust must be real, or understanding he’s working in an imaginary framework? That’s the difference — they either can’t entertain the idea that they’re “theorizing” about something that isn’t actually real, or won’t entertain it because doing the “theory” gives them prestige among the ignorant.
Trin
March 18, 2008 at 6:52 am
awesome post. when’s/where’s the next CoF? this should be in it.
belledame2222
March 18, 2008 at 10:32 am
As per phobic: well, again, if it isn’t -fear-, what IS it? What exactly do you imagine is going to happen if you Maud forbid share a gigantic space in the woods with a handful of women who might still have discreetly tucked away and hormone-depleted phalli? or once did? The shower panic (yet another parallel with homophobic straight men, and you know what, yeah, I’m sure some of them can justify that fear with stories of personal abuse as well, in fact I’ve known a few who do have that going on as well): this isn’t -fear?- Okay: what -is- it?
Usually, when a homophobe pulls the “I’m not afraid!” they usually are doing it in a way that’s not only “I’m not a bigot” but “ain’t -scared- of these preverts/freaks/sissies; they just -disgust- me.” Which is of course much better, and immediately inclines one to stop calling them the nasty word that upsets them so, because, hey! Respect.
belledame2222
March 18, 2008 at 10:37 am
>>(5 homemade brownies in the next life to the person who gets it).”>>
too subtle for me, sorry! I missed the subtle part.
Can I just say, tangentially, that “in the next life” made me laugh out loud? Little Freudian slip, there, maybe: of course it would be in the next life, that’s what these people are all about. No brownies for you; you haven’t -earned- it, and brownies under the Patriarchy are irredeemably tainted anyway, don’t touch ‘em, ptui ptui.
belledame2222
March 18, 2008 at 10:40 am
“I’m not sure it is always a pretense. I think of posts like Maia’s and Cicely’s from way back when, and they make me think that some people really do believe this not out of maliciousness but out of ignorance (and sometimes come to see their ignorance for what it is.)”
Yes, which takes us back to my “Grand Unified Theory of Assholery.” They changed their minds, or were capable of it, because they’re basically decent people who are capable of experiencing basic human empathy and compassion. Whereas the reason people like Blanche and Rich and a lot of others take hateful positions is because, in fact, they’re hateful people: solipsistic, self-aggrandizing, more issues than National Geographic, tending to blame all their problems on external circumstances/people while at the same time devoid of self-insight, and just basically horrible.
I realize this is not a belief that is popular among many of the political theorists and spiritual people of this world, particularly the ones with whom I share general leanings. Nonetheless, I hold to it. Some things are more basic than ideology, and more important, also. They play out in ideology, they use ideology as frames and justifications, but ultimately you have to look under that.
belledame2222
March 18, 2008 at 10:46 am
“As I read pisaquarise, she’s actually admitting to a serious character flaw even if transphobia “doesn’t exist.” She’s claiming that her sense of self is so fragile it gets broken down among people who she disagrees with. ”
…exactly.
belledame2222
March 18, 2008 at 10:50 am
“Transphobia is not strictly defined as a “fear of transsexual or transgender people.” Its usage is directly related to “homophobia,” which is also not strictly defined as a “fear of GLB people.” It’s about bigotry. If someone is transphobic – or homophobic – they’re bigoted against trans people – or GLB people.”
“Bigot”? Geez there we go again. You do realize that a person can question and challenge “transitioning” while still wanting you to have rights, safety, and an overall happy and good life right?
I want the ability to be with like-minded individuals and only like-minded individuals for period of maybe a day, next year, to feel comfortable talking about/against transitioning (amongst other things)–if that makes me a bigot then fine. I suppose not wanting nonradfems there makes me nonradfemphobic too.
“Why do so many radical feminists waste their time trying to define trans women as not women, trying to characterize us in insulting, offensive, misogynist ways if you’re not transphobic?”
I don’t speak for Heart or Lucky or M Andrea but I am not saying transwomen are not *women*, per se, because “woman” is a semantics beehive.
What I *am* saying is that transwomen are not female born woman raised.
Which, to me, is akin to “duh.”
(and “insulting?” So far you’ve called me transphobic, fundamentalist, a bigot and -stolen from my post- a hateful panicbot. Different standards apply?)
“I mean the actual meaning of the word, not your shifted goalposts meaning. ”
You can give *the* (that should be The right?) “actual” meaning of the word all day.
Do you believe every person who says they are a woman?
The only way this argument works is if *your* actual meaning of the word goes for everyone–that is, of course, unless anyone who claims womanhood gets it.
Can’t have both.
“My oppression comes from the fact that women are supposed to be A and men are supposed to be B”
Hey, mine too. Do you get that I *don’t want people oppressing you*.
And no, I don’t feel having a radfem conference ( the only one I have addressed) of the female born and woman raised variety is oppressive to trans because it excludes them. Unless of course, and as stated, you believe nonradfems are being oppressed too. Perhaps you do.
“From radical feminsts, I get, “No, you’re really B, and you can never ever change, nor should you want to, because changing like that is wrong!””
Really? Did you get that from me?
I can’t mad lib that statement to make it applicable because the line of argument you have presented isn’t analogous to my feelings.
Here is my position in a nutshell:
1. Transwomen are people (yep! “people”) that have made some sort of *change* to be considered (trans) “women”
2. To have transitioned is to have supported the message that links what our bodies are to how we express them. That, to me, is gender. (That those expressions, however, oftentimes have binary influence-influence not carbon copy- is no accident.)
3. I don’t want body parts “expressible” (maybe you do? or don’t care either way)
To “express” womanhood/being a “woman” is to further define/perpetuate how those with the status of “woman” under Status Quo Norms should act or behave and, thusly, what people expect from them (for obvious reasons, you didn’t become trans to be considered translisa). Any positive re-enforcement of this, afaic, is problematic and oppressive.
4. I recognize that my latter points are not appreciated by transpersons so I’m not going to go out of my way (across seas, lots of expense) to say those things to transpersons who already have a hard enough time with conservative values. Contrary to typical conflation radfems are not conservatives–our positions are wholly different and you are smart enough to discern.
5. All I would like, wrt to trans exclusive spaces, are enough places I may go, in one lifetime, on one hand, that allow me to speak comfortably about the points presented above.
6. I will always question the motives of trans who can in one breath call me transphobic (or bigot, or fundamentalist) and then ask “So can I come?”
“Pisaquari also talks about how she only wants radfem events to be for those who were born and raised female, and nothing else, but she’s not talking in a vacuum.”
I never said “radfems events” because that to me implies all events. I don’t think all radfems events should be exclusionary.
“The truth is, about a year into my transition,…[this paragraph]” &
“That is my experience with radical feminism. If you don’t want to be considered a trans-hating movement, then it would probably help to start respecting trans people as people, respecting our histories, not imposing your own prejudices and narratives on our lives, using us to symbolize your oppression, and otherwise othering us so you can discriminate against us with a clean conscience.”
I don’t think you understand: no one is saying your history, or narrative didn’t happen. The point is what messages we feel are inherent in transitioning. People address messages all the time–people exclude people for the messages they send *all the time* (ever voted?).
“…whoops, I mean “against the politics, not the people” ”
If you are so informed of radical feminism then you should know how often this does not work Lisa. Addressing people makes radfems bigots, and personal *attackers*. Addressing generic points makes radfems bigots and personal *attackers*.
It’s no wonder we give up.
pisaquaririse
March 18, 2008 at 10:53 am
Yeah, fundamentalism is Open Source, innit? Free, as in the common cold.
Stassa
March 18, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Uh, yeah, pisqua, it does make you a bigot. Sorry if you don’t like being referred to/thought of in a way you don’t like to think of yourself as–oh, wait.
Difference is: whether or not someone -else- transitions? is not any skin off -your- ass. Someone else transitions, you don’t have to transition. Someone else -doesn’t- transition, you -still- don’t have to transition.
Sort of, oh I don’t know, in the same way that excuse me NOT homophobes who totally don’t want us -dead- or discriminated against at work or anything just want a space to themselves without our input where they can talk about how they don’t think we should be able to get married or have kids. Never mind the fact that whether or not we get those rights, -their- ability to get married or have kids with their partner or choice is not in question. Funny, that.
belledame2222
March 18, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Also: your ideology is not equivalent to someone else’s entire fucking LIFE. Again, any more than fundamentalist Christianity is being “discriminated against” because they can’t get their entire fucking way about how to run everyone else’s life -either.-
belledame2222
March 18, 2008 at 5:30 pm
and pisqua, as far as I know no transperson or “sex pox” or anyone else is banging down the door to get into your personal private treehouse. A gigantic national level music festival which is supposedly open to any woman who can pay the entry fee, much less a fucking -rape crisis shelter-, yeah, there are reasons why people want in even if they can’t personally stand -your- ass.
“You don’t own the street! You don’t own the whole street! If you want to own a street why don’t you move, and buy a street!…”
belledame2222
March 18, 2008 at 5:33 pm
also? I’m fairly certain that the people who were protesting the seating policies at certain lunch counters down South a few decades back, they weren’t doing it because they were so desperate for the company of the other customers and/or the food was so hot, you know…
belledame2222
March 18, 2008 at 5:43 pm
“You can give *the* (that should be The right?) “actual” meaning of the word all day.
Do you believe every person who says they are a woman?
The only way this argument works is if *your* actual meaning of the word goes for everyone–that is, of course, unless anyone who claims womanhood gets it.
Can’t have both.”
So, here’s a wacky notion, just entertain for a moment:
What if anyone who claimed womanhood -did- get it? What would happen?
Because, the whole hairsplitting some of y’all have about “wanting to do away with gender” doesn’t fit well with this deep-seated attachment to the idea that BEING BORN WITH A HOOHOO IS ULTRA IMPORTANT. Especially if you’re simultaneously trying to claim that it’s not -really- about the hoohoo, it’s about the message -society- drills into the recipient of the hoohoo (or non-recipient, respectively). What, you’re not society, now? You have no power to uphold the gender binary yourselves, is that it? So of course that’s so totally NOT what you’re doing when you scream your head off about who is or isn’t allowed into some stupid music festival or a forfuckssake -bathroom-. Heavens, no. You’re totally all about getting rid of the gender binary; it just has to be done your way. Even if that way involves calling yourself “she,” dressing more or less like a traditional albeit not terribly glamorous feminine woman, using the ladies’ loo without thinking twice about it, and so on, and so on, and so on.
Uh huh.
Look, why don’t you just come off it? You’re not -radical- feminists; you’re -cultural feminists.- Female supremacists, even. You have absolutely no intention of doing away with “gender” OR the sexual binary, because if there were no such thing as “womanhood” you’d have absolutely no identity whatsoever. You want to do away with the Patriarchy in about the same way that the CP wants the State to wither away: oh, sure, sure, someday, some day looooooong and far away, and of course you have no power, can’t get power, and certainly wouldn’t -want- power even if it were offered to you on a silver platter;
just, you know, there’s -work- to do, and stuff, and, gosh, well, we’re awfully -busy-, and all those other poor deluded slobs can’t -think- about this important shit as well as you can, it’s a dirty job but -someone- has to do it…
mm, mm hm.
belledame2222
March 18, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Pisaquari, I’m not fisking you here – you have a long post and it’s easier for me to process/respond to long posts by taking the points individually.
I realize that people don’t like it, but it’s just easier to be clear about what I’m specifically responding to by quoting it directly.
If you want me to have an overall happy and good life, why would you question transition? I attempted suicide several times before I started transition, and haven’t attempted suicide once since… If I hadn’t begun, I most likely wouldn’t be here to discuss this with you.
And what is it about transition that you question?
I guess the problem here is that trans people aren’t included in this dialogue about what’s wrong with transitioning. I think you’d be surprised at the perspectives trans people would bring on the subject of transition if you wanted to talk to us about it, rather than talk about it and against it away from us.
Obviously, not allowing non-radfems to come is reasonable because it’s a radfem gathering, but I do believe there are trans women who are also radfems, or at least used to be. Just being trans doesn’t mean reviling everything radical feminism has to say, or reviling radical feminism at all. It’s just that there’s so much radical feminist writing in actual books as well as the blogosphere that takes the position that trans people can be discussed and dissected without our input or acknowledgement of our own life histories or even identities as valid.
Well, yeah, of course not. That’s something that we’re not responsible for, any more than you’re responsible for being born female and raised a woman. However, you’re saying here that it’s okay to hold that against trans women, but in your post you say it’s not okay to point out the privilege you had in being born female and raised a woman.
I agree that “woman” is a semantic beehive. I just take people’s word for it, assuming they’re not clearly playing some kind of game (like men who pose as women online, and all the drama that can bring).
I get that from radical feminists in general, hence my references to Heart, Lucky, M Andrea, and…well, there’s a pretty long list.
Okay, so you don’t feel it’s analogous to your feelings: Do you challenge it when it comes from other radfems? Or do you let it slide? Do you not object to them even though you personally don’t hold them?
Well, to be considered women. We have a hard time shedding the “trans” part unless we’re seen as women and people can’t just look at us and say “Hey, I bet that person was born male.”
This doesn’t really strike me as more than a superficial analysis of transition. You’re talking about it in terms of how it supposedly reinforces gender by altering someone’s body as far as possible from male to female and female to male – and, I want to be clear on this, society hates this, because it violates the sense that what our bodies look like define who we are.
It also doesn’t acknowledge what trans people say about ourselves or our reasons for transition. See my comment previously about suicide, for example. Or check out Cameron McWilliams. The problem here is that on the one hand, you feel that transition does…what you say above. On the other hand, for people who transition, it’s usually a matter of life and death. Sure, not everyone has that narrative. Not every trans person who transitions partially or fully says they were that desperate.
Okay, one of the reasons that trans people transition is because our bodies feel wrong to us. Our brains expect our bodies to be one sex, and our bodies are the other sex, and this causes dissonance that gets worse over time. You’re reducing that to a matter of political theory about how people looking like women reinforces how women should act.
And, this is a critique that is leveled much less often against cis women who behave in traditionally feminine ways. It also seems to come with the assumption that trans women only behave in traditionally feminine ways, and there’s stereotype there based in truth – a truth that I personally criticize every chance I get. That truth isn’t that trans women are hyperfeminine stereotypes, but that the standards of care that are supposed to govern our transition and get us the letters for surgery encourage (or with some psychiatrists, even demand) that we present ourselves in a feminine or even hyperfeminine way.
In order to be diagnosed in the first place, I had to disavow any attraction I had to women, and state that I was attracted to men. In order to be prescribed hormones, the psychiatrist wanted to see me in a dress or skirt. The therapist I was seeing for voice work (and she was an awful voice therapist) insisted that I always wear dresses and skirts to her office. Even years later when I needed to see her about something, she insisted I wear a dress for the appointment, and not show up in my preferred (at the time) jeans.
And this wasn’t just something I experienced. Psychiatrists involved in the early days of gender clinics talked about assessing whether trans women would be attractive enough as women after they transitioned, and required a specific narrative to diagnose trans women that emphasized femininity. Since trans women are just diverse as cis women, a lot of us had to misrepresent ourselves as more feminine than we would have preferred just to get the treatment that would help encourage us to not kill ourselves, or at least not live out our lives in depression.
I really want that to be clear – transitioning isn’t – for trans people – about reinforcing the gender binary, or behaving in traditionally or stereotypically gendered ways, it’s about survival and quality of life.
You echoed a popular religious right argument about homophobia almost word for word. No, you’re not conservatives, but when it comes to trans people, a lot of radfems are downright paleolithic.
The problem with your assumption is that there’s parts of your concerns about transition that I think could use discussion, but I think that those concerns tend not to be applied to cis women in general, and that those concerns tend to be applied to transition as a whole rather than something a few people do, or something that was (and in some places, still is) reinforced by the medical profession and not the people who go to the medical profession for help.
But is it useful to discussion transition in the absence of people who undergo it? Without really acknowledging why we do it?
Not all trans people are the same person. I never asked if I could come.
However, I want to draw a completely valid parallel here: When activsts were trying to end segregation, they walked into lunch counters and other businesses where they were not welcome, and probably were more than willing to call the owners and customers who didn’t want them there racist and bigoted (and rightly so). Would you question their motives? Would you ask them “What’s wrong with you that you say these people are racist, but you want to be welcome in their spaces?”
Because that’s what your statement above is like. You’re asking why trans people would call anyone out on their anti-trans bigotry and yet still want to participate. The answer is pretty simple – many trans women feel they belong in women’s culture, which means that they want to come, and they’re being discriminated against.
Are you just saying my tone is off because you don’t like how I questioned your anti-trans statements? That you don’t like being seen as prejudiced against trans women? Obviously you don’t, you spent an entire post arguing that you couldn’t be transphobic because you don’t fear trans people, something that a lot of conservatives take time to do with homophobia.
If you want to question and analyze what trans people do without having trans people present? You’re not going to come to any kind of informed conclusions about us or transition. At best, you’ll get back into the kind of statementsthat say high heels and lipstick (and other gendered markers) are bad, and you don’t need to talk about transition to come to that conclusion, as Twisty Faster’s blogging history can easily attest. I mean, if you want to question ” the message that links what our bodies are to how we express them,” you don’t need transition to illustrate your conclusions, or to object across transd bodies. You don’t need to exclude trans women from these discussions – many of whom have had to deal with expectations that womanhood requires certain expressions, and would probably love to discuss this.
It’s like if a bunch of white people got together to discuss how much of a problem it is that part of the black community reinforces stereotypes by using the n* word toward each other. How could they really be informed on the meaning of that usage, or whether the entire black community agrees with it? What theory of use could they come up with, that relates to black people’s lived realities, without asking black people in the first place? And why should they concern themselves over it in the first place? Isn’t it something for the black community to deal with? Why are they sticking their noses in?
Or, perhaps more close to home, men getting together to discuss how feminism is harming society. MRAs do this, they talk about about symbolic caricatures they call feminism and whine about it at length, they assign their own prejudices and beliefs to feminism and set that straw on fire repeatedly. What value can their discourse bring if they don’t actually pay attention to what feminists are saying and doing, and choose instead to attack a big straw dummy they pretend is feminism?
That’s how I feel about most of the radical feminist discussions I see about transsexualism and transgender – we’re ignored, our comments aren’t approved, we’re told straight to our faces that we can’t be relied on to tell the truth and someone else’s narrative about what she thinks is true about trans people is imposed upon us. There’s a lot of talk about trans issues among radical feminists, but any actual input from trans people isn’t usually welcome.
Lisa Harney
March 18, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Uh, you know, I don’t get that argument. Of course everyone who claims womanhood gets it. ‘Cause, you know, they, like, have it already? Men are not in the habit of claiming womanhood and women are not in the habit of claiming manhood. Generally, human beings claim the gender they are- and get it, because, well, duh. What planet do men claim to be women on?
Listen. Humans, they don’t define either gender as “claims to be the other”.
You don’t like gender? Fine by me. It both suits me and hinders me, like most. You want it gone? Good luck with that. I ain’t helping, I ain’t stopping you. But respect how people interact with what they have in their head and know what that is. The rules of gender, unlike gender itself, are set in stone.
And men don’t fragging wanna be women. OK?
Stassa
March 18, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Oh, I forgot that one:
The word in question being “transphobia” which refers to prejudice against trans people in the same way that homophobia refers to prejudice against gay and lesbian people, and racism refers to prejudice against people of color. In your post, you tried to redefine transphobia as a medical diagnosis of “Fear of trans people,” which is exactly the same argument that religious fundamentalists use to argue that they’re not homophobic – I even linked to an example in the post, and Belledame linked to another in her post. You even tried to conflate pointing out anti-trans prejudice with diagnoses of hysteria. In my experience, dealing with racists, sexists, homophobes, ableists, transphobes…in every case, the person who actually spends time trying to redefine the word into something else so they can say it doesn’t apply to them? It usually does apply to them.
Do I believe every person who says they are a woman? No, I’ve been involved in online gaming and chatting, and I’ve encountered a few men who pose as women. I don’t mean trans people, or transvestites, but men who carefully construct an elaborate alternate online identity as women. But, that’s specifically online, and those identities tend to come across a certain way, and after you’ve seen a few, the rest tend to show their slip.
But for the most part, yes, I do accept that most people who say they’re women are women. Generally speaking, men won’t ever claim to be women and women won’t ever claim to be men. People know what their gender – or if you prefer, their sense of what sex they are. I know from personal experience that this knowledge does not always match up with what sex you’re born with.
Why shouldn’t everyone who claims womanhood get it? You know that there’s not a prize for being a woman, that being a woman is not actually a socially advantageous position. What would a man gain from becoming a woman? Why would a man want to be a woman? I’m pretty much left with actual women wanting to be women, and that “actual women” includes trans women as well as cis women, as far as I’m concerned.
Do you think there’s legions of actual men waiting to claim womanhood? Why would you think that?
Lisa Harney
March 18, 2008 at 8:44 pm
And that last is the $64,000 question, isn’t it.
I said a little something at my place, too.
belledame2222
March 18, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Pisaquari, I am curious as to what you mean by gender pimps as a tag for your posts related to transgender issues. I’m not sure how referring to transgender people as “gender pimps” is not somehow a slur against transgender people. Could you explain this to me? What exactly is a gender pimp, and why am I supposed to take you at your word that you respect my identity when you are willing to tag your discussions about trans issues as “gender pimps?”
And while you’re explaining that, why do you praise a website as “crazy brilliant” that hosts articles about trans people that include outright lies like this?
This (page 14) is what actually happened:
But does it stop there? No. Karla Mantilla also says
If you do not support the assertion that trans women are not women, why are you so enthusiastic about a website that supports the assertion that trans women are men? That we shouldn’t have access to women’s services? From the front page:
How about Karla Mantilla invoking the image of trans women as potential rapists? Especially building that image off of a lie – off of an event that never happened? Can you explain to me why this site is so insightful and daring for questioning transgender politics when Karla Mantilla’s basically just slagging off trans women as penis-flashing rapists? This passage here:
Not being bigoted against trans people means doing more than just saying you respect our identities and our lives. It means not supporting websites and groups that actively propagate transphobic propaganda about people just to justify keeping us segregated from you. It means actually listening to us when we say “Hey, what you said there is not cool.”
Karla also continues to refer to trans women as men and males. How is this not extremely disrespectful and how is she not attacking the people rather than politics in this essay? Could you please explain this to me?
In Maia’s post, you say
Could you explain how characterizing trans women as rapists and actively working against trans women being included in social programs for women is working against the politics and not the people? Could you go through those articles and justify what they say? Justify why Alix Dobkin is willing to say:
But what she really means is “Be ourselves as long as you don’t be the wrong kind of ourselves: Don’t transition.”
Read the entire article. She’s condemning trans men, characterizing them as “fleeing womanhood” which shows she either doesn’t know or doesn’t believe what these men have to say about why they transition. She’s again not talking about politics, she’s telling these men who lived for years or decades as lesbians to stop transitioning and live as women, even though living that way is painful enough that they are transitioning.
There’s nothing to this site that acknowledges trans people’s lived experiences and realities. It’s about dismissing our experiences and realities, about saying that transition is wrong and probably immoral, that dependence upon the medical establishment makes us willing and eager participants in patriarchal oppression (as opposed to, for example, diabetics who take insulin, or cancer patients who undergo chemo and radiation therapy).
So if you want to know one of the lines I draw? It’s this: If you actively promote a hate site dedicated to demeaning trans lives and bodies – and you do – you’re prejudiced against me. You may not believe it, you may not want to believe it, but I’m right here telling you that I can’t even count the number of trans people who have posted comments here, comments on their own blogs, sent e-mail, thanking me for taking the time to criticize, question, and deconstruct Questioning Transgender, because when they came across it, they didn’t always have a ready response. I certainly didn’t. It made me ill to read that, and that’s another thing many trans people have told me – they felt ill reading that.
If you’re truly honestly plausibly not transphobic, not bigoted against trans people, then now’s your chance to prove it – read what I’m saying here. Look – honestly, seriously look – at what Questioning Transgender’s essays and articles are really saying about trans people. Read my posts from November that deconstruct those articles and explain what’s wrong with them from a trans woman’s perspective. Don’t just accept at face value that it is what the preface says it is. It’s a one-sided site dedicated to promoting anti-transgender and anti-transsexual sentiment.
I realize I may sound like I’m stuck on the rapist thing, but for real, don’t you see how obnoxiously offensive that is? Or basing an entire argument on an event that never happened? This site you say is brilliant spreads lies about trans women to discredit us and keep us excluded from women’s spaces.
Oh, and transgender politics?
National Transgender Advocacy Coalition describes its politics:
Read the whole thing.
How about GenderPAC? Surely they must have some of those noxious transgender politics that QTP talks about, right?
Please tell me what’s wrong with that? Please point to where there’s actual activism that doesn’t fit that. Please tell me what trans people are doing that’s so horrible. Show me how transgender and transsexual people – by violating and crossing and transgressing gender boundaries – are reinforcing patriarchal norms of gender. I would like to know.
Lisa Harney
March 19, 2008 at 3:31 am
I agree with your argument about the meaning of homophobia. In my opinion, it’s politics, not fear. I made the same argument in my 2004 article in the Journal of Bisexuality, entitled “GL vs. BT: The Archaeology of Biphobia and Transphobia in the U.S. Gay and Lesbian Community,” which you can read at http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~jweiss/glvsbt.htm Here’s the conclusion of the article:
“As we have seen, the historical circumstances of the construction of homosexuality in the U.S. created power relations, which called both for a more inclusive grouping and, at the same time, for a more exclusive grouping. These power relations created the four different groups of which the homosexual community are composed, assigning them different identities, different resources, different spaces in the political sphere. It is these social constructions that created the environment for identity politics within the homosexual community. To the extent that this identity politics has created prejudice and discrimination within the community, it might be more accurate to call it “heterosexism” or “internalized heterosexism” rather than dividing the community even further by referring to “biphobia” and “transphobia”, as if bisexuals and transgenders are outside of the community. I understand the argument that “biphobia” and “transphobia” are useful terms because they label phenomena different in some ways from “homophobia.” However, to so define them is to demarcate different spaces inhabitable only by those who are thereby indelibly marked as “not one of us.” I prefer to go with Rust’s understanding: “Heterosexism refers to the whole constellation of psychological, social and political factors that favor one form of sexuality over another.” (Rust 1996:26) Prejudice in gay and lesbian communities against bisexuals and transgenders is heterosexism because it is an accommodationist attempt to disavow these more “radical” forms of sexuality.”
Dr. Jillian T. Weiss
March 19, 2008 at 6:03 am
That’s an interesting point about the bigotry against LGBT people and how distinguishing them can be used. I’ve argued in the past that transphobia and homophobia come from very similar (virtually identical in many ways, but still differentiated) places and that this is why being allies – or being part of the same larger umbrella – makes sense.
Lisa Harney
March 19, 2008 at 6:15 am
>>Gays and lesbians have struggled for decades to be able to name ourselves and to BE ourselves.>>
That’s wight, wabbit. And that’s why those of us who aren’t total “I’ve got mine, Jack/I suffered, not YOU suffer” arseholes know better than to turn around and contribute to making anyone -else- go through the same miserable process.
belledame2222
March 19, 2008 at 7:41 am
“not=now”
belledame2222
March 19, 2008 at 7:41 am
p.s. dear Alix: a lot of the ev0l transpeople are ALSO gays and lesbians, TOO. just like lesbians (trans or otherwise) are women AND lesbians, black lesbians are women AND lesbian AND black…
belledame2222
March 19, 2008 at 7:43 am
“That’s an interesting point about the bigotry against LGBT people and how distinguishing them can be used. I’ve argued in the past that transphobia and homophobia come from very similar (virtually identical in many ways, but still differentiated) places and that this is why being allies – or being part of the same larger umbrella – makes sense.”
exactly why–well, a large part of why–I care so strongly about this.
belledame2222
March 19, 2008 at 7:44 am
“Please tell me what’s wrong with that? Please point to where there’s actual activism that doesn’t fit that. Please tell me what trans people are doing that’s so horrible. Show me how transgender and transsexual people – by violating and crossing and transgressing gender boundaries – are reinforcing patriarchal norms of gender. I would like to know.”
While we’re at it, I’m still waiting for a traditional family values type to explain to me how gay marriage destroys het marriage, with specific examples if possible.
I won’t hold my breath till either, though.
belledame2222
March 19, 2008 at 7:47 am
(and “insulting?” So far you’ve called me transphobic, fundamentalist, a bigot and -stolen from my post- a hateful panicbot. Different standards apply?)
You know, not only is this exactly like homobigots whining about being called homophobes, it’s like MRA loons acting like calling them misogynists is the height of all insults to them. *eyeroll*
J.Goff
March 19, 2008 at 11:30 am
Lisa, first off, I just want to thank you, truly from the bottom of my heart, for the work that you do on this blog. When I read the messages of hate coming from QTP or the Michfest boards or Heart, or I read people like Pisaquari telling us that they’re not transphobic while lionizing those who publish those messages so full of hate, I can only shake and cry – I cannot respond in a coherent way, so I am glad that you are able to do so.
And I want to thank you, also, Belledame, for your fierceness in calling out transphobia wherever and whenever you see it.
Now onto Pisaquari:
2. To have transitioned is to have supported the message that links what our bodies are to how we express them. That, to me, is gender. (That those expressions, however, oftentimes have binary influence-influence not carbon copy- is no accident.)
Note to Pisaquari: If we lived in a society that had no concept of gender, I would still physically transition. Why? Because I do not want the body that I have, I do not want the genitals that I have, and I want my body to be different, and I have the right to my bodily autonomy, including the right to modify my body as I see fit.
Second Note to Pisaquari: If we lived in a society that had no concept of gender, there would be no MWMF. There would be no women’s spaces. Everybody would share the same bathroom, regardless of the (presumed) shape of their genitals. If there’s no concept of “woman” or “man” – a concept that you claim to support, then there’s no need to define separate spaces. Scary, innit? You can circle the wagons and womyn the guard towers around your sacrosanct “women-born-women spaces”, or you can truly support the elimination of gender. You can’t have it both ways.
GallingGalla
March 19, 2008 at 1:31 pm
“f we lived in a society that had no concept of gender, there would be no MWMF. There would be no women’s spaces. Everybody would share the same bathroom, regardless of the (presumed) shape of their genitals. If there’s no concept of “woman” or “man” – a concept that you claim to support, then there’s no need to define separate spaces. Scary, innit? You can circle the wagons and womyn the guard towers around your sacrosanct “women-born-women spaces”, or you can truly support the elimination of gender. You can’t have it both ways.”
i bin sayin’.
but, yeah, funny how that works.
Heart’s contortions to try to explain how nonono GENDER is not SEX, we just want to do away with GENDER, there are still two SEXES and always will be are entertaining in a traffic accident sort of way. Right, so, okay: we all keep the genitals we had, let’s say; still not seeing why you need a separate festival, unless the fest is all about teh genitals, perhaps? No? Gee.
or for that matter, bathrooms: maybe we’d keep urinals, but the little sacrosanct M or F on the door? What for?
or gendered pronouns. Use ‘em for yourself? Or do you insist that other people use gender-neutral pronouns when referring to you? No? -Gee.-
Yeah, I know: that’s Utopia, we have to live in the present, make concessions to the world we actually live in as opposed to the idealized one we (say we) want.
Funny; I think that’s pretty much what everyone’s been saying here all the fuck along.
That, and: stuff like the pronouns, other gestures of solidarity with the “non-gendered” world one wishes for: you know, those might not be too -convenient-, but gosh, they’re fairly -simple- on an individual level. Doable, even.
-holds breath until Heart does any of those things-
What’s that phrase? “Be the change you seek?”
belledame2222
March 19, 2008 at 2:31 pm
“stolen from my post?” Say wha? -stolen-?
what strange little minds these people have…
belledame2222
March 19, 2008 at 9:25 pm
“If you want me to have an overall happy and good life, why would you question transition? I attempted suicide several times before I started transition, and haven’t attempted suicide once since…”
Lisa, I question a lot of things/concepts: heterosexuality, all sexuality, the beauty/health industry, feminisms, myself, fairy tales for godssake. Would you say I don’t want anyone, who participated in something I questioned, to have a good life? My questioning nature brought me to feminism, seems to have brought you to starting this site. Is it the questioning you don’t like or the questioning of a part of *your life* you don’t like?
You can’t know/won’t believe how much I would never want suicidal thoughts running through anyone’s head.
But linking this point to my stance on questioning seems a deliberate, yet subtle way, of vilifying one of my points. I will see it as such till you clarify further.
“And what is it about transition that you question?”
That was laid out in my numerical “nutshell” response.
“I guess the problem here is that trans people aren’t included in this dialogue about what’s wrong with transitioning. I think you’d be surprised at the perspectives trans people would bring on the subject of transition if you wanted to talk to us about it, rather than talk about it and against it away from us.”
Well first, I wouldn’t advocate for trans persons to be excluded from all dialogues wherein radfems discuss what they find troubling about it (I won’t use “wrong” because the connotations of that word are not consistent with my feelings). I am here at your blog. You are welcome at mine.
And there’s always more I could do right? There always someone’s perspective I won’t be getting (even after this hurrah dies down). I have no problem with reading further–my problem has stemmed from any accusations of hate that really don’t act to further dialogue between the different sides. As well, the overreactions to ancillary events such as the one I have supported this whole time. Since you seem claim later in your comment to not care about it anyways I don’t really know where/how to focus this response.
“Obviously, not allowing non-radfems to come is reasonable because it’s a radfem gathering,”
And if it’s a radfem female born woman raised gathering? The second condition is simply a narrowing of the first–both are exclusionary and leave out people (in both categories) who might apply to the other condition.
i.e. female born woman raised nonradfems and radfem non female born woman raised women.
The rest of the paragraph with the point above I agree with. And I would say it goes both ways and that’s a problem. I don’t think it’s so confusing, then, to understand why a small exclusionary event would happen. Especially if it is to happen next year. The sides haven’t come to any great consensus, yet (no sign of happening).
I still believe the way I do and, still, you and others will hold I am transphobic–it makes no sense to me why, at this point, someone would have offered up a trans inclusive radfem conference. Does it to you?
I, personally, wouldn’t go through what it would take to meet up with all sides knowing what I know at this point about transitioning debates and the very real divide. We’d *at least* have to be getting along on the internet. That’s not happening.
“However, you’re saying here that it’s okay to hold that against trans women, ”
Do you mean in general or because of the event I am supporting? I don’t *hold* anything against trans women anymore than I hold any person accountable for their involuntary status. The event would also be excluding other people for certain involuntary statuses (i.e. male born man raised men). The event is exclusive on many levels. You seem to be cherry picking the exclusion for yourself where it applies but not for others.
“Do you challenge it when it comes from other radfems? Or do you let it slide? Do you not object to them even though you personally don’t hold them?”
The line of reasoning you posited as radical feminists view is as much a caricature piece of dialogue as you say radfems project on trans. I have not seen that line of thinking explicitly from other bloggers. It’s too simple and too many have presented in depth analyses on their positions for me to credit that statement with authors.
When there are arguments and heated debates, yes I see radfems who seem to speak/type in haste and anger (I’m sure I have), resulting in a bigger fire. That does us no good, absolutely. I don’t jump into too many frays wherein I align with someone and just back them up. I usually like to speak for myself and let someone else do their dirty work. For this alone I have backed out many times, in many situations where I should have lent my voice/support.
Hold me accountable for it by all means,
(and wrt this question, I ask the same of you? This post (transphobia and sophistry) makes me feel very much otherwise)
“one of the reasons that trans people transition is because our bodies feel wrong to us. Our brains expect our bodies to be one sex, and our bodies are the other sex”
Okay, this summarizes the point where I become immensely confused (yes I have read elaborations on this–they do not help, but here goes). To ask further questions means to ask personal information so, as I said to someone on my blog, answer at will:
how does this work? And how does surgery fix it–is there some connection between the form of the genitalia (or something?) that is repaired when the physical form of the genitalia changes? The link between the feeling of *wrongness* and the physical genitalia seems very vague to me.
“However, I want to draw a completely valid parallel here: When activsts were trying to end segregation…,”
You know, I just have to say, what would feminists do without racism or poc’s history to compare their every point to?
As for:
“they walked into lunch counters and other businesses where they were not welcome, and probably were more than willing to call the owners and customers who didn’t want them there racist and bigoted (and rightly so).”
Absolutely not a parallel. For starters, radical feminists most certainly do not have the pull, authority, or influence white society had on blacks and, further, are not advocating for separation on such legal or societal levels (and wouldn’t). What it took for poc’s to make those moves into white institutions/business, the threats and dangers they faced, are in no way comparable to what trans face in coming into a radfem female born woman raised space.
I wonder if you thought, when you made this statement, how you would make a radfem woc feel who advocated for female born woman raised space–that she, for feeling more comfortable in such a space (especially as few and far between they actually are) is a “valid parallel” to the persons responsible for her history of racist oppression.
(the vilification is now becoming insulting to those with whom you would like to wax poetic some sort of similar oppression. How many comments are you from a Nazi-ism assertion?)
“many trans women feel they belong in women’s culture, which means that they want to come, and they’re being discriminated against.”
If this is still using your segregation “parallel” (and either way) then it seems you are saying poc’s wanted to “belong” to white culture. White culture wanted white culture to continue on Supremely. Radical feminists do not want any such concepts as “woman” to continue on–a construct invented by and for the patriarchy. That is the ends we are working towards but we have to acknowledge, even in working towards that end, the conditions of the present day “woman”: oppressed and abused and broken. Some abused female born women raised have no issue with transwomen in what are considered “woman” only spaces but *some do*–and radical feminists should be able to advocate for both in respect for the unique situations (I would *never* agree with a radfem imposing on you or any other trans exclusive event).
And going off that, I am still unclear Lisa as to whether you would like “woman” to continue forward. If you do and I do not (as with other radfems) then you would understand why perhaps your view would be further unwelcome in a place where female born women have gathered for commonality and healing.
Further, a few female born women raised spaces does not keep you from being a part of “women’s culture” as you say.
And whatever the answer to my above question I will explain below (in the next comment) why I feel how you are proposing we deal with the issue of “womanhood” is problematic.
pisaquaririse
March 20, 2008 at 7:54 am
“Why shouldn’t everyone who claims womanhood get it?”
& “”But for the most part, yes, I do accept that most people who say they’re women are women.”
Certainly you know you are not representative of all transpersons and that plenty do in fact support patriarchal doctrines and ideas.
There are plenty of men dressing as women, wanting to be considered women, who would be *very* triggering for safe spaces–your definition would allow them in.
There are, further, those wishing to have a transition who cannot afford it who would still prefer to be considered/claim to be women–again, your definition includes those people who would be triggering.
Your loose standards for “women” do wonders for endangering the few safe spaces many women can go who are in no way doing the same to you. You and many others admit that trans is a very wide and inclusive term–with all the varieties you should know there are a number of variations that would be upsetting to previously abused and raped women.
Having such a definition is all the more reason to continue making this female born woman raised distinction.
If claiming womanhood is such a free for all in your eyes then what business have you in even attempting conversation (or laying claim you want to) with radical feminists who aim to provide women a variety of resources in some immensely sensitive situations.
This to me Lisa says you really do not respect a great deal of women’s own history and narratives.
“In your post, you tried to redefine transphobia as a medical diagnosis of “Fear of trans people,” which is exactly the same argument that religious fundamentalists use to argue that they’re not homophobic”
I said nothing about phobias requiring a “medical diagnosis.” No one had to tell me I feared elevators for me to fear them. As for fundamentalists and homophobia, yes I believe they do in fact fear them, the fear manifesting as hate, the hate manifesting as name-calling, physical assaults, avoiding them at all costs, mockery.
You say people who are bigoted against trans are transphobic and very well then. That you would include those protective of, and participatory in, female born woman raised spaces for (once again) the safe haven they provide in a category of bigots is so backwards to me.
Do you get that radfems are not saying all spaces should have this distinction? Do you get that radfems would allow you the same right?
We are not saying the sides should never mingle but we *are* saying a duality is present wherein “woman” is to be erased and “woman” is till a status many are abused for. It’s not like everyone agrees “woman” needs to be gone. It’s not like radfems say “woman” means nothing and then it doesn’t. We *have* to account for those who have been abused and hurt for their *women* status (yes that includes transwomen) and we *have* to account for those whose abuses are so tremendous (as many are) that where they feel they may go for peace of mind is respected.
I would consider anyone who felt those conditions could not/should not coexist to be negligent.
“In every case, the person who actually spends time trying to redefine the word into something else so they can say it doesn’t apply to them? It usually does apply to them.”
You know Lisa, I wonder how would feel if I said this to you about being a “man”? That you, by redefining “woman” or putting your own spit on it (b/c you know “woman” *has* been narrowly defined for quite some time by males)–that all your insistences otherwise are *proof* that you in fact are one.
I’ve said what I have to say about where I stand on this. I was making sure that you were more fully aware of just exactly who you were calling transphobic and on what grounds. If you can read my responses and still force-feed prejudice into every word then so be it (mad libbing conservative statements is a rather innocuous point–one could do this for all types of things and draw comparisons).
As to why people *want* to be women?
I couldn’t tell you why anyone would *want* to be a woman because I am a radical feminist who feels being considered a woman is the bane of my existence.
But I can tell you that, being a feminist, I know LOTS of people who don’t get that women are oppressed and who couldn’t, if asked, explain what’s so bad with being a woman. Plenty of people (not just MRA’s) think women are privileged and exaggerating their woes. Plenty of people think the Women’s Rights Movement is done (we got our birth control so we should stfu). Plenty of people could not identify an act of sexism if it happened to them–as it is, many feminists are divided on what acts even constitute sexism.
I haven’t gotten the impression that the majority of people believe/acknowledge women are the lesser sex (have you?). It wouldn’t surprise me then that this information skipped a person wanting to transition as well.
Further, it does not dumbfound me that a person would be confused regarding their identify on a sex or gender level.
Gender is a VERY powerful construct, oftentimes touted as the same as sex (any variation to be a *defect*) with a million contradictions, power paradigms, and destructive forces (as you know, people *kill* over it).
That persons are driven to transition and question their identity, or feel strongly against their selves, does not surprise me.
pisaquaririse
March 20, 2008 at 7:59 am
“I am curious as to what you mean by gender pimps as a tag for your posts related to transgender issues. I’m not sure how referring to transgender people as “gender pimps” is not somehow a slur against transgender people.”
Gender pimps, as you will notice throughout my blog, is a tag I’ve applied to posts on beauty standards, pornography, misogyny, feminist debates, etc… Gender pimps is the way I spit my vitriol at gender in a quick and easy-sum kind of way. Yes, I feel gender “pimps” people–sells us as an image, in a role, costs us time and money, causes heart ache, is used for oppression as well as orgasms and is, generally, a massive construct affecting us all. I think everyone, basically, is a gender pimp (reciever or giver) to some degree. I actually regret not tagging more posts with it.
But no, it’s not specific to trans–who yes, I feel, also utilize gender (exact binary or not)
“why do you praise a website as “crazy brilliant” that”
I didn’t praise the website, I praised the article on the points it raised and said specifically in my comments that I was not endorsing the entire website as I hadn’t enough information to do so, and, invited such critique there.
As to Tony and the event the article referenced I am not all that familiar with any history off hand (I liked the article because I thought the comparisons they drew for how S/M and transpersons approach radical feminists/ism to be spot on). And I can’t say, after reading the page 14 you linked to I am anymore clear on what happened. Is the article lying about who/what Tony is or what Tony did?
“If you do not support the assertion that trans women are not women, why are you so enthusiastic about a website that supports the assertion that trans women are men? That we shouldn’t have access to women’s services?”
Once again, I am not versed enough on the website. I can like an article from a website and not the whole site (I don’t like the term transphobia as it has been applied and as you are using it and still I agree with some of your points)–I am not all or nothing with the website.
Access to female born woman raised services?–Those I agree should be just that. Just as I think there should be services for transwomen (and that such services don’t always have to be separate).
“Not being bigoted against trans people means doing more than just saying you respect our identities and our lives.”
I agree. But, as stated earlier, you have a very dangerous definition of “woman” that I feel will work to further alienate/isolate certain sensitive situations and that, in turn, disrespects several women’s lives.
How do you propose we bridge that besides what I have advocated for in these comments?
“In Maia’s post, you say”
That was Deb’ comment and thus much of what you say following does not apply to what I have said.
As well, throughout this comment I am responding to you keep clinging to my alleged grand support for Questioning Transgender–”actively promoting” as you say. I have linked to one article and said I loved it. Is that “actively promoting”??
I do not have the time at the moment to read through the two sites you linked but both, from the excerpts you left, appear to be organizations I would support.
I have read more on your website in one day than I have on Questioning Transgender and here is what I can say:
I don’t believe you are interested in presenting a full picture of this debate. You have a tag called “radical feminism terrorism”–I think you and I both know the weight “terrorism” carries and applying it to radical feminists is just as “obnoxious” as calling transpersons rapists (<yes, I find that obnoxious too). You use terms like “cisgender” which radfems no more accept than you accept being called a “man”. You have titled your site “questioningtransphobia” which essentially is a “slur” to anyone who disagrees with you or whom you link to as being anti-trans (do you believe “transgender” wrt to questioningtransgender’s site,is as offensive to you as transphobia is to radfems?). Not once do I see from you mention of the work radical feminists are doing to protect safe spaces–do you not care about them? Do you have any intention of addressing the abused who may feel uneasy about your trans’ presence in certain places? Don’t you think that would help?
And here’s the thing: you’re no more guilty for such a one-sided take than anyone else. Radical feminists, as I have said, need to step it up wrt to recognizing the oppression and violence against trans. When each sides brings with them decades of inherited bad blood there becomes very little chance of having a productive discussion because the agenda is too full, the pain is too much, and the anger is easier.
Shouldn’t these actions stop across the board?
How invested would you be in such a cause?
pisaquaririse
March 20, 2008 at 8:02 am
I’m sorry about confusing you and Debs, not sure why I did that – probably just plain fatigue.
As for why I have a tag called “radical feminist terrorism,” it’s sort of a response to a category/tag on this post in which Heart complained that little light, another trans woman blogger, had not mentioned Robin Morgan in reference to the use of monster imagery in feminist poetry/writing. Heart included “male terrorism” in the tags. Why would that be necessary in discussing a woman’s writings?
I probably didn’t pick the best post to apply it to, I haven’t been happy with it, and I haven’t used it since that particular post.
I don’t have time at the moment to give your comments the responses they really should have, though. Thank you for writing these.
Lisa Harney
March 20, 2008 at 8:15 am
>>>Radical feminists, as I have said, need to step it up wrt to recognizing the oppression and violence against trans. When each sides brings with them decades of inherited bad blood there becomes very little chance of having a productive discussion because the agenda is too full, the pain is too much, and the anger is easier.
I’m sorry, it’s not equal. Radical feminism has explicitly defined trans women as the enemy. See, The Transsexual Empire, The Whole Woman, everything by Sheila Jeffreys, MWMF, Vancouver Rape Relief, etc etc etc.
And trans women? Well, Camp Trans = a reaction to that policy. Sandy Stone’s The Empire Strikes Back = a reaction to The Transsexual Empire.
You want to have a productive dialogue? Stop calling us men. Stop freaking out about us using female bathrooms, all we want to do is go to the toilet without being attacked or arrested. Stop referencing Silence of the Lambs or Psycho. Stop lobbying against trans inclusion of ENDA type law reforms, our rights will not diminish your own. Stop behaving as though “women” and ‘”trans” women are two separate groups. Stop pretending as though it’s not possible for you to repress anyone because you’re women born women, because it is, it’s bloody possible for *anyone* to.
Stop attacking us, and stop pretending as though there has been anything resembling a good faith dialogue. And then we’ll talk.
queen emily
March 20, 2008 at 8:32 am
“Why would that be necessary in discussing a woman’s writings?”
I don’t know that post and cannot say at this moment. I will read what you have linked.
“Stop calling us men.[the rest of this]”
To queen emily (and the point Lisa raised): see how difficult this is? One radical feminist/trans person has to speak for *everything* that particular opposing person has been hurt by/wants changed.
How does “good faith dialogue” come about in this atmosphere? Is it all radfems queen emily?
Is there no jumping off point? Can we begin moving forward while still remembering and discussing the past?
The trans issues I said I thought needed change in radfem blogs I absolutely believe in and they are not conditional (as in, if you tell me “there’s no point” I will still do them).
But really. I don’t know when to sit or jump.
pisaquaririse
March 20, 2008 at 9:02 am
“Heart included “male terrorism” in the tags. ”
Okay, I read the post and a few of the comments (there are too many) and the only thing I can get from that tag is that perhaps she is comparing what the son said to Robin Morgan (genital reference) to “male terrorism.”
She also tagged it with “Sexism in the Military” which I do not understand.
Is there somewhere in that heap of comments (where I saw her praise little light–but perhaps there is more to that in your eyes?) where she explains the tag–have you ever asked her?
pisaquaririse
March 20, 2008 at 9:22 am
Okay, this is explanation, and I’m not asking you to defend this, or saying that you’ve said this stuff.
As the comment thread continues, other women propose that little light actively plagiarized Robin Morgan, and Heart agrees with them, although she denies ever actually saying that (which is true – she didn’t say that, but she went along with others saying it) and later on, she basically says that little light is plagiarizing womanhood by using goddess imagery in her essay. The really anti-trans slowly snowballs up.
Also, Starting here, Mary Sunshine’s comments until post #92, where Heart responds to Mary Sunshine.
I got a pretty distinct vibe that the intent of the post was to ultimately build up the idea that little light was committing some horrible wrong.
And that tag is pretty typical of the way Heart talks about trans people – the day after the Transgender Day of Remembrance, and a few days before the a week of violence against women, Heart complained that when a trans woman dies, everyone’s upset, but when a woman dies, no one cares. The timing was…she didn’t specifically say “The Transgender Day of Remembrance steals the spotlight from women who are victims who were born female,” but that she chose to lament about the attention trans murders receive less than a day after the one day out of the year when we make a point to remember trans people who were murdered just for being trans people.
This past February, she picked a trans woman’s LJ, where said woman had complained that she’d been groped on a bus. Heart lambasted her for letting a man sit next to her, and tore her down for it… and then a couple days later posted about how horrible it is that women get groped on buses by men who think they have the right to do this, in a post about a women-only bus line in Mexico City. It’s just a long list of passive-aggressive swipes and double-standards like that, that when I see “male terrorism” in a post about a trans woman’s feminist writing, I find it hard to assume the pattern’s different this one time. I mean, stuff she posted on Ms. Magazine, stuff she posts on her blog, comments she leaves on other blogs, posts on the MWMF forum. The fact that she feels that Maia saying “anti-trans sentiment is pretty heavy in radical feminism” is an attack on radical feminism, the fact that she allows the most horrific things to be posted about trans people on her blog, and agrees with those comments even while what she says is meant to sound moderate.
I haven’t asked her about that specific tag – my conversations with her were limited to the MWMF forum where the topic was already a bit focused, and I hadn’t at that point read the post in question.
Just to be clear, though, that tag was about Heart and Heart’s use of that other tag, and really little more. Like I said, I’m not happy with my decision to use it.
Oh, on the woman thing, since it’s on my mind. I’ve never ever ever met a man who tried to claim womanhood. I’ve encountered men online who pretend to be women, but that’s not really the same thing. I also find that many trans women are pretty cautious about claiming womanhood right at the start of transition, or even the first year or so. I’ve only come across one who claimed that she instantly became a woman the moment she had surgery – and she’d bypassed the standards of care and started hormones, electrolysis, etc. afterward, and while I do believe she’s genuinely transsexual and genuinely sought to be a woman socially and physically (what kind of man would rush into surgery to have that done?), I believe she was assigning far too much importance to having a vagina and not really enough importance to living as a woman, experiencing being a womanhood, experiencing how women are treated. She didn’t have any of that when she had her surgery, although she did get it afterward.
As for those who are too poor for treatment? I’ve never met one. I honestly, haven’t met anyone who hasn’t found a way to get hormones (which are fairly inexpensive), either from the black market, from a doctor, or getting them from the black market just so the doctor will prescribe and monitor the hormones in the name of harm reduction. Where the money tends to fail is paying for surgery – facial surgery especially, but SRS is pretty expensive too.
So take it with my experience: I’ve been around cross-dressers, drag queens, transsexual women, and I’ve never met a man who would claim womanhood. The drag queens know they’re men (except for those who end up trans), the cross-dressers know they’re men (except for those who end up trans), and the transsexual women know they’re sense of self is that they should be women, and they do everything they can to get to that state.
I know about transgenderists – like Virginia Prince – who lived as women, but never sought hormones or surgery, but that wasn’t a matter of income so much as preference. I also don’t think Virginia Prince was a woman, or claimed to be.
So anyway, take that as you will: I trust people who say they’re women because they’re doing everything in their power to be women, or they were born female. Aside from internet pranksters, those are the only kinds of people I’ve met who claim womanhood.
I spent more time on this than I expected. I should be doing something worklike. I will get back to the rest of your points later tonight.
Lisa Harney
March 20, 2008 at 9:58 am
You have titled your site “questioningtransphobia” which essentially is a “slur” to anyone who disagrees with you or whom you link to as being anti-trans (do you believe “transgender” wrt to questioningtransgender’s site,is as offensive to you as transphobia is to radfems?
Again, this sounds EXACTLY like homobigots complaining about being labeled “homophobes”. EXACTLY like it. No it is not a slur to call out transphobia when and where it exists. You seem to be the one who doesn’t know the full backstory, not any one of us, so you saying that Lisa is the one who is not arguing in good faith is not only risible, it’s more than just enlightening with respect to your so-called commitment to dialogue.
Transphobia is real, it exists, and yes, there are plenty of examples of radical feminists who have taken up the call to shame and bully transgender people. Your post, need I remind you, is a study in a bad faith argument. “Oh, it’s not on my list of possible phobias, therefore it CAN’T POSSIBLY EXIST. I’m not going to try to find out the definition, mind you, but I still say it can’t exist! QED.” If that isn’t bad faith argumentation, I’ve never seen it.
J.Goff
March 20, 2008 at 11:47 am
To queen emily (and the point Lisa raised): see how difficult this is? One radical feminist/trans person has to speak for *everything* that particular opposing person has been hurt by/wants changed.
Well, when you defend radical feminists as a group, and attack transpeople’s responses to them as a group, yes, you will be rebutted as though you are speaking for more people than yourself. That’s what you did here:
Listen I’m writing a pseudo book that I am going to post on this blog called “Radical Feminist Mis-characterizations.” I anticipate it will have endless contributions and I cannot wait to find out who, in whatever respect, I offend by laying out the mis-characterizations of radical feminists.
Are you calling *me* a MIScharacterizer pisaquari??? Have you forgotten I’m a PERSON!?”
Transphobia— it didn’t even make the phobia list and I can’t imagine why not. As much as it is thrown around you’d expect the Medical Association to have a book out on it by now–Janice Raymond on the cover or something, with doodled devil horns and a strap on.
People have a legitimate grievance. You attempted to delegitimize it. They’re explaining why you’re wrong. You don’t get to dismiss their complaints altogether and then complain that people are forcing you to speak for your cohort. You don’t want to be responsible for people like Heart, don’t pretend you know the history. You don’t want people to assume that any given self-identified radical feminist is transphobic, don’t go acting like a dismissive wanker before they get to know you, at least.
As for those who are too poor for treatment? I’ve never met one. I honestly, haven’t met anyone who hasn’t found a way to get hormones (which are fairly inexpensive), either from the black market, from a doctor, or getting them from the black market just so the doctor will prescribe and monitor the hormones in the name of harm reduction. Where the money tends to fail is paying for surgery – facial surgery especially, but SRS is pretty expensive too.
Right. It’s willful ignorance causing actual ignorance. Transphobia in medicine isn’t just about access to SRS or any transition-related treatment. It’s about quality of care in an overarching sense. Being poor and being trans both make it more difficult for people to obtain treatment with the kind of professional oversight (medical, not gatekeeping) that keeps people alive. Blood tests, pap smears, check ups. Basic respect and kindness from your physician. And when you throw some medical procedures–surgery, hormones–into the equation, those issues become even more immediate. It’s in the interests of people like Raymond to pretend that the medical profession created transsexuality; she would hardly be interested in the truth about how transphobic doctors treat transsexual people.
piny
March 20, 2008 at 1:42 pm
>>>How does “good faith dialogue” come about in this atmosphere? Is it all radfems queen emily?
No. For instance, I think Maia’s post was in good faith–and indeed Cecily’s post on women’s space quoted on here–because she acknowledged her own previous complicity in a rad-fem discourse of transphobia. Any dialogue that continues to repeat the same talking points isn’t going to interest most of us, because it’ll simply be more of the same.
The fact that Maia was accused of attacking radical feminism is indicative of there being a serious problem in radical feminism, and *that* is largely stalling on-going dialogue with trans feminists. There’s a range of positions, and clearly trans-inclusive is *not* a generally acceptable one.
queen emily
March 20, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Um, speaking of “ever asking her,” at what point did Heart ever bother to directly address Little Light? Like, ever?
belledame2222
March 20, 2008 at 5:44 pm
“The fact that Maia was accused of attacking radical feminism is indicative of there being a serious problem in radical feminism, and *that* is largely stalling on-going dialogue with trans feminists. There’s a range of positions, and clearly trans-inclusive is *not* a generally acceptable one.”
Well. Or alternately, I suppose, that the most vocal people/gatekeepers within radical feminism are currently the ones wearing the tinfoil hats.
But, um, yeah, problem. “ZOMG she wrote a thoughtful post wherein she comes to conclusions different from ours! Alert! Alert! Traitor in the ranks! Quick, off with her head!” ffs.
Seriously, all specific issues aside for the moment, do you -like- functioning like this? Is this what you call a “safe space?” Nurturing, sisterly? Does it really feel that way, with all that…vigilance all the time? Because from where I’m sitting it looks more like a cross between Heathers and a Scientology meeting.
belledame2222
March 20, 2008 at 5:48 pm
and, what JG said (post 51)
belledame2222
March 20, 2008 at 5:51 pm
“Lisa, I question a lot of things/concepts: heterosexuality, all sexuality, the beauty/health industry, feminisms, myself, fairy tales for godssake. Would you say I don’t want anyone, who participated in something I questioned, to have a good life? My questioning nature brought me to feminism, seems to have brought you to starting this site. Is it the questioning you don’t like or the questioning of a part of *your life* you don’t like?”
Ah, here we come to it. Pisqua: whatever your navel-gazing has brought you to, in fact: no, it is not your place to question Lisa about -her life.- That is correct. It’s hers. Not yours. “The personal is political” does not mean “okay, I beat myself up for a little while and decide to purge myself of all impurities, now I get to do it to YOU, whether you like it or not!! Ready steady go!–”
You know the funny thing: Maia’s post, in fact, is -questioning-, and yet, that doesn’t seem to be acceptable to you or Debs or a number of other posters there, not because she qasn’t genuinely questioning–she was–but -because she isn’t coming up with the same answers you already did.-
belledame2222
March 20, 2008 at 5:57 pm
“But really. I don’t know when to sit or jump.”
Novel idea, but you could try just listening before spouting off about what other people do or don’t do with their own bodies, or why.
belledame2222
March 20, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Piny, yeah all that on the treatment.
People who seek transition tend to be at the point where they’ll do anything to get there – and that includes buying hormones from overseas pharmacies if they can’t get or can’t afford a referral to an endocrinologist and monitoring.
And yeah, I know quite a few trans women who couldn’t afford this, who obtained hormones via overseas pharmacies or the street and went to their GP (state-funded) and said “I’m going to take hormones” just so the doctor would monitor.
There is or was a clinic in San Francisco set up for low-income trans people including those who lived on the street, worked in prostitution, that provided hormones and other health care for them just so they wouldn’t kill themselves.
Lisa Harney
March 20, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Yo, Pisa. I’m standing right here? Would you mind replying to me for the sake of politeness, like? No? Yes?
You’re talking to women who will never have the chance to choose whether to bear children or not, and who are relegated to second-class women status as a result. A bunch of the ladies in your camp think it’s fine to kick those women out of a women’s festival on those grounds. That’s not transphobic? I don’t really care about that, I don’t get too hung up on labels and this is not my language anyway. In my language, all that’s called anesthesia. You know what that means? It means “insensitivity”. Being insensitive is better than being a rabid transphobe, how exactly? And you’re proud that you’re not one but the other? Why?
You say that some women have a problem with transwomen in women-only spaces. So you have an event, like Michfest, that’s been going on for some time, that includes a bunch of people, then another bunch of people goes “we don’t like them” and the first buch is then expelled, although it’s the others who have the problem? And you don’t see anything wrong with that? Someone has to choose between letting go of some women or all transwomen and you’re fine with the latter. And then you’re not treating transwomen indiscriminately like shit?
HEY! Wake up! I’m talking to you! Are you even listening?
You and yours are treating transwomen like shit. Your only excuse for that is that we’re not really women. That’s typical offensive shit number one. Everyone who ever wanted to hurt a transwoman started by calling her a “he”. That’s our big fucking vulnerability. No, I have no way to prove to you I’m a woman, but then, how the hell do I know who is and who isn’t one? How do I know you’re a woman? It’s because you say so and I choose to believe you, because, why not? But then, we tell you what’s going on inside our heads and you respond that it’s all a bunch of bullshit because we’re all so confused, because sex and gender is confusing. We could pretend to be born-women and infiltrate your ranks in stealth but don’t. Still you’re suspicious of our motives and consider us dishonest by default or simply whacked. So you have the right to dismiss me and I have the right to shut up and fuck off. How is that the lost basis for dialogue that you lament?
Basically, you’re not transphobic- you’re exludig a bunch of women -from wherever. That’s misogyny. It’s women you’re stepping on and the “trans” qualifier is just another way to set us apart so we can be attacked more easily. You dont’ see that, you think it’s, like, normal, common sense, well-duh.. And that’s where misogyny becomes transmisogyny. But as I said, I don’t like those labels too much. Been bandied around too long.
So let’s say you just don’t like transwomen much, huh? But that’s what people call transphobia. Labels again. This dialogue is so formulaic… And you know why? Because everything that those labels are used to describe is so bloody typical and seen before and done before.
But hell… you’re telling me you’re not transphobic, then give me another word for it, you who are so good with words and at keeping things vague. To paraphrase.
Stassa
March 20, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Oh and about why transwomen claim womanhood, and so that you know that we’re all a pretty diverse boucquet, me, personally, I “just” want to have a female body, able to bear children. Not ’cause motherhood is my definition of womanhood. If I could have the body I wish for, I couldn’t care less if I was identified as a woman or a man or whether any elements of my internal gender identity would be or would be construed as male or female. Generally, unlike most transpeople, I don’t care as much about birth certificates and people’s acceptance and so on. I just want to be a mother.
But your (rabidfem) explanation of that would be that I’m a privileged but confused man who wants to steal women’s reproductive rights and push them aside, so that patriarchy can reproduce itself without the need of genuine women. Yeah, and, Greeks came from Sirius on ships of bronze. There’s plenty of evidence of that too and as Belle said, it’s such an attractive theory too. To Greeks at least.
Is my irony getting through to you?
Stassa
March 20, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Lisa,
I’m the attorney who stepped into the discussion about ENDA over at Heart’s place last fall. Thanks for you kind words about my efforts there (comment #6). I did my best there, as I do everywhere, to break down the walls that only serve to hurt all of us.
I’ve spent several hours reading your post and all the comments, trying throughout to understand the positions of everyone in this debate and I still come back to one thing that continues to confuse me.
In comment #20, Pisaquari asked, “Do you believe every person who says they are a woman?” My response is to ask how she decides who qualifies as a woman? Doesn’t she simply accept the word of those she encounters, whether at a radfem conference or otherwise? Or, every time she encounters a person presenting as female and claiming to be a woman who also happens to have large hands or feet, an Adam’s apple or other supposed male-only features, or who is aggressive in asserting herself in a way that others see as “patriarchal,” does she asks them to produce a birth certificate or a DNA profile, or drop her panties, to prove she is, in fact, a woman before she will allow the newcomer into her female born women-only space?
All of these discussions assume that we will all know a woman when we see one, or, at least, can distinguish a trans woman from a cis woman. And yet we all necessarily rely on each other’s self-identification because masculine and feminine, male and female overlap in so many ways.
And why is it so important to be able to distinguish trans women, like me, from female born women? I believe the answer lies in this statement from the same comment. Pisaquari said, “I want the ability to be with like-minded individuals and only like-minded individuals . . . .” In other words, she apparently believes that, because of who we are, we cannot possibly think or feel the same way as she does. Thus, excluding nonradfem women from a radfem conference is *not* the same as excluding trans women; the former are excluded because they are not, in fact, “like-minded” (in other words, on the basis of what they believe), while we are excluded because of who we are based on the unquestioned assumption that we couldn’t possibly be “like-minded.” That is the prejudice that I object to and that I find so sad because it makes it more difficult for all of us to achieve the goal of living in a world where we all are accepted and respected for who we are.
I hope I’ve made some sense here. That’s hard to do at 4:30 a.m. without any sleep when dealing with such complicated, and fundamentally important, issues.
Abby
March 21, 2008 at 3:41 am
Okay–I shouldn’t have engaged queen emily because that misrepresented why I came here: to speak with Lisa.
I have read the responses to me and I really haven’t the time to respond with the thought I’d like because if I spend as much time doing this as I have been I’m quite sure I will be *fired*.
To sum: I think some people aren’t getting me, are getting me and have raised quality concerns, or will never extend anything past mockery my way because the bloggular beef is too much or I’m too vitriolic to take seriously.
I don’t mind responding on all accounts but I get the feeling I am engaging a community on a very broad level that will only grow since I am “the enemy” on the wrong turf.
I will continue to respond to Lisa to the best of my ability where she has brought forth concerns (throughout the day as time allows).
If anyone would like to copy/paste what they have here (or say something else) I wouldn’t mind answering it in e-mail where I can respond specifically (in more drawn out periods) without the task of taking on Lisa’s readership and their myriad of concerns.
But what I am suggesting here is probably more a continued dialogue with reaches into a lot more issues. I get that some people wouldn’t be comfortable doing this as blogs provide the comfort of support and like minds–to those I unfortunately don’t have much to offer (I’d say “sorry” but I know I risk being called an insincere bitch, in so many words–as well, I anticipate comments that posit me a transphobic convo-escapee or something).
Lisa has my e-mail through comments, so she may pass it along privately to those interested.
More to you later Lisa on Heart’s thread.
pisaquaririse
March 21, 2008 at 5:55 am
Pisa, I didn’t forget to answer your posts – just was very busy last night.
Abby,
Thank you for dropping by. :) The entire ENDA thread frustrated me because, well, the idea that we’re not entitled to equal rights because someone thinks they might interfere with cis women’s rights, when those are already covered and have been for 40 years, since the Civil Rights Act.
Lisa Harney
March 21, 2008 at 6:39 am
Pisa, you can just answer with a “I don’t have time for you, fuck you” in so many words. If you haven’t time to do that, you surely haven’t enough to get into a mail exchange, or join the fray at Heart’s. But you don’t even do that. So I wouldn’t call you an insincere bitch in so many words, mostly because I’ve abused Lisa’s hospitality enough in the past.
But you sure are quite transparent.
Stassa
March 21, 2008 at 7:46 am
Lisa,
I hadn’t thought of this until I saw your reply to my post, but the ENDA thread at Heart’s place, or, at least, the opening email from Davis and her later response, could be seen as an example of transphobia in the classic sense, i.e., fear of trans women (and men, I suppose, although trans men seem to be always ignored in these discussions). That thread began with an expression of the fear that an inclusive ENDA, by explicitly banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity, would somehow do away with the protections against discrimination on the basis of a person’s failure to conform to gender stereotypes as form of sex discrimination that has existed since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins in 1989. The interpretation of ENDA on which that fear was based makes no sense to anyone familiar with employment discrimination law, which focuses on the motivation of the employer, whether express or implied, not on the how the person who is discriminated against identifies. (In other words, what matters is why the employer did what they did, not whether the person who was fired or denied a job or promotion is willing to claim to be gender variant.)
It also would be strange indeed if trans women and men, and our allies in the greater LGB community who recognize that they too sometimes experience discrimination because of their gender variance, not their sexual orientation, were working for a law that would eliminate the basis for the only legal protection that has been extended to trans and other gender variant people under Title VII, if only in the 6th Circuit, i.e., the theory that discrimination against trans and other gender variant people is illegal discrimination on the basis of gender stereotypes under Hopkins.
I don’t know Davis, the woman attorney whose interpretation of ENDA started that thread, and so won’t ascribe any particular motives to her. Nonetheless, it is clear that most of that thread was fueled by fear that protecting trans people against discrimination would reduce existing protections for women who do not identify as gender variant, in other words, by transphobia pure and simple.
Abby
March 21, 2008 at 7:53 am
“I want the ability to be with like-minded individuals and only like-minded individuals”
Here’s a question: why? And, what do you mean by that exactly?
Because that’s very telling, to me. You’re not even really interested in mystical sisterly communion, much less political effectiveness, so much as being around people who you don’t have to argue with. Like, at all.
“Birds in their little nests agree…”
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but: even if you do manage to purge your community of all dissenters on transpeople (much less the transpeople themselves), sex work/prostitution, femme accoutrements, BDSM, and so on and so forth, there’s -still- going to be something that’ll tear you apart. Does. Hell, I can see it happening from here. Yeah, it happens to everyone, we all have fights, often over stupid shit, but y’all…I gotta tell you, you really put the “fun” back in “dysfunctional.” This goes a good way toward explaining why.
It’s, like, a -betrayal,- isn’t it, when your “sister” suddenly turns out to be, -not- an extension of yourself, but -a completely whole other person-. -Different.- This isn’t what you signed up for! You came for the merge! This was supposed to fix everything! Why, it makes you feel so, so…*alone*. Again. And terrified.
Welcome to life.
Welcome to adulthood.
There -is- no “safe space” in this world that’s gonna be safe enough, if that’s your criteria.
You know what really makes a space safe, relatively speaking? Trust. Acceptance. Compassion.
But you have to give a little to get a little.
belledame2222
March 21, 2008 at 8:09 am
OK, on a second thought, Pisa speaks about dialogue and she may or may not mean it in any sincere way, but the very word resonates with my Greek soul (and it is another Greek word, thankyouvermuch).
But it just so happens that to have a dialogue between two sides, you need lots of parameters set to specific values. You need both sides to be willing and able- like, sideAWilling = true && sideBWilling = true && sideAAble= true && sideBAble= true. And then you also need some common ground, a common language more often than not, a shared experience of some sort.
And what common ground do I have with Pisa Quari? I’m sideAWilling = true, but she’s sideBWilling = false, but then, she’s also an American feminst chick of who knows what personal history. And I’m… me. We’ll probably talk past each other’s head and piss each other off inadvertently. Plus I automatically distrust anyone who adopts a certain stance that I interpret as, yes, transphobic and I have trouble making dialogue with them afterwards.
And why should I? Lisa, you’re doing a great job already. I guess I’m even more irrelevant than I thought. ::shrug:: And yeah, I guess we did swarm on Pisa. A bit. I apologise and remove myself from the convo.
::bamf::
Stassa
March 21, 2008 at 8:11 am
::bamf::
Dang. Forgot to say. “-phobic” doesn’t actually derive from “phobia”. It’s the opposite in the pair with “-phile”, as in xenophobic/ xenophile, neophobic/ neophile, hydrophobic/ hydrophile, photophobic/ photophile and so on. -phile in particular, literally means “friend”. The pair is used in several contexts to mean anything from water retention capacity (hydrophile) to mistrust and hatred of strangers/ foreingers (xenophobe) through to interest in novel stimuli (neophile). In that sense “transphobic” as “homophobic” can be legitimately taken to mean either hatred or fear of either, but also enmity, distrust, reactionism towards and so on. No point in focusing on one meaning only. In any case, homophobia is genearlly believed to fuel hate crimes. Not fear ones.
::BAMF::
(and stay bamf!)
Stassa
March 21, 2008 at 8:50 am
I want the ability to be with like-minded individuals and only like-minded individuals for period of maybe a day, next year, to feel comfortable talking about/against transitioning (amongst other things)–if that makes me a bigot then fine. I suppose not wanting nonradfems there makes me nonradfemphobic too.
Then the question, one presumes, will be whether you will have a person at the door with a questionnaire. She who would cross the Bridge to Woman-Space must answer me these questions three, ere the other side she see.
J.Goff
March 21, 2008 at 9:54 am
[...] usual–has already devoted many paragraphs to responding to this post, but I’m adding my contribution here, because I read this comment [...]
Feministe » Define/perpetuate
March 21, 2008 at 10:13 am
Okay, I read little light’s piece (wow) and the excerpt of Morgan’s poem from Heart’s place (I’ve never read the full poem).
In comparing the two I don’t see enough of a similarity to get upset about or make any claims that would imply copying or plagiarizing. I do get the sense, as you do, that little light’s piece was receiving those accusations (even indirectly) with not enough support otherwise from radfems.
If there are striking similarities (which I cannot see because the excerpt posted did not include them afaic) I would see nothing wrong with, as one of little light’s commenters suggested, simply noting that.
I do not agree with/would not have used the following from comments linked to: (s)he (?), him/her/its self, trannies, colonize, you monster you, factually male.
Wrt to goddess imagery I’m having a hard time putting that into context. MS claims little light put up goddess imagery (as in actual images?) on her site but I cannot find them. I’m thinking maybe she’s just referring to the goddesses mentioned in little light’s poem. And I’m honestly not that hip to goddess imagery so I had to do a rather shoddy research session over lunch to get a better understanding. It seems Heart and MS was more upset with goddess imagery that represented child-bearing capabilities being celebrated (?) on a blog by someone who was not born female (or did/does not have those capabilities?).
I didn’t get from little light’s poem that she was conflating parallels of goddess imagery with the monster she (little light) was presenting. I do agree bearing children should be considered it’s own unique experience but I do not feel little light, by mentioning these goddesses, was assigning herself that experience (just as I wouldn’t for never having had children).
Because Heart used “factually male” I can see now that “male terrorism” could very much have been a swipe at little light.
From what I can gather and from what you have linked to I agree little light was treated unfairly.
As well, I can understand an emotional impulse driving you to create a similar tag for your blog.
More later on “woman.”
pisaquaririse
March 21, 2008 at 10:24 am
There is or was a clinic in San Francisco set up for low-income trans people including those who lived on the street, worked in prostitution, that provided hormones and other health care for them just so they wouldn’t kill themselves.
Still are–although I was last connected with one right before a big round of budget cuts, so I can’t tell you anything about what’s available or to whom. There were at least two clinics in the city that assisted lower-income transpeople with hormones and with monitoring, and which (IIRC) provided trans-friendly gyn checkups. They might also have provided referral letters.
piny
March 21, 2008 at 10:33 am
pisa, this was Little Light’s response wrt the goddess part in particular:
http://takingsteps.blogspot.com/2007/01/public-service-announcement.html
“Now, I’ve never read Robin Morgan before. The poem Heart quotes is a hell of a piece of work, and in other circumstances, I’d thank her for giving me some new reading material. I will see, once I know Morgan’s work, how to go about honoring her legacy to feminism.
To claim, however, that Ms. Morgan, or radical feminism, are the only place I could have gotten inspired to work with the imagery of monsters and struggle, a major theme for discussing human experience–especially that of desolation and radical Othering–for the entirety of recorded history, is patently ludicrous. To accuse me of stealing another woman’s work simply because she and I shared some source material much older than either of us, regarding themes that have direct bearing on my life and experiences and which, as someone raised on a lifelong love affair with history and mythology, I have been marinating in since early childhood–themes I have worked with before, over and over–is ridiculous. We don’t even use the reclamation of monsterhood in the same way. You might as well say I stole my imagery from Sesame Street–they make “monster” a positive thing, too, don’t they?
Is it that frightening for you to read someone like me actually achieving something like self-acceptance, or deriving strength from having been ground into the ground and refusing to break? Are you so threatened by the idea that I might be proud of my life or that I might reject attempts to shame my deviant body that your first instinct, on reading my declaration that I refuse to roll over and die, is to denigrate, accuse, and sneak about trying to undermine it? Are you so far gone that your first reaction to someone writing about getting past hurt and trying to live life fiercely in a hostile world is to say, ‘wait! I’m the only one who gets to talk about overcoming adversity! Anyone claiming to be something decent in life is just trying to steal from me!’ and this doesn’t worry you? Because that proves only that you didn’t understand what I was writing, and further, that you’ve proved my point.
You can go on calling me whatever you like, but you’ve got a long line in front of you if you want to see me bleed. Some of the people in it even have the ovaries to say things to me directly.
Keep kicking.
And hey, thanks for driving up my hit counter.
Edited to add: Because I am being called a “liar” in regard to the first sentence of this post, I should clarify. Heart did not use the word “plagiarism.” She simply claimed I was stealing the ideas of another writer without credit, which is very different, and made applauding comments when other people used the word “plagiarism.” I apologize for the misunderstanding; I also should not attribute to her, for instance, the reference to me as “it,” since that was done by a commenter not herself who she merely told that she “loves the way [she] think[s]“–she is not in any way, by her own affidavit, “transphobic,” nor would any such inclination be involved in the substance of this dispute; I am assured Heart found my piece “moving.”
Additionally, the charges have been modified to include “appropriation”–that is, a white American woman is asking that I refrain from using imagery pertaining to female-presented deities including those from a Middle Eastern, Asian and/or Pacific Islander cultural heritage (that is to say, my ancestors) as this constitutes “colonization.” Additionally, goddesses with transsexual priesthoods, if they are mother-figures, are off-limits. Actually, this probably also includes the ocean, and the earth, and pretty much anything concave, for caution’s sake.
Also, the literature of feminists predating the radical movement should be considered inadmissible, as well, due to having already being claimed. Further, laying any claim to my ancestry is probably gauche, as belonging is sort of like owning, which is a patriarchal sort of thing to engage in, and it would prove as such that I am really a man. I therefore freely admit I have no right whatsoever to read or reference anything related to my religious practice, ancestral culture, or favorite childhood reading material, as this may or may not be subject to the Dibs! Act of 1967, wherein they had a flag stuck in them by people who have never prayed to my gods, had their countries invaded by European powers, or bothered to study other branches of the movement they also claimed through that same statute, viz., feminism.
I also have no right to interest in feminism, because I might once have made $1.00 to the $0.75 I will be making for the rest of my life, had I had a chance to be employable during those formative childhood years.
Also, apparently I have had some surgeries I was not aware of. One of these may or may not have been the addition of someone else’s stolen skin. I will take care to provide more information about those in the future.
Also, my work was apparently about erasing the work of prior generations by producing content myself, in continuity with another branch of the greater feminist movement, rather than simply quoting people I did not know about who, I’m told, would disapprove of everything I represent. With my apologies, please consider this addition to the canon transparent, then, so that prior generations are still visible and can continue to be found in bookstores and libraries and schools across this fair land.”
later, in the comments:
“Well, Cassandra, AW, as it says up top of the site, I’m a religion scholar. I’m drenched in that stuff.
I have influences, and I don’t hide them. I’m proud of my influences.
Most of them are a lot older than the Seventies, though; I admit that the recent stuff is a hole in my education.
Religion and mythology and stories are what I do and know. It’s the same as a a carpenter choosing to write about her experiences using the metaphors of hand-tools and dovetails and house-building. The allusions in here are older than Shelley, too, going back to the mythical and Biblical and fantastical frames of reference.
My ideas are only as original as anyone else’s, but I know who my influences are, and to whom I owe my view from the shoulders of giants. And I will damn well not be called a liar and a thief when the folk I actually do owe a debt to are being erased by the insistence that I stole from some woman I hadn’t really heard of instead of learning from them.
I cannot be expected to drop on my knees and jettison the debt I owe to postcolonial feminists, Islamic feminists, my own storytelling ancestors, the conversations I built on about disability advocacy and transhumanism in order to pretend that the only source for inspiration I could have had is someone, no matter how grand, I have never had contact with.”
***
The only ones who concerned themselves with childbearing were Heart and Mary Sunshine and a few others in there; and they brought it up not because they were suddenly so very concerned with Robin Morgan’s literary influences, but because they’re saying that -Little Light is actually plagiarizing womens’ bodies-, not just a poem. See.
“Get out of my skin, Jack.”
belledame2222
March 21, 2008 at 1:27 pm
And by the way, for anyone who’s interested, after the initial flushes of sheer outrage, this was my response focusing more on the two poems and what I think they represent.
http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.com/2007/01/may-we-go-mad-together-my-sisters-mm.html
belledame222
March 21, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Okay, the iconic representative of trans women exclusion is the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. It’s a music festival for women, but only some women. Trans women were attending prior to Nancy Burkholder’s ejection and the decision that trans women are not to be allowed on the land. For a few years, that was actually enforced – but in practice, women who looked “too masculine” (whether they were trans or not) were challenged on the land, and it ended up becoming a “don’t ask, don’t tell,” thing, as it is now – with trans women attending, and even outing themselves to other attendees. Sometimes with bad results, sometimes with good.
But, how can a festival be for “all women” when it excludes a significant minority?
Another thing is that many exclusion supporters will argue that it’s one week out of the year – but it’s not. On the forum, they talk about establishing more trans-exclusive spaces, of trying to make existing spaces less welcoming. MWMF sends out e-mails suggesting other gatherings, people who attend arrange for gatherings outside the festival, and many of them discuss the inclusion of trans women in women-only spaces in terms of “invasion,” “colonization,” and so on. As in, something that’s done aggressively and with ill intent, and completely ignore the fact that they’re talking about people who are women.
It’s an interesting intellectual exercise with an obvious answer, but it’s not really the same thing. I’m talking about a certain kind of objection to being seen as prejudiced and ways to dodge that without actually addressing the substance itself. Like “I’m not homophobic, I don’t fear gay people. I just want them all stopped.” Your post wasn’t that extreme, but you focused on transphobia as a fear of trans people, rather than a word to label prejudice against trans people.
On being a man or a woman, I’m talking about my reality and my experiences. I don’t even remember what it’s like to be seen as a man or boy – it’s over 20 years since I started transitioning, and I lived any hardly any part of my adult life as a man. I can’t define woman strictly, I tried once and ended up going in circles, I can just say that I’m treated as one, and I identify as one, and that pretty much defines my reality.
That’s true, but certain kinds of arguments parallel and dovetail fairly closely, and I’ve been attacking the “I’m not afraid of the homosexuals” argument for years from conservatives and religious right and every time, they’re trying to deflect the question from their own prejudice, whether they even believe they’re prejudiced or not (most don’t – they think they’re just presenting the facts).
I also think, that it’s hard to talk about prejudice because if someone says something prejudiced and you say “Hey, that’s prejudiced!” they tend to react as if you said “Hey, you’re burning a cross on my lawn!” which is of course, not typically the case.
I’m not trying to force anything into your words, I just see patterns that I’ve seen before.
It really is possible to not want to be prejudiced and be prejudiced all the same, too. But, people get defensive at the thought of being seen as prejudiced as well. I mean, this happens with everything – sexism, racism, homophobia, and so on.
Believe me, I know. One of the most acrimonious discussions I ever got into was with MRAs. They were insisting that I should read Warren Farrell’s book of how men get the short end of the stick before I could even talk to them (and wow, are his assertions easy to counter – the guy’s not very bright, he’s just feeding into a manufactured persecution complex that comes from the fear that maybe men won’t always have more power than women).
They insisted that men had it worse than women and women accomplished everything we could want with the Civil Rights Act and Roe vs. Wade. They used compelling examples like “If there were a male version of Sex in the City, feminists would use their amazing social superpowers to destroy it,” and they ignored me when I mentioned Porky’s and American Pie as a counterpoint to that. That is, that media about men trying to have sex with women have gone back forever. That Sex in the City is not new idea, and it’s something that’s been done hundreds of times with men.
I’ve been in nasty discussions about pro-choice, where men try to deflect the issue into “the supreme court shouldn’t make that decision, it should be about states rights” and ignore the fact that pregnancy and abortion-related death rates increase in nations which make abortion illegal.
And on a lighter note, I’ve also spent a bit of time banging my head into a wall… I mean explaining to a guy why assuming that all people he meets online are men is not respectful and is sexist. He tried to say that if he knew that some people were women, he wouldn’t treat us as equals, so the only way to be non-sexist is to treat us all as men.
And then there’s the guardians of the english language. There’s been a trend over the past few decades to move away from masculine pronouns for indeterminate/neutral gender. So, some books have been written with alternating gender or they have some other method to determine when to use masculine and when to use feminine. People who won’t even blink at “ain’t” or “for all intensive purposes” or “towing the line” will declare total war over defiling the purity of the english langage by using a feminine pronoun in reference to an indeterminate subject.
And this is just on the internet. The time I was told a ride home would cost me a blow job, the times men have stopped to explain to me what they would like to do to my body (okay, shouted from a moving car, usually), getting talked over constantly, having my opinions dismissed…there’s so much there. Yeah, I know it’s how women are treated, and I don’t like it. But, in the face of all that, given the fact that I hate every bit of it, and fight against it when I can, I am still a woman, and I never seriously considered retransitioning to escape that.
I’m not trying to present feminist credentials here, I’m just trying to be clear that this stuff isn’t new to me – not the MRA stuff, not the stuff that comes from people who don’t define their politics by being anti-woman. I know that many people couldn’t identify an act of sexism even if it happened to them. These aren’t even the sum total of what I’ve dealt with, just the ones that come immediately to mind.
I don’t like the idea of confusion as applied to people like me – I was never confused as to who I was. I knew who I was as early as I can remember. I guess it may look like confusion if my body is one sex and my identity says another, but to me, it was always clear, and my body was in the wrong.
Everyone uses gender, and transsexual people don’t really use gender any differently than the general population. This is one of the problems I have with a common radical feminist sentiment about transgender, transsexualism, and trans people – that we reify gender roles and that we reinforce the gender binary by transitioning from one box to the other. I’d say the vast majority of people who never transition and never consider transitioning have a lot more invested in reinforcing strict gender roles, and they certainly are just as willing to attack trans people for violating those strict gender roles (by crossing over, or finding someplace outside them). That’s why I’ve had people loudly ask “is that a man or a woman?” when they read me, or why I’ve had a few people actually tell me to “be a man!” which, by the way, is the most confusing thing anyone has ever said to me.
So on the one side, I have mainstream people telling me how awful I am because I changed sex and violated my god-given sex role, and on the other side, I have radical feminists telling me how awfulI am because I changed sex and reinforced sex roles. It seems rather contradictory to me, and I usually feel more like gender’s pimping me than the other way around.
That’s before even getting into how often I catch crap because I’m not feminine enough or too feminine, whether or not the person doing the criticizing knows I’m trans or not.
Tony is a man, who was born female, and had a penis constructed from skin on his forearm. He used the showers set aside for people with disabilities and someone saw him. The story got out, and mutated into – well, Karla Mantilla’s assertion that multiple trans women “invaded” the festival, got into the showers, and flashed their penises in an act of gender transgression. The article doesn’t even mention Tony, just unnamed trans women. Others name someone from Camp Trans (I forget who) as the ringleader.
There shouldn’t be a distinction in a lot of cases. Rape shelters? Domestic violence shelters? I’d say a large number of women’s services are not dependent upon whether the woman receiving them was born male or female, but are dependent on that woman’s current state as a woman. I mean, sure, you’re not going to see trans women going to planned parenthood for an abortion, although many are adoptive mothers and might need assistance aimed at mothers.
I explained it further previously, but based on personal experience, my definition is pretty safe based on the fact that I haven’t seen men actually transition and get hormones and surgery for predatory reasons. Most men treasure their sexual function, and hormones mess with that, never mind SRS.
My site is called “Questioning Transphobia” in response to the site, “Questioning Transgender Politics.” Most of my early posts are about their articles. I don’t believe that calling out prejudice and bigotry is a slur, and I think that giving those with privilege the ability to tell me what I can call their privilege and their prejudice is not realistic. Saying it’s a slur implies to me that being anti-trans is equal to being pro-trans, that both positions hold equal merit, and that neither position has a social advantage over the other.
The problem with a balanced perspective is, I have no idea what you mean by that. Should I spend time tracking down all the good that radical feminism does so I can say “Yes, they say horrible things about trans people and do horrible things to trans people, but they also do X?” I actually started to write a post like that once, but I felt it was diluting the point I was trying to make, which is challenging bigotry against trans people. Is it not balanced to say “some radical feminists have written these words, and this is my critique on the basis that those words are used to demonize, illegitimize, and other me?” Am I supposed to present why their words are accurate? Their words aren’t accurate, they’re layered justifications to disguise the fact that there’s really no justification for treating other human beings like these women who write these words apparently feel trans people deserve to be treated.
“Transgender” is not an offensive word to me. “Questioning Transgender Politics” as a site is offensive to me because it’s based on attacking people under the umbrella of non-existent politics, or rather, based on politicizing people’s actions against their will and assigning motives and attitudes based on those politicized actions.
My problem with the “safe spaces” that radical feminists set up for women is that they exclude trans women. And, I think that if they cared to, they could accommodate those women whom they believe would be completely unable to handle the presence of a trans woman.
Many radical feminists direct their activism to excluding trans women whenever and wherever possible. Several years ago on the Margins, I saw one woman gloating about how there was a young trans woman in her local high school, and how she was going to work to prevent that woman from being able to use the women’s restroom in the high school. It’s that kind of directed attack – against people like me – that makes me question those safe spaces in the first place.
And, the implicit assumption tied up in that – the idea that trans women are somehow, still men, and thus should be excluded because we’re somehow still traumatic for some women to be around. Our own needs, and the dangers we have to deal with as women, are brushed aside because “real women’s” needs are privileged above our own.
This makes it sound like trans women have been fulminating against radical feminists for decades just as many radical feminists have been fulminating against trans women, and this just isn’t so.
Trans women were involved in second wave feminism. Beth Elliott was in the Daughters of Bilitis before she was ejected (and Heart occasionally claims that she was ejected because she raped a woman – something I have not seen confirmed or even mentioned anywhere else). Sandy Stone was a recording engineer at Olivia Records in the late 70s until, thanks to The Transsexual Empire, feminists started boycotting them until she left – and she had to leave, or Olivia would die, because someone said she was a man masquerading as a woman. Robin Morgan, Germaine Greer, Janice Raymond, Mary Daly… all of these writers made it a point to attack trans women. They’d say things like by becoming women we’re trying to murder our mothers or described us as patriarchy’s secret agents, setting out to invade women’s spaces.
And to be honest, I think a lot of the discomfort with the idea of us being in women’s spaces comes from that writing – the characterization of us as men trying to get into the women’s movement and undermine it from within that Janice Raymond was specifically responsible for.
In contrast, there hasn’t been much of a body of work criticizing these works. I mean, we have some blogs, there’s a few books out there, we have Camp Trans, but this stuff is a response to feminists who declared us as the enemy without provocation or reason.
I hope that people read what I have to write and see the flaws and the cracks in the transphobic arguments that have been used to exclude and other trans people. I hope that people see I am angry not because I hate women (I do not) or radical feminism (I do not), but because I am tired of being treated like a subhuman worthy of nothing more than table scraps from the real men and women.
I hope that people do not read what I have to write and assume that I’m ignoring other oppressions. I am invested in fighting sexism, racism, ableism, and so on. Transphobia is my primary concern on this blog, true, but it’s not my only concern.
I also do not think that people who hold prejudiced views are automatically not worth talking to. I’d like to think it’s possible to explain why something is offensive or derogatory without them immediately assuming it’s more about them than it is about the something in question.
Lisa Harney
March 21, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Abby, yeah… It’s not like anyone’s used their profession or credentials to discredit anyone else ever before, right? :) Oh, I forget his name and I even blogged about him –
Ah, here we are: Dr. McHugh and the Catholic Church.
Thanks for the added details.
Also, remember Satsuma, who was telling you that transphobia doesn’t exist and she’s an ally to trans people? She’s been betching rather virulently about how trans women are men invading women’s – especially lesbian – spaces and especially bringing their “pornographic minds” in and talking about sex all the time.
Lovely, huh?
Lisa Harney
March 21, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Pisaquari: you seem to be sorta trying here, so I’m going to dial down the snark for a bit.
Let’s ignore the discussion about women’s space for a minute.
Discussions with radical feminists do not ever concern ally work. We don’t get to talk about violence against trans women, or how that might intersect with race, homophobia and misogyny.
Or why the issues that trans women face have so much in common with cis women – misogyny, rape, domestic violence, beauty standards, and so on.
Because, see, we’re not *really* having political discussions, and it’s not politics that’s being debated, beyond the women’s space issue.
Instead, it’s a continual ethico-philosophical debate over the morality of trans people transitioning, over whether we have the right to have our gender identities respected. And that continually means a slippage whereby “trans woman” – where it’s not just reduced to a genderless “trans” – slips into “man,” and then again into “potential or actual rapist.”
Not by all radical feminists, sure, but enough.
Can you see why that would be frustrating, if you live in a world where you get screwed by institutions, discriminated against by employers family friends co-workers random arseholes on the street, and the ever-possible threat of violence? The stats on violence against trans people are just astronomically higher than the general population. To state the obvious, the world – the Patriarchy – hates us.
And then in a progressive movement that is supposed to be about gender equality and rights, all you get is a twice yearly debate that inevitably features you being compared to serial killers or rapists. That makes me, and a lot of trans people, quite grumpy. Because it’s one more fight I don’t have a lot of energy for.
queen emily
March 21, 2008 at 11:01 pm
I’m not trying to force anything into your words, I just see patterns that I’ve seen before
And honestly, from the way pisaquaririse has reacted to everything, there was nothing that couldn’t be read into hir words. Sie has reacted as every single bigot I have ever met has reacted, blaming those sie targeted in the first place for reacting, and acting like it was their fault in the first place for any overreaction on hir part. Honestly, Heart, pisaquaririse, luckynkl? They’re all the same, in the end. It ends up being ALL-YOUR-FAULT™ that you don’t fit in with their preconceived boundaries of gender, which means YOU</I. reify gender, not them. Oh, never them.
J.Goff
March 21, 2008 at 11:07 pm
To be fair, Heart’s extremely unlikely to come over here to engage, or to allow any comment I write to be posted on her blog (at least not without extreme editing). I don’t believe she’s ever allowed a pingback through. Lucky’s just a troll with a shaky grasp on biology. Pisa’s talking, which is something that never happened even when I did have a conversation with Heart, and Lucky just does drive-bys
Lisa Harney
March 21, 2008 at 11:14 pm
I don’t agree, Lisa, but that is my own position. I wholeheartedly state that my words are my own, and are not a reflection of this site. Have a problem with me? The email you can reach me at is jwgoff@gmail.com.
J.Goff
March 21, 2008 at 11:20 pm
“Okay, the iconic representative of trans women exclusion is the Michigan Women’s Music Festival [these paragraphs]
Yes, the Michigan Music Festival. Soo, *that* I have yet to make any declamatory statements on. I’ve never been, but read bout it and listened to some of the performances. I think part of my hesitation stems from my own musical background (singer) and the experience I’ve had with music as a performer and lover: which as always been very inclusive.
I’ve experienced too much creative joy and force in diverse atmospheres to have any immediate sentiments for exclusion at a music festival. I’m listening to both sides on this one but I lean more with you. As well, as I stated, I do believe in spaces that are more inclusive and I think music is a great way to bring people together. My experience at music festivals of the general public kind is that they are a bastion of misogyny and any woman is subject to groping, drunkin’ assholes , or, as I once experienced, forced mosh-pits (resembling something of a molestation-ping-pong). I would not want these to be the only music festivals open to transwomen because I think they are especially dangerous for them.
But, as I have a very hard time insisting for people include certain people, especially on such a private level (as in the festival is organized through private means), I would probably focus more time/effort on organizing a festival that was inclusive. (has that idea been thrown around? I don’t go to those forums).
“but you focused on transphobia as a fear of trans people, rather than a word to label prejudice against trans people.”
Well yes, I talked about it from a fear stand point but I also feel I indirectly addressed prejudice. When I, however satirically, made mention of radfems reactions to trans or trans-related things, or spoke to the level of intensity the fear had reached I was also alluding to hate. Because I fear elevators I in fact hate them. Phobia most immediately, in my mind, means fear but I do feel, in my post, I was also demonstrating (without using the word) how that fear manifests as hateful acts or hate towards the feared person/thing.
The point was to say: if radfems have all this fear/hate in what ways does it truly manifest that justifies the accusations?
If that makes sense.
“I don’t like the idea of confusion as applied to people like me – I was never confused as to who I was. I knew who I was as early as I can remember. I guess it may look like confusion if my body is one sex and my identity says another, but to me, it was always clear, and my body was in the wrong.”
I see how you inferred “confusion.”
I accept that you felt the way you did as you say.
My comment there was to address how unremarkable I find any situations where people and their bodies are at a strong disconnect—to include all people of any *whatever* (I have a tag I need to use more often called “Antibodies”—because I really feel it’s a phenomenon on a massive level).
“Everyone uses gender, and transsexual people don’t really use gender any differently than the general population”
I agree to a certain extent. I no more blame transpersons anymore than I blame the general population. But part of my leaning towards radical feminism is that it preaches a move from the general population in this regard and many radfems I have come to know actively practice removing the idea that behavior and body parts are linked. Those are the people I philosophically promote on these issues. I find that to be the most sound and healthy ideal to work towards.
“I’d say the vast majority of people who never transition and never consider transitioning have a lot more invested in reinforcing strict gender roles, and they certainly are just as willing to attack trans people for violating those strict gender roles”
I agree with you. I am certainly not with the vast majority of people on *anything* let alone gender.
Wrt to trans where I see gender coming in (not all the time but enough to say something) is that, to transition is to go, basically, from one status to another. From biological male to woman let’s say and any changes (I said this essentially over at Feministe) that come with that new status that are in direct line of behaviors and expressions men have coined as “womanly” for centuries re-emphasize gender .
* A note here on binary: I really know *no one* who is totally with the binary. The binary exists as an ideology that is promoted in advertising and media and words and exchanges people have with each other but I hold that no person is anymore a true “Man” than a ftm. But to me the binary, as strong as it is, is upheld *anytime* someone uses one of the “gendered” behaviors and reassigns it to the correct “gender” using a causal relationship.
And I realize that reassignment is DUE to male’s system—wherein not even someone who feels their “internal map” ill-fits their genitalia can have a body without men’s stamp. Yes I really get that. My concern comes into play wherein a transwoman for instance says they do/wear/say “X” *because* they are now a woman—especially when that behavior comes strikingly close to *any* of the gendered behavior prescribed by the male model ( I understand that is not necessarily you Lisa).
Now, clearly any transperson who does not want anything to do with radical feminism or doesn’t have much beef with gender will think what I am saying is out of line. (I thought the original discussion was about transitioning and radical feminism so that is how I am taking this).
But that is my target goal for how all gender should be discussed: woman/men does not equal behavior or expressions *ever* (I’m sure that sounds exhaustively small—seriously tho, I am the ** nip tickiest** person you’ve ever met).
~(It’s 4 AM–I will finish the rest of my response tomorrow)~
pisaquaririse
March 22, 2008 at 12:18 am
Wrt to trans where I see gender coming in (not all the time but enough to say something) is that, to transition is to go, basically, from one status to another. From biological male to woman let’s say and any changes (I said this essentially over at Feministe) that come with that new status that are in direct line of behaviors and expressions men have coined as “womanly” for centuries re-emphasize gender .
You said a lot of things over at feministe.
I think you’ve got this wrong, and, again, I think that this is one of the ways that transpeople are treated as categorically different. Any given person is going to be gendered–ask someone who’s transitioned what happens to the reactions they get from different people when they go from one gender-status to another. It is a given that someone who is seen as female, who identifies as female, will display certain behaviors in line with the rules for womanhood, and some that aren’t–and many that are shoved to one side or the other from minute to minute. Bucking the status quo isn’t about confounding expectations all the time; this isn’t exactly possible given the dichotomous nature of the beast. I think it happens when people individuate. And most transpeople do that all by themselves.
But that is my target goal for how all gender should be discussed: woman/men does not equal behavior or expressions *ever* (I’m sure that sounds exhaustively small—seriously tho, I am the ** nip tickiest** person you’ve ever met).
It’s not exhaustively small so much as dismayingly out-of-touch when it comes to people who transition: the doubled expectations on top of the double bind make it virtually impossible for any transperson to accept this statement as the truth from anyone. A transwoman doesn’t have the luxury of straightforward rebellion, not in a system with two boxes readymade for her every trait.
piny
March 22, 2008 at 1:25 pm
I have to preface my comment here.
1.) My name is more a reflection of the fact that I am a chemist than my trans-ness. A transition state is the point in a reaction where everything is halfway between the starting material and the final product. That eccurately sums up my current outlook on life.
2.) I am a pre-op, pre-hormone FTM.
3.) I have no intention of ever having any permanent modification because even though the parts aren’t right, they work and that’s more important to me at this stage.
I will tell my story because I think it will be very instructive to the “don’t understand the disjointed body-mind connection crowd.”
My mother is a rad-rem. Because she is a radfem, she raised both my brother and I completely androgynously. I was even given a boy’s name and my brother was given a girl’s name. No lie. And so, when I hit puberty, I stayed androgynous. Then my mother freaked out and realized that I was very very different from other girls. She started trying to socialize me as a female. This was ineffective. It was doubly frustrating when my brother turned out to be a relatively normal, if slightly overly sensitive boy. It’s important to note also that I was taught to think of myself as a person and not a girl. I did not have a crisis when I realized I liked women sexually because it was not really conflicting with any of my sense of self. I did try to hang on to liking boys because I wanted to be a little normal and I knew that I read as female. Fast forward to college — a prestigious women’s college so I could be immersed in the culture of rad-fem and lesbianism. I was born female so I supposed I was a lesbian. Then I met other butch lesbians. They were not like me. It was at this point I started feeling a loss and an emptiness. Over the course of my 4 year college career I grew out of the socialization my mother forced on me and with each vestige of false femaleness I felt my other self — the bigger, broad-shouldered me growing. I started having phantom sensations from parts I did not have. That was the most disquieting. I’ve grown all the way into it at this point. I know my female body very well, but it’s like concept of the movie Face/Off; I’m fully aware of what is real but it isn’t mine. I don’t have any first hand experience with it, but an amputee’s Phantom Limb syndrome is the closest parallel to what I feel about some parts of my body. AND I startle myself sometimes when I speak because I sound so much like a girl. So now, here I am. I am 24 and in graduate school so surgery is out of the picture entirely for now. But even so I don’t feel comfortable with the hormone therapy because I’m a very moody person as it is. I might consider top surgery one day because my breasts aren’t just foreign, they actively annoy me. Bottom surgery just scares the bejesus out of me.
I think the biggest, most critical disconnect in this whole argument is the perception of self by the indiividual versus the perception of self by society. In a radfem utopia, we could, maybe, all be happy in our own bodies (or at least accept it better because when you look down you see what’s in your head) because we can be perceived as ourselves instead of a binary (which is possible because at least I don’t go round showing off my genitals [real or prosthetic] to any and all comers.). I am a boy and I would like to be perceived as a boy. I have a better day when I’m passing, to be sure. This is why so many of us are unhappy until we have surgery, I think. We want to stop feeling like we’re wearing a costume. We want to be the right person when we’re naked.
On the subject of feminism, I have one final thing to add. I was raised and schooled rad-fem. I was practically in that place where I was for male exclusion in a lot of areas (old school outlook on gender, I know). But now? What I am? I know that women have not yet achieved equality, but I feel like the movement should actually embrace the reality that we are just *people*. Yes, I will concede that by becoming a man I am giving up many rights I had as a woman. I try not to violate women’s only spaces (except the bathroom because I’m a very small person and afraid of getting cornered in the men’s room) but at the same time I feel a tremendous loss because I was still socialized as female and spent time with the feminist set.
And that was rambly and stream of consciousness, so I apologize. I’ve been sneaking this in at work.
TransitionState
March 22, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I always thought that a so-called “woman-only” space should be way more specific.
For instance, “only for people who experienced growing up publicly gendered as female from the ages of 5 through 18″ is subtly and importantly different from “only for people who have dealt with and are dealing with menstruation”.
“Women” is lazy. A careful radfem who supports “woman-only spaces” would instead specify what shared experience was relevant to that particular space.
I had to respond to this quote: People know what their gender – or if you prefer, their sense of what sex they are
Right, absolutely. Well, my sense is that I am ungendered, or if you prefer, both male and female. As, according to some fairly famous theologies, all our souls are ungendered, or both male and female. Essentialism can go to hell.
And I was spurred to comment on this from Lisa Harney:
Online gaming, like pen-and-paper RPGs, sometimes involves the *deliberate* and *mutually understood* creation of alternate identities: actual role-playing. I would never ‘masquerade’ in an environment where real identities were expected (like most chatting), but in an environment where everyone is a medieval warrior or a space cadet and is expected to be playing a role, the distinction between in-character and out-of-character matters. If someone asked me or any other serious role-player online “Are you a woman?”, I’d assume they were asking an *in-character* question. (Of course, I would also profess lack of knowledge of things like “the USA”, the President, Washington, DC, France, India, and other OOC things, giving a clear tipoff that I was a hardcore roleplayer.)
If you’re seriously involved in online gaming, you’ve probably encountered women playing male characters and men playing female characters where you never spotted it because gender wasn’t an issue. (One estimate was that over half the woman gamers online usually play male characters, often to avoid harassment.) They are in amongst the many who make themselves obvious. I never make any assumptions about the RL identities of players in online RPGs (although they can often unwittingly give things away through lack of knowledge when certain topics come up).
Actually, one of the disturbing things is that people can get quite offended when people RP a different gender than their one, even though they don’t mind that people are RPing pirates, soldiers, kings, queens, bankers, or corporate tycoons while being something entirely different in Real Life (nor do they usually get upset when you have a different height or hair color or even skin color in RL). It’s a curious form of sexism: some people seem to very strongly want to force everyone to stay in their gender box *even when the social convention is that this is a masquerade*. To me it’s like prohibiting fiction writers from writing from the POV of characters of any gender other than their own. That’s kind of insane.
Bit of free association here. Ramble ramble.
Nathanael Nerode
March 23, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Yeah, a lot of people don’t have a sense of themselves having gender.
As for the gaming thing, I am explicitly not talking about men who play female characters. I’m talking about men who establish elaborate online identities as women, claiming to be women in reality, and using that claim to establish relationships. I first came across it in gaming in a guild that was mainly established for playing competitive RTS games, not RPGs.
It wasn’t completely accurate to relate it to gaming, although that is where it happens so often. It also happens in chat rooms, mailing lists, on forums. Sometimes it’s relatively harmless, and sometimes the person doing it manages to hurt people with his fiction.
And I’ve never seen it happen in an MMORPG with a man who was playing a female character. I have seen other men make assumptions and get angry about those assumptions when they turn out to be false, but I haven’t experienced a man playing a female character causing that problem. I have seen men posing as women outside whatever characters they play, which I feel is a different thing that’s not specifically related.
Lisa Harney
March 23, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Why does Heart use “male terrorism” as a tag (like this is some key that unlocks the door to understanding or something). Morgan’s poem is talking about wanting a women’s revolution. Women’s revolution is a response to male terrorism. Duh Sherlock.
I don’t know what the sexism in the military tag is for, it probably was a mistake in tagging. But don’t let that stop any of you from trying to make a case where there isn’t one.
Carol
March 24, 2008 at 8:38 am
I like that you pick on the male terrorism aspect while ignoring everything that happened around it, and neglecting the extremely hostile discussion they were having about little light.
Also, the way that Heart insists upon referring to trans women as males really does make it hard to take what you post there at face value.
If I intended to point out the male terrorism tag as if it were a “key that unlocks the door to understanding,” I wouldn’t have also provided links to the discussion – and to the specific comments in that discussion that are demonstrative of the bad faith with which Heart and many of her commenters approach their discussions about trans women.
Lisa Harney
March 24, 2008 at 8:44 am
Show me where Heart refers to trans women as males. Exactly, not some indirect reference with no links.. In all the years I have known Heart online, she never refers to anyone except as the sex they identify as. That’s a big issue with her not to do that.
Carol
March 24, 2008 at 9:33 am
Jesus Christ, Carol. She doesn’t have to, all right? (and: see topic title).
If she doesn’t see trans women as “male,” if she -does- see them as “female” (the real point here), then exactly what is the big fucking problem with letting them into a womens’ event, hm? At best she’s giving this sort of begrudging “okay, not exactly like MEN men, but certainly not WOMEN, that’s SPECIAL and RESERVED for people who can HAVE BABIES and were born with VULVAS.” It’s fucked. Stop being so disingenuous.
And you don’t get cookies for dogwhistling to the faithful without having to actually use the epithet in question, when you’re surrounded by such charmers as lucky, who refers to “Buffalo Bill” and “nutjobs who belong in straitjackets,” and doesn’t do more than give a tap on the wrist, if that; or Rich, a male who remains male hanging around womensspace, please note, with his constant virulence and previous reference to “freaks,” or Mary Sunshine in that very thread, “get out of my skin Jack,” and “there are some lines trannies really, really shouldn’t be crossing,” and Heart following it immediately with “I love you, Mary Sunshine.”
or for that matter, her digging up a post by a trans woman wherein she talks about being harassed on the bus and using it as proof that no REAL woman would ever write like this and how dare this person ask for Heart’s sympathy anyway? outrage!
Professional bigots know how to play good cop and veil their terms in front of a wider audience; that’s how they -work.- Nice try, though.
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 9:48 am
–here, you want the link or quotes? This is her dear dear friend Mary Sunshine, from the Robin Morgan thread at Heart’s own place, you know where to find it, it’s in her sidebar.
(please also note that the original post referred indirectly to Little Light, whom she never bothered to address directly ever, as “she or he”)
# Mary Sunshine Says:
January 19th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
For the record, I was just really offended to see little light’s page where (s)he (?) has thrown up all kinds of ancient female Goddess imagery and obviously done a makeover of Robin Morgan’s poem to try to present him/her/its self as a born-female.
These female power images have *everything* to do with female biological creative power: gestation, birth, and lactation.
That power is an essential and unremoveable part of those images.
The fearsomeness of female being is very much connected to these particular powers, amongst others.
Trannies really, really do need to realize that there are some lines they should not be crossing.
OK, fine, call yourself “she”, get your body hacked up (or not), get “recognized” as something or other. But you know what? Your imagined “rights” don’t exceed mine: my right to say “hell, no!” when you’re presenting yourself as what I *am* and you *are not*.
You *have not* almost died in childbirth. (I have).
You *have not* almost lost your newborn daughter in that process. (I have).
You *have not* lactated and nourished your own child from your own body. (I have).
These experiences of female power and danger have not been, and never will, be yours.
So back off with the imagery that suggests that they are.
Mary S.
***
and then:
Mary Sunshine Says:
January 18th, 2007 at 7:08 am
But … but … they do such a *better* job of being women than we do.
Can’t we just get over it, and pay obeisance to them for that?
We never really knew how do do feminism until *they* came along and brought us into the light, while keeping the spotlight on themselves.
Being *born* female is such a nasty, creepy slimey thing that we need to have the way shown to us by those who were not so cursed.
Copycats are better cats, seems to be the point in all of this.
Mary S.
***
and this is Heart’s response:
womensspace Says:
January 18th, 2007 at 7:13 am
Profacero, exactly. Let’s talk about the apparent erasure. Let’s talk about Robin Morgan and her poem, “Monster,” which is beautiful and brilliant and worth talking about. Let’s talk about the difference between the struggles/issues of women and the struggles/issues of transwomen. Let’s talk about who has made whom to be monstrous and why and when and where.
Mary Sunshine, I love you.
xxxooo
Heart
****
No, she doesn’t use the word “males” in there; she doesn’t have to. Why this of itself is supposed to make anyone think any better of her is beyond me, however.
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 9:53 am
also please note: “him/her/itself.” which -dear- Heart never calls her on, and why should she: she did pretty much the same thing herself.
No, that’s right, she doesn’t call trans women males. Basically her position would seem to be: okay if they’re -not- males, they’re, well, -it.- And -still- can’t come in the clubhouse. Let them go find their own space somewhere else, shoo, shoo.
Which is in -no way- bigotry, and -certainly- in no way at -all- anything like mainstream transphobia, FUCK no.
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 9:55 am
I linked it above. Right here:
Emphasis mine.
Here’s a second:
Two consecutive posts here:
And:
When she’s not making sure to define trans women as males, she’s defining womanhood as the experience of “being born female and treated as a girl and a woman for all of one’s life.”
Lisa Harney
March 24, 2008 at 9:58 am
Oh, I italicized the bit about not being able to buy womanhood not because I believe womanhood is something trans women buy, but to link it to the statement that women can only be women if they’re born female and treated as girls and women their entire lives.
It’s pretty insulting to impose the idea that trans women believe that hormones and surgery are what make trans women into women, though. It’s almost like making assertions about a group of people without taking time to listen to what those people say about themselves. Julia Serano has some good writing in Whipping GIrl on the process of growing into womanhood during transition that does not insist that it is purchased with hormone pills or a surgeon’s knife.
Lisa Harney
March 24, 2008 at 10:03 am
None of that proves a damn thing. Heart is not Mary Sunshine. If everybody is responsible for what commentesr say on their blogs everybody here is in big trouble. If someone was born male, they were. When they identify as women Heart calls them women and doesn’t call anyone “It”. The point of those last quotes is surgery does not make women. Some people born male live as women and cannot afford surgery and they are no more or less women than people who can afford surgery. That is the point of the last quotes. Either way Heart calls them women if they so identify. If she really did call them men, you’d be able to quote her doing that. You can’t because she never does.
Carol
March 24, 2008 at 10:09 am
Here’s one:
http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2007/02/02/woman-born-woman-only-spaces-protected-by-supreme-court-of-canada-ruling/
Comment # 47:
Females with disabilities are females. Transwomen have lived for long periods of their lives as men, and are male born. Females can’t discriminate against males, or those who have lived many years of their lives as men, in the same way that people of color cannot discriminate against white people.
(snip)
Wrong. VRR is defending female only space. Transwomen are not females. They are person born male and who have lived many years of their lives as men, with male privilege. This is particularly true of Kimberly Nixon, who was a white male, a pilot, who lived 33 years as a man and a pilot, enjoying male privilege in ways no female ever does.
Also in this post:
http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2007/01/17/i-am-a-monster-and-i-am-proud-robin-morgan/
The part where she quotes a bit from Chasingmoksha about how transwomen are “biologically born males” and applauds it:
“Yet it is exactly that reasoning that is justifying allowing a biological born male to be accepted as a woman. I do not think biological males should be discriminated against during transition, or if they never officially transitioned, but how is it that they are embraced openly, but I do not.”
YES.
Going back to reading your comment, chasingmoksha.
Heart
And here’s a short passage from the intro:
If the central imagery of the poem is going to be enlisted in a different type of political struggle, then circulated and otherwise blogged, it seems right to me that this classic of the women’s liberation movement, be acknowledged and named, with full credit given, if not immediately by the the person using the imagery (because she or he wasn’t aware of the poem, perhaps), then by those of us interested in honoring the great leaders and mothers of our own movement. That’s what you do– you know?
Little Light’s gender–she’s a transwoman–is something Heart was perfectly aware of, couldn’t possibly have missed if she saw any of the responses to LL’s poem or if she read the piece itself (”I am not a woman trapped in a man’s body. This body is no man’s; it is mine, it is me, and there is no man in that equation.”). This is a passive-aggressive swipe at LL’s identity.
…And really, read the threads. Heart’s MO isn’t so much to call transwomen men as to cheer people who call them men–and who come out with gems like the one about how transphobia is actually the opposite of true:
“Regardless of what gender the biological being identifies with, transitioning in or out of, dressed as, portrayed as, society will promote the one that is biologically closer to the male.”
YES.
Heart
Here’s the second commenter on the Monster thread:
While they’re at it, why don’t they just write, “Not a man, but *better* than a woman. Hear me roar!”
That’s the whole point, isn’t it?
“I can do anything, anything, I can do anything better than you …” … including being female??!!
It would be unfair to attribute these other comments to Heart, but…when this stuff constitutes the comments threads on every single womensspace post about trans stuff, when commenters like Rich and Luckynkl may be relied upon to call transwomen MAYUNS whenever they comment, why does Heart only clarify it when a trans/ally blogger complains that she thinks transwomen are dudes?
piny
March 24, 2008 at 10:36 am
Except that in those two last quotes, she makes an explicit point that women are “born female, and treated all their lives as girls and women.”
Are you saying that definition does not exclude trans women?
a
Also, when she says that trans women who aren’t able to get hormones or surgery are no more or less women than people who can afford surgery, she’s not actually acknowledging their womanhood. She’s not actually saying they’re women. In every one of those quotes, she skirts around referring to trans women as women, instead referring to them as “born male,” “factually male,” describes trans women becoming women as “a new and different manifestation of male supremacy,” refers to a hypothetical trans woman with a masculine pronoun.
Oh, and this:
And right here, she certainly refers to trans women as women:
I meant she refers to trans women as separate from women.
And this:
The person who sued Vancouver Rape Relief is a woman, Heart’s referring to her (as part of a larger group) as a man and using male privilege to sue Vancouver Rape Relief. She refers to those who were against Bitch performing at the Boston Dyke March as men.
On a related note in that same discussion, but not specifically about denying trans women identities as valid, she also writes:
Laudable goals, here. I’m curious if she’s ever really supported that position.
I remember more clearly, the day after the Transgender Day of Remembrance, when she said in a comment:
In context, this was written the day after the Transgender Day of Remembrance, when we remember the lives of the many trans people who were killed out of hatred and prejudice, many of whom were trans women of color, forced into prostitution. Is that how she goes to the mat for them? She complains that people care too much that they’ve been murdered? That the concern for their deaths equals the concern for the deaths of men or boys?
And before you tell me I’m reading too much into it, how would you feel if, the day after the 16 days of blogging against violence against women, a man posted:
Should that context be ignored?
Lisa Harney
March 24, 2008 at 10:43 am
None of that proves a damn thing. Heart is not Mary Sunshine. If everybody is responsible for what commentesr say on their blogs everybody here is in big trouble.
If it were just a few commenters, that would be one thing. But it’s this whole crowd of people who show up every time Heart posts about trans anything, and while she posts reams of text in response to any apparent misunderstanding on the part of, say, Bint Alhamsa, she never corrects any of them when they refer to transwomen as men. And they do. Constantly. They interpret this issue that way every single time.
The surgery issue would be different if Heart weren’t inclined to use terms like “factually male.” “Factually” doesn’t mean “born” or “biologically” or “assigned” or “physically.” It means “male in the important sense of the term.” It’s a denial of the fact that transwomen are factually female.
Either way Heart calls them women if they so identify. If she really did call them men, you’d be able to quote her doing that. You can’t because she never does.
So I refer to my aunt’s partner as her wife, because that’s what my aunt wants me to call her. I also constantly talk about how their “lifestyle” could never be confused with my marriage, how it’s categorically different and how they don’t have to deal with any of the issues that affect my spouse and me. Does my immaculate etiquette negate my immaculate denial? And is the latter any less homophobic than an insistence on political exclusion coupled with a willingness to seem like a big meanie to my mom’s big sister?
piny
March 24, 2008 at 10:46 am
There’s also quotes on Alas, La Chola, and I Blame the Patriarchy. I’m fairly certain there’s more quotes on blogs beyond those, but they’re not coming immediately to mind.
Lisa Harney
March 24, 2008 at 10:51 am
And, really, the $100,000 question: If Heart really accepts trans women as women, then why does she support keeping trans women out of women-only spaces? I don’t care about the “born female, treated as a girl and a woman etc” litany she repeats when she’s carefully defining why trans women aren’t really women. That’s not a reason to exclude trans women – that’s drawing boundaries to keep some women out of the clubhouse, and in fact, to keep them from being defined as women in the first place.
Just referring to us as women isn’t respect. It’s a level of accommodation, but the fact is that her actions do not support that she respects or sees us as women, even if she calls us women occasionally.
Can you point to a single blog post she’s made about trans people or trans issues that was positive? Just one.
Lisa Harney
March 24, 2008 at 10:58 am
Considering that Heart maintains her space so carefully and bans people for all sorts of other things, you bet it matters. And, what everyone else said.
Heart, as far as I’m concerned, is exactly parallel to the conservative preacher who “loves the sinner, not the sin,” occasionally tut-tuts about such things as Matthew Shepherd being brutally tortured and murdered (and fully expects a whole box of cookies for it), but simultaneously refuses to accept that there might be ANY connection between the virulently homophobic language used by his dear friends and colleagues, to which he stands by and listens to with an indulgent chuckle, even applauding, not to mention his own very firm position against ordaining gay ministers, allowing gay marriage, and so on and so forth.
and also loses the nicey-nicey veneer pretty damn quickly when people, actually gay or not, challenge him too closely on any of his positions.
and appeals to the terrible terrible behavior of certain homosexual activists as justification for his beliefs and actions.
and accuses them of oppressing him as a Christian because gosh darn it they won’t respect his -beliefs.-
Oh. Speaking of all which: if Mrs. Seelhoff makes a sneering allusion to LGBTUVWXYZ, “queer,” or how wrong certain kinds of lesbian sex are, not to mention what a waste of time it is to campaign for gay marriage, ONE more time.
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 11:21 am
per 97: I stand corrected, that sure sounds like Heart calling ‘em “male” to -me.- Basically she’s saying o all right if you INSIST, I’ll indulge you in your fantasy, as long as you don’t challenge me too much. If you do, all bets are off.
which is, again, not in the slightest about “privilege,” because Heart is a Real Woman ™ and no -woman- can oppress -anyone ever- (yes, she actually said this. no, I don’t have access to the quote right this minute, but I can search later), therefore, she is not responsible for anything she says or does regarding trans persons up to and including supporting the Vancouver Rape Relief court decision, QED.
such bullshit.
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 11:25 am
”
And, really, the $100,000 question: If Heart really accepts trans women as women, then why does she support keeping trans women out of women-only spaces? ”
What I’m saying.
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 11:26 am
“So I refer to my aunt’s partner as her wife, because that’s what my aunt wants me to call her. I also constantly talk about how their “lifestyle” could never be confused with my marriage, how it’s categorically different and how they don’t have to deal with any of the issues that affect my spouse and me. Does my immaculate etiquette negate my immaculate denial? And is the latter any less homophobic than an insistence on political exclusion coupled with a willingness to seem like a big meanie to my mom’s big sister?”
I’d like an answer to this, also.
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 11:27 am
…particularly if, when push comes to shove, or rather when the vote comes up, I vote against legal recognition of my aunt’s relationship.
and am perfectly fine with them not being allowed into my church.
or a number of family gatherings.
but hey, I’m -polite- to them, don’t actually spit in their face or anything (although I don’t really say anything when my friends do spit, call them “disgusting dykes” and child molesters right in front of me, except maybe “I love you, [homophobic friend].” Don’t I get a cookie? How can you possibly say I’m homophobic when I’m so -nice- and -considerate- and make all these -accomodations- for -those people-? What do you want from me, blood?
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 11:30 am
(Sorry for the delay)
“So on the one side, I have mainstream people telling me how awful I am because I changed sex and violated my god-given sex role, and on the other side, I have radical feminists telling me how awfulI am because I changed sex and reinforced sex roles.”
Yes, a lose-lose it seems. I don’t think the net effect these discussions have had on transpersons is truly on the radfem agenda (for some, quite possibly).
And if I can clarify this further: afaic there are no sex “roles”–only gender roles, and that sex and gender are seen as the same I blame on the idea of gender. (maybe this is a redundancy but I want to keep a close eye on language here because it is essentially all we have).
As well, I think a great many radfems feel any reiteration of the idea our sex has anything to do with behavior or expressions is a very mainstream idea/theme. This is what we see in mainstream all the time and it simply doesn’t fly with radical feminism (I can’t tell for sure if you back this or not?) . And then there are the theories brought up in trans discussions backed by science (giving the whole brain and genitalia link some validity) and radfems do another head-spin because we’ve been trying to fight science and studies for *years* that put women in their place with studies– “Get in the kitchen woman–look at this infrared scan of your cortebellus thalamucous” or whatever. The parallels, in that respect, give many radfems great pause.
And then comes along someone like you Lisa who says, paraphrasing “This is how I feel–I almost killed myself over it”–and so ensues a very messy, difficult-to-manage situation.
It’s highly emotional: for many radfems, the philosophy, this way of looking at the world is its own saving grace, or the only escape from a world they can’t find a place in. And then, for a transperson with your situation, your transition is the reason you are alive.
It only makes sense, to me, that a hyperbolic disagreement would manifest. I think that dynamic is a breeding ground for fighting and accusations. Radfems work very hard to break down where sexism or misogyny are and *anything* remotely close (seemingly even) will be red flagged. You Lisa are working toward being accepted simply as you are by society and so, I would bet, anything remotely close to mainstream’s exclusion of you is also red flagged.
Still it seems to me, in such a fray, there are very real opportunities for common ground and support of each other–only to be squandered because both sides are hyper sensitive to their situations and wanting to protect so much of what they are working towards.
“It seems rather contradictory to me, and I usually feel more like gender’s pimping me than the other way around.”
Yes, that’s why I put “receiver and giver” in the original explanation for the tag. I understand that there are many times in our lives where gender is inevitable, either for survival or sanity. That is *no one’s* fault.
My reasons for being so particular about it on my blog and in discussion is because this is the only place in my world where I can at least be the kind of tough I want to on gender and really hash out ways to get rid of it. My strictness on the blogosphere has helped me remove it more from my own life .
But, of course, this is not a popular method for those who, once again, don’t care or do not see gender the way I do.
“I explained it further previously, but based on personal experience, my definition is pretty safe based on the fact that I haven’t seen men actually transition and get hormones and surgery for predatory reasons. ”
If I implied predatory then let me clarify. I don’t necessarily believe any transperson has bad intentions for wanting to be with women I simply want more sensitive situations to be respected by other people (I would for almost any situation).
And it seems, at least I think, you have addressed just that here:
“And, I think that if they cared to, they could accommodate those women whom they believe would be completely unable to handle the presence of a trans woman.”
Maybe I’m wrong–it sounds like you are saying you are okay with accommodating those unable to handle transwomen in, what are called, safe spaces. (yes?)
If so, I don’t know where we are disagreeing on this point.
However, when you say:” My problem with the “safe spaces” that radical feminists set up for women is that they exclude trans women.”
Is it your impression that radfems want all safe spaces trans exclusive? Is it your impression that there are too many exclusionary spaces?
My personal feelings are that I advocate for 3 different kinds of safe spaces: trans inclusive women only, female born women only, transwomen only.
If one of these types of spaces are not proportionate to the needs of either group I would support more organization for those people in need.
“Saying it’s a slur implies to me that being anti-trans is equal to being pro-trans, that both positions hold equal merit, and that neither position has a social advantage over the other.”
I get that–except we still are divided on how so much of this alleged anti-trans or transphobic-ness is occurring in the radfem community.
As well, “social advantages” seems to me to imply dichotomy that isn’t valued by radfems–could you explain?
“Tony is a man, who…[paragraph]”
Okay, I am still confused. Did Tony sneak into the festival?
I agree saying a whole bunch of people were doing “X” is an exaggeration it it was an isolated incident.
“The problem with a balanced perspective is, I have no idea what you mean by that. [paragraph]”
I agree that dedicating a whole bunch of posts to radical feminists’ good (if you Lisa would call it that) would be tangential. What I mean is where are the posts that seriously talk about/address the safe spaces that are exclusionary–not just that radical feminists are mean/transphobic but the very serious situations that seem to give way for the exclusion?
“Many radical feminists direct their activism to excluding trans women whenever and wherever possible.”
Well, I think if radfems were to speak to the nit and grit of their points they would say their activism is directed at protecting women only (female born) safe spaces. Too many radfems have experienced, or work with those who’ve felt, brutality by the biological male and understand the need for those spaces. Again, this presents an emotional situation that makes everything sticky and subject to a fire-storm because people who’ve got those discomforts don’t want to have to justify their discomfort for something they never deserved in the first place.
And of course it goes both ways where we have two different groups who feel they are being made to feel worse for an already unjust situation.
So again, chances for agreement or support become too narrow to see.
As well (in terms of conferences and such), I can imagine many radfems (myself included) really haven’t come across a transperson/transwoman they would call a radical feminist–even without transitioning.
I know I haven’t met/talked with any transpersons that align with a lot of other major tenets radfems discuss (at least, in blog land).
Have you come across any?
“Our own needs, and the dangers we have to deal with as women, are brushed aside because “real women’s” needs are privileged above our own.”
I do not agree your needs should be brushed aside and I’ve seen many radfems speak to as much.
“Robin Morgan, Germaine Greer, Janice Raymond, Mary Daly… all of these writers made it a point to attack trans women. They’d say things like by becoming women we’re trying to murder our mothers or described us as patriarchy’s secret agents, setting out to invade women’s spaces.”
I have not read all these writers or all their major works. I’ve read more Daly than anyone and enough of the other authors to know they are very powerful writers who don’t scrimp on theory or passion. The murder of the mothers I don’t stand behind and as for patriarchy’s secret agent, I can see that only so far as the trans issues that make it through mainstream channels (drag and such) give off a mocking and derogatory impression of women–I still need to read more works in full for a better context.
“I’d like to think it’s possible to explain why something is offensive or derogatory without them immediately assuming it’s more about them than it is about the something in question.”
See, this to me supports the “politics not the people” dynamic you mocked earlier–yet I agree with it.
“I hope that people see I am angry not because I hate women (I do not) or radical feminism (I do not), but because I am tired of being treated like a subhuman worthy of nothing more than table scraps from the real men and women.”
Again, I think the radfem community backs this more than you know–and more than the community has displayed.
And that’s what I am interested in changing.
pisaquaririse
March 24, 2008 at 11:30 am
–ooh, wait, don’t tell me! there’s no such thing as “homophobia,” because the dictionary says “homo” is the “same” and “phobia” means “afraid of,” and I certainly am not afraid of sameness! Now: stop calling me “straight,” because I find that INCREDIBLY insulting. Aren’t I a radically transgressive Christian? Everyone hates Christians, you know. I went back to the land, I tuned in and dropped out, I know what “straight” society is and I am not a part of it, how very -dare- you.
as long as you keep calling me “straight,” I see no reason why I have to make even the minging, grudging gestures of accomodation I do (well yes come to mention it I DO find the idea of what you do in bed rather disgusting, although I was too polite to say anything before); certainly anything -more- is totally off the table, the NERVE of you people.
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 11:36 am
Those quotes from all around don’t come to mind because they don’t exist. Telling lies over and over starts to sound like the truth but isn’t. Heart’s commenters are her commenters and do not speak for her. Objections to the GLBT-plus alphabet (which ends up including straight white married people as “queer”) , to BDSM (certain “lesbian sexual practices”) and to civil marriage (for anyone) have to do with that neglected movement known as the women’s liberation movement. Queer is not the political center for everyone as it is here. For a positive post about transpersons (among positive references in many posts) look up “soul force” on Heart’s blog.
Carol
March 24, 2008 at 11:37 am
pisa: Raymond is primarily known (among trans people, anyway) for her book entitled “The Transsexual Empire,” in which she posits that trans women are a sinister creation of the patriarchal establishment and a threat to all real women/lesbians/feminists everywhere.
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 11:38 am
“Again, I think the radfem community backs this more than you know–and more than the community has displayed.
And that’s what I am interested in changing.”
O.K. Then for a start, it would help to actively see and challenge the blatantly transphobic remarks and actions others in the community take, as cited in this and other threads here.
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 11:40 am
Carol,
I quoted Heart saying those things you said she didn’t say. How is that a lie?
I found this post, which does include talk about transgendered people, but it’s not about transgendered people. It’s primarily about 40 people protesting, and about their stop at Patrick Henry College, and its relationship to Michael Farris. It’s not negative about trans people, and it’s supportive of the protesters and the cause they were protesting, but it’s not specifically a trans positive post.
And while you are correct that Heart is not responsible for what Lucky, Mary Sunshine, Satsuma, etc. say on her blog, when she agrees with them, then she’s endorsing their views, or at least admitting that she holds similar views herself.
You were able to point to one post in which she mentions trans people without either running them down or enthusiastically agreeing with someone else who runs them down, which is great, but I think that post was more about applauding that specific activism that they were engaged in more than it was about applauding trans people. It’s pretty thin gruel compared to an entire post dedicated to running down trans women for criticizing Bailey’s unscientific, transphobic, sexist, and homophobic writings about trans women, or criticizing a trans woman for complaining that she’d been groped on the bus, or a post coming down in complete opposition against gender identity protections in ENDA. I mean, it’s great, she supports my right to be a Christian, yay.
But she doesn’t support legislation that would protect me from being fired because of who I am. Maybe those Christians might have some charity, you think?
Lisa Harney
March 24, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Individual transgender leaders’ public treatment and ruining of Bailey was inexcusable; Heart’s post was about that mostly. Some transpersons agree with Bailey and disagree with you, same with intersex persons, and some of those showed up in the Bailey thread to agree with Heart. Yours is not the only opinion on either Bailey or ENDA; some believe women and transpersons are protected under Title 7 and that ENDA might be a problem as far as Title 7 protections. Heart doesn’t agree or disagree with her commenters unless she says she does, as is true of all bloggers. Where does Heart says she agrees with Lucky, etc.? You haven’t shown that here. You posted quotes that didn’t prove what you say they prove and are still saying they prove what you say they do. But I’m not seeing it.
Carol
March 24, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Okay, so when a man manipulates women into giving him narratives and then publishes those narratives with his own interpretations imposed upon them, without informing those women, and without obtaining their permission, it’s wrong to seek censure against him for this abuse of his position?
I never said my opinion was the only opinion, and I’m not sure how it’s relevant that other trans people may disagree with me? I never claimed to speak for them – or for any intersex people.
I realize people believe that trans people are protected under Title VII, but I don’t think that’s been borne out in actual legal decisions with outside the 6th Circuit Court, and of course any such decisions will be decried as the work of activist judges.
Belle and Piny have shown where Heart agrees with Mary Sunshine, Lucky, etc when they say the most horrible things. The links are there, the text is there. If you say they say otherwise, you’re either not reading them, or you’re trying to convince me that they’re not speaking English.
Also, at the very minimum, even ignoring the fact that Heart explicitly agrees with many of the most transphobic statements made on her blog, consider the fact that she aggressively moderates The Margins, and is quick to not allow posts that are anti-feminist or anti-woman or misogynist, but she’s more than willing to allow these transphobic posts by Lucky, Rich, Mary Sunshine, Satsuma, and others to be posted on her blog without modification.
Does that seem right to you?
But yeah, it’s been shown. You don’t want to see it. Heart’s not transphobic, it’s just numerous blogs in the feminist and disability and women – and men – of color blogosphere who have called her on it dozens of times over the past few years. Bint Alshamsa, Ampersand, Brownfemipower, Sly Civilian, I can’t even name everyone who’s called Heart out on her transphobic statements, declarations, and posts. But so many have, and I – as a trans person – can see when I’m being discriminated against, can read her blog and see her prejudice as plain as day. I’m supposed to take your word that this volume of work that adds up to “Heart does not respect trans identities,” is actually the opposite?
I’m not interested in buying your bridge, and it looks fine in Brooklyn anyway.
Lisa Harney
March 24, 2008 at 12:50 pm
So, Carol, are you actually Heart, or are you just her press agent? Just cuz you know, haven’t really seen you around before, and she’s been known to sockpuppet herself in the past. (hi, crunchygranoladyke! hi!) Which is pretty fucking sad, btw.
and you’re defending fucking Bailey, now? Homophobic, right-wing conservative Bailey? Lady…
and the only other person I knew of who really gave much of a fuck about him was…Heart.
or for that matter, you sure are nailing a lot of her talking points there.
You don’t want to identify with the queer spectrum (Maud forbid any of us who actually have non hetero desires might find something in common with each other) rather than leap on the exclusive clear-eyed gazing (god, that was brilliant. BRILLIANT) non-sexual lesbian bandwagon, go ahead; but really, don’t be surprised when people start thinking your shit smacks of not just transphobia but good ol’fashioned homophobia as well.
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 5:16 pm
And I’m sorry: after all of that, going “prove I I mean Heart -agrees- with lucky that transwomen are sick perverts who belong in a nuthouse!” –you know what, piss off. Hello? What part of “you don’t get a cookie for -maybe- mildly disagreeing that one needs to go quite -that- far, even as you slobber undying friendship all over her and Mary Sunshine and -Rich-” do you not understand? You I mean she lets them spew their hatred all over the Margins; at the same time shutting down threads and banishing people from the blogroll for basically disagreeing with her (Daisy might have a few words about that); –oh, why even bother. Gah. Oleaginous little weasel.
And by the way, since you seem to know so much about Heart: I for one would really like to know just how much damage she did to queer folks during her -decades’- worth of propping up the theocratic right? And what has she done to make up for it? Post Robin Morgan’s gay-male-baiting crap and go “it’s as true now as it ever was”? Keep trying to redefine “lesbian” as “women who exchange clear-eyed gazes with each other and have political ragegasms?” Keep posting odes to motherhood and the “natural” female body, because of course most lesbians and other queer folk have -never- been called “unnatural” as a way of discrediting us before, and wouldn’t possibly find anything familiar in the way she’s talking about trans people.
p.s. you I mean she’s supposed to be running for President, neh? Shouldn’t she be getting on that?
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Objections to the GLBT-plus alphabet (which ends up including straight white married people as “queer”) , to BDSM (certain “lesbian sexual practices”) and to civil marriage (for anyone) have to do with that neglected movement known as the women’s liberation movement.
***
Not my women’s liberation movement. Not Judy Grahn’s, either, or Dorothy Allison’s, or Amber Hollibaugh’s, or any number of lesser lights I could name who, unlike Heart, actually were -there-, back in the day, rather than oh I don’t know, being a “rising star of the (fundamentalist) homeschooling movement.”
And “white straight married people”–to whom would you be referring, there, hm? And where does “white” come into it, pray tell? You know, I remember Heart taking a similar line when she was whinging about not being invited to some party or another…
And people who object to civil marriage for anyone: that’s -swell-; meanwhile, I have several friends who really, really could fucking use marriage rights -right now-, not in some fantastic post-Revolutionary world. Know why? Because one of the partners (respectively) is not a U.S. citizen, and, unlike certain people who’ve happily made use of civil hetero marriage -three times- and as far as we know haven’t divested themselves of that -privilege- yet, are certainly still using the very patriarchal last name (hi, Mrs. Seelhoff!!), do not -have- that option, and thus are going through all kinds of hoops and heartache just to try to remain together. They’ve been together for eight and ten years, respectively. They don’t give a shit about your (misappropriated use of Lorde too) “master’s tools.” They want to live their goddam lives. That’s the whole point of this, remember? Or did you ever really know that?
belledame222
March 24, 2008 at 5:41 pm
“Telling lies over and over starts to sound like the truth but isn’t.”
You should inform Heart of that, Carol, because she damn well missed the memo.
arrogantworm
March 24, 2008 at 8:12 pm
I hope that at some future date, if someone said “You didn’t argue with Belledame or Piny in that thread,” I can say “That’s right, and this is why” and stand behind my words.
That is, as opposed to either posting under another name or relying on someone else to present an apologist perspective on those words.
Lisa Harney
March 24, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Oh, although:
While I’m not 100% convinced, because I know Heart does post under other names (crunchygranoladyke on MWMF, for example) or anonymously on blogs, I’m not sure whether or not to think that she is.
For a bit, I was sure, but now… no.
Lisa Harney
March 24, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Just read through this entire thread, and I’m taking up one point, something I do whenever I see fallacious logic applied whatever the “side” using it. It has to do with recognizing where the power flows in our systems of oppression.
Oppression exists where there is an institutionalized and systemic definition of one group as “normal” or “nontarget” and all others as target for mistreatment, disrespect, and lesser status. These divisions are crystal clear: With regard to race, white people are non-target for oppression, all others (of any race) are target. With respect to class, those with economic plenty and security are non-target, all others are target. With regard to gender, those who are male and straight are non-target, all others are target. This includes women, queers, and trans, of any definition.
There is no such as reverse racism. When people of color create an exclusive space, they are not “oppressing” white people, because they do not hold the power to oppress white people. But white people refusing to serve people of color, that’s not just exclusionary, it’s an expression of power that is reflected at every level of society.
If a blacks-only club choose to exclude other people of color because, for the purposes of that gathering, they are focusing only on their identity as blacks, not as the generic “other” in the binary of race, then it is not racism they are engaging in — because they do not hold the power to oppress other people of color. They may well have internalized racism and have those feelings at play in their behavior, but it is not actual oppression.
Therefore: Women (by any definition) who create woman-only space (by any definition) are not oppressing those who don’t fit their definition. Exclusion does not equal oppression. When you make analogies comparing women (transwomen, non-trans, whoever) to white supremicists, to nontarget men, to the wealthy elite, or to Christianists, you are ignoring or confusing the actual balance of power and, quite likely, doing so because one of the roles of women (by any definition) in the oppression we call patriarchy is to accept the responsbility for others’ feelings. It is conditioning that is laid upon females at birth, and by the time we are two or three, we tend to not be able to see it when we are doing it unless we’ve had a chance to escape the environments where that conditioning is being instilled (i.e., our families) and find ideologies plus environments in which to dismantle our conditioning.
To learn the bedrock of the target/nontarget theory, move away from victim-playing and shaming, and increase your ability to create effective alliance, read the work of Ricky Sherover-Marcuse at Unlearning Racism.
Maggie Jochild
March 25, 2008 at 3:07 am
>>>To learn the bedrock of the target/nontarget theory, move away from victim-playing and shaming, and increase your ability to create effective alliance, read the work of Ricky Sherover-Marcuse at Unlearning Racism.
No. Simply no. You’ve retained gender as the bedrock from which all other oppressions spring. I don’t buy it.
There’s nothing wrong with that site so far as I can tell, but it doesn’t really tell me much of anything. Perhaps *you* should read work by women of colour and post-colonial feminists like Gloria Anzaldua that allow for a heterogeneity amongst allies. Cis women of colour have been organising for *ages* with trans people.
Yes, it is true that only straight, white men are really safe. But oppression works as a series of constellations that intersect with each other (race, gender, sexuality, cis or trans, disability, and so on), even secure each other, depending on context (ie gender normativity secures homophobia/heterosexism). Yes, there’s hierarchical power relations, but they’re not simply a binary thing, and they can switch and vary. Oppressed people can and do still oppress other less privileged people, depending on context (ie a straight woman can oppress a queer, or an able-bodied can oppress a woman with disability, and so on).
The exclusion produced by women’s space does not necessarily equal oppression, personally I think it’s drawing a long bow to call the MWMF oppression per se. But denying trans women jobs or crucial services like Vancouver Rape Relief? Yes.
>>>one of the roles of women (by any definition) in the oppression we call patriarchy is to accept the responsbility for others’ feelings.
Oh, so given that, you admit that trans women are supposed to take responsibility for cis women’s feelings in this case? To cede civil rights based upon feelings of discomfort – which may be based upon a heterosexual discomfort with overt signs of queerness?
Sweet. Case closed. Let’s all have a drink then.
queen emily
March 25, 2008 at 4:41 am
Not completely correct. Males are non-target relative to females, straight (male or female) is non-target relative to gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, etc, cis is non-target relative to trans. These intersect, they’re not the same. A lesbian woman, for example, is not legally able to marry her partner. A straight woman can marry her partner. That’s a privilege – that’s hetero/straight privilege. But of course, it’s not just stuff they can do, but how society accommodates her – most of American society is aimed at straight people. Straight people – men and women – can expect that most role models, actors, actresses, character in any kind of fiction, are straight, or rather are like them. Lesbian women cannot expect this, and can often expect to be portrayed as masculine, unattractive and man-hating, or can be portrayed as sexy, attractive young women who make out with each other for the titillation of straight men.
My life – my lived experiences and reality for the past decade has been as trans, as lesbian, and as a woman. My lived experiences and reality for the decade before that has been as trans, as bisexual, and as a woman. I have experienced how society treats people in each of these intersecting categories. I know that each lacks privilege relative to other people who are considered the norm in society, and I know, that in both trans and lesbian cases, straight, cis women do not experience the same degree or kind of oppression that I have. I am not saying that lesbians experience worse oppression, though – I am saying that lesbians experience oppression for being lesbian as well as being women, and those are two different, intersecting, oppressions.
Women who create women-only space specifically defined to exclude trans women from that space are in a position of privilege relative to trans women in a way that black women are not relative to white women and women are not relative to men. It is not equal for a black women to set aside a space for themselves vs. white women setting aside a women’s space for white women only, nor is it equal for trans women to set aside a space for ourselves to cis women setting aside a women’s space for cis women only.
I am not ignoring or confusing the balance of power. The fact is that people who do not feel the need to transition and never transition are treated better by society than people who do feel the need to transition and do transition.
And this is both how society treats people who don’t transition vs. people who do transition as well as how people who don’t transition treat people who do transition – how they talk about us, how they talk to us, whether they respect our identities, and whether they use a lack of respect or acceptance for our identities to make space unsafe and unwelcoming for us.
And this, here?
This is a dodge. It’s true, women are expected to do this. I’ve been expected to do this. But, this does not mean that any time women are called out for their privilege, that it is wrong to call those women out for those privilege. It does not mean that women incapable of prejudice and entitlement. It does not mean that when some women actively work to marginalize a minority disadvantaged relative to them, that it is wrong to say “Those women are actively working to further marginalize a minority disadvantaged relative to them.”
One of the hallmarks of privilege is the perceived entitlement to tell those without privilege what they really experience, what they really think, and what their lives are really like, and when I see this:
You’re doing just that. You’re already telling me my experiences as a woman, a lesbian, and a trans person are wrong, because your own assertion is that there’s no distinction between those three facets of my life when it comes to oppression. You’re telling me that it’s impossible for women to be agents of oppression or to be recipients of privilege that I do not have, and this is so contrary to my own lived reality and experiences that in order to accept it, I’d have to induce amnesia.
What would you say to a man you called out for sexist attitudes if he told you to stop playing the victim? Why are you telling me to stop playing the victim here?
Lisa Harney
March 25, 2008 at 4:46 am
Emily, MWMF serves as a model, an example, and a precedent that continues to justify the idea of women-only spaces that exclude trans women, whether it’s domestic violence shelters or lesbian support groups. It legitimizes the idea that trans women are not really women, and don’t a place among women. It is also fairly influential as it’s one of the largest women’s gatherings in the United States. Not being able to go to a music festival by itself isn’t oppression – that the music festival legitimizes and justifies the attitude that trans women shouldn’t be welcome in general is oppressive.
Lisa Harney
March 25, 2008 at 4:48 am
No, I know that. That’s why I said, per se.
queen emily
March 25, 2008 at 4:53 am
I know you know that, but I didn’t want someone to say “Look, someone said that the MWMF is okay!” because that’s a potential, although extremely loose interpretation of what you said without at least having more of the story there.
Lisa Harney
March 25, 2008 at 4:57 am
Pisa, I haven’t ignored you, btw. I will respond tomorrow.
Lisa Harney
March 25, 2008 at 4:59 am
“you are ignoring or confusing the actual balance of power and, quite likely, doing so because one of the roles of women (by any definition) in the oppression we call patriarchy is to accept the responsbility for others’ feelings.”
Awesome, great excuse for being an empathy-devoid git forever and ever and ever and…
I don’t have responsibility for other peoples’ feelings when they step on my neck. I DO have responsibility for it when -I- step on -their- neck. More specifically, I have responsibility for my ACTIONS. And, actively campaigning to keep trans women out of some of the few spaces they might feel welcome, much less rape relief shelters and much needed legal protections? Yes, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE for that. No one is -making- Heart (for example) do this. The Man is not forcing you to spend all this supposedly valuable time and energy railing against a handful of trans people when you’re theoretically off revolutionizing the entire fucking world…
Oh, and you want to give me lessons about second-wave radical feminism? Funny, I seem to remember this as being part of it, too:
“SISTER! your foot’s smaller,
but it’s still on my neck.”
–Pat Parker
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 7:02 am
“Perhaps *you* should read work by women of colour and post-colonial feminists like Gloria Anzaldua that allow for a heterogeneity amongst allies.”
Hell, for that matter, read Bernice Johnson Reagon:
http://shewhostumbles.wordpress.com/2008/01/12/bernice-johnson-reagon-coalition-politics-turning-the-century/
“Now when it comes to women—the organized women’s movement—this recent thrust—we all have had the opportunity to have some kind of relationship with it. The women’s movement has perpetuated a myth that there is some common experience that comes just cause you’re women. And they’re throwing all these festivals and this music and these concerts happen. If you’re the same kind of women like the folk in that little barred room, it works. But as soon as some other folk check the definition of “women” that’s in the dictionary (which you didn’t write, right?) they decide that they can come because they are women, but when they do, they don’t see or hear nothing that is like them. Then they charge, “This ain’t no women’s thing!” (Applause) Then if you try to address that and bring them in, they start to play music that ain’t even women’s music! (Laughter and hoots) And you try to figure out what happened to your wonderful barred room. It comes from taking a word like “women” and using it as a code. There is an in-house definition so that when you say “women only” most of the time that means you had better be able—if you come to this place—to handle lesbianism and a lot of folks running around with no clothes on. And I’m being too harsh this morning as I talk to you, but I don’t want you to miss what I’m trying to say. Now if you come and you can’t handle that, there’s another term that’s called “woman-identified.” They say you might be a woman but you’re not woman-identified, and we only want women who are “woman-identified.” That’s a good way to leave a lot of women out of your room.
So here you are and you grew up and you speak English and you know about this word “woman” and you know you one, and you walk into this “woman-only” space and you ain’t there. (Laughter) Because “woman” in that space does not mean “woman” from your world. It’s a code word and it traps, and the people that use the word are not prepared to deal with the fact that if you put it out, everybody that thinks they’re a woman may one day want to seek refuge. And it ain’t no refuge place! And it’s not safe! It should be a coalition! It may have been that in its first year the Michigan National “Women-Only” festival was a refuge place. By the fourth year it was a place of coalition, and it’s not safe anymore. (Applause) It ain’t safe for nobody who comes. When you walk in there you in trouble—and everybody who comes is trying to get to their home there…”
***
1981, that was. Nineteen-eighty-fucking-one. And even more ironic: she never mentions trans women at all. It’s a good example of why some WoC might indeed find points of connection with (white, some people are all three, see transgriot for instance) trans women.
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 7:19 am
This right here says it better than I was able to.
Lisa Harney
March 25, 2008 at 7:32 am
Finally, okay, this latest sub-thread thrash started with the assertion that no, Heart and presumably her defenders (?) are NOT calling trans women MEN, so stop saying that. O.K. Then, why keep bringing up the whole “women are expected to take care of their male oppressors” thing over and over and over in this context?
Because, there are only three ways in which this makes sense:
Either, you’re saying that in fact, yes, trans women are MEN forever and ever and ever and therefore, as your oppressor (never even mind for now how, like, a Maggie Thatcher can never “oppress” a poor gay male out-of-status African immigrant with multiple disabilities..), nothing you can say or do to or about them can -possibly- cause any harm, so you’re off the hook?
Or is it: no, they’re not men, but you were born with Certified Wimminly Bits, and therefore you, like the rest of the 3.x BILLION non-trans women in this world, do not have to take responsibility for anything you do or say to or about ANYONE, EVER? Including your fellow 3.x billion -1 women? (see Pat Parker, above). Because, boy, that attitude, I can’t imagine why that would’ve caused any problem within the movement, you know? Especially when at the same time, you have self-avowed radical revolutionary feminists running things like CATW and even -running for president-. Because there’s no -power- involved in any of this, no, precious.
“With great power comes great responsibility. Unless you’re a woman-born-woman who subscribes to this particular interpretation of radical feminism. Anyway, we don’t have any power and never will, that’s a man thing. Uh, VIVA THE REVOLUTION! …where is everybody, anyway?”
Terrific.
Or, the third possibility: no, trans women aren’t men, but they’re not -women- either, not -really-, and therefore we as women (i.e. the Most Oppressed We Win The Armana Fridge and Queen For A Day Tiara) cannot do or say anything that will harm them ever, -and- we don’t have to let them in our treehouse, because they’re -not women.- What are they? Well, whatever else: Not Our Problem, Dear.
That about the size of it?
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 7:52 am
All of the above innit.
You don’t need a coherent political ideology when you’re relying on assumption, prejudice and defending bad research like J fucking Michael “killing gay and lesbian fetuses by eugenics is fine” Bailey.
“They kinda are, and they’re kinda not, and uh.. look! a panda!” is about the sum of it.
queen emily
March 25, 2008 at 8:17 am
>>>The Man is not forcing you to spend all this supposedly valuable time and energy railing against a handful of trans people when you’re theoretically off revolutionizing the entire fucking world…
While we’re on the subject, when exactly is this messianic revolution coming, anyway? I need to put some space in my diary.
How’s Tuesday, 2000 and never?
Aren’t the Eternal Wars about trans women and porn the sign of a politically stalled movement? The utopian horizon of second wave radical feminism has narrowed considerably, no?
Revolutionising capitalism and heterosexuality is surely in the “too hard” basket but shit, at least there’s no trannies at your parties and shelters.
Attacking other vulnerable people, well done, fight the power eh. I’m sure The Patriarchy’s shaking in its boots.
queen emily
March 25, 2008 at 8:50 am
oh come on, it’s GETTING THINGS DONE, Debs says so; and she’s going to -shout you down-. and actually yeah, it’s all the nasty pomo/snidely alphabetized queer/trans/sex pos folks who’ve GOTTEN IN THEIR WAY, says Heart.
In other news, I’m well on my way to Clear, and I bet I can help -you- with those pesky body thetans, too.
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 9:31 am
Oh, and, while women have no power ever, we totally need to defend Mr. “J Fucking Michae l’killing gay and lesbian fetuses by eugenics is fine’ Bailey” from teh -bad- trans folk (which, let’s be clear, is only -some- trans folk, not all of them; witness our complete lack of bigotry, our attention to nuance).
Because, clearly if there’s one thing a radical revolutionary feminist with no power and no responsibility to other peoples’ feelings does, it’s come flying to the defense of a homophobic right wing dude who’s got a book out, from the -terrible- things trans women are saying about him. Yes indeedy.
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 9:35 am
There’s also quotes on Alas, La Chola, and I Blame the Patriarchy. I’m fairly certain there’s more quotes on blogs beyond those, but they’re not coming immediately to mind.
And don’t forget the veritable SHIT SWAMP of transphobic comments Heart has made on the Michfest board, as well as on the Ms board. There is a reason she attracts droves of transphobic skinheads to her board.
None of that proves a damn thing. Heart is not Mary Sunshine. If everybody is responsible for what commenters say on their blogs everybody here is in big trouble.
Is she at least responsible for censoring my comments on her blog, because she deemed them too pro-trans? Does that count? She is a fucking Stalinist that will not allow anyone to argue with her who might have a positive view of trans.
I was told not to quote Piny over at Women’s space. WTF???
Those quotes from all around don’t come to mind because they don’t exist.
Of course they exist, and yes, they come to mind very easily: Heart defended Mary Daly’s “Frankenstein’s monsters” comment at Ms, which I remember VERY WELL.
It was funny because her little shadow, Renee, heartily agreed with her. ;)
daisydeadhead
March 25, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Where does Heart says she agrees with Lucky, etc.?
All over the MS board, is where she said that. After Lucky got banned, she was more careful.
daisydeadhead
March 25, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Maggie Jochild: Therefore: Women (by any definition) who create woman-only space (by any definition) are not oppressing those who don’t fit their definition.
If those people are not “men”–by definition–then they can.
Using your analogy–women cannot oppress men. Women can oppress people who are NOT men, correct? White women can oppress black women, and do.
Transwomen are not men. Therefore, “women” (by any definition) can oppress other women (by any definition), correct? Your statement rests upon your assumption/continued belief that transwomen are “really” men.
Exclusion does not equal oppression. .
Why doesn’t it? If the reason for exclusion is that a group is not deemed good enough for inclusion, of COURSE IT IS.
daisydeadhead
March 25, 2008 at 1:14 pm
You’ve put a lot of words in my mouth. The only ones I actually said are the ones you quote directly and accurately, and that’s all I will respond to. You can vent your anger about what you imagined I said elsewhere.
“Women (by any definition) who create woman-only space (by any definition) are not oppressing those who don’t fit their definition.”
I did say this, and meant it. There are opposing definitions of women being thrown around by individuals who assume theirs is the only definition that is TRUE. It may be true for them, and I grant them the right to define themselves. If your definition of woman includes anyone who calls themselves woman, then THAT definition is the only one that will be acceptable in the woman-only spaces you create. You have that right. It is NOT oppressive when transwoman define women in that way, although it definitely excludes the definitions that others have. When you have competing definitions, any place where they don’t overlap is exclusionary. But it’s not oppression.
Oppression is use of systemic, institutionalized power by a nontarget group to deny essential items of survival for the target group. If it isn’t systemic and institutionalized — if it’s a black woman refusing to hire a white man because her definition of her employees is blacks only — then it is not oppression.
White supremacy is a system. Comparing the small numbers of blacks who might not want to hire a white person to white supremacy is, shall we say, ineffective at best. To call it racism is to make a mockery of those of us who fight white supremacy.
Transwomen are not oppressing nontrans women. And vice versa. We are not treating each other well, but it’s not oppression.
Women cannot oppress men — not as groups. Yes, white people oppress POC, owning class people oppress raised poor people, adults oppress children, and women who belong to any of those target groups who participate in that oppression based on those categories are engaging in oppression. That’s the point of using target/nontarget theory: It points out the real complexity of the situation. Every one of us is target in some areas, nontarget in others, and claiming victim status is embracing powerlessness. Naming the specifics of oppression is an empowering first step: We do have the power to dismantle this system by recognizing what is real power and what is not. Fighting with other target groups is not getting us anywhere. I mean, ANY-where.
The Woman of Color tent at a festival which denies entrance to white women is defining woman in a particular, exclusionary way, based on a shared target characteristic. I’m not being oppressed when they do this. Even if some of them are stupid enough to tell me that I’m not “good enough” to be with them, I understand about power dynamics (they are NOT my oppressor) and I trust them to do what they need to do. If I have feelings about being excluded (and believe me, I have), POC are NOT responsible for my feelings.
Lisa, I hear that you have the target group of “non-male” divided up into many different categories, and you believe these different categories are oppressing each other. I don’t share your belief. I believe the oppression of gay men, women of any definition, trans of any definition, and those who reject masculinity/femininity in any form, is all equally gender oppression, targeting those who are not “right” for gender (although the system is very creative in devising different ways of oppressing us).
I do not engage in oppression Olympics — I don’t try to figure out if I as someone raised poor is MORE oppressed than someone raised only working class. I don’t try to prove sexism is worse than racism, or that being black is worse than being Native American. There are differences, of course, and it’s important to understand those differences so we can dismantle the system. But huddling in groups simply for the purpose of claiming victim status has not worked — not once — and I’m asking those of us who are emotionally able to take a step beyond it to do so. Whoever you are.
I’ll reveal one thing further: I do not believe those who are nontarget for specific areas of oppression — whites, “acceptable” males, rich people, adults, able-bodied, Christians — are “choosing” to remain oppressive. I believe they were conditioned to play a perpetrator role, and in my decades I’ve seen countless numbers of them step right out of so-called “privilege” (which is always only economic, never emotionally fulfilling) into unity with the target group. I trust them also to do their best to find a way out of their end of the prison. I’m not willing to give up on “them”, whoever they are with regard to me as target. All of these categories are constructs, not biological reality as manifested by behavior, and they can thus be unlearned, dismantled. That’s my long-term goal. Short-term, yes, I have to claim being white, being an adult, and do my work there of cleaning up the lies I was raised with. I ask the same of anybody who was raised with conditioning. If you refuse to acknowledge your conditioning, that’s your right but I won’t work in alliance with you until you do. I can’t do anything about your denial and how it keeps you isolated.
Maggie Jochild
March 25, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Maggie, call it whatever you want: the fact is, when trans women are excluded from womens’ space, you’re cutting off marginalized people, marginalized -women- from yet one more venue; and it’s hateful and unnecessary.
And yes, all these categories are constructs; so why do you cling to them so ferociously?
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 3:29 pm
and, okay: exclusion doesn’t equal oppression. Says the person who’s doing the excluding.
…sorry, no, it still stinks.
You’re not excluding -men-, the “target group;” you’re excluding a minority group of women, who want to be at a womens’ festival (or, hello, a shelter, or…) not for any nefarious purposes, but for the same damn reason as everyone else. You can handwave all you want about how non-trans women don’t have any power relative to trans women. People who exist in the reality-based community see it otherwise.
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 3:32 pm
As per Heart: more recently, she had this to offer:
womensspace
on January 31, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Here are some paragraphs from someone who claims to be a transperson
and a “trans rights” activist. The person receives a monthly stipend
from an “GLBT(continue letters here)” organization which, the person
complains, is so low, they have to buy their “medications” from Wal-
Mart and nobody should criticize that decision.
I mean, jeezus. If you want me to buy my medications elsewhere, pay me
more money to do my activism! What?! You’re an activist who has never
earned a single penny doing your activist work? It’s all been
volunteer, a second or third job you’ve done while holding down
regular day jobs to pay the bills? Well, break out the world’s tiniest
violins, that’s not my problem! I am an ACTIVIST. I don’t have any
TIME to take a regular job!
If you go to this person’s blog, here is a typical entry:
“I don’t really like it.
They ask my name. I shorten it, telling them it’s ___,
figuring that’s neutral enough that it won’t disrupt whatever
assumptions they have about my gender, hopefully keeping me safe. I
suppose it should be flattering that they all assume I’m female.
Sometimes it comes unbidden. I’m walking out of the downtown
campus when a man nearby says something. I stop to hear it. I wish I
hadn’t. He follows as I try to walk away, follows for two blocks,
telling me how “fine” my “big ol’ ass” is, telling me exactly what he
wants to do to it. Or I’m in a bar, heading for the ladies room, when
a man stands up and tries to follow me, taking the fact that I’m alone
as an invitation to try and get into the stall.
Sometimes I feel like I’m asking for it. I tell the man on the bus
he can sit next to me. He takes the opportunity to ask me if he can
get some action. He tells me it’s obvious I already like him. He tries
to get off at my stop, but the driver doesn’t let him. Or I’m waiting
for the bus, and I help a man out who’s asking for fare. It suddenly
becomes his business what bus I’m taking, where I live, how many men
have had me, how many black men have had me. He tells me how “thick” I
am.
(name omitted) tells me to “stop being so nice,” but I don’t want
to be that person, who ignores the other persons around them. And even
if I was, their interest rarely seems to predicate upon mine. I can’t
stop it from happening.
And I don’t know what to do once it happens. I freeze up. I try to
ignore it. I walk away, though there’s only so far one can walk when
waiting for a bus, and even less one can walk when already on the bus.
I say, “I’m busy,” I say, “Not now,” I say, “I’m not having this
conversation with you.” I say, “NO.”
None of it works.
…
Welcome to womanhood.”
*********
What great activism. I’m sure this person is accomplishing really
amazing things for female persons.
I’m going to post this, then edit and using my amazing mod powers,
hopefully include this person’s avatar.
This is the kind of thing we are expected to support. This is the kind
of thing we get trashed for critiquing. This is the kind of thing that
is *everywhere* under the aegis of “GLBT activism! The above, racist,
misogynist claptrap is activism being *paid for* by some GLBT group
somewhere.
This person’s avatar (images don’t work in comments):
*************
The bit starting “What great activism” is Heart’s again, just for clarification. So basically, she goes around to this trans woman’s journal, digs this up, displays it and her avatar for her and her cronies to mock, apparently outraged that she’s “supposed to support” “this kind of thing.” I’m not remotely sure what “this sort of thing” is supposed to be; an account of a woman’s transition and harassment? It’s her -life,- this entry, not “activism.” Perhaps Heart is unable to tell the difference?
And, I’m not sure what Heart was smoking to get “racist and misogynist” from all of that; anyone else have a clue?
What I -do- know is that eventually the author of that entry found out that Heart had singled it out to spotlight and mock, and she was pretty shaken up. I’m not surprised. I would be too, if I’d written something as personal as that on a small private elljay and someone had used it as evidence that I didn’t deserve support from feminists. Because apparently her experience of harassment is, well, She’s Doin It Rong, is the author of the quoted piece: Heart continues:
on January 31, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Argh, I’m all fired up about that post.
I tell the man on the bus he can sit next to me. He takes the
opportunity to ask me if he can get some action. He tells me it’s
obvious I already like him.
This is SO exhibit A.
Which of us would EVER tell some random man on a bus he can sit next
to us! And why don’t we? Because he may well sexually harrass or
assault us. As Satsuma says Mexico City joins a growing list of cities
worldwide which have woman-only coaches, and why? Because women do not
want to be accosted, assaulted, raped, riding the bus! We are not
“flattered” that some perv thinks we are female. We do not write blog
posts like this pornographically detailing our experiences of sexual
harassment.
****
I ask again: wtf is Heart smoking? What, seriously, is WRONG with this person? Pornographic?? And, no woman would tell a man he could sit next to her on a bus: WHAT. I do it all the time. Hell, for that matter, most of the time, there really isn’t an option.
I mean, what, if she’d told him to fuck off, that’d have been clear evidence of her male privilege and how none of us would DARE say such a thing, amirite?
Shit, what was she doing riding the bus at all?
Seriously, the ability to get “fired up” about an entry like this is…well, it’s -something-, all right, but “feminist” isn’t what I’d call it. I honestly don’t know -what- that is.
But then, I never did understand why something like Little Light’s poem would inspire Heart to try to throw mud at her, either.
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 3:50 pm
For proper contrast, you should link this post from a few days later:
Just for a contrast between “trans woman gets harassed on the bus” and “cis woman gets harassed on the bus” from Heart.
Maggie Jochild, I didn’t put words in your mouth – I came to conclusions about what you were saying. It’s apparently something you’re able to do with my words, as you did it in this post.
For example, I didn’t say that the “not straight male” categories are oppressing each other, and that’s a fairly simplistic interpretation of my point – which is that being gay, lesbian, or bisexual is its own kind of oppression, being straight is its own kind of privilege. Being transsexual is its own kind of oppression and being cissexual is its own kind of privilege. Being a man is its own kind of oppression and being a woman is its own kind of privilege. A person can be privileged in some areas and oppressed in others. This isn’t oppression olympics, it’s basic intersectionality. A gay man can still benefit from male privilege, after all, even if he can’t marry his partner because his partner is not female. He’s not completely separated from the straight man.
And also, I never said that having privilege automatically means actively participating in oppression. Having privilege makes one capable of oppression, and everyone who has privilege benefits from it passively, but not everyone chooses to use that privilege against other people. But…some do.
Let’s go back to gay men again – Barney Frank, John Aravosis, Joe Solmonese. Barney decided that he didn’t want to push for trans protections. So, got them cut from ENDA. John Aravosis cheered him on, and Joe Solmonese lied to people about how HRC would not support any non-inclusive ENDA up to nearly the last minute, even while HRC was actively campaigning in support of a trans-exclusive ENDA.
Now, I don’t know about you, but actively campaigning against one oppressed group’s civil rights and succeeding feels like oppression to me. And that’s gay men – and some lesbians.
Okay, so, how about cis women? Non-trans women, if you prefer. This example is really only against one person, but – I’m sure you know about Sandy Stone, former recording engineer for Olivia Records? Yeah, feminists mobilized against her employment and began a boycott against Olivia Records until she left.
That is, feminists mobilized to get her fired, and probably push her out of the movement. Yes, that’s a single person, but it establishes a tone, a zeitgeist, for the feminist movement that trans women are not welcome as a part of it. In 1996, Germaine Greer outed Dr. Rachel Padman and tried to block her election to fellowship at Newham College on the grounds that she had been born female. She was unsuccessful, but let’s back up a bit – can a trans woman out a cis woman as cis/non-trans? I somehow don’t think so, since the assumed norm is that you’re not trans. So, if Calpernia Addams got on TV and said “Oh my god, Germaine Greer was born female, can you believe it?” that would at best get a laugh because it’s a joke.
But cis women? They can use trans women’s medical history against us, as happened to Sandy Stone and Rachel Padman. Even if we don’t lose our jobs as a consequence, our private medical history has been revealed against our will, and that can and does affect how we’re treated. That’s a tool cis people, who are men and women, lesbian and gay, black and white, and so on. The fact that trans people can fit into all of those categories as well is a matter of intersection, but it doesn’t give us the same tools to oppress those who choose to use their privilege to oppress us – the privilege of having been born into a body and not having the need to change.
I’m not talking about who’s oppressed worse, but who’s capable of oppressing who, who has a better position in society on the basis of who and what they are, and not on merit alone.
Also, this?
I don’t refuse to talk about my conditioning, I’m not in denial, and I’m not (nor are trans people as a whole) kept isolated by this.
In fact, when a cis person is telling me that it is impossible for her to engage in oppressive behavior (and this isn’t saying that you are directly engaged in oppressive behavior) because men hate us both, then I feel like she’s refusing to acknowledge her own conditioning. That’s not putting words in your mouth, that’s my reaction to your words – just as my previous post was.
Lisa Harney
March 25, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I hear that you believe in looking at differences primarily in terms of privilege. I don’t. I know there is enormous privilege, of the survival kind, in certain non-target categories, I know it first-hand. But most of the people who are non-target don’t feel privileged by their box, and it’s a shitty way to create allies for me to insist on defining them by their privilege. I gave it up a long time ago.
I don’t use the term cis (in any form) for myself because I find it an essentialist construct and it has no meaning to my identity. Please refrain from using it to apply to me. Thanks.
I have, several times, acknowledged the areas where I am non-target for an issue of oppression and therefore can be presumed to (and do) engage in oppressive behavior, despite my best efforts. I live in a white supremicist country, an imperialist country, a Christianist country. We are terrorizing the world. I benefit from this economically, despite every attempt on my part to change the circumstances.
But would I be I oppressing nonprostitutes, nonmothers, transwomen, gay men, or middle class women if I were to organize a support group for the purpose of exploring the upbringing of someone who was born and raised female in a poor household, who now has children and has sold sex in order to survive? Hoping to find the threads of conditioning which might explain pieces of her conditioned identity? I would reject the claim that oppression of all those folks who didn’t find that specific identity ensued from my choice — although all of those groups are oppressed and sometimes I belong to groups which participate in their oppression.
The point is which way the power flows from a particular decision. When Jewish women (some of whom were raised with class privilege, some of whom were married with so-called straight and marriage privilege) excluded me as a Gentile from attending the Jewish Feminist Conferences in San Francisco in the early 1980s, it was not oppression. I hated it, I felt left out, but it was not oppression. It resulted in no threat to my survival. And while I could speculate about loss of contacts that might have affected my future employment, for example, that would be speculation. The fact is, I used the time to examine my own conditioning about Jews and to grow from the experience.
We can’t be all things to each other. We can agree on some terms, not on others, and form community where commonality in definition exists.
Re Sandy Stone — I do know Sandy, by having been at retreats with her and also because in 1977 I was an Olivia Records distributor for a while in North Texas. Here’s what you’re leaving out of the history. Olivia Records was formed with a specific stated mission of creating a place for women to make and distribute their own music without male privilege, conditioning or influence. It was an utterly radical idea then, and still would be now. It was a difficult goal to maintain, but Olivia succeeded, wildly, because hundreds of thousands of women across the country said “I want to hear music that has no male-conditioned influence attached to it — I want to know what that sounds like.”
It sounded like nothing else we’d ever heard. And it built on itself. More and more women discovered access to their own skills as musicians, engineers, promoters, etc. — women who had NO other chance in the male-dominated music industry to acquire that training. When I bought an Olivia album, that access mattered to me.
Olivia did not come to us, the community which sustained them, and say “We want to hire a woman who spent 30 years acquiring male conditioning, training, and skills which would have been immediately denied to her if she had presented as a woman then. Is this change in our stated mission and construct acceptable to you all?” Instead, they lied about it, and so did Sandy. Which means it clearly was perceived by THEM as a violation of their compact with the community.
When the word did get out, there was a threatened boycott. There were other women’s music companies whose members did not have access to male — well, privilege is the word you’d use, maybe. I believe in conditioning, so that’s what I’d call it.
Since we may be talking across definitions here, I’ll try to make an analogy: For a lot of women’s organizations and businesses, there was a goal to have working class or raised poor women in charge of decision-making. I’m not arguing whether or not this was fair, I’m just stating it was the case. And the definition of class was how you had been RAISED, not how much money you had in your account currently. Women who had been raised rich, with trust funds, were expected to identify themselves as such and not claim a working-class identity identical to that of women who were raised on food stamps — even if those raised-rich women were now contending with having no money. Because, in my crowd at least, we were not essentialists: We did not believe biology was destiny. We believed conditioning made us who we were.
So if an organization had, as its founding purpose, a promise to only hire women raised poor or working class, and if had then been discovered the chief engineer of that group had spent 30 years living in wealth, the outrage would have been just as volanic. Even from women who agreed that a transwoman is a woman.
I’m not saying all of the outrage was free from trans oppression, because it wasn’t. But it was not simply a “trans” issue. It was a combination of deceit and defiance of a basic feminist belief that conditioning cannot be dismissed. We were undertaking a revolution based on dismantling the tools of oppression, chief of which was conditioning.
This divide, by the way, still characterizes the wars going on. Feminism (as we created it) said that gender like race, was made up, not biologically determined. This single idea catapulted the patriarchy into opposition to us. We are little touchy on the subject. That doesn’t excuse us not listening, or refusing to build alliance where we CAN agree with other groups. But it helps explain things, I think.
In her later manifesto, Sandy stated that it was incumbent on every trans person to identify herself (or himself) publicly as trans in gendered environments, to insist on respect given and taken without concealment. I think she’s right about that, although of course (like all manifestos), it’s up to individuals to decide their own safety. Just as I think lesbians should be out, and white people fighting against racism should be out, etc. — but if you can’t manage it in a given situation because of perceived danger, then I’ll take your word for it.
I don’t think that fits the lying that Olivia did, however. They were taking our money and our sustenance under false pretenses, instead of coming clean and taking a stand if they believed in their choice. Clearly they didn’t believe in their choice — they fired Sandy rather than defend their thinking.
And — I know for a fact in later situations, Sandy chose to go stealth rather than declare herself in some small women’s gatherings. I didn’t say anything at the time, and I still would not, because since I was not the organizers of those gatherings, it was not my responsibility to insure the agreements under which we gathered were honestly made by everyone attending. And, eventually, the second or third year, Sandy herself came out, asked for forgiveness, and then left before listening to anybody’s reaction. So, be careful about the examples you choose: Some of us were there, and we know firsthand what happened, not the politicized and often mythic version created after the fact. And I do believe that denial about the cumulative effect of male conditioning played a huge role in Sandy’s decisions at that point in history.
I appreciate you defining the thinking behind your belief system, intersectionality, and linking to it. I read the link. It’s interesting, but I found it inadequate to cover the reality of human history as I see it. I’ll stick with target and nontarget, which was created by working-class people of color as a tool for unlearning oppressive conditioning through alliance, rather than using guilt, shaming, and yardsticks of privilege. I’ve found it to work incredibly well. And, honestly, my background is such that I am uncomfortable around academic explanations. I’m a hands-on activitist and artist, and tools have to work in my hands across multiple communities for me to use them. But not I understand where you’re coming from, and I’m glad of that.
Maggie Jochild
March 25, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Oops — last line meant to be “NOW” I understand where you’re coming from, not “not”.
Also, earlier, I left out the C in volcanic.
Maggie Jochild
March 25, 2008 at 7:27 pm
>>>And, honestly, my background is such that I am uncomfortable around academic explanations. I’m a hands-on activitist and artist, and tools have to work in my hands across multiple communities for me to use them
Ah yes, cos the tools of intersectional analysis are not used by, for example, such multiple community activist organisations like Incite! Radical Women of Color (co-founded by Native American activist and academic Andrea Smith) and Ubuntu!, both of which are women of colour led and trans inclusive.
No, it’s all just a theoretical thing. Pinch of Derrida, dash of Butler, add some Fanon and hooks for color and the activism’s done. I mean, sweet zombie Jesus.
Suggesting that trans inclusive politics are about guilt and shaming is the individualistic solipstic rubbish that homophobes and racists regularly employ to exempt themselves from systemic analysis. It’s about how power is employed, and that’s something your theories are clearly ill-equipped to handle in all but the broadest terms.
queen emily
March 25, 2008 at 8:26 pm
But would I be I oppressing nonprostitutes, nonmothers, transwomen, gay men, or middle class women if I were to organize a support group for the purpose of exploring the upbringing of someone who was born and raised female in a poor household, who now has children and has sold sex in order to survive? ”
Your analogy is lacking. Cissexual people > Trans people with regard to cissexual advantages. The same cannot be said for the woman in prostitution in your example, as she’s being compared to people who you’d have us assume do not resemble the woman with regard to advantages.
“The point is which way the power flows from a particular decision. When Jewish women (some of whom were raised with class privilege, some of whom were married with so-called straight and marriage privilege) excluded me as a Gentile from attending the Jewish Feminist Conferences in San Francisco in the early 1980s, it was not oppression. I hated it, I felt left out, but it was not oppression. It resulted in no threat to my survival. And while I could speculate about loss of contacts that might have affected my future employment, for example, that would be speculation. The fact is, I used the time to examine my own conditioning about Jews and to grow from the experience. ”
And that’s a very good point. Which way does that power flow? Gentiles are greater than Jews, as popular conditioning would have it. That sort’ve resembles Cissexual people > Trans people. Funny, that. And if you’re under the assumption that society isn’t conditioned to value cissexual people over trans people, I’ve some shocking news to impart. I also find it interesting people rarely bring up male or masculine identified trans people for these discussions about which way power and privilege flow. It’s always the trans women when trans people are talked about, how they’ve male conditioning and By Jove! it’ll never, ever change! And look, all behavior can be traced to that yucky yucky conditioning, especially Sandy Stone’s. So please tell me, because I’m horribly interested; What do you think of my part in these conditional power relations, since I’m ftm?
arrogantworm
March 25, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Okay, Maggie, personally I won’t call you “cis.” But, um. Still really not getting how someone so deeply opposed to “essentialism” is so invested in the identity (for it -is- that) of “woman” that she feels the need to defend the borders as rigorously as you do. I’m sure I just keep missing the subtle part.
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 8:39 pm
and: right, okay, in terms of -hand-on activism-: Maggie, this is what it boils down to in concrete terms, okay, from the thread over across the way:
http://witchywoo.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/im-no-longer-female-apparently/
Arantxa // March 23, 2008 at 12:41 pm
What I think, Amy, is that when I see a so called transwoman I am looking at a man and when I listen to a transwoman speak I am hearing a man’s voice. And I’m expected to pretend that this isn’t what I see and that is isn’t what I hear. That I should deny my own experience in favour of that which so called transwomen are imposing on me. Basically, another case of male reality prevailing over and erasing that of the female. Business as usual. But in a dress.
and
stormy // March 24, 2008 at 1:36 am
I forgot to address a point in Lisa’s last comment. The forgetfulness was partly due to age, but partly due to the blinding rage of having to wade through anti-radfem rhetoric.
“…that trans women should not be allowed access to women’s services. I guess like domestic violence shelters and rape services? I see Vancouver Rape Relief celebrate keeping a trans woman from working as a volunteer.
There are several issues that you have lumped in together, those being 1) should TWs be able to access women’s services, and 2) should TWs be able to be service providers within women’s services.
Should TWs be able to access women’s services, I would say generally yes. They would however be better served by specialist TW advisors within the women’s services sector, in that way getting specialist needs addressed. However, it may be problematic within general housing for DV due the the majority of FABs already in residence and who may be so traumatised that a TW that does not ‘pass’ (again, this is the perception of the other women in residence) would further traumatise them. This would have to be on a case by case basis, taking into account ALL shelter residents, not just the TW. Witchy I am sure would verify this. Rape counselling for TW rape victims could well be dealt with by existing rape crisis helplines/centres, however, one would think that a TW would be better served by having a TW advisor.
The second part, that of TWs in a serving capacity in women’s services. This would be generally no. As an adjunct for supporting TWs, yes, as mentioned above. However, many TWs do not “pass” as well as they think they do, especially on the telephone. To the FAB ear, most TWs sound like very camp queens, and this is very off-putting to an FAB expecting to hear a female voice on the other end of the telephone. Before you go ballistic, specialist services like rape counselling can be further divided within the FAB group, between lesbian and heterosexual women. Many lesbians would appreciate more focused care for their unique experiences of rape. That isn’t to say that it is any more or less traumatic for any victim of rape, just different, from the victim’s perspective. That is victim-centred thinking, not ‘phobic’ to any particular group.
****
So. This is what it boils down to. Don’t let “most trans women” staff womens’ crisis hotlines, because they sound like “camp queens” and this is traumatic for recently raped women, you know. That sound about right to you? I mean, I don’t want to get too academic or anything, but that’s my how you say reading of the text, there. Do you agree with this?
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 8:44 pm
or, no, wait, sorry, it may be something like: trans women can serve as “adjuncts” (the way you do), just make sure they ONLY talk to other trans women, because if they talk to non-trans women the non-trans women might be re-traumatized, by the sound of their voice.
and the way in which you make this distinction is, here, by pitch and timbre of voice, among other things. which is not at -all- essentialist, and has -nothing to do- with -maintaining- rigid gender distinctions. Nonono.
presumably naturally deep-voiced non-trans women are o.k., though, because they have an ineffable quality of womanliness that the recently raped/abused woman on the other line can instantly tell, and be reassured by
and the analogy dear Stormy makes wrt lesbians and straight women is also totally apropos, because of course most crisis hotlines go out of their way these days to protest -lesbians counseling straight women-, because it might be -traumatic- for the woman. After all, a lot of lesbians, especially the butch ones, well, they come off kind of -mannish-, don’t they? Oh, wait.
anyway. “separate but equal” so totally works here, and of course our first concern is about the women in crisis and not o i don’t know the tender political sensibilities of the other females womyning the hotlines, here.
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 8:54 pm
“Olivia did not come to us, the community which sustained them, and say “We want to hire a woman who spent 30 years acquiring male conditioning, training, and skills which would have been immediately denied to her if she had presented as a woman then. Is this change in our stated mission and construct acceptable to you all?” Instead, they lied about it, and so did Sandy. Which means it clearly was perceived by THEM as a violation of their compact with the community.”
Uh huh; and if they’d done it the way you said it would’ve been totally fine, yes?
Sort of oh I don’t know in the same way gay priests and lesbian soldiers are less than scrupulously honest about their sexuality if they want to, like, keep their jobs. The nerve of them.
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 8:58 pm
“But would I be I oppressing nonprostitutes, nonmothers, transwomen, gay men, or middle class women if I were to organize a support group for the purpose of exploring the upbringing of someone who was born and raised female in a poor household, who now has children and has sold sex in order to survive? ””
Why does “born and raised female” -matter-, here? If your purpose is specifically to support people who now have children and have sold sex in order to survive, then say that. If you want a group for -mothers- who have sold sex in order to survive, say -that.- Sure, if you have a specific purpose for a -support group-. But, a major music festival which is purportedly open to -women-, period, is not that. Frankly it’s not remotely clear to me why I’m supposed to care, in a campground full of 7,000 women, what the woman in the next tent was -raised- like (it might be by wolves for all I know), or what her genitals look like, unless I’m actually going to fuck her. -Why should it?- Tell me, please, how it matters and how this is -not- essentialism.
as for crisis centers and hotlines–well, see above.
and absolutely none of this explains why, for instance, Heart is defending the trans-exclusive version of ENDA, or why she feels compelled to run to the rescue of J. Michael Bailey, a non-trans and deeply reactionary and homophobic, right-wing -man-, when apparently the trans women she’s defending him from do not merit any such ummm, female-socialized caretaking of -feelings,- let’s say, hm?
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 9:07 pm
finally: I realize this may be my academentic, lack of salt-of-the-earthness showing, but can someone explain to me a) the difference between “privilege” and “target/non-target,” in practical terms b) what this has to do with why it’s okay to exclude trans women from womens’ festivals and crisis centers and lgb anti-discrimination laws? kthxbai
belledame222
March 25, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Oppression is use of systemic, institutionalized power by a nontarget group to deny essential items of survival for the target group.
Minor point: restricting the extension of “oppression” to denial of “essential items of survival” defines it down in an unwarranted way. (Why not just take the plunge & adopt the current Administration’s language about “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure.”)
Factual question: did Olivia’s original mission statement really explicitly contemplate the exclusion of transwomen? (I haven’t seen the language & would be grateful if anyone has it at hand.)
Ethical question: if, arguendo, a group’s original mission statement unjustly excludes some class of people, does the fact that the injustice was part of the statement make it any less indefensible? If the exclusion is unjust, & people try to evade it by lying to exclusionist stakeholders, what’s the more serious ethical concern: the unjust exclusion or the lying to circumvent it?
The right course depends on the justice of the underlying exclusion. I assume we agree that if a non-white person tried to pass for white in a racially unjust society, & someone lied to ease her path, it’d be grossly morally obtuse to frame the situation, as defenders of racial segregation historically did, as primarily an example of the wrongness of lying. (Note, incidentally, that neither lying to evade unjust exclusion nor submitting to it under pressure is evidence that someone “clearly … didn’t believe in their choice.” It’s just evidence of the ways people fight injustice or get defeated.) I stipulate that in US discourse racial exclusion is the paradigmatic case of invidious discrimination, & not all exclusions are invidious. We all know that, but the fact that not all exclusions are unjust isn’t evidence that the exclusion of transgendered people isn’t. It pretty plainly is, & “non-targeted” defenders of it, & their high-minded criticism of the ways “targeted” people try to resist it, are an embarrassment.
KH
March 25, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Just to kinda go off in another direction:
Maggie, what would you have feminist transwomen DO?
For example, re: Sandy Stone as chief Olivia records engineer. If transwomen have additional/expert knowledge they have learned due to possessing/having access to male privilege (as you have claimed here), and then they come over and teach feminists what they have learned, isn’t that pretty revolutionary?
If the Sandy Stones just horded their knowledge for themselves, you’d say they weren’t feminist, not identifying with women and keeping their male-earned privilege to themselves.
No way to win, it seems to me! Julia Serrano is right…
daisydeadhead
March 26, 2008 at 9:19 am
[...] a powerful and eloquent claims-staking, Lisa of Questioning Transphobia in Transphobia and Sophistry vehemently objects to being excluded: “Why do so many radical feminists waste their time trying [...]
Redemption Blues » Carnival of Feminists #56
March 26, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Olivia did not come to us, the community which sustained them, and say “We want to hire a woman who spent 30 years acquiring male conditioning, training, and skills which would have been immediately denied to her if she had presented as a woman then. Is this change in our stated mission and construct acceptable to you all?” Instead, they lied about it, and so did Sandy. Which means it clearly was perceived by THEM as a violation of their compact with the community.
This is witch-hunter logic. Hiding something out of fear of violent reprisal doesn’t mean that you agree that it’s shameful–only that you believe in the likelihood of fallout and doubt your own ability to defend yourself. They didn’t necessarily believe that Sandy was less of a woman, only that the community would see them that way. If a women’s nonprofit organization allowed a lesbian employee to closet herself against the pearl-clutching sensibilities of their donors, they wouldn’t be conceding the justice of homophobia, although they would be condoning it.
Part of Sandy Stone’s manifesto was about precisely this sort of essentialism–she believed that the willingness of transpeople to stay “stealth” endangered any possibility of trans acceptance. In other words, it was only by openly seeking admission to women’s organizations that they might eventually overcome the transphobia that would flourish without their acknowledged presence. I understand that her apprenticeship happened when she was in a vastly different position, but her argument was that a community that accepted her as a transwoman would neither be condoning the sexism that offered her her advantage nor tacitly accepting it. A community that pressured transwomen into closeting themselves, on the other hand, would lose committed sound engineers and a whole bunch of really interesting contributions to the “Girls: Bad At Gadgets?” debate.
piny
March 26, 2008 at 6:45 pm
“Because, in my crowd at least, we were not essentialists: We did not believe biology was destiny. We believed conditioning made us who we were.”
This is a sort of essentialism, cultural essentialism or conditioning essentialism. A “you were raised x way, therefore you must have trait a, b, c or condone/approve of people who do.”, this is essentialism too.
Schala
March 27, 2008 at 10:11 am
ooooh, and you know, Carol/Heart, I forgot about -this- one, -this- one, some kind of prize for this one:
http://allecto.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/pornography-stripping-and-violence-in-contemporary-lesbian-culture/
“I agree with you re mental illness in the SM culture and also ::::zipping into flame-retardant suit::: among transpersons, i.e., MTFs that hang around lesbian groups/venues. Someone I very much respect who has done very fine work on transgender issues, a radical/lesbian feminist, said a while back she thinks that quite often, doctors, psychologists, etc. encourage “transitioning” because it’s something concrete that they *can* do, but that it doesn’t help, because again, so often these are not really gender issues the person has, these are issues of mental illness, and as some of us have seen, transitioning is no cure for mental illness.”
****
Now, I’d call this straightforward ableism of the worst kind as well as transphobia–well, it is–but that I’m fairly certain I know -exactly- who you’re referring to, here.
1) Yep, she/they have problems bigger than gender issues, I’ve seen ‘em in action
2) The fact that you’ve based your view of an entire group of people on the small handful of people, at least one of whom does -not- refer to herself as “trans,” let it be said, because she’s thoroughly internalized your hateful crap about Real Womanhood and it’s no doubt at least part of what’s fucking her up, although I’m sure by no means all of it–well, there are names for that sort of thing. Like, -snaps fingers-, uhm, uhhh, what was it again–oh, yes! BIGOTRY.
Especially considering how very many sane, smart, compassionate trans people have nearly beaten their heads in trying to have something resembling a productive dialogue with you; you really just don’t want to hear it, do you? That, and: you’re a crap judge of character, which leads us to
3) at least one of the people you’re so enraged at, word has it you lurrrrved her as long as you didn’t know her dirty little secret and she had her head firmly wedged up your ass. Which, in a weird way, she still does.
You know why that is? “Water finds its own level.” Who d’you -think- is going to spend all her time trying for the approval of someone who clearly wants her not to exist? Someone -healthy?-
Yes; and I’m sure that any given group of closeted gay Republicans and/or ex-gays is just FULL of the picture of mental health.
But then, you wouldn’t know what that looked like if you saw it, would you?
belledame222
March 28, 2008 at 12:46 pm
…but, hey. You didn’t refer to trans women as “male’ -anywhere in that post.- Mentally ill and clearly thus unfit to judge whether or not transition is the best thing for them (poor lambs), yes. “Male,” no. In this post. QED, you’re not a transphobe. Clap, clap.
belledame222
March 28, 2008 at 12:50 pm
…that would’ve been, “the small handful of people who’ve been doing some kind of bizarre dance to prove that THEY and THEY ALONE among the not WBW’s would meet your exacting standards of True Womanhood, whereas the others are mere imposters.
It must feel familiar, that dance, eh Heart? “no, please don’t excommunicate -me-, I’m one of the Chosen, no -really!- REALLY! Don’t cast me into the outer darkness…”
just so long as it ain’t you, hm?
belledame222
March 28, 2008 at 12:54 pm
In short, both the religious right and some radical feminists (not all) are telling us that we ought to know our place, and ‘our place’ is with the men, that we don’t hold claim in any way to womanhood, and that it wouldn’t be possible to do so. That do take advantage of sex-segregated facilities of any kind, and refuse to identify as men, is deception and hatred of “real” women, whom that act metaphorically rapes by itself.
The only difference I see is the religious right tells us “Be masculine manly men, it is your god-given role.”, while radical feminists tell us “Be feminine men, but identify as men – and if anyone mistakes you for a woman, correct them. Go fight gender for us on the battlefield…we’ll stay here with our theories.”
and even for those who are less safe (non-gender conforming radical feminist advocating for what I said), they still have women’s shelters and organizations. You think men’s organizations/shelters/services of any kind would even have trans women on their radar to help them?
Schala
March 28, 2008 at 2:03 pm
“while radical feminists tell us “Be feminine men, but identify as men – and if anyone mistakes you for a woman, correct them.”
“…and if a radical feminist sneeringly calls you a ‘camp queen’ or otherwise makes fun of you for your femininity, just smile and suck it up.”
belledame222
March 28, 2008 at 3:42 pm
belledame, where did this second quote come from?
I know I heard what more or less is the first before (it’s not exact, but what it amounts to).
Schala
March 28, 2008 at 4:06 pm
oh, no, that was just me being sarcastic. although the “camp queen” part is real, the originating quote’s quoted -waves vaguely- somewhere up there, also at my spot.
belledame222
March 28, 2008 at 4:49 pm
I posted on your blog, I’m Sara over there. My blogger ID is different than my wordpress commenter name (and I don’t have a wordpress blog either). Essentially Schala is pronounced as Sara in Japanese, so there’s no real difference :P I just love that character (Schala Zeal).
Schala
March 28, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Heart does not think that trans*women are women. See:
http://lonergrrrl.blogspot.com/2008/03/women-only-space-male-privilege.html
I can’t paste the comments. But she concludes:
“It’s not passing that makes a women. It’s not money for surgeries. IT’s the lived experience of being born female and treated as a girl and a woman for all of one’s life. That’s what “gendering” is all about.”
My problem, of course, is that I don’t think anyone is born a woman.
Feminist Avatar
March 29, 2008 at 7:48 am
Indeed.
And the question of “passing” (ie being seen by the world how you see youself) which she has just blithely brushed off is *hardly* inconsequential to the question of gendering.
If you are seen as a woman, you will be treated as one. People tend not to have a magic Y chromosome or “male energy” detector that then gives trans women a patriarchal pass, you know?
queen emily
March 29, 2008 at 11:15 pm
The thing that gets me,r eally gets me, is how rad fems can claim gender is socially constructed and then refer to someone as a “woman BORN woman”
Which is it, social construction or biology? It CANNOT BE BOTH.
Trin
March 30, 2008 at 6:25 pm
The answer to that question is: “yeah but not but yeah but no but yeah… SHUT UP!”
queen emily
March 30, 2008 at 9:53 pm
“I’m not bovvered!”
belledame222
March 31, 2008 at 10:38 am
[...] Light of Recent Debates I mean the debate at William & Mary as well as the concerted radical feminist attention on my blog [...]
In Light of Recent Debates « Questioning Transphobia
April 23, 2008 at 9:41 pm
“Yeah, actual transgender politics are identical to actual feminist politics – seeking equality and equitable treatment in society and under the law.”
No, this is a definition of liberal feminism. Radical feminism recognizes that in order for there to be equality to anything there is a default standard in place and in this case it is a default male standard. Radical feminists do not wish equality because with these contingencies it cannot exist.
“Of course, as we know, some radical feminists oppose such rights for trans people under the pretense that they would somehow lessen civil rights protections for women.”
The question here would be the very idea idea of defining oneself along gender, a social construct. “Transgender” in it’s very name does reify gender and if nothing else radical feminism recognizes the pitfalls of the very identity itself.
Elaine
April 26, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I don’t believe that argument’s in good faith. I don’t believe radical feminism has anything useful to say about transgender lives and experiences. About gender itself? Probably – I’ve read some pretty useful deconstruction of gender.
But when you start applying it to people you don’t understand, whose lives you ignore, run roughshod over, and redefine for your own political or ideological convenience, then you’re reinforcing another form of gendered oppression.
How is that radical?
Lisa Harney
April 26, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Also, you’re saying that trans people define ourselves along gender – I know many who don’t, and I think it’s a simplistic analysis of transgender and transsexual people to criticize trans lives on that basis. Even for those who do, you’re ignoring the fact that something being a social construct does not make it imaginary. As I’ve pointed out before, laws, taxes, police power, the government, ethics, morals, and so on are themselves social constructs.
You also ignore that gender isn’t explicitly imposed from above, but is an outgrowth of the expected norm that everyone who is born male becomes a man and everyone who is born female becomes a woman. That comes from all directions, and that expectation by itself does not have to be oppressive (although I know for certain that it is oppressive). Radical feminists practice gender themselves to a great extent – just look at your comment above about how equality is a “default male standard,” even while describing something you define as liberal feminism.
You also ignore how trans lives – gender migration, if you will – renders the gender binary permeable and removes the certainty I mentioned above from the equation. Not everyone born male will become a man, not everyone born female will become a woman. I don’t think that’s a reification of anything, and to call it such is an extremely shallow analysis.
Lisa Harney
April 26, 2008 at 7:27 pm
“It is conditioning that is laid upon females at birth, and by the time we are two or three, we tend to not be able to see it when we are doing it unless we’ve had a chance to escape the environments where that conditioning is being instilled (i.e., our families) and find ideologies plus environments in which to dismantle our conditioning.”
Maggie, if you look at the lesbians around, by your reasoning, they do not exist, for not one single girl-child has ever been raised or conditioned to be a lesbian, non-the-less, lesbians do appear to exist which are pretty clear contradictions to what you say here.
“I ask the same of anybody who was raised with conditioning. If you refuse to acknowledge your conditioning, that’s your right but I won’t work in alliance with you until you do. I can’t do anything about your denial and how it keeps you isolated.”
What is true here is that you are assuming a conditioning and are not distinguishing between your assumption and people’s lived lives. I don’t know about isolation but I do know about logic tight compartments.
If we could examine this in a historical context, radical feminism began with the participation of a number of psychologists, specifically Ann Koedt (Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm) and Judith Brown (The Psychology of Women). At the time in the late sixties and early seventies, the zeitgeist of psychology was defined by B.F. Skinner who worked in the operant conditioning of pigeons and this is where radical feminism acquired “conditioning” as part of its analysis.
Since Skinner, we have learned that people are not pigeons and that we are mediating thinking beings employing far more complex social learning than Skinner’s pigeons and radical feminism has rarely revisited or revamped this component of our analysis analysis. Human’s, all humans learn socially by modeling. We all model. The thing the we do not always know is who someone is learning from.
Secondly there is another omission in the conditioning model which is seen to work in terms of reward and reinforcement. The radical feminist analysis holds true for men whose identity is consistent with being members of class man. It must be quite rewarding and reinforcing for someone whose identity is boy/man to be treated as a boy or a man. However, it would be my guess that it is quite punishing for someone whose identity is not consistent with the assigned class membership to be treated in a manner that is not consistent with their identity. Radical feminism does clearly recognize that we have gendered components to our identity. However, it has never gone back and updated the ‘conditioning’ model in view of what we know. Possibly, this is because it’s very convenient to hold onto old and incorrect view points when they have utility in validating prejudice.
Contemporary radical feminists do not use the term “conditioning” any longer. The contemporary term in social constructivist radical feminism is social constitution. We can pretty be sure that social constitution manifests itself at any given time.
Lastly, your assumption of uniform and consistent class-wide treatment is a phallacy. One can be sure that across classes there are differences, but that’s about all you say because of individual differences and as far as contraclassed kids are concerned, you can be sure that their social constitution is anything but consistent with people whose identity coincides with their assigned class.
In view of everything posited, it may be a good idea for a re-examination of your positions on this. Remember there are no lesbians. There can’t be because no one is raised socially to be a lesbian. Parents are heterosexuals and yet by some miracle and clear contradicition to simple theories of conditioning — lesbians exist.
Elaine
April 26, 2008 at 8:16 pm
“Also, you’re saying that trans people define ourselves along gender – I know many who don’t, and I think it’s a simplistic analysis of transgender and transsexual people to criticize trans lives on that basis.”
You have incorrectly restated what I said. My critque was directed at a movement and an ideology which calls itself the transgender movement. I’ll address more on this as I respond.
“Even for those who do, you’re ignoring the fact that something being a social construct does not make it imaginary. As I’ve pointed out before, laws, taxes, police power, the government, ethics, morals, and so on are themselves social constructs.”
You seem to think that gender is a noun. I would offer that it is a verb as in social process. People simply behave. Observers gender(verb) that behavior. I would offer that what gender really is, in the eyes of perceivers. That’s it.
“You also ignore that gender isn’t explicitly imposed from above, but is an outgrowth of the expected norm that everyone who is born male becomes a man and everyone who is born female becomes a woman. That comes from all directions, and that expectation by itself does not have to be oppressive (although I know for certain that it is oppressive). Radical feminists practice gender themselves to a great extent – just look at your comment above about how equality is a “default male standard,” even while describing something you define as liberal feminism.”
Again, you didn’t understand what I said. if I may offer a concrete example. Caucasian women make seventy cents to the male dollar. This is justified by saying that women do not work the long hours that (who) work. Unlike (who), women are seen to have discontinuities in our professional careers for whatever reason. Always, women are compared to a measuring stick and the measuring stick to which we are compared is socially male. The default standard for a business resume is the male resume of X number of years of continous work which is the ideal. So women are measured against a default resume and the default is socially male. Radical feminism does not look toward, equality with men where men have defined what we are to be equal to. The second wave aphorism for this was: “I don’t want another piece of pie. I want a whole new pie.” The difference between liberal and radical feminism, is that liberal feminism wants reform or a different piece of the pie. Radical feminism wants to dissolve the basic and fundamental institutions of this society and restart. Radical feminists do not want to be equal to men where men set the default standards because that is not equality. Lastly, I’ve never met a radical feminist who envisions post-patriarchy as being anywhere similar to the way men have fashioed this world.
My favorite radical feminist author observes that there is nothing wrong with gender differentiation” and continues to say, “the sin is in it’s hierarchization.” I wouldn’t say she “practices gender”. What does it mean to practice gender? One of the largest things that is clear to me is that few people at all really understand what radical feminism really does advocate. They grab a label and make things up whether it has anything to do with radical feminism or not.
“You also ignore how trans lives – gender migration, if you will – renders the gender binary permeable and removes the certainty I mentioned above from the equation.”
Yes, I did ignore it because I do not believe gender exists in the way that you construct it.
But there is more to it than that. I am woman-centered and do not use trans as any kind of standard. You act as if this “permeability” benefits women which is the entry point for radical feminist analysis. I do not think women benfit when people who have lived as adult men appropriate our labels because it does erase women’s lives and says that our own social constitution is irrelevant. The “anyone who identifies as a woman” metric renders women’s lives into irrelvancy.
It is neither certainty or uncertainty that oppresses women. It’s male dominance, so these virtues you espouse certainly do not do anything to help women.
“Not everyone born male will become a man, not everyone born female will become a woman. I don’t think that’s a reification of anything, and to call it such is an extremely shallow analysis.”
please note your last statement:
“You also ignore how trans lives – gender migration”
What you just said, reifies gender as a noun as something that is “out there”. It’s not. It’s the way we construct the world and that’s all it is.
“”Not everyone born male will become a man”
It would seem you are unaware that radical feminism sees “male” as a social and poltical construct.
Elaine
April 26, 2008 at 9:11 pm
“For example, re: Sandy Stone as chief Olivia records engineer. If transwomen have additional/expert knowledge they have learned due to possessing/having access to male privilege (as you have claimed here), and then they come over and teach feminists what they have learned, isn’t that pretty revolutionary?”
I don’t think that’s revolutionary at all. It recapitulates the traditional male-female relationship of the knower/expert and the woman student. Secondly the relationship is a dependent relationship on the part of women. That too is the traditional male-female positioning. Women have demonstrated that we live quite independently.
Maggie Jo on Sandy Stone -
“It was a combination of deceit and defiance of a basic feminist belief that conditioning cannot be dismissed. We were undertaking a revolution based on dismantling the tools of oppression, chief of which was conditioning.
This divide, by the way, still characterizes the wars going on. Feminism (as we created it) said that gender like race, was made up, not biologically determined.”
Maggie Jo asking about oppression:
But would I be I oppressing nonprostitutes, nonmothers, transwomen, gay men, or middle class women if I were to organize a support group for the purpose of exploring the upbringing of someone who was born and raised female in a poor household, who now has children and has sold sex in order to survive? ”
The last couple of question bring up an elaborate set of issues. First of all, oppression is a class based issue. Oppression is the systematic undermining of a subordinated class by a dominant class. Therefore oppression is a classed based issue and individuals cannot oppress other individuals. But there is more here. That said, I wanted to look at the lines you drew:
“gender like race, was made up, not biologically determined.”
It’s true that radical feminism does not point at biology as being a pre-social determinant. In fact, nowhere does radical feminism draw lines at how someone is born. Which leaves me curious:
“But would I be I oppressing nonprostitutes, nonmothers, transwomen, gay men, or middle class women if I were to organize a support group for the purpose of exploring the upbringing of someone who was born and raised female in a poor household, who now has children and has sold sex in order to survive? ”
Suddenly a line is drawn based upon biology. I agree, that the radical feminist rejection of essentialism is a thorn in patriarchy’s side as it removes the justification for the oppression of women. You yourself just included a line based on the same patriarchal constructs that radical feminism rejects. It was fast, but not quite facile because it was dissonant with many of the things you advocate and stands out to anyone who really reads what you you have been saying.
Let me also return to another quote:
“We were undertaking a revolution based on dismantling the tools of oppression, chief of which was conditioning.”
I just went through the first two papers on radical feminism, (Woman as a class, and Radical Feminism -3854 words) by T-Grace Atkinson. You know… the word “conditioning” did not appear once in those articles. “Conditioning” was not the chief issue, the chief issue was the binary gender system:
“Df. of “political class”-individuals grouped together by other individuals as a function of grouping individuals, depriving the grouped individuals of their human status.”
This is what I mean about people making stuff up about radical feminism. Gendered classing was the chief issue. The word “conditioning” did not even appear in the preliminary causal analysis as Atkinson put it. She identifies sex/gender roles and classes as the chief issue.
“The male-female distinction was the beginning of the role system, wherein some persons function for others. This primary distinction should properly be referred as the Oppressor (male) -Oppressed (female) distinction, the first political distinction. Women were the first political class and the beginning of the class system.” (TGA, 1969)
The enemies were the the gendered class system, not conditioning. So I think you are misrepresenting radical feminism.
These things said, there’s a lot more that is unexamined and Sandy Stone is in the middle of this. You seem to know Sandy. But I found your description really interesting:
“”It was a combination of deceit and defiance of a basic feminist belief that conditioning cannot be dismissed.”
Social constitution is important. But it is not positioned in feminism the way you are misrepresenting it. But there’s more here than that.
“deceit.”
I don’t know how sandy understands Sandy. But a couple of things are clear in your characterizations. I made a reference above to the role of the “knower”. One of the best feminist discussions on that, is by Elaine Code in “Feminist Epistemology.” Men are the knowers and staters of truth” in their traditional self-appointed roles. Men see people as objects with known properties.
In terms of what I’ve seen quoted here, so does Sandy Stone. Sandy who has it that people with operative histories, a.) have a certain set of characteristics amd as such are objects and b.) have some social obligation to each other and c.) has a set of prescriptions for how people with reassignment in their histories should live.
Because Sandy, as a knower knows the “truth”. Just as you Maggie, see Sandy as an object and you know the “truth”. It you didn’t have a construct of “what is” and you weren’t “the knower”, you couldn’t make decalrations about ‘deciet’, falling back on truth. Sandy the object, did not conform to your presciptions. sandy was not the kind of object you know to be the truth and Sandy was deceitful because Sandy did not meet your construction of radical feminism which is skewed at best.
There’s yet another issue. You escew academia yet lean heavily upon parts of academia. This is basically duplicitious. It allows you to take what you want and reject the rest. It allows you to construct a highly constricted picture of what is, as if anything is custom shaped and molded and you do this as a “knower of the truth”. It intellectual hit and run. If you don’t like it’s “academic”. If it furthers your position, hey it’s fine. It looks to me that this is what you’ve done with radical feminism.
It’s clear you are very knowledgeable and have been around. But what is also clear is that you have put a spin on radical feminism in more than one dimension that does not mirror radical feminism.
Elaine
April 26, 2008 at 11:43 pm
No, I’m aware of all these things.
You don’t support the argument in the least how trans women appropriate and erase cis women’s lives. You’re objecting to the idea that some people born male can be women at all, trying to reify and reinforce gender boundaries by insisting on “your side” and “my side.”
The “anyone who identifies as a woman” metric doesn’t render anyone irrelevant. In my experience, the only people who identify as women are women. Some were born male and undergo hormone therapy and (if they can afford it) surgery so that their bodies match as closely as possible who they are. Most were born female. I’ve never met a man who seriously identified as a woman. I’ve met men who posed as women online (but never offline)
You also completely ignore why some trans women transition as early as possible and why some trans women transition later in life. I guess to you (based on the relatively common radical feminist arguments), they did it to capitalize on male privilege before changing. I would suggest, rather, that it’s not unlike gay men and lesbian women who stay in the closet for years or decades, trying to be straight before finally giving up and coming to terms with their own sexual orientation. Similarly, many trans people (men and women) try hard to fit into their birth sex until they can’t do it anymore and transition.
You’re also trying to position “benefiting from male privilege” as a personal failing that trans women are entirely responsible for, even though they lose many of the benefits of that privilege by transition in the first place. Yes, they still have some of the benefits of male privilege such as potentially education, or a more lucrative career, but I know trans women who – despite their careers and education before transition – have a harder time finding work, and when they do find work, either end up working a job they didn’t train for, or getting paid less than they would have otherwise…because they’re not currently receiving male privilege.
I also do not appreciate your insistence that I use language the way you want me to use language. You can either try to communicate with me or you can continue to tell me I’m wrong because you don’t like how I use a word, and if the latter, trying to engage you is a waste of time for me.
If you’re not willing to talk about trans people as human beings who have lives and needs just like any other human being, then I have nothing to say to you. The idea that you’re attacking “a movement and an ideology that calls itself the transgender movement” – a straw man I’ve deconstructed on this blog in the past – is pure sophistry. You’re attacking people, and your attempt to establish borders cuts right through our bodies.
Lisa Harney
April 26, 2008 at 11:54 pm
yr gender, i reifys it
queen emily
April 27, 2008 at 2:09 pm
but i doez not practis it
queen emily
April 27, 2008 at 2:15 pm
i doez rejex essechalism tho
queen emily
April 27, 2008 at 2:16 pm
sorta newai…. tranniez lulz!
queen emily
April 27, 2008 at 2:18 pm
“male” is constuck… but iz not changeabul
queen emily
April 27, 2008 at 2:22 pm
radicul kitteh is radicul!
queen emily
April 27, 2008 at 2:23 pm
kthxbai
queen emily
April 27, 2008 at 2:24 pm
[...] The post with the most views was entirely about one radfem’s comments about transphobia, and a number of radfems closing ranks to defend against the idea that attacking trans people for arbitrary and poorly informed reasons was bigoted. It has 2,182 views. [...]
Questioning Transphobia
August 1, 2008 at 8:28 am
[...] Maggie Jochild: I do know Sandy, by having been at retreats with her and also because in 1977 I was an Olivia Records distributor for a while in North Texas. Here’s what you’re leaving out of the history. Olivia Records was formed with a specific stated mission of creating a place for women to make and distribute their own music without male privilege, conditioning or influence. It was an utterly radical idea then, and still would be now. It was a difficult goal to maintain, but Olivia succeeded, wildly, because hundreds of thousands of women across the country said “I want to hear music that has no male-conditioned influence attached to it — I want to know what that sounds like.” [...]
Trans Women and Male Privilege « Questioning Transphobia
October 3, 2008 at 2:13 am