I googled the author of the piece I signal boosted yesterday, and to my delight found that she has also discussed the misogyny invoked in transmisogyny, highlighting one of the fundamental hypocrisies of trans exclusionary “radical feminism.”
Once I had an argument with a cis dude acquaintance about whether trans women should be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Out of nowhere, he burst out with, “I want a family someday!”
He continued, apparently unaware of how non he was sequituring. “How am I supposed to feel about the fact that there are all these women walking around, and maybe they look just like everyone else, but they don’t have uteruses? Why is it transphobic to say I want a woman who can have children?”
My response was, “It’s not transphobic to want children, but it’s misogynistic as hell to say that anyone who can’t give birth is not a woman.” The idea that a woman’s value, or her gender, is determined by her reproductive function is so deeply objectifying that to call it transphobic is to miss the entire point. Note that in his hypothetical there was no question of whether the woman wanted to give birth; he was only interested in whether she was physically capable of fulfilling hisparental desires. The problem with this guy isn’t that he doesn’t want to date trans women. It’s that he sees all women as vessels for his own dreams.
In just this way, whenever you scratch the surface of transmisogyny (even in the guise of “trans-critical feminism”), you find that it’s just one facet of a deeper hatred and distrust of women. Here are four tenets of transmisogyny that are profoundly dangerous to all women:
You can read more about Lindsay King-Miller’s stupendous take on the issue here, or read my previous post on the same topic here.
-Shiv
Thanks for the link. I particulary liked her put down of the argument that all discrimination centres around ciswomens ability to get pregnant and fear of doing so, like discrimination stops at menopause … yeah of course it does.
“It’s not transphobic to want children, but it’s misogynistic as hell to say that anyone who can’t give birth is not a woman.”
That’s great!
I may not have this right, but it seems to me like “you don’t want to have children with me” means “you are less human” to some of these people. The problem, it appears to me, is that they are perhaps paying too much attention to those who won’t have children with them and not enough to those who will.
“How am I supposed to feel about the fact that there are all these women walking around, and maybe they look just like everyone else, but they don’t have uteruses?”
There’s also an element of… I don’t think there’s a word for it, but he’s also pushing the idea that the only “real” families are those bound by DNA, and adopting is “inferior”. Why isn’t there a word for this?
@WMDKitty — Survivor
I’m not sure. It’s possible there is. I couldn’t dig anything up though.
I did encounter this delightful blog post drawing a line straight from forced-birther adoption rhetoric to anti-gay anti-adoption rhetoric, though: https://likelockedrooms.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/adoption-the-loving-yet-inferior-option/