Don’t you just hate it when the answers aren’t clear-cut? And I’m not going to give you any.
Two recent cases bring up conflicts.
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Germaine Greer is a transphobic ass who demeans a whole group of people. Students at Cardiff University petition to have her banned from speaking there.
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Gamergaters are some of the most awful people on the internet — they represent a distillation of the lowest scumming trolls. SXSW responded to threats from gamergaters by shutting down a panel on online harassment.
My personal feeling is that Greer really is saying hateful crap, and my sentiment favors booting her antiquated butt off the campus. But the women speaking out against harassment are in the right, and SXSW shouldn’t boot their SJW butts out of the conference. Universities should take responsibility for what views are presented in official events, but also, SXSW is a commercial event and they should also have control over what they offer, and they have every right to be craven dipshits. The real arbiter of who should speak on a campus are the students, but students are often naive — they’re there to learn, and I wouldn’t stand for them dictating to me what I should teach. A commercial event like SXSW should follow the demands of the market if it expects to remain economically viable, but popularity for the masses is often a recipe for mediocrity, and also, market forces are biased against the underprivileged, so that would reinforce a discriminatory status quo.
Universities should encourage open discussion of a wide range of views, but maybe we should recognize that some views have fallen completely off the map of reasonable positions, despite the fact that some people continue to hold them, sometimes fiercely. Does the university have an obligation to let students hear advocates for the idea that the earth was created in a week, 6000 years ago? Should we bring in representatives of the KKK to explain how our black students are subhuman? I don’t think so. But universities, as public institutions, do allow groups to rent an auditorium for an evening, and the kooks do take advantage…so they should allow, but not endorse, lunacy and nastiness, as long as they aren’t expected to pay for it (and actually, if the loons have to pay for the privilege).
We should be open to good ideas, but not to wrong ones. The hard part is deciding which ideas are wrong enough that they should be excluded.
Universities have ideals and goals, and we should be able to say that some things are not at all conducive to learning or social progress. SxSW is a different beast: it’s a music festival which has branched out to cover all kinds of completely unrelated phenomena. Is there even a coherent mission that could be used to guide what kinds of events are appropriate to their program? How does anyone justify a statement that SxSW ought to have a panel on online harassment? Shouldn’t the ultimate argument be that they will do whatever appeases the sponsors?
So no, I don’t have a pat answer. I might give different answers to different situations, too. I think what I’d want is a clear statement of the long term goals of the institution, so that we could judge whether a specific action is likely to serve that goal or not. In the case of SxSW, I think they’ve betrayed the attendees vision of what the conference is all about, but they could be wrong — maybe the conference organizers’ vision is one where Monster Energy Drinks and McDonald’s continues to give them lots of money.
Similarly, I have rather idealistic views on the purpose of the university, but I suspect it would often be at odds with the views of the regents, who, as recent cases in Iowa and North Carolina show, might be more business-oriented and regressive than I’d like.
Which of Greer’s beliefs do you believe to be so awful? The idea that men do not become women during transition?
They were women before transition, scienceforjustice. Not all trans folks go through transition to begin with.
PZ
typo alert
“they’re their to learn”
scienceforjustice
Pretty much all of them.
And no, no men become women when they transition in whatever form they do (with a wide range of medical options that are desired by many but not all trans folks in various combinations). Trans women receive medical help to overcome dysphoria.
+++
As for the OP.
I think there is a really big difference between a university reacting to criticism and protest and a con giving in to threats of violence. If the Greer talk were cancelled because of bomb threats I would be on Greer’s side.
BTW, if you want evidence for Greer being horrible try this. Massive TW for transphobia.
When I hear the name Germaine Greer, I think of her article defending FGM, pointing out that criticizing it is tantamount to cultural imperialism. This was 1999 or so IIRC. Easy to find online.
It is really stretching the definition of “feminist” to include people who support FGM.
What I find wrong is her narrow belief that she knows exactly what defines a woman, while ignoring the fact that her criteria aren’t what most women use to identify themselves.
Indeed, petitions != threats.
Also, the people who started the petition weren’t unwilling to hear Greer’s ideas. Clearly they were fully aware of her ideas, so they must have heard them at some point, How else could they decide she should not be given a platform at the university? One would hope that the people who signed it were properly informed and/or informed themselves before signing it as well.
I posted about SxSW yesterday. All I have to say about that is that it’s a fucking shame to see yet more caving in to threats from the likes of gamergaters and 4chan, all those shit-filled people. What they have learned is that threats and harassment work. Bad news all the way around.
As for Germaine Greer, I think if she wants anyone to hear her incredibly hateful, nasty rhetoric, she should pay for the privilege.
PZ:
As Aoife pointed out, going by her criteria defining woman, she excludes herself from said criteria.
Student petitions are a good thing. People in power caving in to petitions, rather than a deliberate moral decision, are not.
I’d also say that it’s extremely important for opponents of speakers to protest — even if the speaker is allowed to come to campus, get off your ass and make a sign or march or write angry letters or shout. Even if the powers-that-be rule against you, make noise about it, don’t resign yourself to their decision.
Well frankly I’m horrified by Greer’s views on Tolkien (just google), but I don’t think she should be banned from Cardiff for them.
Oddly, amongst all this publicity, I haven’t actually heard who was responsible for _inviting_ Greer to speak. I’m guessing (from the lecture title) that it was a department or institute – neither the University itself, nor a student organisation. Not that it should matter – banning Greer at Cardiff is of a piece with banning Maryam Namazie at Warwick. If you create a weapon like no-platforming then you have to be incredibly naive to think it will only be used against the just those people _you_ deem reactionary.
As for sxsw – they’re a private organisation. They’re perfectly entitled to fight harrasment by hosting an anti-harrasment panel (without “balancing” it with a pro-harrasment panel). Instead they’ve chosen to cave in so as not to offend the pro-harrasers. What more needs to be said?
In the case of Germaine Greer I think it also matters whether the lecture she was to give in Cardiff was a talk specifically expounding her distasteful views on trans issues or a lecture on some other subject. I am extremely uncomfortable with prohibiting people from speaking simply because they hold some awful opinions. When those opinions are the focus of their talk it’s a bit different, but if they’re talking about something else then this verges dangerously on thought crime. As far as I know Greer hasn’t done anything beyond expressing her views. She hasn’t actively campaigned to make people’s lives worse, advocated discrimination (like the homophobic hate preachers who sometimes get this kind of publicity) or been complicit in war crimes (cf. Rice, C., Blair, T. et al), so the speaking engagement can’t really be seen as legitimising something else that is horrible.
I wouldn’t want James Watson being invited to speak on race issues, for instance, but I don’t think he should be prevented from talking about his work on the structure of DNA.
Giliell @ 5:
Jesus Fuck. Vituperative venom, that. Greer seems to count on having an unnecessarily nasty attitude towards all manner of people, knowing that there are enough people out there who love being unnecessarily nasty too, who will support her.
Cartomancer @ 13:
I would guess that your aren’t active in feminist and LGBT circles.
I think the university has a responsibility to keep an open learning environment for their students, which means avoiding promoting bigotry against members of the student body. If there is concern that Greer will denigrate trans students and staff (and the petition is an expression of that concern), then yes, one should take that into account when inviting her. (Especially since many universities have non-discrimination policies to protect groups like trans students and staff.)
(And as pointed out, the students are following legal methods for expressing their opinion of a speaker, so good for them.)
(SxSW might not have an explicit policy about what is and is not appropriate, but this is making them look like shitheels, and I don’t mind saying it. Canceling an anti-harassment panel because harassers are threatening to disrupt the event* makes the statement that harassment works, and makes people who worry about being harassed feel unsafe and stay home and tell their audience to so the same.)
* Given the scale means that they can afford security. If this was a tiny convention where security was a single volunteer who was mostly there to discourage freeriders, then they’d be in a bind. (Even then, explaining things to the panel first privately might help, since I imagine anti-harassment folks might know a thing or two about what resources exist.)
I think SXSW gets to cancel whatever panels they want, and violent threats are not a bad reason to cancel pretty much anything. That said, people get to choose to not attend based on their concession to the harassers.
Cardiff university should get to cancel Greer’s speech as well. It’s not censorship not to pay someone to speak at your university and people clearly don’t want their university wasting money on such a hateful person.
I really don’t get how “we don’t want our university to financially support someone who’s a very vocal proponent of hate speech” is that controversial of an opinion.
Greer is welcome to say what she wants, but no venue is required to host her, and the students aren’t required to like it. All I’m seeing so far is a perfectly valid form of protest against a really shitty person.
She was going to be doing a talk on “Women and Power – lessons from the 20th century”. Not on trans issues. Not even on “women and Power – how I think that all 21st century feminists have got it all wrong by not listening to me”.
Odiously wrong though her trans views are, I find it hard to believe that they’re worth no-platforming her for every other word she utters. There are better people to ask to do talks on gender and sexuality, and these days there are better people to ask about feminism. But not to no-platform her. Anyway, she won’t be going now and she knows which of her views are no longer welcome.
Well no. I’m not “active” in any circles these days! My life has a distinct lack of circularity to it in all senses. To be honest I tend to avoid getting caught up in circles in the first place. I’m not a huge fan of other people.
But if Germaine Greer has gone beyond merely expressing opinions and into actively campaigning to make people’s lives worse then it would be different, as I implied. Then giving her a platform may well go well beyond the academic exchange of ideas and substantially into the political and social realm – it would be endorsing her validity as a spokesperson on these issues. As far as I know she’s just a celebrity academic with some weird, obnoxious and old-fashioned views on some issues. But I don’t follow her religiously, so she might be heavily involved with groups campaigning for regressive ends.
@EigenSprocketUK
The thing is that I don’t really think there’s a loss in not welcoming her to a university campus. By this point, she’s pushing thirty year old theories that tend to conflict pretty heavily with modern sciences, both physical and social. She’s done some good work on the topic of Native Australian rights and some feminist work that reflects the sociological consensus, but as a whole, one could reasonably sum up her work as “transphobic biological essentialism.”
Any good feminist theories that might be gleaned from her could easily be gleaned from numerous other speakers, who are both
A. Not clinging to pet theories in the face of all evidence to the contrary and
B. Not active purveyors of hate speech.
The only outcome of her speeches, in my opinion, is funneling money to a transphobic crank and giving a soapbox to ideas that pretty much unilaterally carry themes of hate speech.
Not to mention that she has actively campaigned against trans people in the past, when she tried to deny a trans physiscist a fellowship at a woman’s college due to her transgender status.
Please bear with me, I am not a writer and I am trying to say what I mean, but I will probably screw it up.
With regards to SXSW, i think they can do what they want, and I can judge them by their actions. If I think they stand for, or orthogonal to something I support I will support them, if not, then not.
Universities are more complicated for me. On matters of fact I think it is easier, if you want to present evidence the world is flat, it had better be so remarkable as to be earth squashing. If you want to present a novel interpretation of existing data, or disturbing data you have generated, I think a university is the place that should happen. Where I have trouble is with subjective stuff. Should a university provide a platform for someone to argue that women are chattel, should a university provide a platform to argue that black people have intrinsically less worth than good ol white folk, how about that women should be allowed to vote? How about presenting the idea that who a person is attracted to is irrelevant to anyone but that person and the object of their attraction? I think it is really important for there to be forums to present and discuss fringe ideas, and i think universities should be one of those places. I think this for two reasons. Most of the social justice battles being fought ARE fringe ideas, other wise they wouldn’t need to be fought. Yea, manny of those fringe, and mainstream ideas are actively harmful and need to die by fire, some some of those fringe ideas really deserve room to grow and I don’t know which ones do. I also think that if a student group finds some speaker odious they should speak up and raise a stink, otherwise there is no discussion, only a presentation and the only people who benefit from that are the ones in power. Second, university is a place to learn, and one of the things a person should learn there is to think critically and come to a thoughtful conclusion. This requires being exposed to the wrong idea, otherwise your not thinking critically, your just absorbing what you’ve been told. And if the ‘wrong’ ideas are presented fairly, in their strongest form, some people will favor them.
Further update on the SxSW story: http://recode.net/2015/10/27/exclusive-after-gamergate-misstep-sxsw-weighing-an-all-day-forum-on-online-harassment/
As for the no-platforming, it’s worth noting a few distinctions:
Greer was obviously invited by someone in authority without much by way of student input; the students then rallied against her appearance.
The SxSW panel, OTOH, was approved in via a voting process of attendees (indeed, there were several panels suggested, and this was the one that survived a brigading effort by the GG crowd). Then AFTER that process was over, the GG’ers managed to weasel in their own ‘balancing’ forum, run by several key figures in their bowel movement. And then the threats started against the anti-harassment panel, and SxSW decided to pull the plug on both of them.
So instead of legitimately interested parties expressing a concern, this was a case of a heckler’s veto enforced with the threat of violence. The two cases are completely incomparable, once you get to the details–and those have nothing to do with the content of the presentations.
cartomancer
She is NOT prohobited from speaking. She got a gig on primetime British TV, FFS. Not paying somebody to lecture at a university is NOT the same as “being prohibited from speaking”. Hell, nobody ever invited me to give a talk at a university and that is not a violation of my rights or the free exchange of ideas.
csrster
I’m sick and tired of this “both sides yadda yadda” bullshit. As if there was no way to determine whether charges made against somebody are actually founded in reality or not. Do you have no morals and evidence on which basis you can argue that Maryam Namazie does not actually incite hatred against muslims? We really don’t have to suck up to bigots in the hope that they’ll treat us nice if we do. Because that also doesn’t work.
EigenSprocketUK
YEah, only that she’s somebody who excudles many women from her definition. So how can a talk that is trans exclusionary in principle not touch on thes ubject of trans people. That’s like giving a talk about “human rights” in the early 19th century that simply excludes women and PoC from the definition of “human”.
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BEcca Stareyes
That’s actually the very fucking point. in order for students to get an education, they must have a protected space, a safe space. Inviting somebody to speak on matters of gender says that you think this person has at least a valid standpoint. If that person is horribly bigoted and hostile to a part of the student population because of their gender identity it means that as a university you lend legitimacy to those views. This creates an openly hostile environment for trans students as they can no longer be sure that the university would have their back should they be discriminated against because of their gender identity and expression.
I mean, seriously, would people think that inviting Vox “shooting girls in the head is a reasonable method to keep them from getting an education” Day to speak at their university would not create a hostile climate for women?
Oh FFS, just subjective matters of opinion, let’S all agree to disagree.
I can’t even.
Vivek, I think you’re right. Don’t invite her to deliver her outdated theories. Fine. Except that someone did invite her, and Cardiff SU decided to no-platform her. That’s a very serious sanction indeed; one which should be reserved for the most serious irredeemable offences. (like Vox Day, seeing as he’s been Godwinned into this)
I wasn’t aware that she campaigned against a fellowship for someone on account of their trans status – that would be shittily-scurrilous and deeply troubling. I’m having trouble finding a reference to find out anything about that, or if she’s since apologised.
Gilell @ 25 you can agree to disagree if you want, I haven’t and I think it’s stupid to.
Oh dear: you’re right. It’s there in front of me in Wikipedia about Greer’s unsuccessful campaign in 1997 against a fellowship for Rachel Padman. And she’s not changed that tune much in 19years, so she can’t even try even a weak excuse like it was a long time ago and a different milieu. Now I understand why the Newsnight interview went stratospheric.
@Giliell
I do think it’s funny that people are going “Well, she wasn’t going there to talk about trans people, she was just talking about women and power!”
Like, the vast majority of Greer’s work hasn’t worn the transphobic part on the cuff. It’s either implicated, or been buried in the meat of the work.
It’s not like she titled one of her books “Here’s why I hate trans people” and the rest of her books are on an entirely different matter. It’s pretty much omnipresent in her work due to her welding of biological essentialism to second-wave ideas.
In effect, it’d be like inviting a racial phrenologist and saying “Oh, no he’s not talking about how black people are inferior to whites, he’s just talking about skull shape!”
Jacobletoile
tTHat swishing noise you just heard right now was the point that flew over your head. let me guess, you do not belong to any of the demographics whose humanity you just declared to be “subjective matters”.
@Eigen
I don’t think she’s hurting from not being invited to the university, though.
Not only has she had like a dozen books published, she’s had numerous academic positions, she routinely gives speeches both in venues and on television, and there’s an archive of her work in the university of Melbourne that cost around 2 million dollars to establish.
Somehow, I think she’ll make due without a single speaking engagement at a university with a student body that is hostile to her outdated, transphobic ideas.
Bit of a shame that Cardiff SU didn’t put together a counter talk which would have neatly explained why Greer is wrong, why it’s terrible that she hasn’t learnt much over the years, and why people feel so strongly about it.
Instead they decided to
burn the witchno-platform her.Greer is no mere academic, she is also a celebrity and is probably the most famous feminist in the UK. It is impossible to ignore that context when offering her an unopposed platform, because that power and status imbues someone with influence. Actually, it is difficult to see how a famous activist can put fourth any public opinion on a matter such as this without that also constituting activism on that subject.
Ultimately, a petition is no more than a collective opinion. The University can chose to react to that statement of opinion however it will, and that could include withdrawing the invite, not withdrawing the invite but rejecting the problematic views of the speaker (what happened here), or it rejecting the petition and arguing against either the petitioners’ claims or in favour of providing a platform. The students petitioning the administration did not get their way, and the talk was not cancelled.
As it is, Greer seems also to be shy of listening to opposing opinions:
a) Clearly she wants an unopposed platform, or at least wants to dictate the acceptable volume of the opposition; b) Who has threatened to throw anything at her, and who was going to let them do it?
Is the argument here that the hundreds who signed the petition should not have used that format (calling for those consequences) to protest – that it was disproportionate – or that they should support a different model of free speech?
(There is no great legal protection or tradition of free speech in the UK, not in that sense. Freedom of expression has always been weighed in law and in society against potential harm, and with a much lower burden to demonstrate that harm than in the US, for example. Pundits on all sides of politics would like to claim differently, in this case and others in recent months, but it simply isn’t so. We have always happily declined platforms for those whose views we find harmfully offensive.)
Characterizing this as a witch hunt is cute.
I think, by and large, none of us would oppose a witch hunt if the founding assumptions were true. Like, hypothetically, if there really was a super powerful magic using monster that kills babies and destroys harvests, I’d consider stopping said witch a moral obligation. The problem is that, of course, the assumptions were incorrect, witches don’t exist, and innocent people were killed.
This isn’t that. This is a bigot being offered a place to speak, and then choosing not to attend once she finds out that the venue is hostile to her bigotry. And even had the venue decided to rescind the offer, said bigot would be perfectly free to speak at a venue more amenable to her bigotry. No one’s rights have been rescinded,no one innocent was harmed, and she just lost a venue to spout her bigotry.
Caine @9:
I share your disgust.
I was glad to see that The Verge and their parent company, Vox not only oppose the decision by SXSW but have vowed not to attend the event unless they take harassment seriously. Buzzfeed has also said they will not attend unless the convention reinstates the gaming panels. Here’s a letter (from the above link) from three Buzzfeed executives sent to SXSW:
Obviously this doesn’t change the fact that SXSW has caved to pressure from antifeminists. Nor does it change the fact that even before they cancelled the panels, the actions of SXSW were “unprofessional, self-serving, and mendacious” (Arthur Chu’s words from Daily Beast).
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Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia @17:
Has anyone argued that they *cannot* cancel whatever panels they want? I don’t think so. I think people have criticized their decision to cancel a panel that was set to discuss online harassment, which is a problem that people in the tech world face (but it’s women that primarily face it, so maybe SXSW just doesn’t give enough of a shit about women to think that panel is something worth keeping). Here is a piece by Chris Kluwe on why he is pissed at SXSW’s decision to cancel the anti-harassment panel and why he feels the threats they received are not a valid reason for cancelling the panel (I happen to agree with him):
(excerpt)
If you want to let Greer know you disagree with her transphobia, boycott her appearances, encourage others to not attend, through leaflets, posters, etc. But to demand the university ban her outright is too extreme. Let her talk, one does not have to agree. It is also useful to hear what one disagrees with, to verify ones disagreement and restock oneself with rhetoric ammunition in opposition. There is value in listening to opposing views.
Cartomancer@20: “I’m not a huge fan of other people.”
My long-lost sibling!!!
EigenSprocketUK @32:
Greer didn’t have a *right* to speak there. She didn’t have a *right* to a platform. She certainly didn’t have a *right* to the money being offered for her to give a speech. Incidentally, Cardiff rejected the petition to uninvite Greer. So don’t worry all you folks concerned about the ebil feminists trying to “silence” Greer. And don’t worry about the concerns of the people who don’t want a bigot to receive a paid platform to express her views.
I do wonder though, would we be having the same discussion about a bigot receiving a platform to express themselves if this was a right-wing extremist? What if it was someone with the belief that all Mexicans are bringing rape, diseases, and violence with them to the US?
Personally, I still have a difficult time understanding why some people seem to think that an individual who has been invited to speak at a university-and will be paid to speak-has some sort of sacred right to speak and efforts to get them uninvited are a suppression of free speech. When did free speech come with a guaranteed paycheck and a platform?
I agree with 36. Let’s invite David Icke and Andrew Wakefield to universities, let them ramble about space lizards and vaccines causing autism, and them give them a fat paycheck on top of the soapbox we’ve already provided.
Who cares if their theories are incorrect, full on batshit conspiracy theories, or imply that it’s better to be dead than have Autism. Universities have an obligation to entertain all beliefs, and it’s morally wrong to deny a soap box to anyone.
@7, PZ Myers:
How does that make her different from anyone else? I’m an agender woman, and I have yet to talk to a single trans person or trans activist who has defined a woman in a way that includes me, or who has agreed to treat my gender identity as equally valid to theirs.
It seems like most people either define man/woman in the way that matches what they personally feel and don’t care about anyone else, or don’t care enough and just go along with the opinion of whatever person or group they have the most sympathy for.
Also, a relevant article asking why Greer and feminist women in general usually face more consequences than men do for the same things.
The wording of the petition written by the Cardiff Students’ union women’s officer Rachel Melhuish;
The wording of the petition makes it clear that they are only asking for support for the idea that because Greer holds damaging views about women it might not be the best idea to have her speak about how to combat such views. She clearly has a bias and it is easy to imagine there would be a more appropriate speaker available to fill the slot. I am pretty sure they are not asking that Greer have her right to free speech removed just that she isn’t given a platform at one particular event. Would there be such a fuss if Nigel Farage wasn’t asked to give a lecture on the benefits of free worker movement in the EU?
This isn’t a free speech issue at all because the petition is part of a debate (which allows full free speech) about whether or not to host Germaine Greer. The opposing side have every opportunity to host a separate petition asking that Germaine Greer be invited to speak or hold discussions about whether or not she should be invited.
So PZ, here is the easy answer, let an open debate about whether or not to invite Germaine Greer to Cardiff Uni to speak about womens issues and go along with that outcome.
I am morbidly fascinated with the recent horror and opposition among certain feminists to “no-platforming”. Feminists who I would think should know better, crying out about the freeze peach and so very very concerned about how not being given a platform is censorship. Sounds familiar. But it really isn’t that hard. Would you be comfortable letting your university give a prominent speaking gig to MRAs, just because they were allegedly only going to talk about men, and never bash women, or say the horrible sexist things they are known for, during their talk? Would we really be hearing reassurances about how it is fine to just let them have the platform if they were Stormfronters coming to talk about biology? Should Ken Ham and Kent Hovind also start getting a platform at colleges with students being encouraged to either just not attend or protest at a polite distance? Being given a platform at a University is being given endorsement by the University. That is the issue. The University should not be using its reputation to boost the credibility of bigots and/or crackpots.
As for SXSW: they are within their rights to do what they want (and people have the right to complain and protest in response), but the details of how they handled everything was shitty on multiple levels. The best explanation given that I’ve seen was from Arthur Chu, who was on one of the cancelled panels.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/27/this-is-not-a-game-how-sxsw-turned-gamergate-abuse-into-a-spectator-sport.html
<Greer thread> I know there’s no point in making relative rankings of odiousness of anti-feminists in order to no-platform them. I just wish that Cardiff SU had set upon the people who regularly -daily- spout the most awful transphobic and misogynist comments to huge audiences. Like most of the Daily Mail, And people like Martin Daubney, Milo Yiannopopolous: there’s no shortage of people on that list. You can be sure they’re just loving this, and are voting early and often on change.org.
Even so, something just feels wrong about no-platforming Greer on an unrelated talk. I agree the point that she can’t talk about feminism without much of the sub-text being tainted by her exclusionary views. So all the more important to argue her and drag her into the 21st century.
Anyway, I’m not the target demographic, so I’m going to shut up and carry on listening to those who are. This is a real eye-opener.
freja:
This is a fair point, but it is only kicking the can down the road. “You only care about this woman’s bigotry because you are sexist”. Yes, that could quite possibly be the case, but that is a damn bizarre way to defend that woman. Accept the bigotry, but claim it is normal and only noted because of another form of bigotry on the part of the observer. That doesn’t make anything right.
@freja
That article regurgitates and supports transphobic talking points while arguing that TERF is a meaningless prejorative akin to “Witch”
It’s also in its totality just a regurgitation of the classic “Why are you trans people angry at TERFs when cis en are the ones that kill you!” talking point, as if we can’t be angry at two groups at the same time.
Yes, I doubt Greer is going to pick up a knife and kill a trans woman, and I doubt most murderers of trans women have read her books. None of that takes away from the fact that she’s a vile bigot whose ideas contribute to a culture of transphobia and she has, personally, attempted to deny trans women academic positions based on their transgender status.
slithey tove
Why? WHY? I really want to know. Is it your gut feeling? Do you feel the same about not inviting Holocaust deniers or Vox Day?
Tony! @38:
Exactly, which makes the continued reaction to the petition look more like some people trying to cast Greer as an unfortunate victim, whilst others are apparently in the business of trying to ban people from calling for things to be banned. Although ban is not an appropriate word here, I think.
The petition gathered relatively little popular support, and importantly was rejected by the administration, so I fail to see wherein lies the issue of censorship to even be discussed.
I would gladly see Greer taking to a suitably opposed platform to discuss precisely the views which are being questioned, since I think she would do badly and her opinions would be exposed as ill-judged, illiberal, and inhumane. However, I don’t think that she should be paid by a University to take an unopposed platform to talk about other relatively uncontroversial subjects, whilst ignoring her problematic and very public views on trans issues.
slithey tove @36:
Can someone, ANYONE, explain why a petition requesting that a university not pay someone and give them a platform to speak is extreme?
@ 48
Because no-platforming and sexism, or something.
Apparently denying a bigot a place to speak kicks off a slippery slope domino effect where eventually ALL TEH FEMINISTS will get banned.
@45, Vivec
Then why don’t you? Why are people angry and upset enough to no-platform Julie Bindel but not Milo Yiannopoulos? It’s from the same event, so it wasn’t like the protesters were different people or objected at different times. And why are Greer’s ideas acceptable enough when she defends FGM, but not when people notice she uses a different definition gender than some other people?
EigensprocketUK:
I sympathize with the reluctance, because there is some significant subjectivity in the decisions of who to not provide a platform for, and for what reason. It is almost impossible to find someone who is completely not bigoted, in any way. And if you include things like espousing pseudoscience and having at least one prominent ridiculous idea as a reason to not invite a speaker, you suddenly have very few speakers. It is a recipe for a slippery slope. But, in my opinion, that is a less serious concern than ensuring that you can find a way to take a stand against bigotry. Deal with the logistics and inconsistencies afterward.
As you yourself note in your second sentence, the topic could easily be affected by her bigotry. It only appears to be unrelated but by approaching the issues related to Women, it would be easy to tread into the topic of trans women, and trans people in general.
Finally, it is very difficult to drag people into the 21st century. Yes, even feminists, apparently. Argument seldom changes minds. In addition, she is there for a talk, not a debate. She just wants a passive audience. You can see from Bernard Bummer’s post at 33 that she is leery of the idea of dealing with an opposition. Arguing with her will do no good because she isn’t receptive to it, and will frame it as abuse, no matter what form the arguing takes (and, honestly, there is no good way to argue with someone in the position of an invited speaker when you are just a random audience member without seeming hostile).
freja @50:
Why are you confident that the latter *doesn’t* happen?
freja:
Milo got banned from the event too once the uproar over them not pushing him away caused them to do more research into who he was. Whereas Julie had already been established on a no-platform list. You know that, right?
And all of the fighting over Julie Bindel was in-fighting amongst feminists, while both sides agreed that Milo is a living sack of shit. Hence more words over the former than the latter. You get that, right? Or are you sincerely saying that the feminists opposed to TERFs are not sufficiently opposed to Milo/Gamergate/MRAs, etc.?
@Freja
I…do?
I’m not a student at Cardiff, so who they chose to speak out against doesn’t reflect my views on the matter. As far as I’m concerned, both Greer and Yiannopoulos are both odious bigots who have no business receiving a paycheck and a soapbox.
IRT why her views on FGM are uncontroversial and why her transphobia isn’t, I don’t see your point here. She’s right about one thing, and wrong about a whole lot of other things.
Plenty of smart people in one field have extremely incorrect or bigoted views in another field. Most historical thinkers believed a lot of wacky religious nonsense. The “Founding Fathers” were by and large slave owners. Dawkins is a very intelligent thinker until he starts talking about muslims or feminism.
@52, Tony! The Queer Shoop:
Because it *didn’t*. The article refers to a specific event where the 2 of them were to have a debate, and people objected to her over him.
re @48 in reference to my “advice”:
good point. Presenting a petition, to drop a speaker, based on the speaker’s disrespected views, is appropriate. I guess it falls under the “etc” part of my list of “leaflets, posters, etc”.
re earlier comment responding to me:
even if the speaker was VoxDay, or a Holocaust Denier, or other scum, I’d still say “Let em speak, So everyone can hear what a fool they are”, I’ll pass around my magic leaflets to dissuade attendance, and then, maybe, attend, to laugh at them.
@56
Sure, I agree. In principle, Vox or a Holocaust Denier have a right to say whatever they want, limits to free speech notwithstanding.
They don’t have the right to a paid, unopposed soapbox, however, and if the requirements of intellectual rigor and decorum are so low that a person can get a paid soapbox to espouse bigotry tinged nonsense why don’t we hand them out to every bigot with a manifesto?
freja @55:
Please see anteprepro’s comment @53.
Perhaps there is a slippery slope, but it is one that we constantly tread, since Universities and other organisations often make such decisions about who to invite. Actually, of more concern should not be who is disinvited, but who is never invited in the first place.
Here we are, debating whether it censorship to withdraw an invite to talk in front of hundreds (?) to someone with a reach of tens or hundreds of thousands via regular opinion pieces, appearances in nation print and broadcast media, and best selling publications.
Note: Freja’s remark about Julie Bindel and Brave Sir Hero Milo of Breitbart was in reference to events a few weeks ago at University of Manchester . For a period of time, Bindel had been banned before they had issued a ruling as to whether Milo would be banned as well, and there was much handwringing over the hypocrisy. (And of course, generic and generally unsupported complaints about no-platforming itself).
Vivec,
I used to laugh at misogynists who accuse feminists of claiming victimhood status where simply criticizing a woman for being wrong is sexism. It seems we have reached the point where these feminists aren’t just a figment of someone’s imagination, but (some of) Greer’s defenders.
@ Beatrice
Hey, careful there. If you criticize one set of ideas, logically we’ll end up criticizing every set of ideas ever! Mass chaos, dogs and cats living together etc
@53, anteprepro
Did research or realized how hypocritical it made them look? Because I have a hard time believing that among the alleged feminists who arranged the campaign and gathered signatures, there wasn’t a single one who had heard about him or spent 15 seconds googling him (I just did and, the first link establishes him as a gamergater and associate editor of Breitbart.com)? That’s either some very selective or some very sloppy activism.
So when feminists disagree about something, they try to get their feminist opponents n no-platformed, but when they all agree that someone is a living sack of shit, they don’t bother getting upset about it?
Bernard Bummer: Agree completely.
slithey tove:
You do realize that this kind of reaction likely comes from a place of privilege, right? Not everyone is in the position where they feel safe and comfortable enough that they can laugh shit like this off. The Holocaust Denier is a good example. Denying the Holocaust on paper on paper just sounds like wacky pseudohistory. Someone being irrational and stupid. Such fun, let us go have a laugh. But if you are Jewish, and have dealt with a lot of antisemitism, and look at the political motives behind Holocaust Denial, and the kind of politics that such denial is than used to justify…..suddenly things are a lot less funny when you know that the wacky idiot in front of the auditorium is flirting with neo-nazism or something like it, and so are some of the eager members in the audience. Your college shouldn’t be sanctioning a stealth white supremacist meeting, but that is what is happening when they deliberately hand the podium off to someone who decides to Just Ask Questions about the Holocaust.
freya:
And here I thought the Pro-Bindel crew was opposed to knee-jerk denials of platforms! But apparently it should actually be done in a single afternoon with a simple google search! Go fucking figure.
Yeah, sure, that is exactly what I said.
You are so full of shit.
@54, Vivec
Plural you. The article referred to a general tendency of women facing more backlash than men for equally controversial views, and mentioned Bindel and Yiannopoulos as one of many examples. Just because you personally feel like you’re treating people equally doesn’t mean it can’t be a tendency. There’s no need to go all #NotAllTransActivists over it.
She defended FGM. She defended cutting off the clitorises of children of unspecified gender for cultural reasons, and yet the backlash against her pretty much only mentions her using a definition of gender that doesn’t fit some trans women.
slithey tove
So you think that Universities should spend their resources on paying people to say horrible hateful things that discriminate against parts of society?
If they knew it is quite possible that they were legitimately more concerned, given the adversarial format, about the person purporting to represent their side of the debate, rather than the dancing bear on the other side.
Possibly, they assumed that Milo typified the opposition.
@ freja
The sources I’m reading about Greer say that she opposed it, so apparently there’s some disagreement as to what her opinion on FGM is.
Also, I don’t really think it’s particularly odd for people to focus on a form of oppression that primarily effects them. I’m no Greer fan, so I can’t say I’ve bought all 15 or so of her books and read them cover to cover. I know that, in a large amount of her works, and in her public statements, she spouts a ton of bigoted biological essentialist bullshit, so that’s the majority of what my problem with her is.
If I wrote 10 books about how I really hate X group, and then made one book where I also say that I kinda-sorta hate Y group, it’s not really odd that people might know me more for the former than the latter. Most people know David Bowie for his music, not his opinion on politics.
Greer’s whole shtick was always based on shocking people, mostly conservatives, combined with a self-satisfied sense of her own perfection. IIRC, way back in the 1960s, she was capable of saying [in effect] that rock stars having groupies were appalling misogynists but if she wanted to fuck Mick Jagger [Jim Morrison?] what the hell is wrong with that? So it’s kinda nice to see her getting thoroughly chastised. Me, I lean to letting the assholes speak but protesting and questioning them. But sometimes you do get what’s been coming for a very long time.
Your “But Milo….” argument is:
1. A blatant “Dear Muslima”, presuming feminists can’t protest multiple things at once.
2. Does not at all have any support for the proposition that feminists opposing TERFs did not also oppose Milo.
3. Is consistent with the odious trend in which certain feminists claim that support for transwomen is hurting Women/ Feminism.
Also:
1. Way to minimize the issue.
2. Dear Muslima again.
3. You are REALLY minimizing the issue. (Also: Giliell’s link at 5)
@65, anteprepro:
I’m not part of any crew. I didn’t even know who she was until I heard about the protests, and how she apparently was worse than Milo Freaking Yiannopoulos. Believe it or not, not everyone who disagrees with you is part of some anti-trans conspiracy.
Yes, if one of the unusually ignorant feminists who wanted to stop a feminist woman from speaking had decided that it might be relevant to look at who she was debating, 15 seconds on google would’ve told them he’s a extremist rightwinger and gamergater, which should be more than enough reason to do just 1 afternoon of research into whether he might possibly have views that were every bit as dangerous and Bindel.
And that one afternoon would have given them more than enough quotes to share and prove that he’s an even bigger transphobe than she is. Do you seriously believe most of the people who sign these petitions spend more than an afternoon reading about the horrible things said by the person they’re trying to no-platform? From what I can tell, usually it’s enough to know that they use a different definition of gender than trans activists.
Basically yes. We were discussing why it was more important to silence Bindel than Yiannopoulos, and you answered that it was because feminists cared more about internal strife than about who’s a piece of shit. How else am I supposed to take it?
Likewise :-)
Seconding anteprepro above.
This, from freja :
displays a remarkable level of insensitivity to the transphobia that trans people live with every day. For them, such transphobia is a more immediate threat to their existence than FGM. That doesn’t mean they don’t oppose FGM. And that last sentence does indeed minimize transphobia.
re @67:
excuse for continuing to dig this hole I dug:
when I said “let em speak” I did not intend to imply “let them get paid to speak”.
Recall, I agreed that petitions to disallow the speech, being sent to the university, would be a reasonable reaction.
Sorry I was so vague.
re @64:
oops. thanks for pointing out hat my proposed actions depend on my position of privilege. I was only relating how I imigine what I would do. Sorry if it came out as universal advice for everyone, regardless of ethnic background (and other factors). I needed that reminder, as I am often unaware of my privilege behaviors.
I want to amend my comment above. It should read:
slithey tove @74:
Thanks for clarifying. I, too, was uncertain what you meant.
Slithey Tove
Okay, thanks for clarifying. I agree with Bernard Bummer: More thought should be put into who is invited in the first place. As somebody who recently did her final thesis on gender, I’m glad I didn’T do so at Cardiff…
freja
My enemy’s enemy might still be my enemy as well. I don’t give a fuck about bindel is supposed to debate. That woman is vile. Of course, that might also be true for her opponent. If somebody asked me “would you sign a petition against Julie Bindel being invited to speak?” I would say “yes” and not ask who her opponent is. Of course the same applies to MIlo…
Freya.
No one said she was worse than Milo. Except for the people like yourself, putting words in other people’s mouths. People who cannot fathom caring about more than one thing at a time.
I did my best to not outright call you a TERF, and this is the thanks I get. Guess I shouldn’t have bothered.
There were no ignorant feminists protesting that caused this. There was no petition. If you spent 15 seconds on Google, you would know this: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/feminist-julie-bindel-banned-manchester-student-union-talk-free-speech-1522670
It was a decision by the Student Union. She is on a no-platforming list. That is what “no platforming” is. As 15 seconds on Google would show to you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUS_No_Platform_Policy
And you still repeat this minimizing bullshit. Go fuck yourself.
That was an explanation of why it seemed like there was more discussion about one rather than the other. Are you really this stupid or are you just trolling?
@71, anteprepro
There are plenty of reasons for why you’d spend an afternoon protesting one thing and not another, and it doesn’t mean you can’t oppose both. I get that. I get opposing things that are closer to you, more relevant to you at the moment, or things you know more about and can do more about. I also get opposing different things at different times depending where and when they occur.
But Bindel and Yiannopoulos were due to debate each other at the same time and in the same place, and yet only Bindel was initially banned, and it took counter-protests and people pointing out the hypocrisy of it before Yiannopoulos was held to the same standards as Bindel had been from the beginning.
That’s the issue. I don’t care whose fault it was, I don’t care about your #NotAllTransActivists. Either the alleged feminists who put this together were way too lazy, sloppy, or indifferent to be political activists, or they acted out of cynical pragmatism and self-interest by only going after the easier target, or the University of Manchester has a serious problem with hypocrisy. Either way, the point of the article still stands: It doesn’t matter if they’re left or right-wing, women seem to face harsher consequences for having unpopular or extreme views, and that’s worth debating.
Can’t wait to see how the story changes once freya finally figures out that Bindel was not actually banned due to feminist protest. Any day now.
I’m really not liking some of the comments being made by freja as they strike a little too close to transphobic to me (the minimization of the struggles trans people go through being one the biggies).
@68, Bernard Bumner:
So people should be put on a no-platform list, not based on whether or not their views are hateful or wrong, but based on which group they represent? So if the WBC were to give a speech, that’s alright as long as enough other christians agree that they represent christians well enough?
@ Tony!
I’d argue that they crossed the line when they linked and continually cosign an article that supports and espouses terf rhetoric.
Also that old canard of like *Says offensive thing* BEFORE YOU CALL ME X-PHOBIC, I AM ACTUALLY A MEMBER OF GROUP X. CHECKMATE!
freya @82:
You should note that I couched that comment in the language of uncertainty, and that reflected my ignorance of the details of the situation, and specifically of the existence of the no-platform list.
I would suggest that you address the comments from other, better-informed individuals on that situation, rather than imagining what my opinions are. (My comment could be broadly summed up as describing people opposing things that are close to them.)
freja:
What the fuck? Now you know that the list exists, while still insisting that Bindel was only not given a platform because hypocritical feminists allegedly protested her while allegedly not protesting Milo?
Seriously, what the fuck!?
(I have a real fucking hard time believing you have been acting in good faith here.)
@78, anteprepro
One was on a no-platform list because of her hateful views, another was not.
So:
I say that 1: I’m an agender woman, 2: that the current definition of woman that most trans people and their allies use actually excludes me and 3: that it therefore baffles me when they act like using a definition of woman which excludes some self-identified women is somehow unusual or bad, and 4: that I think an article which talks about the different treatment of men and women who hold extreme views has some good points and is relevant.
Based on me not mentioning being a feminist at all, you conclude that I am a feminist. Based on me not mentioning any particular feminist ideology (except saying an article written by a pro-trans and by the look of it non-radical feminist might have a point), and you conclude that I must be a radical of some sorts. Based on me not saying anything about believing that trans people are ill or wrong or should not have equal rights or aren’t the gender they claim, you conclude that I’m anti-trans.
And then you decide that not calling me a TERF would be a kindness, and settle for falsely assuming I support a woman about whom the most positive thing I’ve said is that she probably isn’t worse than Milo Yiannopoulos. And you expect me to be grateful for that?
So the problem lies with the University of Manchester (a possibility I raised in post 79)? How does that change that it’s a double standard? Can you explain that to me? The suggestion that the no-platform list had anything to do with trans people actually came from Vivec in post 45. That says more about their assumptions than mine, and since I’m not trying to put anyone on a no-platform list, I’m more than willing to just go along with that, because it’s still hypocrisy no matter if it was done by feminist/trans activists or not. If you want to argue differently, go ahead, but “The Student Union did it” isn’t actually a rebuttal
I’m not the one here claiming that there’s only one definition of women and everyone must adhere to it regardless of whether it excludes them.
And since I wasn’t talking about discussions but of consequences (in this case, no-platform), that’s completely irrelevant to my point.
freja
The no platforming of Bindel is a completely seperate issue from the no platforming of Yiannopolus. It is completely possible that somebody who for legitimate reasons concentrates their activism on Bindel would react to an invitation of Bindel without giving much thought about who is supposed to be her opponent.
Apart from the fact that there was no activist campaign, of course
freja
Oh gods, not that shit again.
Current definition of woman: somebody who says they are. You say you’re a woman, welcome to womanhood. But we’ve been through that before, haven’t we? But you somehow feel excluded from our merry circle because that definition isn’t exclusive enough for you.
My post @45 had nothing to do with linking the Bindel no-platforming to trans matters, and everything to do with that article being shitty.
Maybe don’t cite articles that cosign and defend TERF talking points if you want to keep trans matters out of the discussion?
freya:
A possibility you raised in post 79, you say, in response to post 78.
I don’t think I could explain anything to you.
Bindel was on the list. Milo was not. That is why Bindel got removed so quickly and why they needed to learn more about Milo. It is that fucking simple. Bindel has been around for a while. She has been known as a transphobe for years. Milo just started being a prominent bigot about a year ago. This isn’t complex math. Should Milo be on the list as well as Bindel? I would say so. But that is a different discussion!
Could you explain this please? I have read Vivec’s post 45 again and none of what you are saying makes sense in that context.
Yes, it is, unless you conveniently forgot that your arguments were about groups of ignorant feminists, about campaigns, about petitions. Your entire fucking argument has been why supposedly feminists are protesting Bindel and not protesting Milo. You have nothing to back it up. All you had was the fact that Bindel was banned first, and I have shown that was due to a Student Union, not a gang of uppity trans friendly feminists. So you are wrong. You have nothing. All you have left is to pretend you were making a completely different argument. You could fool yourself that way, but we can all read what you wrote. It hasn’t vanished.
lolwut?
It was about “no platforming” them, which you had seemed to think was due to protests.
Again, the crux of this is that you somehow want me to believe that you weren’t chastising feminists for their alleged protesting Bindel and not Milo. Or that it doesn’t matter, because your point still stands because you were talking about a No Platforming policy. Except….
I guess I just hallucinated all of the above? Almost the entirety of your argument is about feminists being hypocritical or not fighting Milo hard enough while fighting Bindel too hard. It’s bullshit. And yet you want us to imagine it never happened I suppose. Well, whatever.
@81, Tony! The Queer Shoop
Tough cookie. No trans person or cisgendered trans activist has ever acknowledged my identity as a woman, so the way I see it, I’m giving far more courtesy and goodwill than I receive by choosing to accept their definition of women as a valid (if not all-encompassing) definition. And for that I’ve been falsely accused of belonging to groups I have no contact with, supporting someone I have never defended, being full of shit, being stupid, and told to go fuck myself.
Just because you think someone is in a more privileged position than others, it doesn’t mean you get to treat them like dirt and act as if their identity doesn’t matter. I’ve asked people at FTB before if they could accept a definition of woman which is completely extrinsic (or possible internalized) as equally valid to one which is completely intrinsic, and I have gotten no answer except accusations of transphobia, because there is one and only one definition of woman, and that’s the one that fits trans people (and by extension, gendered people in general). And it doesn’t matter who gets left out in the process.
If trans activists haven’t even gotten around respecting my identity, I’m going to find it hard to believe they really see tghe minimization of anyone’s struggles as a problem.
Look at it from my point of view. I respond to a comment about how Bindel defines “woman” in a way which ignores that this isn’t how other women define themselves, by telling that I’m an agender woman, and that the definition used by pro-trans activists excludes me. I also happen to link to an article I think makes a good point about how the people who tend to get the harshest treatment for their opinions of trans people are women.
And you all choose to completely ignore the first part. Never mind that I’m telling you that you’re doing the same thing to agender people (at least the ones that still identifies as a woman or man, like I do) that you accuse Greer of doing. That’s apparently completely OK with you. There’s no need to address it, because I guess no trans people got hurt in the process. But an article which proposes that the current outrage over transphobia seem to hit some very specific targets while others go free? OH NO, THE HORROR!
So forgive me for saying this, but in the spirit of the tone of this board, you can go eat shit for all I care. It’s obviuous that you don’t care either.
Giliell @ 88
freja @ 91
You know what I like about you? It’s so easy to prove you a liar.
@88, Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
In the last thread, I linked to an article (which I got from a link by a commenter here) where a trans woman (I think) said that being a woman had nothing to do with anatomy. I believe I asked if you would be equally tolerant of someone who said that being a woman had nothing to do with how you identified. From what I recall you didn’t answer. So I ask again:
If I were to say: “I’m a woman because because I was born with a certain anatomy/raised a certain way/is identified by society as one”, would that just as OK as if a trans woman said that she was a woman because she was born with an internal sense of gender which told her she was female?
If I ever said: “Being a woman has nothing to do with any internal gender compass or inborn identity”, would you accept it as OK and valid in the same way you don’t see a problem with saying that being a woman has nothing to do with anatomy?
If I talked about “women” as a group in a way that excluded most trans woman, would that be as OK as when people talk about women in a way that excludes me?
@92, Giliell:
Ophelia Benson also said she would take individual trans women’s word for their own gender. It didn’t stop you and others from labeling her a transphobe. So I’m going to need a little more than just “of course you can get to be a woman if you say so” to think any higher of you than you think of her. For instance that you actually answer my questions about how my supposed womanhood is allowed to manifest in the way I speak about sex and gender.
Giliell:
It’s like freja is ignoring what you said upthread:
Never mind that I’ve not placed limitations on who can or cannot consider themselves a woman. Nor have I ever. Nor do I have any intention of doing so, and that includes agender women too.
And none of her arguments absolves her of the anti-trans bigotry in her comments.
I think I’m done here. I can see where this is heading. And it’s not pretty. Hopefully PZ will see freja’s bigotry.
I like how, as of yet, the complaints towards the article have been 50/50 “It’s a shitty terf-affirming article” or “the supposed feminist outrage didn’t actually happen.”
Where is this “OH NO THE HORROR” reaction freja is seeing? Because as of yet the consensus is “it’s a shitty article that makes a bad case about a thing that didn’t happen.”
Also yeah hi trans person that affirms not only yours, but literally every other person’s gender too. Stop claiming no one does and concede that point pls.
freja
Yes
Depends highly on the context. “Woman” as a social position is pretty independent of how you feel about it. “Woman” as an identity isn’t. You obviously feel strongly about “being a woman”. Trans women feel strongle about being women. Of course both, social position and identity are independent of genitals.
You still have not provided any evidence how you are excluded from discourses on women that use the definition “people who say so (independent of their individual reasons)”.
freja
Non sequitur. Whether you’re a woman or not doesn’t have anything to do with whether your views are shitty or not. There’s plenty of religious woman out there who define “woman” as “created to be his helpmeet, sex toy and baby making facilities”. That doesn’t mean they’re not women, it means they’re shitty bigots. You are totally “allowed” to speak about sex and gender in whichever way you like. We are totally allowed to call youa bigoted asshole. Your gender identity doesn’t even come into it.
As a Trans woman I really wish there was less negative sentiments in parts of the Feminist community. The kind of things Germaine Greer has said in the past are terrible. And her justifications for them have no basis in any scientific field or any statistics. She is just spouting dribble about people she really know nothing about, much in the same way that Gallus Mag is. (I can’t even visit Gallus Mag’s blog anymore, its become nothing more than a forum for hating Trans people.)
I feel like, if people who act against leading feminists by spamming them with tweets, could set aside their petty Bullshit about spamming tweets with incitement to commit acts of violence, and instead used the medium to outline their issues with the current feminist movement with actual statistics and well formed arguments, then they might be able to show others what they believe needs to change in the movement and maybe their valid points would have an effect on the current feminist movement. As opposed to what they’re currently doing, which essentially invalidates all of their claims cause they’re all being a bunch of pricks. I don’t like discounting anybody as being impossible to commit an act of good, and as such I don’t find it necessary to label all these people as lost causes, or just failures of human beings. I’d like it if they could actually step up and properly address their claims against modern feminism using scientific and statistical data, and if leaders in the modern feminist movement could address back using scientific and statistical data.
But that’s kind of a dream that will never happen, as most people nowadays who are randomly sending death threats and the like at feminists have no claims to raise anymore, and are simply doing it for the fucking fun of it.
Also, oh my dear gods what the hell is going on in this thread.
@90, anteprepro:
And the Student Union didn’t bother to actually check Milo before accepting his invite? That’s already irresponsible. Oh wait, I looked it up, and it seems like they did. At least they demanded extra security if he was to attend, which seems to indicate they knew about him. And still they only treated him like they treated Bindel after coming under heavy criticism, including from Milo himself.
In post 40, I said a relevant article asking why Greer and feminist women in general usually face more consequences than men do for the same things,
I never made any arguments about feminists or trans women or anyone else. I just said I think thought the article was relevant, and implied that I agreed with the point that it seems to be harder for women to hold controversial opinions than men in general. That’s it. That’s my argument, which no one has commented on so far.
In post 44, you make the first #NotAllTransActivists, and wrongly accused me of defending “that woman”, whoever it was, and in post 45 Vivec continued to talk about how irrelevant the kind of sexism the article talked about was and implied it was all an attack on trans people (“Why are you trans people angry at TERFs when cis en are the ones that kill you!”).
That gave me the impression that that the people who objected to Bindel (and by extension, not Milo) were trans activists, because it was the conclusion you seemed to draw. After all, there wouldn’t be any need to defend them if that wasn’t the case. You didn’t say “The university was wrong for not banning Milo too, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t right about banning Bindel”, you talked about how it was wrong to blame trans people for it. Which (No Shit Sherlock!) it is, and which I never did. I guessed the blame must be indirect (i.e. that the people arguing for no-platforming Bindel but not Milo were trans people and trans activists, and most likely feminists by extension, hence the need to defend them and attack the me and the author of the article for transphobia).
In my next post, I merely talked about “the protesters” because that’s how people are usually no-platformed where I’m from, and wondered what had made them angry at Bindel and not Milo. You never told me there weren’t any, you just said (post 53) that they did research after an uproar. And then you started talking about how it was all because of infighting among feminists, which was seriously confusing (not a native English speaker btw) because it had nothing to with my argument.
I argued that I agreed with an article which said that it was hypocritical to claim Bindel was creating an unsafe environment for students and Milo did not, and that there seemed to be a sex-based double standard. I only started talking about feminists and activists after you and Vivec brought them up and I got the impression that trans people had objected to Bindel and not Milo (i.e. Vivec’s “Why are you trans people angry at TERFs when cis en are the ones that kill you!”).
Yay for convenient timed topic shift! I wonder how many things freja can find to be wrong about.
First, to catch up, freja, I deeply apologize for implying that you were a feminist. There is indeed no evidence to support such a wild accusation. I am sorry for the error.
Translation: “I don’t care about [Entire Class of People X] because [Handful of Members of Group X] and [Handful of People Trying to Support Group X] do [Bad Thing Y]”.
This is like Bigotry 101 here.
1. Nice tone trolling.
2. “Accused of supporting someone I have never defended”? Weren’t you the one accusing trans activist feminists of effectively supporting Milo?
While you are quibbling about the definition of “women”, complete with your vague and perplexing insistence that somehow the very, incredibly broad definitions proposed by transpeople and trans activists don’t allow you in without ever specifying how, perhaps you can address the fact that you are full of shit in saying that the disagreement with Greer and Bindel is simply about how they define “women”? Perhaps you could actually acknowledge they are actually transphobic and that your minimization of the horrible shit they’ve said was a mistake on your part?
Not that you care about transphobia, but still.
If I were to say: “I’m a woman because because I was born with a certain anatomy/raised a certain way/is identified by society as one”, would that just as OK as if a trans woman said that she was a woman because she was born with an internal sense of gender which told her she was female?
This is kinda close to what confuses me. Being a woman is not biological – having a vagina (and the associated political/physical/financial baggage) does not make me a woman. Even the word “vagina” is problematic. I now need to find access to medical attention for my front hole. I may need an abortion, birth control or pre-natal care because I am a uterus-haver. Being one of the millions of AFAB people who was sexually abused or raped because the body I was born with is seen as an object, doesn’t count toward a definition of woman. All the weird social minutia I received as a child is no longer a valid way to understand myself as a woman.
My clothing, hair style or presentation doesn’t define me as a woman. Neither do social cues like voice inflection or body language. It’s beyond silly to see women as the nurturing goddesses of the moon or what have you. I do not believe that women are innately kind, mothering, empathetic caretakers because that implies subservience.
All the proven statistics are useless to prove I am a woman. Making less money, doing more housework, being ignored when I speak, having less access to medical attention, higher chance of being misdiagnosed, being more likely to have been attacked than to be the attacker, seeing myself portrayed realistically in the media, all of it – these are no longer part of the definition of “woman.”
“Woman” as a concept is now so vague that it is meaningless. What confuses me is this – How do trans women know that they are women when there is nothing to define what they are transitioning toward? I honestly don’t understand that.
@freja, is there any room between your definition of woman and “assigned female at birth”?
@ dogeared, in reference to final point you made. We are women because our gender identity is that of a woman. That is to say in the simplest terms, our perception of who we are does not match what our bodies reflect. We feel like women, and feel miserable being made to be men. The physical transition itself is not inherently what defines us as trans women. Physical transition is what enables any trans women to alleviate dysphoria. Some feel the need to go through the whole host of surgeries and hormone supplements, whilst others do not. It’s not about becoming a woman through transition, from our perspective our whole lives up to this point only make sense from the view that we were always women. Transition is to alleviate dysphoria, and to improve our quality of life dramatically, which it has been shown to do.
Woman in the sense of gender identity is a nebulous term. We use it, because who we feel we are in terms of gender identity, better befits that of a person with the body of a female. Our sexual expression is more in tune with that of a female. Woman in the biological perspective is to mean born with female genitalia. It is when people do not honor your gender identity that is a problem. If your gender identity matches your biological sex, then huzzah youve just avoided being part of a group with some of the highest suicide rates of any ethnic group. If it doesn’t, then physical transition can improve your life beyond what you ever thought possible.
dogeared
You’re quite right. On an individual level all of this is useless. That doesn’t mean it’s useless in talking about a social class where “woman” means “people who are seen as being women”, which leads to all the things you described.
Now, I’m not a trans woman, but somehow “woman” was always a strong part of my identity. Or better said being female. My gender identity was challenged when I was a kid because I didn’t look like nor behave like a girl was supposed to and I always had a very strong reaction when people misgendered me or said I’d better been born a boy. This was independent of anatomy or behaviour. Female was what I was and damn you for even questioning it. I suppose trans women feel similar about their femaleness without the benefit of just being able to pull down the pants to satisfy people’s demands to prove your identity. Others feel meh about this.
@ 104 and 106
To add onto things, I don’t really see my transitioning and my gender as at all related.
I’m transitioning because of a purely physical “I don’t feel comfortable with traits X Y and Z and would prefery traits A B and Z” reason. Hypothetically, I could go through with that, and still identify with the gender I was assigned at birth, as far as I’m concerned. The end goal isn’t to “Become” any gender in particular, it’s to remove things that cause me real, tangible discomfort.
I identify as a gender different from the one I was assigned at birth partially because of shared experiences and feelings common with people in that gender, and partially because why the hell not? The further gender is pulled from some hard and fast “Penis/Vagina” dichotomy the better, as far as I’m concerned.
Ideally, it’d be seen as a superficial concept, the same way that the consensus has given up the idea of racial physiology and understands that race is a social construction applied arbitrarily to certain phenotypes.
freja:
Yes, they demanded extra security after extending an offer to him on October 5th. They rescinded the offer on October 7th. http://manchesterstudentsunion.com/articles/updated-statement-from-the-students-union-05-10-2015
The answer is quite simply that they knew who he was, and knew he was bad, but didn’t know quite HOW bad he was.
Or it was an ass-covering conspiracy to avoid being seen as hypocritical, only after incredible pressure, after much arm-twisting and teeth-puling, an agonizing decision drawn out after a massive three day waiting period.
Whatever you want to believe, I guess.
blockquote cite=””> In post 44, you make the first #NotAllTransActivists, and wrongly accused me of defending “that woman”, whoever it was,
My. God.
No, I did not say anything at all like NotAllTransActivists. I never said anything about not all trans activists doing X in this entire thread until the last comment I just posted. What the fuck are you smoking?
What did I actually say? In more words: Just because men or non-feminists are supposedly saying things just as bad or worse than Greer doesn’t mean she should be exempt from criticism. And that is bizarre to attempt to stifle criticism of Greer and others like her by accusing them of being anti-feminist for making such criticism. It is admitting that she is saying transphobic but basically saying to leave her alone because everyone else is doing it. And my response to that is no. That is plainly fucking bullshit and the key way to enable bigotry.
And here you are again, still referring to people protesting Bindel and not Milo. Brilliant.
I’m sorry you couldn’t spend 15 seconds on Google to see how it works and just assumed it worked the same everywhere. I’m also sorry you couldn’t spend 15 seconds on Google to actually know the first things about the topic that you brought up.
I am sorry that I didn’t do your googling for you and that I failed to explain absolutely everything about the topic you brought up to you, because you were even more ignorant about it than I had initially even imagined.
I’m sorry you could not bother to actually ask for clarification instead of just assuming that I was claiming that no-one got upset over Milo and that this was perfectly fine. Maybe you made a mistake, and used all of your precious googling time trying to answer this question on your own?
Is that so? Because your comment 40 is:
And then that’s the context in which you bring up the article. Talking about transpeople and activists.
Did you know that we can scroll up and read this thread? Google that for 15 seconds, and you might learn that neat little trick for yourself.
And now I should google blockquoting and shutting the fuck up.
@AAutumn
Thank you. That does help somewhat.
I understand the feeling of being “not a man.” Even though it would give me some escape from the harsher realities of being a woman, I couldn’t transition. Not because I would no longer be authentic but because it would be a betrayal. In a perfect world, we would all be some evolved new thing that was separate from the history, abuse and expectation of gender. But it’s not a perfect world. We don’t have a safe gender for those who need or want it.
For some people now, a gender which doesn’t match their born sex might be the one they want or need. And even if it is imperfect, it is the only option. That all makes sense. Society might be working towards a better way but we aren’t there yet.
The same sort of thing is happening for the purely physical female human. Society is slowly working towards a better way to treat the negative realities of biological womanhood – primarily pregnancy & abuse – but it’s not there yet. It is frustrating to see decades of work defining woman, the needs of women, and the reality of women being cast aside before society has come around to defining women as fully human.
In the mid 1980sGermaine Greer published several pieces defending the brutal Mengistu regime of Ethiopia. Greer demonstrated that love of dictators that is a far too common trope among intellectuals. From that time I ceased to take her seriously has an intellectual.
freja @94,
With respect no that’s not exactly what Ophelia Benson wrote. You are mischaracterizing it and leaving out the weasel words that she used to differentiate between “ontological is” versus “political is.”
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2015/08/i-did-say/
In other words Ophelia Benson doesn’t really accept that trans women are women but she’ll still use their preferred pronouns and won’t deadname them. Gee what a terrific ally. It’s not like that’s the absolute bottom of the barrel barest of bare minimums that she could do or anything. Though she’s at least in good company there with the likes of Bill Clinton parsing the meaning of “is.”
BTW the strangest thing has happened since Benson wrote the above. Apparently she now understands gender and what it means to be a woman so well that she felt confident enough to argue with (some might say harass) an OB-GYN doctor about whether to use the term “pregnant people” or “woman.” When asked to explain her own views on trans women it was all so confusing and the most she would allow is the “political is.” But when it comes to whether or not to include trans people in discussions on abortion suddenly she understands these concepts and terms better than an OB-GYN… And it’s suddenly important enough that she felt the need to argue this point right at the very moment the good doctor was in the midst of pushing back against anti-abortion nonsense and harassment on Twitter.
Ophelia also has several posts up signal boosting Greer’s views and criticizing those who called for or support the no platforming. Sadly Benson’s explanations for all this seems to veer into conspiracy territory.
In other words please take your Ophelia Benson apologism and peddle that nonsense somewhere else. We’re not buying what you’re selling.
Reading through this thread, I’m again reminded that, for many cis people, the slightest criticism from a trans person causes them to lose their fucking mind.
I promise to only use this power for evil.
@ dogeared, no problem. The problem I often see lies in where the overlap is between trans women, and strictly female humans. The way I look at it is, trans women are women, and strictly female humans are women as well. Their difference comes down to invdividual experience.
To expand on this, there is a lot of stigma about having a transwoman speaker in a location discussing the problems of being a woman. While trans women are not necessarily strictly female humans, they live their lives publically and privately as women. As such it can be assumed that many of them would face adversities for women in general. As can, of course, strictly female humans. Naturally, trans women can give testimony on things only trans women can experience. For instance, being publically harassed and shamed for being clocked (an issue I myself have dealt with before, even in great old canada). This is a problem relative to them that it would be unsuitable to have a strictly female human speak about. A strictly female human can provide testimony to issues only they would experience. For instance, pregnancies in a relationship and the issues that entails. Members from both parties can provide some testimony on issues faced by women in society. The view to the contrary of that is driven by sentiments that trans women are somehow not women, and thusly should have no voice in the matter of being women. Which I disagree with, and fail to see much of the logic behind that movement.
The fact that there is a movement within feminism, the trans exclusionary radical feminist movement, that aims to exclude trans women from any spaces referring to women is troublesome. It implies that driving them into the men box is the best way of dealing with them, as in their eyes they need to be dealt with and not aided in any way by society. The fact that this movement is such a toxic movement is also very troubling. Ideals running through the movement imply that trans women are not only just not women, but somehow less than human. The way that they express these ideals not only borders on hate speech, but turns more trans women away from the feminist movement as a whole, because trans exclusionary radical feminists frequent the same venues and panels where trans women would like to go to listen/speak. This is tarnishes the movement, and causes it to lose more potential members who in many cases fully believe in the cause. Visit this blog if you need more evidence that the trans exclusionary radical feminist movement isn’t alive and well -> https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/. One quote, which stands out to me immediately is this one – >
God, yes.
“You understand how people feel that’s insulting?”
“I don’t care. People get insulted all the time.”
I wish everyone was this honest about whether or not they really believe transwomen are women. The movement would die out in a day.
– LC (10/24/15)
This comment is in regards to an interview done by Germaine Greer which can be viewed here -> https://youtu.be/7B8Q6D4a6TM
On that blog you will find hundreds upon hundreds of truly revolting discussions about how we should go about taking away the rights of trans people, it sickens me to even go there on a good day. The idea that taking away rights from an ethnic group with suicide rates that are staggering at best, is literally mental. (see http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/AFSP-Williams-Suicide-Report-Final.pdf)
But now I’m just rambling.
Don’t sell us short! Not even criticism is required; just the mere mention of transfolk or some trans-related topic has, since June, been enough to send some perfectly normal FTB commenters deep into the vales of irrationality, busily circling wagons for bigots and advancing the most ludicrous of arguments. If I could harness power like that it might be useful, but sadly it’s not capable of anything productive, just wrecking and derailing comments threads.
@35 Tony!
I know it was way upthread, i just wanted to say that i didn’t mean to imply that anyone had said that SXSW didn’t get to cancel. I was just expressing that i, like many, many others, agree that they do.
And that they fucking suck for doing so, by the way…
aAutumn
This.
This myth of Sisterhood of Women is White Cis Middle Class Feminist bullshit. As women we face many issues that are dependent and interdependent on many aspects of our identities. Black women are affected by something called “misogynoir”, a racialised misogyny that manifests in different ways than the misogyny faced by white women. Poor women face different issues than middle class women, German women different from Senegalese of British women. Straight women different from lesbian, bi or pansexual women. Women who were born with penises and assigned male are just another variation of these many facets of “being female”.
slithey tove:
It was a petition, FFS. No one kidnapped Greer and demanded a ban as ransom. As for your idiotic statement, WHY? Why is it extreme, let alone too extreme? This thread has taken a terrifying turn, with one after another person (most of them men) taking up for Greer, on the shruggy basis of “eh, it’s just talk, doesn’t seem so bad”. When it’s an issue that affects men or is something that men care about, you have very different opinions about who should be allowed a platform and who shouldn’t.
This thread is a great example of why it’s so damned hard to get people to wake the fuck up when it comes to bigotry and hatred towards trans persons, and why it’s so damned hard to get people to pay the fuck attention when it comes to the intense damage wrought by TERF persons.
Do you have a particular example you’re thinking of? The opposition to the petition against Greer seems of a piece to me with the standard opposition to no-platforming that’s been around for a long time.
And a petition which clearly argues a case for why the University should not host Greer, including addressing the harm that will be done if Greer is allowed to talk.
Anyone who wants to characterise a ban as extreme or disproportionate really must address that potential harm. Broad arguments about free expression are insufficient, unless one is a free speech absolutist.
I haven’t seen anyone offering a good explanation for why it is more harmful to disinvite Greer than to offer her a prestigious gig and tacitly endorse her.
To translate every post Freja has ever made, ever:
“How can I determine mah womanliness if I can’t push some people outta mah womanly circle?!”
A number of people responding to her/them have tried, really, really hard, to guide her/them through this whole “you do you and no one else” thing. I think most of us are fed up with pretending she/they’re still arguing in good faith.
@103, anteprepro:
Actually, I care about plenty of them. I just haven’t met anyone who was interested in respecting everyone’s gender identity. That’s not the same as not caring. I’ve had cordial interactions with trans people who never expressed any of the kind of support I’m expected to give them, but also never asked for any of that kind of support in return.
No, I said they unfairly went easier on Milo. That’s not the same as supporting him.
That I was answering PZ bringing up the topic of Greer’s definition of woman as a problem.
@104, dogeared, spotted and foxed:
It does me. I don’t expect anyone else to feel that way (though according to the last material I saw about it, plenty seem to do), but I’m a woman based on having a vulva and a uterus, and the consequences thereof. I have little reason to suspect I wouldn’t have been a man if I’d been born with a penis and testicles (assuming no dysphoria at least).
I’m fine with some people feeling like they have an innate gender that exists regardless of their physiology, and I’m fine with them deciding that this, and not their genitals or other people’s perception of them, is what counts for their identity. I don’t believe that it’s a wrong decision to make or that they’re sick for making it. I believe it’s a perfectly valid way of being a woman (or a man).
But I don’t believe it’s the be-all and end-all of being a woman, the one-size-fits-all solution to the issue of gender identity. And that’s where my issue with the current trend of trans activism lies. It’s all about saying, like you just implied, that you can’t be made into a woman without that inborn sense of gender-identity. To me, that’s exactly as ignorant and narrow-minded as saying that you can’t be a woman without certain genitals.
Neither do I, but I used to believe I didn’t need to understand it, anymore than gendered people needed to understand me. I used to think, and still do, that the expectation that other people are going to be able to understand you if they just try hard enough comes from a position of unexamined privilege (mostly neurotypical and gendered privilege ime).
I don’t get gender in the way it’s defined in progressive circles, and given that it can’t be explained beyond a nebulous “I just knew”, I probably never will. And likewise, people who “just knew” will probably never be able to understand what it’s like to grow up without that inherent certainty. When I talk about “women” as a category, the definition depends on the context.
Just to throw in one minor little clarification in the direction of freja and the Julie Bindal tangent, from a Brit perspective. The National Students Union and Manchester University Students Union are different groups of people. The national one should have a rep from the local branch, but if the national organisation had already drawn up a list of people who shouldn’t have a platform at any university this would give the local group a strong case to immediately react firmly when presented with one name which they wouldn’t be able to rely on initially with the second name. Thus having two different initial reactions to speakers at the same event is not evidence of some weird conspiracy, rather that a clear protocol for the local group to follow existed in one case but not the other.
@105, qwints:
That depends on which of the many definitions you’re referring to. The definition I apply to my own identity? No, my gender identity is literally that I was assigned female at birth based on my genitals and told that this meant I was a girl, and I stopped questioning that aspect of it around kindergarten and have been using it ever since.
I’ve learned that for some people, “woman” is something different and possibly more than just that, and I’m not disputing that. But if someone asks “What makes you a woman?” I’d probably answer my genitals or the social category I occupy without my own consent. If someone asked “What makes a woman?” that would be a completely different answer.
@113, We are Plethora:
That’s all well and good, but in the last thread I tried to get an answer in, I linked to this article where a trans woman said “Being a woman has nothing to do with anatomy or appearance”, which is an example of a definition of woman which excludes the things I base my gender identity on as being relevant for being a woman. Since the article had been linked to approvingly by one of the people angry at Ophelia, I’ve been trying to figure out why it was considered OK, and so far, no one has given me an answer.
The only reply I’ve gotten is a personal one, i.e. that if I say I’m a woman, they’ll take my word for it. But that seems to be the exact same thing Ophelia said. If it’s enough for people to just be identified as the gender they prefer in their day-to-day life, never mind people’s more general and ontological definitions, why is it so common in progressive spaces to add “I realize some women have penises and some men have vaginas” or something similar every single time someone has used a definition of man/woman which was reliant on genitals, but the same thing is not considered necessary when someone use a definition which is dependent on intrinsic gender?
On to put it shortly, why is it controversial to say “Gender is such a complicated topic that I don’t think there’s any single or true definition, but politically and in my day-to-day life I take people’s own word for what gender they are”, but not “Gender is not [insert things that some people use as a basis for their gender identity], instead it’s [insert things that not all people use as a basis for their gender identity], and it’s also what you say you are, so I’ll take someone’s own word for what gender they are”?
@126, katybe:
Thank you, that clears up a lot. I’m still confused as to why that list is not public (or at least doesn’t seem to be), but the system makes more sense.
freja
Now you only need to demonstrate that this is actually true. That this is actually a discourse and position forwarded by trans feminists and their allies.
Which of course you can’t.
ahhh, they mysterious oppression of freja by trans activists. Because. Somehow. Of course there’s no evidence for the alleged disrespect of your gender identity by trans activists or their allies or that any of them had ever disputed that you’re a woman.
katybe
So a national organisation already had person A on a list of people who should not be invited so it triggered an immediate response. Person B was not yet on that list but was added when they notice who person B was. I swear the secret trans cabal conspiracy bears a hell lot of similarity to normal procedures… Smart fuckers they are. Makes them virtually undetectable.
@109, anteprepro:
Which, again, is completely irrelevant to what I said. In fewer words: Just because a woman/feminist deserves the criticism she gets doesn’t mean it’s not a double standard or a problem with sexism when conservatives/men don’t get the same criticism.
I wasn’t trying to no-platform or give a platform to anyone. 15 seconds also would have told me nothing in this case, based on the first article that showed up.
No, I brought it up in the same post. It doesn’t mean it’s the same point, it would just be silly to make 2 short posts right after another with 1 of them containing only a single line of text. I thought the space and the “also” would be enough.
And considering that you decided to make so very specific assumptions about me (e.g. supporting Greer and Bindel, referring only to trans people despite specifically describing a general tendency (i.e. “It seems like most people…”), adhering to a very specific ideology and political movement I had not even mentioned) based on literally 4 lines of text, without informing me exactly of what you were accusing me of, I refuse to take all the responsibility for this conversation getting derailed beyond recognition.
freja:
I hope you’ll at least own up to your transphobic bigotry. Not that that’s something you should be proud of, but you’ve shat all over the carpet here and established some “impressive” credentials.
I’ll take my own responsibility for derailing. I still have questions but perhaps this isn’t the thread.
Thank you AAutumn for your many insights. There’s a lot to unpack between a life spent protecting women from abuse that is based on reproductive potential and now trying to fit in women who do not face that particular abuse.
@Giliell, #130:
I did actually suggest to Freja a little while back that maybe their difficulty in determining their own gender could be because they fall under the genderqueer umbrella.
I didn’t stick around to see whether that penetrated Freja’s labyrinthine arguments, but I see Freja has now explicitly identified earlier in the thread.
Still can’t wrap my head around how “you do you” constitutes exclusion.
@ freja 125 -> see @ 115
@ dogeared, no problem at all. It’s important to consider insights from all sources when considering these situations. The issue stems simply from the fact that trans women weren’t widely recognised and understand when feminism first took its roots. There are a lot of people who do not want to change their understanding of what it means to be a woman, and what it means to be a strictly female human.
//
@ freja, again
Essentially, sex is still attached to gender in western society, when it isn’t as much every where else in the world. (see Hijra, Kathoey, and Two-Spirit, to name a couple) That’s not to say that these places don’t have their own problems with gender, they’re just not generally believed to be attached to biological sex. The problems with this is that many people experience life as a woman, and can provide input on what it is like being a woman in this society. Female humans can provide input on being strictly female humans, and trans women can provide input on being trans women. They both live publically and privately as women, therefore they can both provide input on this common topic. Their experiences can be combined into a larger movement, and still have their own seperate problems with issues related to one group or the other. I said all this in my above post (115), but felt the need to reiterate for purposes of clarity. To argue that trans women cannot provide input on issues pertaining to women is irrational and isn’t based in known scientific fact.
The whole point of this arguement is that you’re not making sense in your assertions, not backing them up with any scientific fact or logically derived argument, and openly admit to not understanding the topics you’re talking about (125). Learn more about the topics you are discussing, then provide discourse about them. Assertions have no weight in a discussion.
Also, refer to @ (106) for more information on how trans people know themselves to be trans, and how modern medicine supports that gender is not attached to sex, by way of dysphoria. If you dysphoria it is your mind reacting negatively to your secondary sex characteristics. This manifests itself in several ways, and most of them involve symptoms of false identity, as in you not only feel your body is inaccurate, but feel that you are acting in a manner that doesn’t befit who you actually are. The process of transition encompasses both physical transition to alleviate dysphoria, and a change in how you present yourself that is gradually taken along with the physical transition. Happiness is achieved in this process -> you are relieving your dysphoria and enabling yourself to live a fulfilling and unrestricted life.
@130, Giliell:
I’m sorry I can’t give you a ton of links to different comments, because I took a fairly long break from both looking at and discussing these things due to struggling with my own gender identity, and I don’t keep a file filled with links to every insensitive comment about gender I’ve seen.
But so far, I’ve quoted dogeared’s post 104 and pointed out that the implication of their “Being a woman is not biological” is that “woman” cannot be a biologically based identity. I’ve linked to Lia Hodson (from a link posted by someone accusing Ophelia of not respecting people’s gender identity) claiming that being a woman has nothing to do with anatomy – again, basically saying that the marker I based my identity as a woman on is not valid. I’ve also previously mentioned Heather McNamara dismissing agendered experiences and claiming that things like gender were “culturally established simple, broad concepts”, despite the fact that it’s been anything but simple for people like me and that I’ve not experienced any culture in which the concept of gender was agreed on, and claiming that they only “suddenly become completely absurd once queer people want a piece”, as if confusion about what gender is is just a transphobic ploy and not a real issue which exists. I brought up the University of Auckland’s Womenfest canceling a vagina cupcake event because it apparently excludes trans women, which indicates that a including a physiological aspect in your identity as a woman (or at least being open about it) is somehow illegitimate and wrong in a way an intrinsically gendered definition of womanhood (which, as I’ve repeatedly said, excludes people who don’t have an intrinsic gender) is not. Finally, I’ve pointed out that Jason Thibeault’s insistence that “woman is a gender” made it sound like it was the only legitimate definition of “woman” and the only real reason to call yourself one (I certainly can’t see anyone here embrace the stance “woman is a physical sex/a social construct/something imposed from the outside”, though I could be wrong).
I never said it was oppression. I’ve already said I’m completely fine with people using definitions of woman which excludes me, I’m just not OK with them being absolutist about it or expecting me to use the same definitions as they do. I’ve had conversations with trans women where they would occasionally talk about their experience of gender and what made them women, without specifying that the experience of feeling like a woman and identifying that way without outside input obviously wasn’t the only definition of what could make someone a woman. And I was OK with that, because occasionally I would talk about women in general as a legal/biological/social/political group, without needing to specify that of course some people would feel like women as a personal identity without necessarily belonging to the aforementioned group (yet).
But when I see people being expected to have a clearcut universal answer to “what is a woman” or “are x group women”, or being told that using a definition of women which excludes transwomen is transphobic and then seeing people explain what being a woman is (not) in ways that exclude the reason I identify as a woman, that’s a different matter.
Has Ophelia Benson ever disputed the womanhood of someone who told her she was a woman? From what I recall, she didn’t question the personal definition of a specific woman, she was asked to answer in the abstract/general (i.e. in the same ways Lia Hodson and Jason Thibeault talked about what being a woman was). And that’s the second issue for me, because I don’t seem to have an innate gender identity, gender to is going to be (to quote Heather McNamara) “completely absurd” and “a strange and mysterious thing”, not due to a case of “suddenly the questioned no longer understands what “gender” is”, but because the questioned (at least if they’re anything like me) never understood it to begin with.
And reading people arguing about how gender is simple, and easy, and it’s defined this way and that, and anyone not getting it is a bigot who’s in league with TERFs, is a seriously unhealthy thing to engage in when you’re questioning your gender identity (not your identity as a man or a woman perhaps, but your identity as a gendered individual)
Imagine you’re a person who grew up exposed to a marxist theory of class under which they were classified by everyone as a member of the proletariat. Your recognize yourself as “working class” and develop a class consciousness. Then along comes a new theory of class based solely on self-identification which talks about class identity as an inner attribute of people unrelated to whether someone owns the means of production. The concept of class as an inner attribute unrelated to your possessions doesn’t resonate with you at all. Someone says to you you be whatever class you want to be, the only definition of working class is people who identify as working class.
A very flawed analogy, but I think it gets at the very real tension between a class based analysis of sex and gender and the personal identity based one. Under a class based definition, women means something like “people society at large perceives as belonging in feminine gender roles.” That doesn’t neatly map onto a gender-identity based definition.
dogeared @ 133:
You can talk about stuff here, if you like: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/10/25/discuss-interesting-stuff/
@ cartomancer
I’m curious what you imagine the difference to be between “merely expressing opinions” and “actively campaigning to make people’s lives worse”. Greer is using her influence, which is considerable, to advance a repellent view about a marginalized population. The perpetuation of these kinds of views is exactly why trans people are victims of assault, rape, muder, suicide, etc at astonishing rates. It’s why they have trouble getting jobs, finding housing, etc. These views are the reasons why parents can always be counted upon to lose their shit when they hear of a trans girl wanting to use the girls’ bathrooms/locker rooms at their kids schools, etc.
It really bloody drives me up a tree when people try to pretend that “merely expressing opinions” is completely harmless. How the actual fuck do you think these ideas spread and perpetuate themselves?
freja @128,
Seems you left off the last part of the quote. Here it is in full with emphasis added for your convenience.
First this definition does not actually exclude you unless of course you leave off the last part of the sentence (which is what you did btw). You claim you identify as an agender woman and so by this definition that is what you are.
Second the author is describing her own experience as a trans woman and her own definition of gender identity. She’s not saying that you cannot or should not define yourself by anatomy or appearance if that’s what makes sense to you. Just don’t try to impose that on her or anyone else that’s all. In other words you get to define your own gender identity however you please and using whatever criteria and definition makes sense to you (and so does everyone else). But the problem arises when folks try to impose their definition on others or when they try to act like their definition is “The Right Definition” that should apply to everyone.
Here are some other quotes from this article making it plainly clear the author is not excluding you or anyone else.
No exclusion there. “Everyone has their own sense of self and that they are allowed to express themselves in the way they see fit regardless of gender or appearance.” Everyone. You included. You are part of everyone right? Great then the author is saying that you get to express yourself in the way you see fit.
What you did was to cherry pick one half of one sentence and literally ignored the rest of the article. On the basis of that half sentence you have decided the author is excluding you. Which is true if you only read the half sentence and ignore the rest. But when placed back in the context of the full article it should be clear that you are not being excluded in any way.
No as we explained in our previous comment that’s not the exact same thing Ophelia said. Ophelia said there is an “ontological is” and a “political is” and she would accept the latter but not the former. So it’s not the exact same thing at all. She’s essentially saying that she will not take your word for it (ontological is) but that she will still use your preferred name and pronouns anyway (political is). She seems to have since changed her mind on the “political is” anyway given her stance on “women” versus “pregnant people” in the context of abortion and reproductive rights.
Please just stop trying to defend and rescue Ophelia Benson’s rhetoric because it’s indefensible. End of.
The second paragraph seems to me to be a pretty direct contradiction of the first one, and also that you appear to be conflating gender with sex, or at least that’s the impression i get from your words.
Thank you. This post has been the great admission that life is too complicated and two completely correct morals can still contradict each other, and probably always will. We all just need to be converted into a smooth paste and let this planet go back to being governed entirely by weather. Or, maybe a less extreme solution like just taking things on a case by case basis is needed. All I know for sure is my ongoing quest to make sure none of my personal ideals contradict each other in any case tends to go haywire a bit too often lately.
@135, AAutumn:
Slight correction. At least the Kathoey identity is still attached to sex, being defined as trans women and/or effeminate gay men, aka. people who were born with male genitals. People born with female genitals are excluded regardless of how they identify. Every picture and description I’ve seen of Hijra is also of people born with male physiology but identifying female/feminine, though that could be for the same reason trans women are more visible than trans men in the west.
So it’s not always so much about separating gender from genitals as it is about having multiple categories for people with the same genitals, and a different category/set of categories for people with different genitals. Most examples I’ve heard of people with one set of genitals sharing a category with people with different genitals are for practical reasons (e.g. the sworn virgins of Albania).
Could you point me to where exactly I argued that trans women cannot provide input on issues pertaining to women?
Which assertions? That my identity as a woman is extrinsic and not intrinsic? That people identifying “woman” as something exclusively intrinsic or denying that extrinsic factors can be decisive are not being inclusive?
Because if the common mantra here is true, that people are allowed to define their own gender identity and have it respected as valid, then it’s not a question about whether defining “woman” in a way that excludes self-identified women is exclusive or not. It is.
I can’t learn about gender any more than an asexual can learn about sexuality. I know the mechanics (possibly better than you, given that your definition of Kathoey not being attached to biological sex is wrong, and you seem to be conflating dysphoria with identity below), like an asexual might know that tap A usually go into slot B and people derive pleasure from it, but I can’t know the experience. I read, and read, and read, and read, but it’s just becoming clearer and clearer that gendered people are talking about a feeling I’ve never had.
Perhaps you should try to read a bit about non-gendered people instead.
Actually, the 2 are separate. Plenty of trans people do not experience dysphoria, and though it’s not commonly talked about or explored, I’ve found at least one example of a trans woman who doesn’t identify with a gender.
You’re trying to prove a negative – that gender (which you seem to conflate with being a woman/man) is not attached to sex. You don’t prove a negative by proving that there are of people for which your assertion holds true (i.e. people whose gender is not attached to their sex), you do so by proving that there no examples to the contrary (i.e. no people whose gender is attached to their sex). Since I’m here telling you that I don’t appear to have an intrinsic gender, but have still evolved to identify as a woman as a result of outer circumstances (my physical sex being the key factor), you can only try to argue that gender is by definition not attached to sex by either denying that I’m legitimately a woman or claiming that I do have an inborn/intrinsic gender identity, I just don’t realize it.
And it’s not just me. Plenty of people see themselves as cis by default. In the comments there’s a link to a survey done on the website Less Wrong, where 45.3% of the people surveyed answered “I only identify with my birth gender by default”, vs. the smaller 39.0% saying “I identify strongly with my birth gender”. Less Wrong is far from being representative of the wider population, but even if they’re 5 times more likely to be cis by default than the general population, and 4 out 5 people who identify as cis per default are wrong/lying (which is a lot of identity to deny), that’s still a higher % than the % of trans people in the population.
There’s also the fact that Bindel is British and published in British media, while Milo is American and published in American media. Extraordinary as it may seem to some, even in the internet age, British students are more likely to be familiar with the views of British journalists than American ones.
I agree, and oddly enough I feel just the same way about Maryam Namazie, both because she’s a member of the creepy personality cult calling itself the Worker-Communist Party of Iran, and because of her fulsome support for the recent Egyptian military coup, which she was too stupid to recognise as the Saudi- and American-backed counter-revolution it so obviously was (I mention this because Namazie was raised as someone else who – horror of horrors – was no-platformed).
I think it’s a nice bit of blaming the victim to think that it’s trans people – or specifically, the ebil trans activists (who? names please, so we can round them up) – that are deliberately doing damage to the concepts of supposedly simple terms like ‘gender’ and ‘woman’; and that furthermore, it is beholden on trans people to fix this by supplying definitions that satisfy people who are notoriously unwilling to be pleased. That is a not simply a contest not worth participating it; it’s a simply impossible and unreasonable task for anyone: cisgender, transgender, ipso gender, etc.
If I were to make two slightly different ‘definitions’ that women is (a) the set of the people who identify as women, and (b) the set of people who society regards as women, then these sets will always be disjunct. As a request to the people demanding that trans activism satisfy them by furnishing an adequate definition, please let me know what the essence of womanhood is that every woman possesses it, and every not-woman lacks it, and then I’ll get back to you with a definition, perhaps. Maybe. Or… we could just accept that the ontological reality of ‘women’ is always going to falsify any possible definition we might attempt with such poor things as words.
There’s a bullshit argument above in the thread that it’s the ebil trans activism is trying to change the definition to exclude “real” women (the use of scare quotes around “real” is to highlight that denying the reality of trans women is a TERF trope), when it would be more accurate to say that perhaps some trans activists are doing that (accurate citation would be welcome, rather than the cherry-picking and quote-mining that is going on to make isolated trans women apparently say the opposite of what they actually mean!), but that social, legal, and even biological definitions for socially constructed categories are inadequate to reflect all of the messy complexity of human society.
Simply, there is no overarching trans activist agenda (instead, a whole rabbit’s maze of divergent and conflicting agendas) but I’ve seen so many dogwhistles these last few months about what the “trans activists” are saying and doing that is bad, mkay that it has become an empty signifier. You might as well say “the boogey man” and be done with it. This really imputes far too much power to transfolk that we simply do not possess.
AAutumn
THat also a pretty recent development in the western world as well. The whole obsession with “scientific” sexism, hysteria, women and mental illness, how our cis female reproductive organs make us inferior…
There is actually at least one case of a “trans man*” who got papal permission to live as a man.
*I use scare quotes because it is not clear whether this person actually identified as a man for their self or simply took on the role of a man because the role of a woman sucked.
freja
You either really suck at understanding the difference between “I am a woman because XYZ” and “Women are women because XYZ” or you’re simply dishonest. You can personally bake all the vagina cupcakes you want. I personally find them totally cool. I have a vagina, it’s an awesome part of my anatomy. But to use vagina as a shorthand of “woman” is trans exclusionary and makes not a statement about any individual woman’s self-identity but about defining markers of womanhood. Same with “Womani s not a marker of fecundity”. It simply isn’t. Many women, cis or trans, don’t have a working uterus plus ovaries. Some men do. Therefore it is incorrect to define “woman = can make babies”.
Giliell said:
freja answers
You know, throwing a question that bears no relevance to the original one back is not an answer. Since you decided to do so I take that as “There is not a single shred of evidence, but I think you’re as stupid as I am and would therefore fall for my cheap trick of trying a silly distraction on you”
#144: Whoa, we Americans aren’t to blame. Yiannopoulos is British, went to several British universities (and dropped out of all of them), lives in London, and works for the UK edition of Breitbart. NOT ONE OF US!
Gumbifying my own text, because of my vocabulary failing spectacularly. I meant to say those sets will have a large overlap but will have members who are in one set but not the other.
@141, Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia:
I have been told that you can’t be trans racial, or trans middle class, or trans anything else but gender. Only your gender identity is inborn, everything else is taught. But that doesn’t really stop people from identifying with non-inborn factors like ethnicity. In fact, if someone was adopted into a family of a different ethnicity before their first memory, was never treated any differently or told about their origins, and looked physically similar to the people of the adopted ethnicity, they would probably be just as likely to accept that ethnicity as people who were born into it.
They would learn they belonged to a group named X, they would receive instruction in how members of group X were supposed to behave and expected to adhere to it, they would get X citizenship, be told about group X’s culture and history, receive training in skills associated with group X, and they would probably grow to identify with group X, emulate members of group X over other groups, feel bad when group X was insulted and proud when group X was praised, etc.
Replace the Tabula Rasa of ethnicity with a Tabula Rasa of gender. Someone without an innate gender identity has little reason not to internalize gender in the same way they’d internalize ethnicity. They might be more prone to rebelling against gender roles and they might decide to abandon their gender altogether (just as someone might feel the need to switch nationality or prefer a different culture than their native one). But they wouldn’t automatically declare “This is not right, I can’t be a boy/girl!” any more than most people question the ethnicity or nationality they were born into.
Since I learned that gender identity was a thing, read up on it, and realized none of what was described seemed to apply to me, I started questioning my identity as a woman. But eventually I realized that I have learned I belong to a group named girls/women/female, received instruction in how people labeled female were supposed to behave and expected to adhere to it, gotten a legal identity as a woman, been told about the female parts of my culture, received training in skills associated with women, and I have identified with girls/women, been more likely to emulate people identified as girls/women than boys/men, feel bad when women as a group is insulted in a way that’s more personal than when it happens to groups I don’t feel I belong to, feel good when women as a group have their issues acknowledged, etc..
I’m not going to stop now, declare it all a sham, and pretend that it’s a mistake when I’m grouped in with people labeled “women”. I’m not going to pretend all of the above didn’t mean anything just because it happened as a result of my physical sex instead of intrinsic gender. But neither am I going to pretend I share an intrinsic indefinable womanhood with anyone who says they grew up feeling a certain way. I accept their feelings as valid, I accept that there’s a kind of female identity which exists independently of the things I described above, but I don’t accept that I have to share it in order to be a woman. And when people say that woman is an inborn gender identity with no connection to physical sex, I reserve the right to say “Maybe to you, but not to me”.
@ freja
I get what you’re saying. You have different reasons for identifying as a woman, or partially identifying as one given your earlier statements about being an agender woman, then some trans people do.
What I don’t get is your contention with the “If you claim to be x gender, you are x gender” statement. It doesn’t matter why you claim to be x gender, it just matters that you do. If you feel like a woman because of your genitalia, that’s cool, you’re a woman. If someone else feels like a woman because it reflects their gender identity, cool, they’re a woman too.
Sure, it’s fine and valid to share your experiences as “I identify as a woman because….” but, at least under the definition we operate under, only the first five words there have any bearing on whether or not you’re a woman. The rest is just additional information.
@140, We are Plethora:
She contradicts herself. She says being a woman has nothing to do with something, and then she says it can have everything to do with everything and that the definition is entirely subjective. She also doesn’t appear to use the same definition of identifying as I would.
If I was to define womanhood in as personal a way as her, I could easily write something like “Being a woman has nothing to do with how you identify – it has everything to do the social category you’re placed in”. Because I spent a lot of time not really identifying as a woman but seeing it as a category I belonged to independent of self-identification. In a way I still do, calling it gender identification is just quicker and easier than explaining the specifics.
And yet every time someone says that you get to define what makes you a woman and you can’t be wrong, someone else starts talking about how the definition I use for myself is wrong.
Aatumn’s post 135 is an example of that. When she says
she’s clearly referring to objective and impersonal criteria (scientific fact, logically derived argument), and claims it’s a matter of knowledge, not opinion (Assertions have no weight).
But post 125 was all about my definition of my own gender identity. I said 4 things (go back and check if you want), 1) that having a vagina was what made me a woman (beyond debate, as it’s my identity), 2) I accept that some people define their identity on a different basis (an acknowledgement that the definition depends on the individual), 3) it’s wrong to say that “you can’t be made into a woman without that inborn sense of gender-identity” (the same point as 2), and 4) that it probably isn’t possible for agender people to understand gender any more than it is for gendered people to understand what it’s like not having a gender (personal evaluation based on experience, doesn’t impose a definition of gender on anyone).
Nothing in that was about denying anyone their own personal definitions, just a statement about how my definition differs from a lot of other people’s and that didn’t make it wrong. And yet it was objectively wrong, scientifically incorrect, illogical, etc. and I needed to learn more about the topic.
She further stated that “modern medicine supports that gender is not attached to sex”. Apart from being wrong (modern medicine supports that gender doesn’t have to be attached to sex, not that it can’t be or never is), it’s also applying an outside, scientific, “objective” authority to a question which is deeply personal and subjective. She’s not objecting to anything I’ve said about her gender identity. The post of mine she refers to clearly says
I can’t think of a clearer way of saying “Your identity as a woman is completely valid. It’s not wrong to base your identity on innate gender”. The only thing I add is that it’s not my definition of my identity as a woman. But that’s enough. Now it’s about how science and modern medicine supports her definition, about how assertions (even about your own identity it seems) have no weight in a discussion, and about not knowing what I’m talking about and needing to learn even more about her definition of gender identity so I’ll understand it right.
That’s the issue I’m talking about. When people say “People saying they’re women, are women”, what they often assume by “saying they’re women” is “identify as women”, typically in the intrinsic sense of the word. When no one digs any deeper, it doesn’t matter and people don’t notice, but as soon as someone specifies that they’re women on the basis that they have a vagina/were AFAB/currently presents as one etc., it’s often seen as inherently invalidating of other people’s identity as women, particularly trans women.
Like when some cis women want to make vagina cupcakes because it is (or might be) part of their identity as women and personally meaningful/fun/liberating to them, and it’s assumed that this act implies that trans women are not women.
Words are hard. When I read “not attached to sex”, in my brain at least that translates to “is not always, 100%, attached.” For example, there are things that are ‘not genetic’… yet they are influenced by genes. In American english at least, ‘not genetic’ tends to mean ‘not tied to a single specific gene, so there’s no 100% you have this gene, you have this thing’.
My gender is not attached to my sex. They happen to match, that’s true. But I don’t, personally, feel like a woman just because I have a uterus, ovaries, and a vagina. I am a woman because I am. And my version of ‘woman’ happens to have a great many of the traits that society views as masculine. Several family members expected me to come out as a ‘butch lesbian’ when I was younger because of my behaviour. I am an entirely ‘unfeminine’ woman. So I’m not a woman because of preferred behaviour patterns, and I’m not a woman because of genitalia. I just *am*.
So no, gender is not attached to sex. Gender is in many ways a social construct that is *imposed* on individuals in varying ways based on the perceptions others have about their sex. But gender itself is clearly not attached to sex, because people identify as things other than their sex. If gender WAS attached to sex, trans people would probably not exist.
@150, Vivec:
As I said in post 151, because of the (often gendered) nature of the people who propose that definition as the only valid one, it often comes with the unexamined assumption that “claim to be gender x” means “identifying as gender x” which means “having an intrinsic orientation towards gender x”.
That usually doesn’t matter a lot when we’re just talking shallow definitions, but it creates conflicts when it comes to related issues. I’ve met plenty of women who attach a special gendered meaning to something I didn’t feel had anything to do with being a woman (particular types of clothes, work, body language, behavior, etc.). It’s their definition, meaningful to them, if not to me, and I accept that. But there seems to be a taboo about attaching a similar meaning to many of the things I feel like I share with a lot of women (particular experiences resulting from being perceived as female, a particular anatomy and its consequences etc.).
I used the AUSA womenfest vagina cupcake as an example, where offering an activity based on the connection many people feel between femaleness (in this case their own) and vaginas, and the way perceptions of vaginas have affected many women’s experiences as women, is seen as denying the identity of trans women.
Or when it comes to talking about myself. I appreciate that you get it, but Aatumn obviously didn’t, and despite referring to a post where I did my utmost be as completely clear about my acceptance of other people’s individual basis for their individual womanhood as I could, she jumped straight to the conclusion that I was transphobic, didn’t know what I was talking about, and needed her to give me more reading material so I could learn it.
Because most people in progressive spaces operate with the assumption of an innate gender identity and don’t consider a definition of womanhood that doesn’t include it to even be possible (e.g. Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia in post 141 saying it seems a contradiction), the first reaction I get is often someone correcting me and telling me what gender is really about, despite not offering the same correction when someone gendered (cis or trans) use their personal definitions.
@152, Rowan vet-tech
Does it really? Because I’ve read quite a few American science articles, and I haven’t heard many scientists say that, say, intelligence is not genetic, despite everyone seemingly agreeing that it’s not tied to a single gene. I’ve heard some say that genetics is only a component of intelligence and not the whole part, or that many things count for more, but never a flat assertion that it’s “not genetic”.
I’ve never read any article about the different alleles thought to play a role in something, or their interactions, wherein the authors conclude that the thing being studied is “not genetic”. The fact that they’re looking at specific alleles to explain something is always taken to mean that there’s probably a genetic component in whatever they’re looking at. The “100% you have this gene, you have this thing” are fairly rare, and it doesn’t make sense to conclude than any other type of genetic factor makes something “not genetic”.
When I’ve heard Americans say things like “not attached to” they seemed to always mean “not (co)related/not occurring together at a higher than chance rate/not causing each other” and when they say things like “not genetic” they always meant “having no genetic component”, never “having no more than 1 genetic component causing 100% of all variation”. I realize I’m no expert or native speaker, but I’m genuinely surprised if that definition is really so common.
It may be localized to my area/what forums I frequent… and the fact that we aren’t using the full on technical terminology in ever day speech. This is like the difference between a lay person’s ‘theory’ and a scientific ‘theory’.
For example, I breed corn snakes. Every now and then a paradox pops up, like an amel with a patch of black pigment. Now, clearly that area of black pigment is because the mutant amelanistic gene either ‘broke’ into non-functionality, or was somehow repaired, or maybe the snake is a chimera. People like paradox markings, but these markings are… not genetic. They are not able to be reproduced in offspring. Even though genes control the markings, they are ‘not genetic’. See?
You’re getting pedantic over phrases in a way that is making you sound transphobic, because YOU claim the label woman because of genitalia and people who don’t are somehow… wrong… because that’s not your definition and because you define yourself a specific way broader ideas don’t include your narrow one? I’m still not entirely sure what you’re exactly trying to say.
Also, am I a woman under your definition considering that I do NOT find my genitals to be defining of my gender AND my behaviour set is traditionally masculine?
As far as I can tell, freya’s argument on this subject is bafflegab all the way down. And she is unflinching and unbudging in her incredibly opaque jumble of an argument. The real question is whether that is deliberate. Because honestly, it feels like just another way to derail, muddle, and stifle discussion of trans issues. To make it all about freja and her inept and inscrutable debate over the specific philosophical nuances of gender identification. Because those evil fucking trans activists are somehow, some way, if you squint through a crooked, rose-tinted glass hard enough and long enough, excluding freya in their broad, inclusive definitions of gender. It seriously strains my mind to try to imagine how this could not be trolling.
You can read it this way:
Claim #1: Intelligence is genetic.
This is false, because genes don’t determine or define intelligence, and they are not what intelligence consists of. That’s just how the word “is” works in such a sentence, if we’re meant to assume it has a literal and unambiguous meaning. While genetics is one of the apparent causes of intelligence, it seems that in fact no gene (or set of genes) is a necessary and sufficient condition for being intelligent. So, if somebody makes this particular claim, they are wrong.
Claim #2: It is not the case that intelligence is genetic. (Or more succinctly and less precisely “it’s not genetic.”)
This is true, following the interpretation of #1, which is a natural way to interpret a claim like that. If it’s also due to non-genetic factors, then there is reason to criticize the claim that it’s genetic, because such a claim doesn’t adequately describe or explain all of the factors that determine intelligence or define intelligence, as the claim is purporting to do. As an empirical claim about the facts underlying intelligence, it is false that “intelligence is genetic,” since there are many other causes and much more to the story than that. It’s not saying that genetics plays no role, for anybody or for everybody. If we wanted to say genetics plays no role, we would say that, instead of what is actually being said, which is denying the bogus and ill-motivated and inadequate claim that “intelligence is genetic.” There are a few people who think it literally is genetic and only genetic, so this kind of response is especially meant to address them, as well as to make it clear to others who are ignorant or uncertain about it what the entirety of the evidence suggests, since it doesn’t support the notion that intelligence is determined by genetics.
In your case, you’ve added other qualifications which make it a claim about your own personal way of identifying (or not identifying) as a woman. It’s clear, once you give us context like that, that you’re not even attempting to define, as a general matter, what being a women is (or what it means, entails, etc.). So, at this point, I can’t tell if there is any genuine disagreement or what exactly it’s supposed to be. You had said that people here were rejecting your claims, but as we go along, much the disagreement seems to be disappearing as you clarify your position. Perhaps if you had made it clearer to begin with, there wouldn’t have been much confusion or disagreement about it. Or if there still is substantial disagreement, I have no idea what it is.
And/or: others are getting pedantic (or dogmatic) over phrases (or words) in a way that is making them hear freja as transphobic.
leerudolph:
Seriously? That’s your takeaway from this conversation? Wow.
freja @151,
You are still cherry-picking one sentence and ignoring the entire rest of the article. On top of that you are insisting on a rather literalist interpretation of your cherry-picked sentence in order to justify your claim that there is some kind of contradiction. Worst of all your literalist interpretation of your cherry-picked sentence is in direct contradiction to the overall message and theme of the article.
Whether you are doing this by choice or whether you can’t help it either way we aren’t interested in playing these semantic games.
Based on our read you seem to be misunderstanding and mischaracterizing what AAutumn wrote. Beyond that you should probably take this up in a reply to AAutumn as opposed to expecting others to explain or answer for them.
Well if you have been paying attention you may have noticed that it’s often deliberately used as a means of invalidating trans women’s identities as well. Virtually all transphobic bigots and TERFs hold some version of the belief that “woman” is defined as “those born with a vagina and assigned female at birth.” Of course they also use this definition to justify their exclusion and marginalization and mistreatment of trans people. So that would seem to be a good reason why it’s often seen as invalidating trans women’s identities. Precisely because it is in fact often used that way.
Whether it’s intentional or not you are making statements and espousing definitions that closely resemble the kind of transphobic bigotry that’s really common these days. At the same time you are attempting to excuse and rationalize trans exclusionary and trans antagonistic rhetoric from Ophelia Benson. At the same time you are twisting the words of a trans woman in order to claim she is excluding you when the exact opposite is true. Bottom line if you aren’t trolling and you aren’t genuinely hostile towards trans people then you certainly are doing a pretty good impression instead.
I’m struck, once again, that in a thread ostensibly about trans people, we’ve spent 90% of the posts talking about a not-trans person’s experience of gender, no matter that the conversation has run skipping through most of the transphobic memes too.
Every time, it feels like. Just funny how that works – you try and talk about transness, and not-trans people gotta make it all about them.
Frustrating.
PZ@147,
Thanks for the correction, and my apologies on behalf of myself for the error and of the UK for Milo Yiannopoulos! However I didn’t know, and I doubt if 1 in 1000 Brits knows, that there is a UK edition of Breitbart! My main point, which I didn’t make explicit enough, is that Yiannopoulos almost certainly isn’t on the NUS “no-platform” list, because no-one involved in drawing it up had ever heard of him.
Caitie
But look, it’s freja and she’s super-special and also totally oppressed in her identity as a woman by the trans cabal. Somehow. Because vagina cupcakes.
Seriously. I mean, if the worst “oppression” of your personal self-identification as a woman is an example where on a different continent people thought that vagina cupcakes were a really bad stand-in for women as a social group, you probably have not actually experienced any oppression of your self-identification as a woman.
+++
Wea re Plethora
And it’S still the complete disregard for the difference between “I identify as a woman because I have these organs and I occupy a certain position in society assigned to me based on these organs” and “people with these organs are women.”
I mean, it should be very easy: There are people with vaginas who are not women and there are women without vaginas, therefore the vagina is not a sufficient criterion to determine wether somebody is a woman.
Intrinsic identification is not exclusive, it can’t be. It says that for whatever reasons you like, however you identifty, is what you are. Extrinsic identification IS exclusive, however, and directly contradicts intrinsic identification. It couldn’t possibly NOT be exclusive, since it’s saying that you are whatever your characteristics determine that you are, whether you like it or not. For those who are in the “not” category, this is explicitely excluding them.
The difference is that people are telling you that if you identify the way you identify on the basis that you do, that’s fine, you absolutely get to do that. You don’t however, get to define how others identify or on what basis, which is exactly what extrinsic identification does.
CaitieCat @ 161:
Yes, it’s frustrating. This isn’t the first time Freja has done this here. The first time was several years ago.
Caine
Really? Fuck. There goes the last bit of my assumption of good faith. I mean, when I first noticed her crap over at Jason’s blog I thought she was somebody who was actually trying to work through all these complicated gender things. I guess i was wrong. It would be nice not to be disappointed once….
@155, Rowan vet-tech
I don’t know how many times I have to repeat that I don’t think people are wrong to label themselves women over an internal gender identity, but let me try to get through to you one more time:
If someone says “I’m a woman because I feel like a woman/identify as a woman/was born with my internal gender set to “female”/feel that “woman” is the right label for me” that’s a completely valid definition and not disputing the womanhood of anyone else. The person who says this might be a crappy person and hold all sorts of prejudices, but the above sentence is not bigoted.
With me so far?
And if someone says “I’m a woman because I have a vagina/am identified as female/was raised as a girl/is legally a woman” that’s also a completely valid definition and not disputing the womanhood of anyone else. The person who says this might be a crappy person and hold all sorts of prejudices, but the above sentence is not bigoted.
People should be allowed to base their personal definition of themselves as a woman on personal criteria that make sense to them, regardless of whether other people who call themselves women share and agree with that definition. If some people feel that they’re placed in the category “woman” without any choice or input, and don’t feel like it reflects any particular orientation or inborn identity on their part, it should still be OK for them to use the label to describe themselves, even if what they describe is a position/situation they’re in and not something inherent to who they are.
I don’t know because I don’t know your criteria. If you feel that inherent gender is the best basis for you to define yourself as a woman/man/other on, and if you feel your inherent gender is that of a woman, and on that basis, you choose to call yourself a woman, then for the purpose of your identity, you’re a woman. Same as me, albeit we use different criteria to get there.
The claim “If people say they’re women, they’re women” doesn’t come with a caveat that they have to use a specific criteria for deciding that they’re women or that their reason for saying they’re women have to be identical or understandable to anyone else.
If I can get to say “I’m a woman because I have a vagina and was therefore put into that category as a child” as easily and unproblematically as someone else can say “I’m a woman because my internal sense of gender is female”, I’m perfectly fine with letting other people decide for themselves whether they want to be women or not. But that has not been my experience. People seem to keep looking for definitions of womanhood which they for some reason expect to always be the same definition they use. Hence the difficulty for so many people to understand that “I’m a woman because I have a vagina, if you use other criteria to label yourself a woman that’s OK with me, but this is the way I define myself” is not the same as transphobia.
@165, Caine:
Could you back that up? Because I don’t recall it.
Ah yeah. This mysterious experience for which you can never actually give any evidence except a trans woman talking about herself and a cancelled event concerning vagina cupcakes…
@165, Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia:
So the category “extrinsic” is a subcategory of “intrinsic”? Because that’s the only way defining something as inherently intrinsic does not exclude the possibility that it can be extrinsic in other situations or for different individuals.
But if you want, I can use inherent vs. culturally defined if that makes it more clear.
I have a nationality, ethnicity, profession, and socioeconomic status too. All those carry with them tittles and definitions (French/Russian/Somali, black/hispanic/caucasian, plumber/doctor/nurse, working/middle/upper class), but they’re not all something people like or freely choose or feel are right for them.
If gender for me is not an inherent orientation (and from what I what I can tell about how it works for others, it isn’t), being a woman is going to occupy a similar spot in my identity as those categories. It’s not any less real, less relevant or less correct, but it’s not necessarily an intrinsic part of who I am. Or if it is, the intrinsic part is the physiological aspect, not the gendered one.
If we’re all allowed to use whatever criteria we feel are right to decide whether we want to call ourselves women or not, my criteria are no less exclusive to those who don’t share them than criteria which I don’t share are exclusive to me.
Hence my identity as a woman is extrinsic (or as I mentioned earlier, internalized at best) based on what I’ve been told that word means in english, not intrinsic. If people insist on defining woman in a way that’s exclusively intrinsic (rather to sticking to saying that it’s intrinsic to them), or denying that extrinsic factors can be decisive, then yes, I’d say that they’re not being inclusive, because they’re defining womanhood in a way that excludes people who say they’re women.
@169, Giliell:
I tell about experiences which have taken place in various circles at various times, but I can only give recent examples (most of which you don’t answer) because I don’t remember all the names, places and contexts in which those conversations were had (not to mention that some of them were personal), and you conclude that I’m a liar.
Caine makes an allegation a specific named individual (me), of a specific action (doing whatever I’m doing here years ago) which is much easier objectively falsified since it’s less dependent on interpretation, in a named place (here), taking place online where there should be a permanent record of it, and chooses to provide no evidence for it, and you to believe it immediately.
And you wonder why you are called transphobic?
@172, Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia:
What exactly is transphobic in my response to you? I define myself as a woman on a different basis than a lot of women (some of which are trans), but I have specifically said that if they want to define themselves as women on a different basis than me, I’ll accept that definition as being true to them. It is the part where I also expect them to accept my definition as being true to me?
freja
Which you haven’t
which is a lie again
I conclude you’RE a liar based on the fact that you have lied several times on this very thread already. You simply make claims and expect to swallow them wholesale without giving a shred of evidence. Wheni as ked you for concrete evidence you went all Ophelia Benson on me as if the discussion about her had anything to do with the price of butter.
I’ve known Caine for several years now. I’ve had the opportunity to have many discussions with her. While it is, of course, totally possible that she’s mistaken I’ll take her word over yours any day.
+++
Which is, of course, bullshit since you obviously accepted that identification, which means you took an action that said “this label describes me”. Furthermore there is no direct link between the genitals and the label. People called you a girl and treated you like a girl because they had decided that young humans witha vagina are girls, not because vagina=girl
To them, not you. Hence, transphobic.
What you are basically saying is that you are fine with people saying they are women or men based on an internal sense of identity that isn’t dependent on physical characteristics or societal imposition, but that they are really not…and that society and you, according to how you define gender, will consider them to not be women, regardless of their desires, because vagina.
@163, Giliell:
You seem to have changed your argument. When I first remarked that I had seen some correction of people who used “woman” in a way that was connected to physiology and/or cultural identification, because it was supposedly exclusive to trans women, but that I had never seen people casually using “woman” in a way that implied an inherent gender getting the same correction, you told me it didn’t happen and that only non-personal definitions which excluded others were the problem.
When I related it to idea of competing needs, and said I accepted that in many situations, affirming the gender identity of trans women could be the more important aspect because trans women were more oppressed, but that I would prefer if people were honest about it instead of claiming there’s a one-size-fits-all solution, you told me it was wrong and had nothing to do with oppression, because there was a one-size-fits-all solution, namely that of personal identification.
Now I gave you example of some women wanting to engage in an activity based on something they found meaningful to their womanhood, but being told no because it wasn’t meaningful to trans women’s womanhood and was therefore exclusive. And your argument immediately becomes all about the different amounts of oppression you previously claimed didn’t play a role. You basically say that it’s not oppression like trans women experience oppression, and therefore not relevant.
Isn’t that exactly the principle of competing needs I brought up? That it might be annoying for cis women not to be able to base an activity on their experience of womanhood, but it’s worse for trans women because they’re excluded so often in other contexts?
freja:
Nope, not right now anyway. It’s was a while back, someone going by the nym Freja, had issues the same as yours, and I vaguely recall it was in a thread dealing with misogyny and Thunderfoot. You, or that Freja, didn’t go on for a terribly long time, the thread was furiously fast paced. Maybe it wasn’t you, I don’t know right now, but if it wasn’t, someone out there shares your views.
Sorry for not digging for the link, I’m back and forth to town today, have a rat in surgery.
Freja is getting gaslit in this thread. That’s abusive and it needs to stop.
The treatment of Freja in this thread has been terrible. Dishonest, mean-spirited, and nasty.
This isn’t social justice, former Pharyngula comrades. This is something a lot uglier. It doesn’t need to be this way.
@175, Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia:
But my basis for defining myself as a woman isn’t true for them either. That’s not transphobic, that’s saying you can come to the conclusion that you’re a woman in many different ways, and each is true for the individual.
I’m saying there isn’t one, true, “objective” criteria for being a woman, except saying that you are one. If you say you’re a woman based on your inherent gender identity, then that’s the truth when it comes to your identity, but not necessarily when it comes to others’. If you say you’re a woman based on physiology, that’s also the truth when it comes to your identity, but also not necessarily when it comes to others’.
There is no “really”. If the definition of who is a woman is “someone who says they’re a woman”, then it’s an entirely subjective thing, determined solely by the individual and based solely on whatever criteria makes sense for them in regards to their own identity.
No more than they’ll consider me to not be a woman. If the one true definition is “You’re a woman if you say you are”, that goes both ways. Based on that definition, if your criteria for being a woman is “has a female gender identity” that’s wrong. If your criteria is “has female physiology” that’s also wrong. Because both are universal claims about “women” in general, and since women use different criteria for deciding if they’re women, universal claims are going to be false. But if you say “I’m a woman because I have a female gender identity” that’s entirely correct. And if you say “I’m a woman because I have a female physiology”, that’s also entirely correct. Again, based on the definition “You’re a woman if you say you are”.
*pinches bridge of nose and sighs deeply*
Ok, if you feel you do not have an intrinsic gender, but you identify as female (however you care to phrase it) because society at large treats you as this gender due to your appearance/anatomy, you are STILL self-identifying. Your reasons for self-identification may be different than those of a trans woman, but you still have internal reasons. You accepted the label “female” because you have internalized what you were told about your gender. YOU are still the one identifying yourself as female and you have your own internal reasons for doing so (even if that reason is you don’t want to be bothered with the definition). So when people say “gender is not based on anatomy,” they are saying that what makes the difference is how you choose to allow yourself to be defined. You are perfectly free to choose to accept your assigned gender based on society or vaginas or whatever, or to reject them as you feel it’s right for you.
Let me put it as absolutely bluntly as I possibly can: YOU ARE FREE TO DEFINE YOURSELF BY YOUR GENITALS OR NOT AS YOU SEE FIT! NO ONE HERE IS CLAIMING OTHERWISE!
I think the reason for said “poor treatment” (which I have yet to see but whatever) is because Freja came here obstensibly to defend a terf, citing an article that uses and defends terf ideology, and then presented themselves in a way that made it look like they shared said terf ideology.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I feel extremely unsafe and unwelcome when I’m sharing a space with terfs, so that is the root of my behavior in this thread.
More poisoning. The TERF is here, the TERF is there. She’s a TERF. She doesn’t sufficiently denounce TERFs.
You never have to justify it. The word is ipso facto proof of the bad nature of the person in question.
And YOU feel unsafe? Fuck off.
@117, Caine:
Was it before or shortly after Thunderfoot got banned from here? Because I wasn’t aware he had been a blogger here when I started reading FTB so I don’t think I was part of that conversation. In addition, it took me a while after reading FTB before I stopped lurking and started commenting, and I had to make a new account/profile here due to having problems logging in, so my earliest comments weren’t even as Freja. And if it was on Pharyngula specifically, that’s even stranger, because this is not among the places at FTB where I first started commenting, and I only recall making short and non-controversial posts here before.
So even if I misremember when my gender issues started to become salient and something I was willing to discuss, and which discussions I was part of several years ago, they’re highly unlikely to have been here, under the nym Freja, or dealing with Thunderfoot.
Back to the topic:
The entitlement at work when people start kvetching about not being provided a platform is always irksome. A university should not be expected to provide a platform for any yahoo. And the students are absolutely justified in having a petition, and if the school chooses the accept that petition that’s all well and good.
The SXSW thing is pretty clear cut. They are craven, but obviously well within their rights.
How much does a person have to defend and utilize terf ideology before they can be called a terf? Because Freja did both, in a way that mirrors many experiences I have had with self-proclaimed terfs.
So uh, yes. I feel unsafe when I’m in the presence of people that act like virulent transphobes. Sorry, I guess?
TERF TERF TERF.
It’s not a magical incantation. It doesn’t stand on its own, self-justifyingly.
I get it. You think that it is, and that merely invoking the word justifies the use of the word. That you have no obligation to unpack it; it’s the obvious and essential evil that you say it is.
And, you get to apply it indiscriminately to anyone who questions—no matter how calmly and reasonably—the epistemology of gender that someone else posits.
Neat.
Yes, I get that it’s not a magical incantation.
It’s the title attached to a hate group, and implies certain beliefs, IE that trans people are actually their assigned genders, that trans people (particularly trans women) are violent misogynists that unfairly target women when men get off easy, and that one can reduce gender down to what genitalia a person has.
I don’t get how it’s unfair to say “Transphobic feminists do X, Y, and Z. This person did X, Y, and z. Therefore, they share beliefs with transphobic feminists, and fall under the “terf” label”
Also, for the record, as of yet I’ve been primarily engaged in bridge building after Freja clarified their point (@150), and largely avoided the thread during certain parts because, as mentioned, the presence of people that act like transphobes makes me feel unsafe. So if you want to foist the bad behavior in the thread on someone, can you like not do it to a trans person that, as of yet, has made plenty of attempts at being amicable here?
@118, Matrim:
I think I made a mistake in shortening “saying you’re a woman” into personal identification in my recent post to Gilliell (which I believe you’re referring to) and others. Basically, when I talk about identification and identity as a woman, feel free to insert “saying you’re a woman”.
Ultimately, saying you’re a woman comes down to choice, that’s true. So does a lot of things. Plenty of trans people choose to allow themselves to defined as a gender that doesn’t match their inherent gender orientation. i.e. some trans men say they’re women and some trans women say they’re men.
A person saying “I got PTSD from being raped” is implying that rape was the deciding factor, despite the fact that many people don’t get PTSD from rape. Just because different people get PTSD from different things depending on individual personality and situation, it doesn’t mean it’s correct to say that this person’s PTSD is not based on their experience being raped. And choosing rape as the deciding factor when talking about one’s PTSD, is not the same as saying that PTSD always follows rape or occurs exclusively as a result of rape, but it
You’re absolutely right to say that my anatomy only made me a woman in conjunction with my lack of internal gender identity. But since “I’m a woman because I have no internal gender” is pretty nonsensical, I think the primary factor here is anatomy and its consequences. To put it shortly, talking about how I allow myself to be identified a certain way and choose to accept it, makes it seem like me being a woman is all my fault.
Josh, Official SpokesGay,
Oh FFS Josh are you kidding with this? Sorry but you lost all credibility on this topic when you decided to throw your support behind the hurtful trans antagonistic rhetoric and trans exclusionary views of Ophelia Benson. Unless and until you take her to task you have no moral or ethical standing from which to criticize others.
The idea that “anyone who questions—no matter how calmly and reasonably” will be called a TERF is a gross lie and distortion of reality. Nothing about Ophelia Benson’s rhetoric and open mocking of trans people’s identities (which took place on a public Facebook group) was “calm and reasonable.” Nothing about Ophelia Benson’s nuclear meltdown at being asked a question was “calm and reasonable.” Nothing about Ophelia Benson’s harassment of an OB/GYN was “calm and reasonable.” If you are unable or unwilling to confront these inconvenient (for you) truths then you really have nothing of value to add to this discussion.
If you want to participate in and cheer on Ophelia Benson’s anti trans agenda go right ahead but kindly stop trying to spread that shit around here. Please take your tone trolling elsewhere and just leave us alone already. Haven’t you all done enough damage?
I’m not particularly concerned about my credibility with you, We Are Plethora. This isn’t about credibility with you or your social circle. It’s about a serious concern with this conversation. I think it’s almost irremediably broken, it’s not playing out under the rules of good faith discussion and logical argumentation (we can’t even get our referents consistent). It’s pitted people who are otherwise well-meaning (mostly) against each other for bad reasons.
Josh, Official SpokesGay @191,
With respect you seem to have missed the point. Because you lack credibility on this issue your supposed concerns don’t seem genuine.
For example you seem far more concerned with the tone here than you seemed concerned about Ophelia Benson’s harassing an OB/GYN over use of “pregnant people” instead of “women.” You seem more concerned about the tone here than you seemed concerned about Ophelia Benson’s mocking of trans identities. You seem more concerned with the tone here than with actual hurt caused to trans people.
Given your apparent priorities what reason does anyone else have for supposing you are here for any sort of “good faith discussion” then?
@192
Hey, ease up on Josh. Telling a trans person to fuck off for feeling unsafe around transphobic rhetoric is totally a good faith discussion.
/sarcasm
This is a toddler-level in-group power play. You’re. not used to people seeing through it, I know, but I do. This is manipulative behavior designed to let you control the discourse at the expense of other people you don’t like. It usually works for you because well-meaning people would rather give the benefit of the doubt and assume that someone who says they feel unsafe really should be listened to. That’s generally a good rule of thumb.
The trouble with it is that it allows free-riders like you, We Are Plethora, to don the mantle of Mistreated Person while you don’t play fair with others.
Bullshit.
Yes, yes, it’s all just questioning and not at all hateful invective towards trans women and anyone who might disagree.
Tone may be an issue when the conversation breaks down and everyone starts to run rings around each other without significantly moving the conversation forward. To me, it looks like that is the case here.
With respect, I can see a lot of justifiable anger getting in the way of any sort of productive conversation or debate. I can see people rapidly making the same points over and again, without gaining concessions from the opposition. In my experience, that is an atmosphere for people feeling increasingly stressed, attacked, and angry. Also, for any meaningful dialogue or learning opportunity to be lost.
I’m not sure that there is anything to lost by people taking a break from this particular discussion, although that is clearly their choice. Is there anything else to be said on this particular subject on this thread? I think both sides have made their cases, and onlookers can weigh up the merits of their respective arguments.
That is my opinion/reaction as an observer, offered only as such and without further comment. I know that I have much, much, much less at stake in this.
I know that many of you here—including you, Unknown Eric—used to consider yourselves my friends. Now you believe I’ve revealed myself as a terrible bigot, to your great sadness.
It’s incredible to me. None of the years I’ve spent in conversation with so many of you count. You didn’t learn anything true about my epistemic and moral commitments from all those years of interactions. Nope. But you have discovered, mirabile dictu, that I’m actually a Bigot (capitalized to indicate that it’s true and permanent) and that I endorse abuse of trans people. Because I object to some of the epistemology deployed in this conversation, and because I think well-meaning people are extremely misguided.
It used to hurt, but now it’s just grim and gross. Discovering that people are not, in actual fact, the kind of people who reciprocate good faith is depressing as anything.
This is a shit show. This entire conversation. And most of you are wallowing in its toxicity. Every protest that comes along further entrenches your opinion that you and your friends are deeply, essentially in the moral right and everyone else isn’t.
Congratulations. Onward to liberation.
Where is this even coming from? I’m not saying that Freja is a terf, I’m giving an explanation for the some of the reactionary hostility earlier on. Freja phrased their argument in a way that seemed to be supporting Greer, linked an article that espouses some transphobic ideas, and appeared to be saying that woman = person with a vagina. Based on that, I felt unfortable.
I think that, at the moment, me and Freja are more or less in aggressive agreement with each other, and the second they clarified their opinion, I backed off on it. They identify as a woman because of their genitalia, some other women identify as a woman for other reasons. Both are equally valid, because both identify as women, regardless of reason.
You, however, have yet to demonstrate why it’s unreasonable for a person that routinely faces transphobia to be uncomfortable around someone that appears to be supporting said transphobia. If you’re accusing me of acting aggressively in the face of evidence to the contrary, you’re demonstrably false. I don’t think Freja’s in the wrong, and I haven’t for nearly a third of the thread now.
Josh, Official SpokesGay @194,
This is offensive nonsense Josh and you seem to be projecting. In the end no matter what other excuses or bullshit reasons you fabricate the simple truth is this is about a genuine concern for trans people. That you find this so hard to believe says far more about you than anyone else.
As for controlling the discourse you are the one who came here to tone troll remember? You are the one who came here to tell us all how concerned you are about the discourse.
WTF are you even talking about? Our concern is trans people who are being mistreated and hurt by this. It’s really sad that you would try to twist this into something bad or deceptive.
Also why do you keep ignoring the point about your massively fucked up priorities and your participation in (or tacit approval of) Ophelia Benson’s anti trans crusade? Why do you think it’s acceptable to be more concerned about the tone of discourse here than about the harm done to trans people?
Do I have to be pendatically explicit? I guess I do:
1. Some of what you call transphobia I do not see that way.
2. You don’t have a permanent, ongoing pass to throw out the word “transphobia” without ever justifying it.
3. I *do not accept* your assertion that some of the things you object to are, in fact, transphobic.
You’re used to having a special dispensation to simply throw the word out there as if that, itself, was sufficient. If someone challenges you, you then characterize the challenge itself as yet more evidence of the transphobia.
This is ridiculous, and it would be recognized as ridiculous in other contexts. It’s circular.
I do not accept that some of the things you call transphobia are actually transphobia. You may feel whatever way you want, but that does not create an obligation on my part to accept your discursive moves without responding.
We Are Plethora, Vivec—you’re ridiculous. You’re entitled and self-absorbed. And you affect more-wounded-than-angry just enough that most people around here treat you like you’re ever the put-upon party.
What a joke. You’re bullshit.
And you’re repeatedly ignoring the fact that I completely agree with you.
The things I had interpreted as transphobia earlier in the thread were not, in fact, transphobia. Hence why, at the moment, I am in agreement in Freja, and no longer feel uncomfortable.
If I’ve overlooked that (which is quite likely), I’m sorry, Vivec. You’re not the same person as We Are and I shouldn’t conflate you.
There’s really no way for me to respond to this. Except that it’s entirely untrue. I’ve never thought, said, or implied that you, or anyone, is a bigot. And if anybody had ever actually talked to me, rather than throwing me overboard the second I disagreed, maybe I could have explained my stance on the issue. But I’m persona-non-grata among so many people I care about. You don’t think that hurts a little?
Oh, I bet it hurts. Try being in the same position (I am, ya know), except also being in the minority opinion camp that gets characterized by people you used to care about as the bigot camp. Cry me a fuckin’ river, Eric.
“Whaaaaaaah. . . .he thinks being called a bigot is worse than the actual bigotry!? Dumb privileged ass@!!!”
—in before all the rest of you
Josh, Official SpokesGay @201,
So this is what passes for “good faith discussion and logical argumentation” in your mind? Figures…
Riiiiight. Being concerned about others somehow means that we are “entitled and self-absorbed.” Sure whatever you say Josh.
Citation requested please.
Riiiiiight. Our concern for others is such a joke to you. It’s all just bullshit because you say so.
Bernard Bumner @196,
Thank you that’s very good advice. Sorry for being repetitive and for being a bit hostile but it’s difficult to sit by and let this stuff go by unchallenged. The stakes are too high.
In any case we’ve said what needed to be said and we’re stepping away for a break now.
This whole blew up over word usage. Freja’s confusion over how “is ” and “is not ” can and often are used has led to this.
Freja, if you told people something like “I’m a gender but I am a woman because gender is extrinsic” or “I’m agender but a woman because gender is attached to sex ” I can see how this could upset people because of how we use “is “. It comes across as telling trans people that they are wrong in how they identify, even if unintentionally and they get a lot of that on purpose.
And if you think “not ” is the same as “not ever ” or “not at all “, I can see why you would feel excluded.
With subtle linguistic usage differences like this, vast misunderstandings occur. Your intrinsic identity is agender, yes? And the one given to you by society based on genitalia (extrinsically) is woman and you accept that designation, right?
freja
I wrote a long reply, but I deleted it. It was basically repeating what I said before. So I’ll safe youa nd me the trouble.
Josh
You get white man condescending to women over issues of their gender down to a T. Congratulations!
Yep, everybody else failed to learn true wisdom from you. REally, do you even read what you write? If people disagree with you it must be because they’re wrong, even if they’re writing about their own fucking lives of which you have no clue.
Do you really not read what you write?
freja @ 184:
Fuck if I know. Sorry, I don’t remember, and I just got back from town and have a rat situation. I assume I got it wrong, so I was wrong Freja, and I apologize. I’ll be more careful with my dodgy memory, so I don’t hurt anyone in the future, and I’m certainly very sorry for hurting and offending you.
Josh:
I just back from town, and from what I see is that Freja kept talking, people kept listening, talked back, and there was bridge-building and understanding taking place. What did not help was you entering, yelling “TERF, TERF, TERF!” Contrary to what you now believe and maintain, it’s quite possible to have extended discussions about gender, identity, and specific trans* issues, including people picking up beliefs which overlap into TERF territory. I see unreasonable, and I see uglier, I just don’t see it where you do. I think perhaps you should take a look at yourself, and those who think as you do, like I saw recently at Almost Diamonds. Lots of nasty there, lots of yelling, no talking at all.
This thread has been above and beyond derailed.
Caitie Cat, at #161 above,
Well, only one half of the OP was related to a petition against a well-known transphobe being given a paid speaking event at a University, and whether or not her peaches had been frozen, but topic drift happens. But this struck me too, and it is highly annoying that most venues do not moderate, or have the requisite knowledge of transgender topics to successfully moderate, or otherwise lack the time to keep a discussion on track. Thus there are always the people who act in bad faith lurking to gum up the works, which can be evidenced by a number of things: derailling or shifting the centre of the discussion; moving goal posts; thread hogging; misunderstandings (wilful or not); quote mining; or outright untruths or lying. Those things are much easier to detect with a sound grasp of the issues; but without that background knowledge too much gets past the keeper.
I’m willing to have good faith discussions with people who display an honest interest in exchange of views; what I’m not willing to do is to argue from dawn to dusk with people who wear proof of their mala fides openly on their sleeve in an environment where they can get away with crap scot-free and waste everyone’s time. Let’s not forget; Greer was being called-out not for her repugnant views in support of FGM, or how rape victims bringing accusations should be named, or other questionable views, but for her well-documented hate speech against trans women over a period of decades. I’ll say it again so we’re clear: hate speech.
I’d like to dispose of one canard though, which entered the discussion fairly early on, which is that trans people don’t treat the genders of other people (cis, trans, or ipso gender) with respect or equal validity. I will say that there is plenty of what I term ‘lateral hostility’ between factions of the trans community that disrespects other genders – and there’s ample evidence available for that (e.g. some trans women mistrusting genderqueer folk), just as there is sometimes hostility between factions of the larger LGBTI community (e.g. some gay men mistrusting bisexual men). And some transfolk who are on the receiving end of misgendering abuse from the TERFs often retaliate in kind. So on the one hand, it would be ridiculous to say that all trans people respect other people’s gender identities – it’s not the slightest bit difficult to find angry transfolk saying horrible things about cis people and other trans people.
But. On the other hand, it is a rather more pernicious untruth that there are no trans people who respect other people’s genders as equally valid to their own. You may choose to believe that I am speaking in good faith or not when I address this thread to state for the record: I. Respect. Other. People’s. Genders. I do so, even in the case of the TERFs – or other trans women – or even, the trans women who are TERFs (yes, sadly it happens) – who come to harass me, misgender me, and disparage my appearance with transphobic insults. I do not give in to such abuse by descending to their level and misgendering them in return.
I respect other people’s genders, with pretty much only one reservation: that their gender is being honestly conveyed, and is not an obvious joke for laughs, like ‘my gender is Napoleon Bonaparte’, or ‘my gender is a helicopter’ – again a well-known meme in the repertoire of transphobic mockery that we have to suffer. Respecting someone’s gender is a completely different thing to showing disrespect for their opinions; I can disagree with someone without misgendering them or believing their gender is in some way invalid. Like most people, I have sometimes misgendered others in error, but I always attempt to apologise for my mistakes.
I would like to think I’m far from being unique and that most trans people do in fact respect other people’s genders – in spite of the obvious antagonism against us which raises its head virtually every time trans issues are discussed. But it is tiring to have to read a thread with a Gish gallop’s worth of misunderstandings and consider, which of these will I spend valuable time addressing, when I would rather be doing virtually anything else in preference.
I agree that cis people like me aren’t the best judges of what’s appropriate. Just a suggestion: I have this thing where I create a discussion thread, curated by a volunteer. If a trans man or woman wanted to manage such a thing and encourage discussion of trans issues, I’d be happy to set that up. It would also be the kind of thing where the curator has the power to shape the conversation, either by friendly suggestion or by asking me to go in and nuke inappropriate comments.
Email me if anyone is interested.
AAutumn @ 213:
Yes, it has. That said, I think Dogeared would like to carry on the conversation you were having, they posted about it here, where you can talk all you like.
IMPERATOR XANTHIOSA @ 214:
Thank you for that post. I know it tires you to have to write and explain the same things over and over, but I appreciate it, as someone who tends to remain silent in such discussions, because I know I’m a bit of a dumbfuck when it comes to trans issues, so I try to read and learn. You always write clearly and concisely, so thanks again.
@198, Vivec:
I realize this thread has mostly died down while I’ve been away, but I just wanted to say that I appreciate where you’re coming from, and I’m sorry that my earlier expressions of frustration made you feel hurt and unsafe. They were never intended to question anyone’s personal identity.
My issue is simply that when talking about issues relating to women in progressive spaces, I see a greater and greater demand for inclusion of trans people in everything. Making a statement about women which links womanhood to a physical, social, or political experience often gets people labeled TERFs. Activities for women based on the same are cancelled. The day-to-day language used to talk about the issue of women and gender is increasingly seen not just as inadequate to describe every woman’s experience, but as an inherent expression of transphobia (despite often originating among people who didn’t even know about the existence of trans people).
But at the same time, I see people who’re more gendered than me use the phrase “women” and make blanket statements about what it means in ways that I can’t relate to at all, while still insisting they’re being inclusive. Or talking about their own womanhood in a way that generalizes their own experience without any of the usual caveats people are expected to make if they talk about a non-gendered experience. And often making assumptions about the ease with which others are supposed to relate to a gendered experience and presuming any difficulty is due to malice.
Talking to people (cis and trans) who’ve always had a strong sense of being a specific gender, it’s clear that many of them have no concept of it not working like that for everyone. They often jump straight to the conclusion that people like that are objectively and scientifically “wrong” in a way the more gendered people are not, and need to have things explained to them (ironically often by cisgendered men), or that they’re malicious TERFs whose sole purpose in life is to persecute trans women.
freja @218:
Since trans women are women, they should be included in such spaces.
Freja, I believe that people can think they are working weal but in fact inflicting woe. Moreover, I believe that sometimes more information and thought can dramatically change a person’s behavior. To that end, I’m going to critique your positions – not your person.
1st:
If that is “simply” your issue, then you object to the inclusion of trans people. I am not saying that you’re a trans-exclusive radical feminist. Hell, I don’t know if you’re a radical feminist at all, though it seems you believe that you’re a feminist.
However, even though I’m not asserting anything in particular, I do ask, first:
“Why would it be wrong to name someone trans* exclusive if they want trans* exclusion and/or oppose efforts to create trans* inclusion?”
Wouldn’t that be a neutral description rather than an epithet? And I further ask, second:
“Are you as opposed to efforts at trans* inclusion as your clear statement above would have it? Or did you type something you didn’t mean?”
If you are opposed to trans* inclusion efforts to any degree, then I would like to ask you:
“Why shouldn’t you embrace wording that merely describes your position?”
If you don’t oppose trans* inclusion efforts to any degree, perhaps you might ask yourself why those who do shouldn’t embrace the phrase “trans* exclusive”. Anti-abortion activists prefer to be called “pro-life” but most have no particular problem being called “anti-abortion”. I don’t know of any people who oppose belief in god/s (rather than just happening not to believe in god/s) who protest being labeled “anti-theist”. Why is it important to at least a significant portion of those who oppose trans* inclusion in movements for progressive social change to resist being described as opposing trans* inclusion in movements for progressive social change?
And in the 1970s the day-to-day language used to talk about the very real labor issues of working class men was increasingly seen not just as inadequate to describe every worker’s experience, but as an inherent expression of sexism.
Let’s try an experiment, a hypothetical union rep, who happens to be a man, says:
…does nothing in what I just wrote – which clearly parallels what you wrote – feel less-than-convincing to you?
What does feel convincing and what doesn’t? Would you agree with the union rep’s statement? Where would you differ? If you disagree with anything in the union rep’s statement, how do you justify making parallel statements with feminists taking the place of labor activists and trans* folk taking the place of women?
And yet, the most extreme cis people think strong gender boundaries are important enough to kill for.
Even given your frame that the most extreme trans* folk are likewise interested in strong gender boundaries (though different drawn gender boundaries), trans people think strong gender boundaries are important enough to say, “Holey toast! Please don’t kill us!” for 50 years before moving on to, “Holey toast! Please don’t give this woman who says things that, in our analysis, contributes to the attitudes that justify our murders.”
I agree that it’s a much bolder position than merely, “Please don’t kill us.” Nonetheless, it’s a much less extreme position than actually fucking killing people.
Is your empathy sufficient to understand that since the people here reading you don’t know how you split your time and can’t see your priorities in anything other than the words you write right here, right now, it’s going to appear (rightly or wrongly) that you’re prioritizing telling people who fear murder that their solely-linguistic activism uses bad tactics over telling the people who assault and murder that their violent “activism” might just be bad tactics?
Now, I give you credit for being far more than your comments here. I assume you’re doing lots of good things in lots of places that need more good things. I wouldn’t even bring up the priorities argument at all.
But I didn’t bring it up. That’s on you: your first contribution was a critique of people for not spending more time on X than Y. If you want to argue priorities and tactics, and you don’t link to anything else you’ve done, and all your criticism is one sided, and you don’t give anyone here any credit for being more than their comments in this thread…
…is it any wonder that people are going to assume that it’s quite fair to return the favor by judging your priorities and tactics from this thread alone, and then judging you as a person based on those judgements of your priorities and tactics? Do you really not have the empathy to see how the words you’ve written might lead to that result?
I think you’ve made some bad choices in this thread. My sympathy is with you as it is with any and all human beings, but I don’t know you. I really only have this thread. And your arguments are not only poor, not only reminiscent of other arguments we rightfully recognize as bullshit justifications for oppression, but also jeopardizing the sympathy others might have for harsh critiques of you and your words when those critiques seem to outside observes to be based on the same criteria you deemed fair when you entered this thread.
I’m happy this thread arrived at a calmer, more fruitful location than the destination it appeared to head toward. I don’t wish anyone to vilify anyone, you included. But I think engaging in these questions won’t do that. I think engaging with these questions has quite a large capacity to create positive discussion… so I hope you’re still checking in on this thread and I hope you do take these questions seriously.