Goldsmiths University Diversity officer facing sack

[Treacle Toes]

it the reason men are excluded from women only spaces because men are 'a danger'?

Sometimes yes. A danger in the sense that women may feel unsafe and restricted in sharing/being if men are around.

 

[Thora]

It comes from the individual making that judgement IME. You and I are both women yet I am sure we could find something we disagree on in terms of what it means to be a woman and how we should define it.

Yes, sure, if someone believes that you need to be born a woman n the biological sense to be defined as such the chances are they would feel uncomfortable and maybe unsafe allowing trans women to share women only spaces. That feeling of being 'unsafe' is fear/phobia.

Don't women have good reasons to feel uncomfortable or unsafe in some situations around people who are born and socialised as male?

 

[cesare]

Lots of children do not behave in a way that matches stereotypical expectations of their gender. When does it become a disorder?

The disorder is of sex development not gender development.

 

[co-op]

I can only speak for me of course but as I read it the 'phobic' part is in the fear that allowing trans women into women's spaces makes them unsafe. It suggests that they are not seen or believed to be women and that they are a danger.

Or maybe it's not to do with safety at all but just the common problem of people socialised as men hogging the conversation space when it's meant to be a place for women to discuss issues that only arise if you were born with female sexual organs?

 

[Thora]

The disorder is of sex development not gender development.

OK, so you're talking about something different here though - not transphobia?

 

[tufty79]

Or maybe it's not to do with safety at all but just the common problem of people socialised as men hogging the conversation space when it's meant to be a place for women to discuss issues that only arise if you were born with female sexual organs?

I don't think that really applies in terms of refuges/rape crisis environments

 

[Nancy_Winks]

By women-only spaces are we talking about bogs, changing rooms and hospital wards? Cos I struggle to think of any others.

Personally I wouldn't have a problem. But I can imagine if I was ill on a hospital ward I might get jumpy sleeping in the same bay as a man (only cos I basically cannot sleep around strange men). If the trans woman was clearly, well, a woman, then it's no bother is it.

Toilets and changing rooms all have cubicles so I don't see the issue there.

 

[Citizen66]

is the reason men are excluded from women only spaces because men are 'a danger'?

Exactly. This is why I loathe this stuff. You can try your hardest, being an egalitarian, and it isn't enough. You're guilty by genetic accident. I know the point they're trying to make, but don't they want to organise with white cis men who aren't dickheads? Turns out they do. But on bizarre terms.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Don't women have good reasons to feel uncomfortable or unsafe in some situations around people who are born and socialised as male?

Sometimes yes. However, it's not my experience that everything men are socialised to be is a 'danger' in that sense to women. Likewise as I am not a trans woman it feels pretty presumptious of me to decide how they dealt with those gender norms being imposed on them.

Pretty much how I feel when someone else tells me what it's like to be a woman/how I should feel about it or what it's like to me Mixed and what that means.

 

[Citizen66]

Don't women have good reasons to feel uncomfortable or unsafe in some situations around people who are born and socialised as male?

Because all men are the same?

 

[Treacle Toes]

Exactly. This is why I loathe this stuff. You can try your hardest, being an egalitarian, and it isn't enough. You're guilty by genetic accident. I know the point they're trying to make, but don't they want to organise with white cis men who aren't dickheads? Turns out they do. But on bizarre terms.

I wasn't trying to be offensive I was using danger as an opposite to safe and definately not saying all men are unsafe.

 

[Thora]

Because all men are the same?

Yes exactly, all men are the same and they are all just waiting for an opportunity to attack women.

 

[cesare]

OK, so you're talking about something different here though - not transphobia?

No, I'm talking about what happens when someone's biological sex doesn't align with their gender and how transphobia may manifest when the person with mismatching biological sex and gender tries to do something about it.

 

[Thora]

By women-only spaces are we talking about bogs, changing rooms and hospital wards? Cos I struggle to think of any others.

Personally I wouldn't have a problem. But I can imagine if I was ill on a hospital ward I might get jumpy sleeping in the same bay as a man (only cos I basically cannot sleep around strange men). If the trans woman was clearly, well, a woman, then it's no bother is it.

Toilets and changing rooms all have cubicles so I don't see the issue there.

Yes, a hospital ward is somewhere I would feel uncomfortable as you are particularly vulnerable. We were also talking about refuges and women-only rape or DV support groups.

 

[Citizen66]

Yes exactly, all men are the same and they are all just waiting for an opportunity to attack women.

This is what I mean by it apes what it opposes. Women just marry for money after all.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Or maybe it's not to do with safety at all but just the common problem of people socialised as men hogging the conversation space when it's meant to be a place for women to discuss issues that only arise if you were born with female sexual organs?

Is that what trans women do then? Please tell me of your experiences because I don't automatically assume that's what happens.

 

[killer b]

Exactly. This is why I loathe this stuff. You can try your hardest, being an egalitarian, and it isn't enough. You're guilty by genetic accident. I know the point they're trying to make, but don't they want to organise with white cis men who aren't dickheads? Turns out they do. But on bizarre terms.

I've no problem with women only spaces tbh. I was just making the point that such restrictions are not necessarily down to looming danger from men, but for many other reasons less ominous (and less likely to get people's backs up).

 

[Thora]

Is that what trans women do then? Please tell me of your experiences because I don't automatically assume that's what happens.

Not all men do it either, but men and women are socialised differently from birth and that does result in different patterns of behaviour. Is it possible to just step out of your socialisation?

 

[Treacle Toes]

I've no problem with women only spaces tbh. I was just making the point that such restrictions are not necessarily down to looming danger from men, but for many other reasons less ominous (and less likely to get people's backs up).

I don't doubt this. I was just trying to give an example/explanation as as I said upthread not trying to be offensive.

What other reasons do you think?

 

[spanglechick]

I might have been the first to mention transphobia (and certainly I wasn't trying to shut down debate - just that I was upset by what I'd read, didn't have much time, but was keen to post something as a pro-inclusion cis-woman, since until then the only pro-inclusion voices had been male).

The things that seemed transphobic to me were the references to people "deciding" to be a woman - made by a few different posters; the repeated use of "born woman" after the reasons for that language being potentially loaded having been explained; and the idea that trans-women should be denied equal access to crisis services as cis-women, since it seems discriminatory, and I can't see any logically consistent argument for it - though obviously, I'm open to persuasion.

The use of "cis" by the way, interests me quite a lot. It's a really neutral, unloaded latin prefix, so i'm not sure why there's a distaste for it. I wonder if it's actually a rebellion against having to add anything at all to cis-gendered people's lifelong experience of being able to call ourselves simply "men" or "women". We, as people with structural privilege are wont to do, like things the way they were - they were easy for us, and caused us (cis people) no harm.

 

[Thora]

I don't find it neutral. How is cis neutral but born isn't?

 

[Treacle Toes]

Not all men do it either, but men and women are socialised differently from birth and that does result in different patterns of behaviour. Is it possible to just step out of your socialisation?

I think so yes. Definately once you have matured enough to understand what socialisation is and how we internalise it/act out on it. I often do things that I wasn't socialised to do but wanted to anyway. Some of those things were frowned upon and described as unfeminine/unladylike etc.

 

[Citizen66]

I've no problem with women only spaces tbh. I was just making the point that such restrictions are not necessarily down to looming danger from men, but for many other reasons less ominous (and less likely to get people's backs up).

I don't have a problem with women only spaces (in fact I love them as they tend to dragnet more people into activism). But you'd have a problem with being labelled a racist - and therefore excluded from an anti racist group - because you're white, I assume?

 

[Treacle Toes]

I don't find it neutral. How is cis neutral but born isn't?

They are both nuetral descriptors until they are used in a way that assumes power.

 

[Thora]

I don't have a problem with women only spaces (in fact I love them as they tend to dragnet more people into activism). But you'd have a problem with being labelled a racist - and therefore excluded from an anti racist group - because you're white, I assume?

I wouldn't have a problem with being excluded from a black women's group on the basis that I'm not a black woman.

 

[Thora]

They are both nuetral descriptors until they are used in a way that assumes power.

Yes, I dislike cis as it seems to be an expression of the power to redefine what a woman is.

 

[killer b]

She certainly does not do herself any favours

here is 'cis' used in a non-neutral way. I think for a lot of people on here, this kind of context is the only time they've heard or seen it used.

 

[ViolentPanda]

If we take this out of the realm of principle or theory and discuss it as simple day to day experience, I'd ask these questions: if trans women are included in a women only space, what harm is done? What are the non-trans women stopped from doing? What solidarity is breached?

If we're discussing it as day-to-day experience, then likely no solidarity is breached, nor harm done.

Unfortunately, the realm of theory is inescapable, if only because it's in the interests of some to always abstract the day-to-day into "what if?". Our "trans-exclusionary feminists" will always theorise about how a woman might react to another woman who happens to be trans, occupying the same "safe space" as her, and from the foundations of such "what ifs" they've built an entire bloc of ideology attempting to (spuriously, in my opinion) define womanhood through exclusion. That some women, even the majority of women, might not give a rat's arse for "terf" perceived wisdom on the subject, doesn't matter worth a drip of piss to a "terf", because they're zealots, and like all zealots they're locked into a particular ideology that is "the one true ideology".

 

[cesare]

I wouldn't have a problem with being excluded from a black women's group on the basis that I'm not a black woman.

I wouldn't have a problem being excluded from a subset that I wasn't part of either. I'd have a problem being excluded from the entire set, though.

 

[spanglechick]

I don't find it neutral. How is cis neutral but born isn't?

I can only give you the same answer you were given earlier. Born can feel loaded with "I got here first so I'm more of a woman that you", or alternatively, some transpeople may feel that they were born into their trans gender, just that the physical body didn't align.

Generally, with language, I'm happy to take on board the views of the person experiencing the oppression. Transpeople have said that they can find "born" problematic and cis (as the technical opposite to trans) neutral.