[Sat 28th Oct 2017] London Anarchist Bookfair (London)

[Fozzie Bear]

The gender is the oppression.

In that people/society extrapolate from the biological aspects to create the social construct which is the gender?

 

[FabricLiveBaby!]

I

There isn't a single unified experience of being socialised as a woman though?

There will be all sorts of social variables like class, ethnicity, geography etc?

Apart from being recognised as female/assigned female and treated as such (ie discrimination).

"There's no universal experience" is the sort of thing you could say about anything and serves to pull movements apart.

"There isn't a single unified experience of being a worker either. There are all so many different variables depending on geography, ethnicity, occupation, class (even business owners say they work)."

The fact there's no universal experience of how you are discriminated against doesn't negate the discrimination.

OK yes, absolutely.

And additionally women are discriminated against and oppressed because of their gender? (Some more than others).

Not exactly. Women are discriminated against and oppressed because of their recognised/assigned sex by the social rules and rituals decided upon by society (gender- feminie and masculine). Those rules and rituals aren't innate. They are imposed. Sometimes subtlely, sometimes coercively sometimes violently.

Gender is a system. As a woman you "have" a gender in the same way you "have" a class. It's not like you can choose it. Or aspire your way out of it. Once you are recognised as female your place in society is known and you are fucked (and sometimes literally).

 

[bimble]

Yes, that's the very premise of the challenge to gender as a social construct. We are told how we can/can't be depending on our biology. So the notion of 'feeling like a woman' is, to me, really odd, because we all learn how to be women and men according to the gender imposed upon us. Not sure if that makes sense.

That's the nub of it for me, that I just can't get at what people mean when they say they feel like a woman, or were assigned the wrong gender. I'm told that it's not about a bunch of accumulated ideas around femininity, ideas that far as I can tell feminists have been fighting to get free of being defined by for generations, but I'm clueless as to what it is about. It's really hard to talk about this stuff but I think that's what 'gender critical' means, rejecting the whole idea of there being these essential attributes that make a person's 'soul' (for want of a better word) female or male.

 

[FabricLiveBaby!]

In that people/society extrapolate from the biological aspects to create the social construct which is the gender?

Some of it is and some of it isn't. The reproductive value of females is what is sought after (which is why historically old and infertile women are deemed less valuable as people). The rest of it (the ideas of worth and capability) is the gender. So in our culture it's the costumes, notions of pink and blue, acceptable jobs and so forth. Note the gender isn't innate. And it isn't "expressed by us". To say that gender is somehow innate to women and that it's "performative" or "expressed" is actually part of the problem and serves to reinforce our submissive status. The notion that women feel a gender is a sexist one.

Rather we have to confirm to gender to because conforming is often easier than fighting.

I hope I'm making sense. I am on my phone. So sorry for typos.

 

[Treacle Toes]

I've not personally been in situations where I or other women have been closed down, but have read lots of comments from trans activisists (one of whom I worked with) which argue that talking about women's biology is trans-exclusionary. You really couldn't make it up.
.

So you haven't experienced it but know of some trans activists that think that way?

You were very emphatic in this post though, as if it is literally happening everywhere!

Women/feminists have supported trans rights going way back into the 70's. There wasn't hostility until trans women started to demand access to our most private places, blaming us for the all the violence they endured (like it wasn't fucking raging, vile men attacking them), and reaching the point where it is now anathema to talk about our cunts, tits, periods (oh, and don't complain about period pain, else you'll be told you're ungrateful and they would give anything to experience periods), breast-feeding, giving birth, all in case we might hurt their feelings. So no, it didn't start with feminists as you assert.

Also, on the point of feminists having been supportive going back to the 70's and there not having been hostility until x, y, z...that's another blanket statement which isn't true for all isn't it?

I understand the fears some people have, it just isn't at all helpful to post this stuff up like you've been there, seen it, got the t-shirt and know it's like that for all.

It clearly isn't and it is just as polarising as trans activists being dogmatic in the way you have experienced SOME as being.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I


Apart from being recognised as female/assigned female and treated as such (ie discrimination).

"There's no universal experience" is the sort of thing you could say about anything and serves to pull movements apart.

"There isn't a single unified experience of being a worker either. There are all so many different variables depending on geography, ethnicity, occupation, class (even business owners say they work)."

The fact there's no universal experience of how you are discriminated against doesn't negate the discrimination.



Not exactly. Women are discriminated against and oppressed because of their recognised/assigned sex by the social rules and rituals decided upon by society (gender- feminie and masculine). Those rules and rituals aren't innate. They are imposed. Sometimes subtlely, sometimes coercively sometimes violently.

Gender is a system. As a woman you "have" a gender in the same way you "have" a class. It's not like you can choose it. Or aspire your way out of it. Once you are recognised as female your place in society is known and you are fucked (and sometimes literally).

thanks for this and to weepiper too.

(I think that it is difficult to have these conversations in the current climate and we are probably all being a bit guarded? I certainly am. Sorry if any of this comes across as weird.)

"There's no universal experience" isn't really where I am coming from. But yes there isn't a single unified experience of being a worker - and yet, working class people share common interests.

I think where I am going with this is that trans women and women who are socialised as women from birth can and do have some shared interests.

What I think is frustrating about the current arguments is that the focus is purely on the areas where their interests are perceived as being opposed.

 

[smokedout]

Women/feminists have supported trans rights going way back into the 70's. There wasn't hostility until trans women started to demand access to our most private places, blaming us for the all the violence they endured (like it wasn't fucking raging, vile men attacking them), and reaching the point where it is now anathema to talk about our cunts, tits, periods (oh, and don't complain about period pain, else you'll be told you're ungrateful and they would give anything to experience periods), breast-feeding, giving birth, all in case we might hurt their feelings. So no, it didn't start with feminists as you assert.

Since you probably haven't bothered to read the link as your mind is made up

At this time, within the Collective, I was planning on converting the living room of the house next door to be a school so that we could teach women to record, so that there would be a lot of women with engineering skills. In the meantime, we’re getting hate mail about me. After a while the hate mail got so vicious that Sandy, who worked in the mail room, made a decision to not pass that mail along to me. This was vile stuff. A lot of it included death threats. They would let me know about the death threats after a while. The death threats were directed at me, but there were violent consequences proposed for the Collective if they didn’t get rid of me.

The more hate mail that arrived, the more we could perceive that there was organizing going on, outside of the Collective, that had to do with transphobia and with isolating trans people wherever they popped up. I was not alone.

This pattern escalated. We were organizing what was for us, a major tour. We wanted to tour the country and provide women’s music for women in major cities along our route. It was the first time anything like that had been attempted. We were very intent on it and it was extremely energy-absorbing. It took all our energy to get it going. We had an entire network of lesbian separatist producers, people who could organize local logistical support, people who could advertise tickets and handle the selling and we wanted it to be completely done by women.

Anyway, we had organized this tour and we had gotten a letter telling us that when we got to Seattle that there was a separatist paramilitary group called the Gorgons. The Gorgons was a group of women who wore cammo gear, shaved their heads and carried live weapons. We were told that when we got to town, they were going to kill me.

We did, in fact, go to Seattle, but we went as probably the only women’s music tour that was ever done with serious muscle security. They were very alert for weapons and, in fact, Gorgons did come and they did have guns taken away from them.

I was pants-wetting scared at that event. I was terrified. During a break between a musical number someone shouted out “GORGONS!” and I made it from my seat at the console to under the table the console was on at something like superluminal speed. I stayed under there until it was clear that I wasn’t about to be shot… Not that it would have done me any good to be under there.

Or from a cis-gendered radical feminist who was active at this time

Robin Tyler: Yes, Harrison & Tyler were performers and we defended Beth Eliot. Robin Morgan came up with this horrible speech and when Beth went on stage to play her guitar and sing, [TERFs] started threatening her. Patty [Harrison] and I jumped on stage and we got hit, because they came onto the stage to physically beat her.

Williams: Oh my god!

“I charge [Beth Elliott] as an opportunist, an infiltrator, and a destroyer—with the mentality of a rapist. And you women at this Conference know who he is. Now. You can let him into your workshops—or you can deal with him.” – Excerpt from Robin Morgan’s speech, prior to the TERF violence

These were not intimate women's spaces by the way. They were trans-inclusive musical events.

 

[bimble]

Opinion | What Makes a Woman?
Just putting this article here because it expresses far better than I could basically where I think the fault lines are that will have to somehow be dealt with if there's any hope of people not just shouting at eachother in hope of making the other 'side' go away.

 

[smokedout]

But, imo, they're not women as in female-born women. They're trans-women. And yes, trans-women, as I said earlier in the thread, have raped and assaulted girls and women in safe spaces, mainly from what I can gather, in the US.

Can you provide some evidence of this please.

 

[The39thStep]

What ever happened to the days when the anarchists were all about overthrowing the state?

 

[TopCat]

What’s going on there?

Intersectionalists shutting down an anarchist conference because they had a beef with a speaker.
A really irritating tactic. It causes many to just give up in despair.

I ask, who benefits?

 

[Pickman's model]

Intersectionalists shutting down an anarchist conference because they had a beef with a speaker.
A really irritating tactic. It causes many to just give up in despair.

I ask, who benefits?

 

[smokedout]

This. A woman born without a womb is still going to grow up experiencing the sex based oppression that comes with being assigned 'female'.

Now we're in an age where some people are gender transitioning in childhood then wouldn't this also largely apply to someone has been seen as female for almost their whole lives?

 

[crossthebreeze]

thanks for this and to weepiper too.

(I think that it is difficult to have these conversations in the current climate and we are probably all being a bit guarded? I certainly am. Sorry if any of this comes across as weird.)

"There's no universal experience" isn't really where I am coming from. But yes there isn't a single unified experience of being a worker - and yet, working class people share common interests.

I think where I am going with this is that trans women and women who are socialised as women from birth can and do have some shared interests.

What I think is frustrating about the current arguments is that the focus is purely on the areas where their interests are perceived as being opposed.

What i've found really depressing about this whole thing was that from.my personal experience, while the wider feminist movement has been polarised on certain issues for a much longer time, i felt until the last 2-3 years there was a coexistence of views and real attempts to understand each other within the more feminist parts of the anarchist movement.

So on the sex work/porn issue, various feminist groups i was part of dissolved in acrimonious disputes with pro and anti factions picketing or banning each other, whereas at the anarchist bookfair i could visit an anti-porn feminist stall, a sex workers union stall, and a stall organising sending porn to prisoners - all sides would have robust arguements with each other but wouldn't try to deny each other a place there. P

At the anarcha feminist events i went to (open to all women and all trans people), until recently, i felt there was a real effort to tease out the similarities and differences in our experiences as cis women, trans women, trans men, non binary people and find common cause without preventing important discussions. In the last couple of years i've found that polarisation and acrimony have been really increasing though.

I'm also not 100% sure how relevant violence that happened in the crazier end of the US lesbian separatist movement in the 1970s is to whats happening within the UK anarcha/socialist feminist movement now. I think thats part of the polarising process - any woman who queries certain trans activist demands is influenced by/just as bad as the most transphobic feminist, and any trans women who speaks up is assumed to be as bad as the most angry transactivists on the internet, even if both have a shared belief in anarchism and experience in the class struggle.

 

[shygirl]

I

Not exactly. Women are discriminated against and oppressed because of their recognised/assigned sex by the social rules and rituals decided upon by society (gender- feminie and masculine). Those rules and rituals aren't innate. They are imposed. Sometimes subtlely, sometimes coercively sometimes violently.

Gender is a system. As a woman you "have" a gender in the same way you "have" a class. It's not like you can choose it. Or aspire your way out of it. Once you are recognised as female your place in society is known and you are fucked (and sometimes literally).

Some of it is and some of it isn't. The reproductive value of females is what is sought after (which is why historically old and infertile women are deemed less valuable as people). The rest of it (the ideas of worth and capability) is the gender. So in our culture it's the costumes, notions of pink and blue, acceptable jobs and so forth. Note the gender isn't innate. And it isn't "expressed by us". To say that gender is somehow innate to women and that it's "performative" or "expressed" is actually part of the problem and serves to reinforce our submissive status. The notion that women feel a gender is a sexist one.

Rather we have to confirm to gender to because conforming is often easier than fighting.

I hope I'm making sense. I am on my phone. So sorry for typos.

These 2 posts by FabricLiveBaby! - far better than I can express.

 

[bimble]

I really like this point made in the article linked above:

She says that as a result of the long fight of feminists against strict binary gender codes, "thousands of women once confined to jobs as secretaries, beauticians or flight attendants now work as welders, mechanics and pilots. [..] In fact, it’s hard to believe that this hard-won loosening of gender constraints for women isn’t at least a partial explanation for why three times as many gender reassignment surgeries are performed on men. Men are, comparatively speaking, more bound, even strangled, by gender stereotyping."

I like that, think its an interesting observation.

 

[smokedout]

I'm also not 100% sure how relevant violence that happened in the crazier end of the US lesbian separatist movement in the 1970s is to whats happening within the UK anarcha/socialist feminist movement now. I think thats part of the polarising process - any woman who queries certain trans activist demands is influenced by/just as bad as the most transphobic feminist, and any trans women who speaks up is assumed to be as bad as the most angry transactivists on the internet, even if both have a shared belief in anarchism and experience in the class struggle.

I think that's a fair and reasonable point but I also think people should be aware that there is a history to this, and that many of those people are still active against trans people and responsible for a lot of the myths and scare mongering that exists today - deliberately because their objection goes way beyond having a problem with transwomen entering women's spaces, they are opposed to transsexuals full stop. Their propanganda, seeping into more mainstream views, is one of the reasons I suspect that this dispute endures and I think their tactics and agendas should be exposed and those with more moderate views should actively seek to distance themselves from them. Just as those on the other side should actively seek to distance themselves from some of the virulent and sometimes mysoginist attacks by the most extreme trans-activists and their supporters - and just as a last point, it seems to me it is often non-trans supporters of trans rights, rather than transpeople themselves, who have been responsible for this.

 

[smokedout]

Some of it is and some of it isn't. The reproductive value of females is what is sought after (which is why historically old and infertile women are deemed less valuable as people). The rest of it (the ideas of worth and capability) is the gender. So in our culture it's the costumes, notions of pink and blue, acceptable jobs and so forth. Note the gender isn't innate. And it isn't "expressed by us". To say that gender is somehow innate to women and that it's "performative" or "expressed" is actually part of the problem and serves to reinforce our submissive status. The notion that women feel a gender is a sexist one.

Rather we have to confirm to gender to because conforming is often easier than fighting.

I hope I'm making sense. I am on my phone. So sorry for typos.

Wouldn't you accept that there is a possibility, given the testimony often offered by transpeople of feeling their body is wrong, that there might be some sort of 'sex' identity in the brain which has nothing to do with gendered behaviour but which might be mis-matched, or mis-wired in some people. We don't know that much about brains after all and the evidence suggests, although far from proves, that there might be some kind of biological basis for transgenderism.

 

[shygirl]

I think that's a fair and reasonable point but I also think people should be aware that there is a history to this, and that many of those people are still active against trans people and responsible for a lot of the myths and scare mongering that exists today - deliberately because their objection goes way beyond having a problem with transwomen entering women's spaces, they are opposed to transsexuals full stop. Their propanganda, seeping into more mainstream views, is one of the reasons I suspect that this dispute endures and I think their tactics and agendas should be exposed and those with more moderate views should actively seek to distance themselves from them. Just as those on the other side should actively seek to distance themselves from some of the virulent and sometimes mysoginist attacks by the most extreme trans-activists and their supporters - and just as a last point, it seems to me it is often non-trans supporters of trans rights, rather than transpeople themselves, who have been responsible for this.

If it's true that there are women who are simply anti-trans sexuals, then I would not side with them.

 

[smokedout]

If it's true that there are women who are simply anti-trans sexuals, then I would not side with them.

Yet on this thread you have propagated some of the myths they started.

 

[Treacle Toes]

If it's true that there are women who are simply anti-trans sexuals, then I would not side with them.

How are you already assessing that people are not? You have posted very emphatic statements about what the issues are but then admitted to never having experienced them save for one actual encounter yourself. You've been asked to back up some of your claims about the sexual predatory exploitation of safe spaces by transwomen but haven't.

It's not helpful.

 

[shygirl]

How are you already accessing that people are not? You have posted very emphatic statements about what the issues are but then admitted to never having experienced them save for one actual encounter yourself. You've been asked to back up some of your claims about the sexual predatory exploitation of safe spaces by transwomen but haven't.

It's not helpful.

I haven't seen you ask other posters if they've had direct experience, what's with the constant challenging?

 

[shygirl]

Most of the stuff I've read about sexually predatory exploitation of safe spaces by transwomen is from the US which i think I mentioned. I'm happy to provide those links.

 

[shygirl]

Do we all have to have direct experience of stuff in order to have a views on it?

 

[Treacle Toes]

I haven't seen you ask other posters if they've had direct experience, what's with the constant challenging?

I have, and/or others have asked so I don't need to repeat those asks. Also just so we are clear I am asking you because of what you have posted. I am asking for clarity to understand your position, not to pick on you.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Do we all have to have direct experience of stuff in order to have a views on it?

Has anyone said that you need to? You've been asked what your direct experiences are given your seeming strength of feeling and self-assuredness. I want to understand why I don't have the same level of 'fear' as you seemingly do.

 

[shygirl]

I think my position is pretty clear, not sure how much clearer I could have been really. I've not seen you challenge other posters for saying broadly similar things to what I've said. I didn't provide evidence of attacks on girls and women in safe/intimate spaces granted, but I don't think I've dithered on anything else.

 

[smokedout]

Most of the stuff I've read about sexually predatory exploitation of safe spaces by transwomen is from the US which i think I mentioned. I'm happy to provide those links.

go on then.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Most of the stuff I've read about sexually predatory exploitation of safe spaces by transwomen is from the US which i think I mentioned. I'm happy to provide those links.

Feel free. Another poster asked.

Can you provide some evidence of this please.

 

[Treacle Toes]

I think my position is pretty clear, not sure how much clearer I could have been really. I've not seen you challenge other posters for saying broadly similar things to what I've said. I didn't provide evidence of attacks on girls and women in safe/intimate spaces granted, but I don't think I've dithered on anything else.

Has anyone accused you of dithering?

As for challenging/targetting you as you seem to be implying now...I don't think I am. I've asked you honest questions because you have made some very emphatic statements and they didn't chime with my experience. Feel free not to answer if that doesn't suit you, obviously.