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Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?

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By defence I was talking about an unconscious process whereby we prevent awareness of uncomfortable, or even unbearable, feelings. So feelings of humiliation, feeling small, are defended against, or warded off, by making oneself all powerful, or clever, or entitled, or the one who has to win etc. These are unconscious processes, not consciously made to happen. And can take place at group level as well as the individual.

I wasn't talking about having to defend oneself against people who may behave in oppressive ways.

I understand and agree with the point you're making.

I guess I'm attempting to develop the idea of the unconscious processes following from humiliation into its social or political consequences in this and other areas, including when groups of people honestly but mistakenly believe they are defending themselves against people who aren't actually behaving in the oppressive ways which are attributed to them.
 
I understand and agree with the point you're making.

I guess I'm attempting to develop the idea of the unconscious processes following from humiliation into its social or political consequences in this and other areas, including when groups of people honestly but mistakenly believe they are defending themselves against people who aren't actually behaving in the oppressive ways which are attributed to them.

The anti-trans rad fems are behaving in an oppresive way though, at least as far as many trans people are concerned. They are campaigning to remove legal rights for transgendered people, to 'morally mandate' transsexuality out of existence. It's hard to see how that is not an attempt to oppess people, most of who are just trying to get on with their lives.

I think this is where smuch of the anger and confusion lies. Behind the ongoing tit for tat is a political ideology which is anti the existence of trans people. It is a current which is easy to trace back several decades, to when the very first trans-activists faced physical violence and death threats from some rad fems. Many of the individuals still involved in anti-trans politics are the same people. These same individuals campaigned against the 2004 gender recognition act with all the same threats of trans or pseudo-trans rapists invading women's spaces. Of course this never happened. They have campaigned against trans healthcare, with some success in the states, and have campaigned against legal protections for trans people whenever they have been proposed.

And they have easily identifiable tactics which have existed a long time - the main one being to associate trans women with male violence at any opportunity, no matter how tenuous. But also to target individuals, mock and misgender them and provoke reactions, to present the most extreme examples of something someone trans has said or done as 'trans ideology', to hold trans people to a higher standard than the rest of society in terms of gender analysis and presentation as well as in terms of social behaviour - the transcrime website lists trans people convicted of driving offences for fuck sake. Additionally to harness the power of the conservative and religious right in whipping up public condemnation of trans people and finally to overstate the power of trans activism, trans ideology, the trans conspiracy or trans people themselves - hence blaming a transwoman's tweet for Topshop's changing room policies.

None of these tactics are new. They have been used against marginalised people of all kinds forever. The difference is that this time they are being employed by people who are generally on the political left and are well ensconsed in the media, politics and academia and as such have a considerable power base. Trans people have no such power base. This is not a fight between equals from the trans perspective, but a self defensive battle against a group who have continually used legitimate concerns about the safety or women's spaces, just as they have used socially conservative disgust or religious intolerence, to bolster and pursue a much broader objective - an objective that would destroy the lives of most trans people.
 
I think I've got a new term. Peniphobia. Is that a thing? Guess it is now. Or phallophobia maybe. Which is probably a thing already.

Lesbians aren’t frightened of penis, we’re not phobic of it. Fuck off.

Phobia doesn't always mean fear, especially as a suffix. ___-phobia can just as easily signify disgust. It's use is closer to averse than specifically afraid.

What’s wrong with the word lesbian? It means same sex attracted. Simple. No need for some silly term related to willies, it’s not all about cock.

I never said it was :confused:

I'm trying to nail down transphobia. I don't care at all about lesbians, if that helps.
I think I've got a new term. Peniphobia. Is that a thing? Guess it is now. Or phallophobia maybe. Which is probably a thing already.

Lesbians aren’t frightened of penis, we’re not phobic of it. Fuck off.

Phobia doesn't always mean fear, especially as a suffix. ___-phobia can just as easily signify disgust. It's use is closer to averse than specifically afraid.

What’s wrong with the word lesbian? It means same sex attracted. Simple. No need for some silly term related to willies, it’s not all about cock.

I never said it was :confused:

I'm trying to nail down transphobia. I don't care at all about lesbians, if that helps.

This exchange has been really thought provoking for me and has stayed we me all weekend.

Firstly, mojo pixy I was really struck that in trying to nail down transphobia you opted to centre it around being penisphobic...

Now I can see how that might make sense when dealing with situations where Cis het men use the argument of 'trap' to justify abuse or violence against transwomen specifically, and can also see why that might be an extension of their preexisting homophobia but I am interested in how you saw it as something lesbians have or do... Or have I misread you here, were you just musing and applying that 'phallusaphobia' to both men and women? :confused:

If so...why did this not include 'vaginaphobia' and the very real possibility that transmen could be rejected by prospective lovers because they have not fully transitioned and still have female genitalia? :hmm:

If lesbians not wanting to have sex with transwomen with penises makes them transphobic does that mean I am lesbianphobic/vaginaphobic because I identify as a cis het female and so far prefer cis het men with a penis as partners?

Do I as a cis het female also become a bigot because I am not looking for or considering a partner that is a transman with a vagina?


For sure there is a section of the rad fem community that is lesbian and trans-exclusionary but it isn't fair, nor realistic to characterise all concerns about that kind of labelling as transphobic, or just preferring lesbian women with vaginas as hard line penis/man hating.

I think applying the same test to yourself and your own sexual choices/interests/preferences is a good exercise tbh.
 
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The anti-trans rad fems are behaving in an oppresive way though, at least as far as many trans people are concerned. They are campaigning to remove legal rights for transgendered people, to 'morally mandate' transsexuality out of existence. It's hard to see how that is not an attempt to oppess people, most of who are just trying to get on with their lives.

No, that's not true. Radfems don't want any change to existing legislation. It's the proposed changes to the GRA that is causing upset, nothing else.
 
The anti-trans rad fems are behaving in an oppresive way though, at least as far as many trans people are concerned. They are campaigning to remove legal rights for transgendered people, to 'morally mandate' transsexuality out of existence. It's hard to see how that is not an attempt to oppess people, most of who are just trying to get on with their lives.

I think this is where smuch of the anger and confusion lies. Behind the ongoing tit for tat is a political ideology which is anti the existence of trans people. It is a current which is easy to trace back several decades, to when the very first trans-activists faced physical violence and death threats from some rad fems. Many of the individuals still involved in anti-trans politics are the same people. These same individuals campaigned against the 2004 gender recognition act with all the same threats of trans or pseudo-trans rapists invading women's spaces. Of course this never happened. They have campaigned against trans healthcare, with some success in the states, and have campaigned against legal protections for trans people whenever they have been proposed.

And they have easily identifiable tactics which have existed a long time - the main one being to associate trans women with male violence at any opportunity, no matter how tenuous. But also to target individuals, mock and misgender them and provoke reactions, to present the most extreme examples of something someone trans has said or done as 'trans ideology', to hold trans people to a higher standard than the rest of society in terms of gender analysis and presentation as well as in terms of social behaviour - the transcrime website lists trans people convicted of driving offences for fuck sake. Additionally to harness the power of the conservative and religious right in whipping up public condemnation of trans people and finally to overstate the power of trans activism, trans ideology, the trans conspiracy or trans people themselves - hence blaming a transwoman's tweet for Topshop's changing room policies.

None of these tactics are new. They have been used against marginalised people of all kinds forever. The difference is that this time they are being employed by people who are generally on the political left and are well ensconsed in the media, politics and academia and as such have a considerable power base. Trans people have no such power base. This is not a fight between equals from the trans perspective, but a self defensive battle against a group who have continually used legitimate concerns about the safety or women's spaces, just as they have used socially conservative disgust or religious intolerence, to bolster and pursue a much broader objective - an objective that would destroy the lives of most trans people.

You appear to be responding to my post on the basis that you think I'm defending some or all of the beliefs or actions of "anti-trans rad fems", which I'm not.

But my point is that many who are not "anti-trans rad fems" are being tarred with that brush, just as many transpeople who are not violent or tweeting rape threats etc are being tarred with that brush. There appears to be such an atmosphere of hatred and fear around this issue, fostered to some extent by extremists on both sides, that no genuine dialogue is actually possible.

And a significant part of that, IMO, is the adoption of identiarian approachs, on both sides, which appear to elevate (genuine) feelings of fear, humiliation, etc to the status of political principle.
 
No, that's not true. Radfems don't want any change to existing legislation. It's the proposed changes to the GRA that is causing upset, nothing else.



DPkA0NfW0AAGT0d.jpg


That's not the end goal of Sheila Jeffries, Venice Allan and Julie Long, who are running the current campaign.
 
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This exchange has been really thought provoking for me and has stayed we me all weekend.

Firstly, mojo pixy I was really struck that in trying to nail down transphobia you opted to centre it around being penisphobic...

Now I can see how that might make sense when dealing with situations where Cis het men use the argument of 'trap' to justify abuse or violence against transwomen specifically, and can also see why that might be an extension of their preexisting homophobia but I am interested in how you saw it as something lesbians have or do... Or have I misread you here, were you just musing and applying that 'phallusaphobia' to both men and women? :confused:

If so...why did this not include 'vaginaphobia' and the very real possibility that transmen could be rejected by prospective lovers because they have not fully transitioned and still have female genitalia? :hmm:

If lesbians not wanting to have sex with transwomen with penises makes them transphobic does that mean I am lesbianphobic/vaginaphobic because I identify as a cis het female and so far prefer cis het men with a penis as partners?

Do I as a cis het female also become a bigot because I am not looking for or considering a partner that is a transman with a vagina?


For sure there is a section of the rad fem community that is lesbian and trans-exclusionary but it isn't fair, nor realistic to characterise all concerns about that kind of labelling as transphobic, or just preferring lesbian women with vaginas as hard line penis/man hating.

I think applying the same test to yourself and your own sexual choices/interests/preferences is a good exercise tbh.

There's a lot to think about here and I thank you for it. I will try to make a response when I have a real keyboard at my disposal.

I want to say right away though that I definitely have applied all these thoughts to myself over the years, as I've come to encounter trans people in various contexts, and I'm not just arguing off the top of my head.
 
There's a lot to think about here and I thank you for it. I will try to make a response when I have a real keyboard at my disposal.

I want to say right away though that I definitely have applied all these thoughts to myself over the years, as I've come to encounter trans people in various contexts, and I'm not just arguing off the top of my head.

Thank you too mojo pixy for receiving my post and thoughts in the way I intended them. As enquiries, reflections and requests for more clarity.

Respond in your own time and as you can. :)
 
You appear to be responding to my post on the basis that you think I'm defending some or all of the beliefs or actions of "anti-trans rad fems", which I'm not.

Not at all, just think it's worth pointing out that this is more than a tit for tat spat because this:
But my point is that many who are not "anti-trans rad fems" are being tarred with that brush, just as many transpeople who are not violent or tweeting rape threats etc are being tarred with that brush. There appears to be such an atmosphere of hatred and fear around this issue, fostered to some extent by extremists on both sides, that no genuine dialogue is actually possible.

There has rightly been calls for those on the trans side to reject and condemn he violent tweets etc, and many people have. I do. But I have not seen the same rejection of the ideological and political aims of some of the rad fems. What I have seen is a defence of them by those more moderates, or people sharing a platform with them, promoting their meetings or defending people handing out their leaflets.

And there is a power differential here. I'm not sure I'll explain this very well but bear with me. Most of the abuse on twitter has come from the mob, from randoms, trolls, kids, and individuals angered or upset by some of the anti-trans rhetoric, it has not come from prominent trans rights activists or campaigns. The other side however is organised, experienced and very savvy about what they can get away with saying - which will be the most hurtful provocative things they can say couched in less offensive language - men's right's activist, male sexual rights movement, rapist. These comments are designed to both smear and wound and are precision targeted to cause the most damage to transpeople both personally and within society. Yet they are all too often apologised for, or excused by moderates. I think the viciousness on the trans side has to be address, and those with more extreme views isolated and condemned. But this won't happen without movement on the other side as well, because how the fuck are transpeople supposed to have a reasonable conversation or debate with people who want them mandated out of existence.

And a significant part of that, IMO, is the adoption of identiarian approachs, on both sides, which appear to elevate (genuine) feelings of fear, humiliation, etc to the status of political principle.

I don't disagree with this, however I don't agree that concerns on both sides should be completely brushed away as simple identity politics, this is real people's lives, health, safety and happiness we are talking about in the here and now.
 


DPkA0NfW0AAGT0d.jpg


That's not the end goal of Sheila Jeffries, Venice Allan and Julie Long, who are running the current campaign.


No, that's not true. Radfems don't want any change to existing legislation. It's the proposed changes to the GRA that is causing upset, nothing else.

Clearly some do trashpony ... and tbh, whilst i think it's problematic that those ideas are being posited as fundamental to what it is to be a radical feminist, I also see a lot of seeming capitulation in terms of not talking about how damaging those ideas are..

Can one be a radfem and be trans inclusive? of course, yet there is very little nuance or discussion here about who the trans exclusionary rad feminists are as opposed to those who are not, apart from being called haidmaidens, abused folk and liberals.
 
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But aren’t you just doing what you accuse others of by finding the worst example and then applying it to a whole ‘ideology’?

Venice Allan was one of the main organisers of the event which led to the cancelled New Cross meeting and Hyde Park incident and is one of the organisers of the current speaking tour against the GRA. She is very much not some twitter random/troll/angry individual. Her, Jeffries, who has spoken on the tour, and Julie Long whose comments I've already posted and who was due to speak at the New Cross, along with other less high profile people, are the ones running this campaign. I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect they are using the proposed GRA amendments as a wedge strategy to foster a wider anti-trans politics.
 
Okay she does. That's one person. That's not my understanding of the majority view of what is called 'terf' thinking.

...and that's fair enough, she is one person and not the majority view...how are we characterising the majority view though and from whom are we to take these pointers?...also please read my edit as I thought it through a little more and I do wonder about the further implications for all of us as feminists.
 
WTF are you talking about? I've never met her, never spoken to her online, have nothing to do with her and am certainly not involved in any 'campaign' with her

Sorry that was a bit abrupt, I meant metaphorically. If people with more moderate views are sincere, if the desire for a debate is sincere, then why are Long, Allan and Jeffries leading the campaign against the GRA. Why are they not being robustly challnged or opposed by other feminists. What are transpeople supposed to think when it's these people on the platform time and time again? How is debate even possible whilst these individuals and those sharing their views dominate gender critical feminism? There isn't really anything trans-activists can do about that, other than what they are doing, protesting meetings, arguing on twitter etc, and this conflict will not be resolved whilst they remain the public voice of radical feminism.
 
How are we to even begin engaging with this sort of ridiculous crap though
DRR74EjWkAAEEqI.jpeg

I don't hate penises :confused: plenty of radfems I know are straight. And I don't recognise the picture of them encouraging the assault and murder of trans people either.
 
How are we to even begin engaging with this sort of ridiculous crap though
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I don't hate penises :confused: plenty of radfems I know are straight. And I don't recognise the picture of them encouraging the assault and murder of trans people either.

From a glance at his twitter feed that looks like some gamergate dickhead who is on that one occassion using transpeople to further his anti-feminist line. So no need to engage with it at all, he doesn't represent transpeople and isn't even trying to.
 
This exchange has been really thought provoking for me and has stayed we me all weekend.

Firstly, mojo pixy I was really struck that in trying to nail down transphobia you opted to centre it around being penisphobic...

Now I can see how that might make sense when dealing with situations where Cis het men use the argument of 'trap' to justify abuse or violence against transwomen specifically, and can also see why that might be an extension of their preexisting homophobia but I am interested in how you saw it as something lesbians have or do... Or have I misread you here, were you just musing and applying that 'phallusaphobia' to both men and women? :confused:

If so...why did this not include 'vaginaphobia' and the very real possibility that transmen could be rejected by prospective lovers because they have not fully transitioned and still have female genitalia? :hmm:

You're right, vaginiphobia .. or whatever it might be called .. should be said. A gay friend also happens to be fairly misogynistic and on the odd occasion when the vagina has come up (so to speak) in conversation, expresses what I wouldn't hesitate to call some fairly strong vaginiphobia. If he encountered a trans man I have no doubt he for one would be grossed out by the presence of a vagina.

Anyway, yes - it's pretty clear that there exists disgust / ''phobia'' around all kinds of genital configurations.

I think it's also worth reiterating what's already been stated, which is that a person cannot be reduced to their genitalia (though a completely different, cis-het female friend who is a massive (no pun intended) size queen and seems to bounce from one terrible relationship to another in her search for the biggest and best, may have another perspective on that...)

If lesbians not wanting to have sex with transwomen with penises makes them transphobic does that mean I am lesbianphobic/vaginaphobic because I identify as a cis het female and so far prefer cis het men with a penis as partners?

Do I as a cis het female also become a bigot because I am not looking for or considering a partner that is a transman with a vagina?

This is a really difficult point, and I'd like to address it anecdotally .. in part because I have no actual data to share anyway, but also to put what I'll go on to say about transphobia in some perspective.

My first sexual encounter with a trans woman was with someone called Jamie (not her real name even at the time as it turned out, but how she first introduced herself to me) who I met at Heaven in 1995 and who I spent a rather torrid couple of weeks with before losing touch completely, in the way of things back then. She did have a penis, and that didn't bother me at all (quite the opposite actually). Anyway, I never saw and have never seen Jamie as anything other than a woman - despite the penis she was every bit as feminine as any woman I've met, as contradictory as that may sound - and she exists in a nice part of my mind where good, positive, even vaguely loving sex-memories reside. But I feel most of the straight-cis men I know would not even consider a dalliance like that, and I'm certain most lesbians wouldn't consider it. Would this be transphobic as such, or would the phobia / distaste centre more specifically on the presence of a penis? I can't answer for other people, but I suspect the penis itself would be an issue over and above Jamie's dirty laugh and beautiful eyes and cute breasts and other alluring aspects.

On the other hand (and still anecdotally), I should mention someone I met more recently than that, though still quite a few years ago now. Her name was P* and she was a fully-transitioned trans woman. We met in a pub in Bristol (long before I actually moved to Bristol though) and things began with her drunkenly ranting at me about all the abuse she'd suffered and was still suffering. I listened, we talked and ended up laughing, and went to a couple of different pubs where we did certainly attract some weird and unwelcome attention. It was scary.

During the course of all this she mentioned her expensive new vagina (her exact words) and the thing is, at that point any fancying I felt for her just evaporated. It was really awkward, and to cut a long story short the night ended with me being yelled at and slapped for being transphobic. Essentially, the idea of a surgically-created vagina really freaked me out. I mean, I was drunk by that point, OK, but the idea of (to me) missing bits and a cosmetic job in their place just .. well I can't put it better, it freaked me out. I think it still does and I have to be honest, if I ever got into something with an attractive trans woman again I'd still rather she had the intact (male) bits if I were to get into a sex situation.

Maybe it has something to do with orgasms, wetness, clitoris, G-spot, I don't know. The person is a whole person - I get that. But for me, something is wrong. So, I believe this is a kind of transphobia, probably .. and though I am vaguely uncomfortable at having to admit that, I have to. It doesn't change how I ally myself with my trans- brothers / etc / sisters in their struggle for social acceptance. And it doesn't have anything to do with their image of themselves as being physically right, which is more important than what anyone else thinks anyway.

I would add that I've never had sex (or even a snog tbf) with a trans man, though over the years I have met a few guys who are trans. Again though, I instinctively feel that if sex happened with a trans man, I'd end up more interested in the vagina (that was natural) more than the penis (which wasn't) and I'm aware of how hurtful that would be. Hence it's not something I've ever sought out.

Again though, this has little to do with a whole person who needs love and acceptance, and I apologise if anything I've written here is hurtful or upsetting to any trans person who reads. It's an honest perspective, is all I can say, and I don't consider myself a transphobe.

I have to add a last point though, about this being all about sex. I think trying to take sex out of it completely is misguided, after all, we are talking about sex, gender, sexuality, genital preferences (on self and others) and sex behaviour. But something I remember P* talking about at some length is how men were happy to fuck her, but finding anyone to hold hands and snog openly with during a night on the town was way more difficult. I think this is the phobia in action too (she certainly did) and I also think it's a far more subtle and (dare I say) harmful expression of it.

So yeah, Too much information. But the main point is this: I do think more of us are more transphobic than we would really like to admit, even to ourselves. I certainly don't think everyone with transphobic feelings feels ashamed of them or even feels they should feel ashamed of them - though I do think some people with transphobic feelings would deny all that anyway, even to themselves. It's not transphobia, it's...

However, I think rather than shaming ourselves and each other over it we could all just do with a bit more honest self-reflection. There's nothing shameful IMO, in finding trans-ness weird and hard to deal with. There's nothing bad about feeling uncomfortable with people seriously challenging something we consider basic, settled and take for granted - in a way, it's all a part of getting older in a world that never stops evolving. But what we do with those feelings matters - whether we retreat into preconceptions and put up walls and attack, or if we try and engage positively with something that isn't going away any time soon.

Or maybe these are really the end-times and fire will shortly cleanse the earth of all wickedness and sin :thumbs:

*hits post*
fuck it.

/edited to add spoiler tags, when I remembered this is the politics forum not one of the restricted ones. I don't mind posting that stuff but I don't want it to come up on G**gle. And then again to edit P*'s name.
 
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Interesting post mojo pixy .

I wonder if this un-ease with trans, finding it weird and hard to deal with is one of the reasons why there's been a tendency in these discussions to wanting to pin things down logically, clear categories, the law, as though that would make the un-ease go away.
 
TW: TERFness

So, a person who's turned out to be TERFy that I follow on Twitter (and I remain following as I want to have insight into their thinking), RTs a link to a story about 'Child sex abuse reported to NSPCC rises by a third' and says:

And letting men say they're really 'girls' and getting rid of a children's right to privacy, safe spaces and boundaries is going to tackle this how?

Really? She actually thinks self-identification is going to cause more child abuse? Presumably she'd say that it's giving more access to girls, but it's always going to be mostly committed by people known to a child, and they can always get access to kids without having to pretend they're trans.
 
None of these tactics are new. They have been used against marginalised people of all kinds forever. The difference is that this time they are being employed by people who are generally on the political left and are well ensconsed in the media, politics and academia and as such have a considerable power base. Trans people have no such power base. This is not a fight between equals from the trans perspective, but a self defensive battle against a group who have continually used legitimate concerns about the safety or women's spaces, just as they have used socially conservative disgust or religious intolerence, to bolster and pursue a much broader objective - an objective that would destroy the lives of most trans people.

I'd say there are signs of a nascent trans power base. It is still relatively early days in terms of becoming formally embedded within existing power structures but what it lacks in this regard is made up for by momentum and allies using modern methods to have their voices heard.

I don't think that detracts from the point you were making, and I applaud your posts on this thread.
 
TW: TERFness

So, a person who's turned out to be TERFy that I follow on Twitter (and I remain following as I want to have insight into their thinking), RTs a link to a story about 'Child sex abuse reported to NSPCC rises by a third' and says:



Really? She actually thinks self-identification is going to cause more child abuse? Presumably she'd say that it's giving more access to girls, but it's always going to be mostly committed by people known to a child, and they can always get access to kids without having to pretend they're trans.
Hard not to make the comparison between this and the link that used to be made between homosexuality and paedophilia. I've been looking for any evidence from Argentina of any problems over the five years of its new law. Maybe others have some, but I can't find anything at all. Violence against trans women - plenty still, sadly. Violence by trans women - can't find anything at all.
 
It just doesn't make sense. If you wanted to 'pretend' to be a trans woman just to access women or children, you'd either have to go through the whole thing and all the shit that comes with it, including possible loss of job, status etc. Or else you'd have to just be pretending to be a trans woman in certain contexts, in which case you'd probably get found out PDQ.

Look I expect there have been cases somewhere where a trans woman has sexually abused others, but the problem is that person being an abuser, not that they were trans or enabled by being trans or by trans-friendly legislation.
 
If there had been cases in Argentina, various people would no doubt be shouting about them very loudly, as they do the one case in Canada that was brought up earlier. So I'm guessing there isn't anything.
 
Hard not to make the comparison between this and the link that used to be made between homosexuality and paedophilia. I've been looking for any evidence from Argentina of any problems over the five years of its new law. Maybe others have some, but I can't find anything at all. Violence against trans women - plenty still, sadly. Violence by trans women - can't find anything at all.
Indeed, much of the language used does mirror what was said about homosexuality, and that came from people on the left as well as the right. Perhaps what's different though is that there wasn't a highly visible theoretical position against homosexuality that grass roots bigots could use to bolster their prejudice. Some of the worst homophobia I experienced on the left in the 90s came from a couple of green anarchist types who had a thing about it being 'unnatural' and therefore non-green and probably caused by chemical pollution or something - and generally they were told to shut the fuck up because there was no evidence for their half baked theories. The fact that bigotry like you quoted is derived from academic theory makes it more powerful.
 
Indeed, much of the language used does mirror what was said about homosexuality, and that came from people on the left as well as the right. Perhaps what's different though is that there wasn't a highly visible theoretical position against homosexuality that grass roots bigots could use to bolster their prejudice. Some of the worst homophobia I experienced on the left in the 90s came from a couple of green anarchist types who had a thing about it being 'unnatural' and therefore non-green and probably caused by chemical pollution or something - and generally they were told to shut the fuck up because there was no evidence for their half baked theories. The fact that bigotry like you quoted is derived from academic theory makes it more powerful.
Luckily evidence trumps theory. So while people may still think homosexuality is wrong or unnatural or against god or whatever, they can't claim that it is a danger to society in a way that appeals to anyone other than fellow hard-core homophobes. Hopefully we'll reach that point with transgender sooner rather than later.
 
Hard core anti-trans activists who see trans women as 'just men' (whatever that's supposed to mean) are one of the loudest voices in the debate but the idea that they are the only point of view or even the dominant one among those who question some of what passes for trans ideology is bullshit.

Many many women, feminists, are very uncomfortable about the idea that binary-preaching transpeople are setting up a new way of validating gender stereotypes that are blatantly reactionary. In a previous debate on these boards a transwoman who identified as binary was posting up amazing right-wing crap about the 'essential' differences between men and women (men are a bit rapey and like science and maths etc) and the embarrassed silence from all the earnest transfriendly liberals on here was deafening. If challenging this is 'transphobic' then the trans movement is desperately in need of some proper radical thinkers to lead it out of this trap.

The question 'what is a man/woman?' is always going to be extremely hard to answer but the idea that it has literally nothing to do with biology and also nothing to do with the constant barrage of gender socialisation that people are subjected to in this society seems to me literally incredible. Transpeople can claim their own experience and imo they are fully entitled to the logical expression of their own gender autonomy that follows from it - but they cannot demand that they can also claim other people's experience.

The idea - mooted on here a few times - that the trans movement, the increasing complexity of gender identification etc etc is in itself a radical thing is about as credible as the idea that homosexuality was in itself radical (an idea I'm old enough to remember). Now that we know that many gay people just want to settle down, marry, raise kids and operate as successful members of the modern neo-liberal society we live in, it's pretty obvious that the gay=radical is bullshit.

NB I'm not asking gay people or anyone else to live up to some higher standard of radicalism, of course most people just want to fit in, especially those who have been relentlessly marginalised. But I'm asking radicals why any theory of gender or sexual identity must be accepted - at pain of denunciation for transphobia - when so many voices backing that theory are either pushing deeply misogynistic gender theory or appear completely ignorant of the fact that they are.

Political radicals posting on here have gone about the 'alliance' between radical feminists and conservative or reactionary groups and parties but seem oblivious of (or have nothing to say about) the fact that institutions like the British Army, fanatical-religious ideologies like that of the Iranian mullahs or deeply patriarchal hierarchical reactionary societies like Thailand are all absolutely fine with trans people, in fact they love them - it explains everything fine in their terms. Yet uncritical liberal supporters of trans rights have no qualms at all about how they are lining up alongside these people.

And you don't have to be a transphobe to see why some feminists are pretty quizzical when they see arguments (also on these recent pages here) that it's a generation thing, old women = TERFs, young women groovy and accepting, when the dismissal of women as having any value once they've passed child-rearing age is such a classic piece of patriarchal contempt for women.

Or why when syndromes that revolve around the probematic (increasingly so) relationship between our bodies and our social selves that affect women mostly (eg bodily dysmorphia) are almost automatically declared to be a pyschological disorder that pathologies the individual when those that affect mostly men (eg gender dysphoria) are automatically declared to be 'real' and requiring intervention in the world to line up the individuals internal reality with that world. Feminists have always criticised the way that world is always assumed to be absolutely for men.

Radical feminists have always centred a critique of these kinds of assumptions in their theory and the Owen Jones style liberal stuff which is not much more than a 'why can't we all just get along' is frankly pathetic next to it.

Change society, not individuals. Challenge and undermine patriarchal gender roles, don't just allow individuals to move from one to the other on the basis of some alleged inner drive.

I'm glad to see a bit of discussion about the erotic component of gender identity starting to appear on the thread though. But again that's something that I've yet to hear any interesting radical takes on from within the trans world. If anyone can point me to some, I'd be very interested.
 
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