Why do some feminists hate transgender people?

[stethoscope]

I don't follow you.

I read it that you are inferring that trans people have a niche world view about gender? Or did I misread what you was saying there?

 

[YouSir]

This is an important point to remember whenever these kinds of situations come up. Even the act of trying to stop someone from having a platform at a certain place or event generally gets that person, and by extension their views, more attention anyway.

It's not about preventing someone from saying something, it's preventing them from saying it under your roof. It's people making a statement of their own, and often it will be people who generally have fewer opportunities to be heard than the person they're trying to ban iyswim.

You have the right to speak, you don't have a right to be listened to.

It's also an act to prevent other people from having the chance to listen though, even if they have wider access to the ideas it's still an attempt to make those ideas taboo and inaccessible even before they're stated. Especially bad for a university where, you'd hope, those ideas could be protested/debated/argued and fairly easily destroyed - which is worth far more to the wider audience there than the censoring actions of an already aware minority.

Strays too close to the self-censorship you get at US universities for my tastes.

 

[J Ed]

I understand the whole idea in abstract that some feminists think that trans people even existing is an insult because it reinforces the gender binary but my god can't they just shut up. There are so few transgender people and they generally have a really shit time of it even before you get to heaping bigotry on top of that, transphobic feminists just seem to care so much about something that must have an absolutely negligible effect on their lives, it makes me wonder if some of them aren't just bitter angry people looking for a scapegoat for everything that is wrong with their lives.

 

[Knotted]

My sense is that Germaine Greer has a theory that the biological basis for gender identity derives purely from (adult) physical biology. This view is dated, but you can see why it lingers in feminist theory. If you have spent your life deconstructing ideas about gender roles you will have spent your life arguing against ideas about gender identity which underpin ideas about gender roles. Further it would have been natural for feminism of the 60's and 70's to borrow from then fashionable (especially among the left) ideas about the mind being malleable, nurture over nature etc.

Transgender people and gender dysphoria offer rude counter examples to such theorising. Some feminists just can't handle it. If gender identity is a social construct with no more physical basis than the physical body rather than the brain then those who see their identity as something different from their physical bodies can only do so for superficial reasons. Feminists like Greer will have no problem with sex change operations, one can do what one likes with one's body, but they refuse to understand why people go through with these operations.

There are worse than Greer out there on this.

 

[stethoscope]

If only the majority of cis people would smash gendered society instead of attacking a minority of trans people for living in it

Anyway, spent loads of time posting on this stuff in the past, can't be arsed now so going out for a walk whilst it's bright and sunny!

 

[Thora]

I read it that you are inferring that trans people have a niche world view about gender? Or did I misread what you was saying there?

I was saying that women who express a fairly mainstream view about gender (that it is something that is socially constructed, and that the "woman" gender role is imposed on people born with a female body) are often shouted down as exclusionary by people who have a different view - that gender is something intrinsic/internal that is unrelated to your body or socialisation.

 

[8115]

I suspect Greer initially wanted to make the reasonable point that tran women don't share a large part of female experience such as growing up and being socialised as a woman. Which is fine and they doubtless have their own very valid experience as does everyone, there's not one female experience anyway. And I'd be inclined to say that trans women are very welcome as a part of any feminism I'd sign up to which would be inclusive and not exclusive of more diverse perspectives. But I can vaguely see the point that Greer ks making. Over the years she's got pushed into a corner and I suspect she's never actually expressed her viewpoint in a way that's very respectful to transgender people.

 

[andysays]

it comes down to accepting that people have a right to define their own identity rather than have one imposed upon them. this is a fairly basic principle IMO, not something that should be labelled as 'niche'.

The problem with this approach, IMO, is that it risks reducing issues of gender (and by extension those of race, class and others) simply to an individual (and individualistic) question of personal identity, which in turn makes it an entirely subjective thing with no generally agreed or socially established meaning.

Anyone can define their own identity as a woman, but in practical terms they can't insist that everyone else accepts or agree with their self-definition, particularly if it contradicts the more broadly accepted definition. One person's self-identity isn't simply of interest to them, it has implications for the identities of many other people, in this case in the insistance by some that female adults who are quite happy to simply identify as women now have to be referred to and regard themselves as cis-women, because not to do so is supposedly to exclude trans-women from the identity of women.

I'm not coming down on either side of that argument, BTW, simply pointing out that it isn't as simple as some (not necessarily you, but your point about the right to self-identify highlights it) appear to be portraying it.

 

[Thora]

I understand the whole idea in abstract that some feminists think that trans people even existing is an insult because it reinforces the gender binary but my god can't they just shut up. There are so few transgender people and they generally have a really shit time of it even before you get to heaping bigotry on top of that, transphobic feminists just seem to care so much about something that must have an absolutely negligible effect on their lives, it makes me wonder if some of them aren't just bitter angry people looking for a scapegoat for everything that is wrong with their lives.

Tbh I haven't come across any feminists that argue this, but I have come across many who do not wish to redefine what it is to be a woman, or their view of gender, who are then accused of being transphobic or hating transpeople. There's a big difference between hating someone and disagreeing with them, but this gets lost in increasingly aggressive arguments on both sides.

 

[stethoscope]

I was saying that women who express a fairly mainstream view about gender (that it is something that is socially constructed, and that the "woman" gender role is imposed on people born with a female body) are often shouted down as exclusionary by people who have a different view - that gender is something intrinsic/internal that is unrelated to your body or socialisation.

I think in a World where gender is so ubiquitous and forced upon everybody, that gender is very difficult to separate from sex and socialisation (whilst clearly gender does not equal biological sex), whilst also being entirely compatible with holding an opinion that 'gender is a social construct'.

 

[billy_bob]

Tbh I haven't come across any feminists that argue this, but I have come across many who do not wish to redefine what it is to be a woman, or their view of gender, who are then accused of being transphobic or hating transpeople. There's a big difference between hating someone and disagreeing with them, but this gets lost in increasingly aggressive arguments on both sides.

There's a big difference, though, isn't there, between saying 'I believe what it is to be a woman is X, Y and Z', in which X, Y and Z could be all manner of things, and saying 'I believe what it is to be a woman can't include you lot'? The latter may not be intended to be hateful, but it is.

 

[stethoscope]

Tbh I haven't come across any feminists that argue this, but I have come across many who do not wish to redefine what it is to be a woman, or their view of gender, who are then accused of being transphobic or hating transpeople. There's a big difference between hating someone and disagreeing with them, but this gets lost in increasingly aggressive arguments on both sides.

I do agree with this actually, and I think the worst of this plays out by opposing 'sides' especially on the internet!

 

[frogwoman]

Tbh I haven't come across any feminists that argue this, but I have come across many who do not wish to redefine what it is to be a woman, or their view of gender, who are then accused of being transphobic or hating transpeople. There's a big difference between hating someone and disagreeing with them, but this gets lost in increasingly aggressive arguments on both sides.

I agree with this tbh

There seem to be increasingly extremist positions on both sides. I have still not entirely made up my mind on my 'political stance' on this issue tbh except to say that transgender people should be treated with respect and that i suspect even if gender was totally abolished (which in communism hopefully it would be) you would always get people wanting to change their gender

I have questioned stuff about myself including my gender and was brought in a family with some fairly domineering female figures in it and a lot of what feminists view as like a non female gender roles didnt really occur to me when growing up. I also find that when i went through a phase of reading radfem material a while back the sort of things they said would make me a lot more nervous about men and walking alone at night etc than before and it was previously stuff i had not given a great deal of thought to.

 

[Thora]

There's a big difference, though, isn't there, between saying 'I believe what it is to be a woman is X, Y and Z', in which X, Y and Z could be all manner of things, and saying 'I believe what it is to be a woman can't include you lot'? The latter may not be intended to be hateful, but it is.

I'm not sure I understand your point. If someone says "I believe what unites women as a class, something that crosses socioeconomic and ethnic divides, is the shared experience of being born with a female body and having the gender role of woman imposed on you" - do you consider that hateful?

 

[stethoscope]

I don't know any trans people that would have an issue with this tbh.

Ah, getting drawn in, I'm off out for a walk

 

[Thora]

I don't know any trans people that would have an issue with this tbh.

Well yes, the other issue is that most of the people doing the terf-calling and shouting down are not actually trans, and I have read articles by transpeople that have been attacked for being hateful and exclusionary too.

 

[andysays]

I don't know any trans people that would have an issue with this tbh.

Ah, getting drawn in, I'm off out for a walk

You don't think so?

It seems to me that saying "born with a female body" very definitely does not include trans-women, unless you and I have utterly different understandings of the meaning of one of those terms.

ETA: And if you don't want to get drawn in (which is fair enough) I won't expect an answer from you, but I still think this is something worth exploring further.

 

[Knotted]

This is worth reading, not just because of it's obnoxiousness but it shows where Greer is coming from.
Caster Semenya sex row: What makes a woman? | Germaine Greeer

It's a position quite distinct from defending a rigid idea of womanhood. More an over correction of that.

And then Caster Semenya appeared. Big, blokish and bloody fast, could she really be a girl? No simple chromosomal test will decide. Establishing her sex will require the services of an endocrinologist, a gynaecologist, an expert on gender and a psychologist. For those of us who have never been allowed to doubt that we were female, the process seems bizarre. We don't know if we think like women or not. We just think. Is there a reputable psychologist out there who would dare to distinguish a female thought process from a male one?

 

[stethoscope]

You don't think so?

It seems to me that saying "born with a female body" very definitely does not include trans-women, unless you and I have utterly different understandings of the meaning of one of those terms.

Not 'hateful' which was what was asked (sorry, should have said that rather than 'take issue with'), though it could be interpreted as exclusionary.

 

[toggle]

The problem with this approach, IMO, is that it risks reducing issues of gender (and by extension those of race, class and others) simply to an individual (and individualistic) question of personal identity, which in turn makes it an entirely subjective thing with no generally agreed or socially established meaning.

Anyone can define their own identity as a woman, but in practical terms they can't insist that everyone else accepts or agree with their self-definition, particularly if it contradicts the more broadly accepted definition. One person's self-identity isn't simply of interest to them, it has implications for the identities of many other people, in this case in the insistance by some that female adults who are quite happy to simply identify as women now have to be referred to and regard themselves as cis-women, because not to do so is supposedly to exclude trans-women from the identity of women.

I'm not coming down on either side of that argument, BTW, simply pointing out that it isn't as simple as some (not necessarily you, but your point about the right to self-identify highlights it) appear to be portraying it.

1.what parts of identity are not socially constructed labels?

2. I don't think I got the memo that told me that told me that i had to describe myself as a cis-woman all the time. the use of cis as a term tends to only be used when someone is also referring to trans. when it's necessary to separately describe 2 aspects of womanhood or manhod. to have only a term for trans implies that trans is other. that it is not normal.

we see this in the media in other ways. there is a person, or a woman .a person or an ethnic miniority. a person or a muslim. people are described in how they are different from the norm.it's a factor of how our society is structured to see everyone in terms of white male or other. the term cis is only unique in that it was necessary to invent a term to allow trans related discussion without implying normal and other

 

[billy_bob]

I'm not sure I understand your point. If someone says "I believe what unites women as a class, something that crosses socioeconomic and ethnic divides, is the shared experience of being born with a female body and having the gender role of woman imposed on you" - do you consider that hateful?

There's an entirely valid point there about the experiences of growing up that might be being emphasised, but in other contexts the subtext of the above could be 'if you weren't born with a vagina we'll never let you in the club'.

And the statement you've put in quotes does subtly reinforce determinist (and I think reductionist) categories and boundaries of identity, by providing essential criteria for belonging to the group in question. People for whom the reality is more fuzzy round the edges are excluded by that in ways that may not be directly, intentionally hateful but may feel hateful all the same. A trans person may not share the experience of being born with a female body and having a female gender role imposed on them as a result, but may well have - often traumatic - experience of what it's like to be considered to embody aspects of that imposed gender role despite having the 'wrong' physical body for it. To simply say that having the wrong equipment at birth permanently excludes someone from 'becoming' a different gender does rather ignore that fact, because it assumes that one set of equipment makes you a privileged male and the other a disadvantaged female, full stop.

 

[andysays]

1.what parts of identity are not socially constructed labels?

2. I don't think I got the memo that told me that told me that i had to describe myself as a cis-woman all the time. the use of cis as a term tends to only be used when someone is also referring to trans. when it's necessary to separately describe 2 aspects of womanhood or manhod. to have only a term for trans implies that trans is other. that it is not normal.

we see this in the media in other ways. there is a person, or a woman .a person or an ethnic miniority. a person or a muslim. people are described in how they are different from the norm.it's a factor of how our society is structured to see everyone in terms of white male or other. the term cis is only unique in that it was necessary to invent a term to allow trans related discussion without implying normal and other

1. I haven't said, nor did I wish to suggest, that there is any part of identity which isn't socially constructed, at least in part. Your point (not exclusively yours, obviously) seems to suggest that identity can simply be chosen by the individual, with no reference to what the socially constructed and generally accepted notion of what/who that particular identity includes and excludes.
   
2. Again, I never said that there was an official and universally agreed position that all women have to use either cis or trans all the time, but there certainly are some who insist on their own right to self determine their identity and simultaneously seek to impose the identity of cis-women on others who would not choose it for themselves.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I agree with this tbh

There seem to be increasingly extremist positions on both sides. I have still not entirely made up my mind on my 'political stance' on this issue tbh except to say that transgender people should be treated with respect and that i suspect even if gender was totally abolished (which in communism hopefully it would be) you would always get people wanting to change their gender

Can you think of a human society that hasn't included the concept of gender? I can't.

While gender, as opposed to biological sex, is clearly a socially constructed thing, that doesn't mean you can completely pigeon-hole it 'nurture'. Separating nature and nurture isn't so simple to do.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It's a position quite distinct from defending a rigid idea of womanhood. More an over correction of that.

For those of us who have never been allowed to doubt that we were female, the process seems bizarre. We don't know if we think like women or not. We just think. Is there a reputable psychologist out there who would dare to distinguish a female thought process from a male one?

I think there is loads of bunkum thinking on this, which is partly clouded by the fact of sexual attraction and its potential existence in one or both parties. Take that out of the equation, and do we really feel that we think differently from the opposite sex? I don't find that my sister thinks very differently from me.

 

[joustmaster]

I'm not sure I understand your point. If someone says "I believe what unites women as a class, something that crosses socioeconomic and ethnic divides, is the shared experience of being born with a female body and having the gender role of woman imposed on you" - do you consider that hateful?

It's not a nice thing to say. The statement denies a transwoman the term 'woman' for their own identity.
So, yeah, hateful seem apt.

 

[Thora]

There's an entirely valid point there about the experiences of growing up that might be being emphasised, but in other contexts the subtext of the above could be 'if you weren't born with a vagina we'll never let you in the club'.

And the statement you've put in quotes does subtly reinforce determinist (and I think reductionist) categories and boundaries of identity, by providing essential criteria for belonging to the group in question. People for whom the reality is more fuzzy round the edges are excluded by that in ways that may not be directly, intentionally hateful but may feel hateful all the same. A trans person may not share the experience of being born with a female body and having a female gender role imposed on them as a result, but may well have - often traumatic - experience of what it's like to be considered to embody aspects of that imposed gender role despite having the 'wrong' physical body for it. To simply say that having the wrong equipment at birth permanently excludes someone from 'becoming' a different gender does rather ignore that fact, because it assumes that one set of equipment makes you a privileged male and the other a disadvantaged female, full stop.

I wonder if this actually makes an argument for there being more than two genders, rather than trying to shoe horn everyone, with such different experiences, into a binary of two?

 

[frogwoman]

I think there is loads of bunkum thinking on this, which is partly clouded by the fact of sexual attraction and its potential existence in one or both parties. Take that out of the equation, and do we really feel that we think differently from the opposite sex? I don't find that my sister thinks very differently from me.

Exactly.

 

[Thora]

It's not a nice thing to say. The statement denies a transwoman the term 'woman' for their own identity.
So, yeah, hateful seem apt.

Do you think that women who see their identity as people born with female bodies who had gender imposed on them, might feel it a bit hateful that you are trying to change or redefine their identity without their consent?

 

[joustmaster]

Do you think that women who see their identity as people born with female bodies who had gender imposed on them, might feel it a bit hateful that you are trying to change or redefine their identity without their consent?

I'm not trying to do that.
I'm just saying excluding people from using a term, and telling people how they should identify isn't very nice.

 

[Knotted]

I think there is loads of bunkum thinking on this, which is partly clouded by the fact of sexual attraction and its potential existence in one or both parties. Take that out of the equation, and do we really feel that we think differently from the opposite sex? I don't find that my sister thinks very differently from me.

I think Greer's position is rather seductive. If I thought that gender identity was purely a product of social conditioning then I too would not be able to take gender dysphoria seriously. I might well think that people are free to do what they want with their bodies and that they should be treated equally (which I think is Greer's position anyway). But I would think that either transgender people have been brought up atypically (possibly "wrongly" if you want to be judgemental) or that they are motivated by superficial desires such as attention seeking. You can't fault her consistency.

I just reject the idea that gender identity is purely a product of social conditioning.

Same with sexual identity.