Why do some feminists hate transgender people?

[frogwoman]

The sports thing is totally fucked. There were actually women competing in womens sports who were told they had to have operations to reduce the size of their genitalia

Then there are places like Iran which orders sex change as a punishment for homosexuality and recently the womens football team there was found to be mostly made up of men.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

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?

Does any woman really feel threatened by this, though? trans people - whether male-to-female or female-to-male - are comparatively rare. And it seems to me so clear that they're anything but in a position of power. The opposite is true.

 

[frogwoman]

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.

What is gender identity tho? I dont think i think that differently to the opposite sex tbh. But if i was to wake up one day in a mans body i think i would feel horrible and weird tbh. Ironically i would probably one of the trans-women denied treatment to get back to female as i dont have much interest in stuff regarded as girly.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

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

yes, I reject this idea as well. In biology, the nature or nurture argument is mostly over - it's always both, nurture of nature, and it's just not valid to think of these as separate things. Seems to me that social scientists often act as if we humans were not part of biology, but imo normally that kind of exceptionalism is just wrong.

 

[billy_bob]

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?

Perhaps they would - but only because they couldn't see that self-definition is just that: it doesn't change what anyone else is. In your scenario, both Person A (a woman who doesn't believe 'woman' can include trans people born as male because they don't share certain experiences shared by those born as female) and Person B (someone, who may or may not be trans themselves, who believes that it can) are claiming the right to self-identify as a woman. Only Person A is seeking to deny the other's right to that self-definition.

 

[frogwoman]

And that brings me to another rant about radical feminism. These days I actually find it uncomfortable to wear trousers (women's or men's) because of the shape of my hips and the fact that ive put on a bit of weight, i also find that women's clothes in general look nicer than men's, but if you read radfem blogs they make a huge big deal out of this. In one blog it actually said that womens clothes were designed to damage your body and shorten your lifespan.

 

[andysays]

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.

Identity in the sense the term is being used here always involves excluding as well as including, the question is who doing the defining and therefore the including and excluding.

And there are people on both sides of this issue attempting to exclude people from using a term, and telling them how they should identify.


Identity is the crisis can't you see...

 

[Thora]

Does any woman really feel threatened by this, though? trans people - whether male-to-female or female-to-male - are comparatively rare. And it seems to me so clear that they're anything but in a position of power. The opposite is true.

Yes, I think it certainly feels threatening to many women - not transpeople themselves, but the redefinition of women to erase women's lived experiences.

 

[Knotted]

What is gender identity tho? I dont think i think that differently to the opposite sex tbh. But if i was to wake up one day in a mans body i think i would feel horrible and weird tbh. Ironically i would probably one of the trans-women denied treatment to get back to female as i dont have much interest in stuff regarded as girly.

I think the nub (at least with respect to trans gender people) is how you view your own body.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

What is gender identity tho?

Perhaps. And I say only perhaps - this is conjecture. But perhaps we are born with an inclination to look for a gender identity of some kind. What that identity is is dependent on the culture we're born into - in a similar process perhaps to the way that children are born with an inclination to look for language in some way, but the particular language they learn is culturally determined.

The exact way that works, I'm not so sure, but it may be that we're attracted to, and look for, binary ideas. In morality, something is either right or wrong. In identity, a person is either male or female. Only as we get older do we come to recognise that things are not always so simple.

 

[toggle]

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.

never said you did suggest it. but just replying to the points you raised.



i don't think that the term cis is redefining of identity. just allowing a discussion without defining trans folk as not normal/othrr.

and if identity is socially constructed, then it can be reconstructed. or redefined by an individual. without reference to how anyone else defines that. if tht gets complicated, then it only serves to highlight how complicated social and official pigeonholing of people can become. sure i ciuld explain better when i'm not so knackered.

 

[frogwoman]

I think the nub (at least with respect to trans gender people) is how you view your own body.

The problem is that it gets tied up with concepts such as brain sex etc which are used to oppress women.

 

[Thora]

Perhaps they would - but only because they couldn't see that self-definition is just that: it doesn't change what anyone else is. In your scenario, both Person A (a woman who doesn't believe 'woman' can include trans people born as male because they don't share certain experiences shared by those born as female) and Person B (someone, who may or may not be trans themselves, who believes that it can) are claiming the right to self-identify as a woman. Only Person A is seeking to deny the other's right to that self-definition.

Is it only gender where you feel people can self identify or does this apply to any other identity/class of people?

 

[frogwoman]

I think there are sex differences tho but primarily to do with physical strength and ive known women seriously fuck themselves up with manual labour and heavy lifting etc.

 

[Knotted]

The problem is that it gets tied up with concepts such as brain sex etc which are used to oppress women.

That concept might lack nuance. I'm on the same page as lbj here - don't trust any reductive ideas on gender identity. But aside from that if a concept is used to oppress women then that might be more to do with how the concept is used rather than the concept itself.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The problem is that it gets tied up with concepts such as brain sex etc which are used to oppress women.

Yes, mostly scientific nonsense, that stuff. But it endures in the drivel in the self-help sections in bookshops. Unfortunately many people are attracted to these ideas.

 

[SpookyFrank]

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.

I see your point, but most people will never have access to that sort of platform, to speak to large numbers of people and be presented as an authority in the field of x, y or z. Nobody is stopping Greer from sitting in the union coffee shop and talking to people in person. That's the biggest audience most of us have access to. It's also the level at which it's genuinely possible for the people she's talking to to tell her if they don't agree with what she says.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yes, I think it certainly feels threatening to many women - not transpeople themselves, but the redefinition of women to erase women's lived experiences.

But again, is this really what is happening when you accept a person in their new gender role? A man who used to be a woman or a woman who used to be a man?

Gender is deeply embedded in our interactions with each other - in our language, we have to make a choice, there are no gender-neutral terms often. And because of that, what's the alternative here to accepting trans people in their new identities? I don't see one. But more than that, I don't see a need for one - accepting them is the solution.

 

[billy_bob]

What is gender identity tho? I dont think i think that differently to the opposite sex tbh. But if i was to wake up one day in a mans body i think i would feel horrible and weird tbh. Ironically i would probably one of the trans-women denied treatment to get back to female as i dont have much interest in stuff regarded as girly.

I'm not going to get this into words well, but....

I think that generally speaking in my life I've met far more women than men who I've felt 'think like me'. And while in terms of appearance mrs_bob and I (these days...) probably fit with fairly conventional gender norms, in terms of character I think we both have far more traits that supposedly belong more to the gender we're not. It's difficult to disentangle the extent to which gender identity is purely about how you see your self from the extent to which it includes what you think you should think, do and feel as a result of that. The trouble with the latter is that 'should' - because it's almost impossible to address it without buying back into reductionist ideas about what being one thing or the other entails (no matter how much of those ideas you believe is socially constructed and how much innate).

My impression is that one thing some people have trouble with is the perception that trans people often buy into rather stereotypical notions of the gender into which they're transitioning. Of course if it was the case that that was generally true, I could understand Greer (for example) seeing it as a demonstration of people taking on the superficial appearance of a woman without actually 'being' a woman. But it's a partial and inaccurate perception, isn't it? (A bit like thinking all gay men are camp because you've met a few camp gay men, without considering how many hundreds of non-camp gay men you might have met without knowing they were gay.) Even to the extent that some trans people might do this, it's presumably tied up with assertion of identity in the face of other people's non-acceptance - it's certainly not as simple as thinking being a woman is all about frocks and makeup.

 

[andysays]

never said you did suggest it. but just replying to the points you raised.

i don't think that the term cis is redefining of identity. just allowing a discussion without defining trans folk as not normal/othrr.

and if identity is socially constructed, then it can be reconstructed. or redefined by an individual. without reference to how anyone else defines that. if tht gets complicated, then it only serves to highlight how complicated social and official pigeonholing of people can become. sure i ciuld explain better when i'm not so knackered.

OK, maybe I misunderstood what you were saying.

Identity (or anything else that's social constructed) can be reconstructed or redefined, but if a relative handful of people attempt to significantly refine it, and simultaneously to paint any resistance to this redefinition as exclusionary or hateful, and then retreat into the idea that identity is simply a personal matter and they have some "right" to define themselves as they like (I'm not referring to you here), I don't think that's particular helpful, sensible or coherent.

I've also got stuff to do today, so maybe I'll rejoin the thread later.

 

[billy_bob]

Is it only gender where you feel people can self identify or does this apply to any other identity/class of people?

Didn't you ask someone else that already? Of course it's not only gender. Why would you think I'd make what I think are fairly vehement arguments for self-identification in relation to one aspect and deny it in relation to others?

E2a: I've been around so-called 'identity politics' a fair bit, and on occasion I've seen a very similar process to what we're discussing here going on in relation to the exclusion of people of mixed ethnic heritage from (politically) black groups as well as from the 'white' 'norm'. It's human nature to ascribe categories to things, especially once they're named - I didn't reply to your earlier point to me about more than two genders, but my immediate thought was that we'd pretty quickly fix any 3rd, 4th or 17th gender with as many absolute attributes and expectations as there are about the current two. I think the idea of a spectrum is more useful, in relation to gender but also (back to your question) in thinking about definitions of ethnicity, social class, age, (dis)ability, etc.

 

[toggle]

OK, maybe I misunderstood what you were saying.

Identity (or anything else that's social constructed) can be reconstructed or redefined, but if a relative handful of people attempt to significantly refine it, and simultaneously to paint any resistance to this redefinition as exclusionary or hateful, and then retreat into the idea that identity is simply a personal matter and they have some "right" to define themselves as they like (I'm not referring to you here), I don't think that's particular helpful, sensible or coherent.

I've also got stuff to do today, so maybe I'll rejoin the thread later.

if you have no term for those who are not members of a group, the only way to discuss issues relating to that group is through a labelling of normal and other. creating a term that allows that to be discussed as 'group a' and 'group b' isn't redefining group a in my opinion. and insisting that group b are defined only inn terms of not group a, in terms of being not the normal, is exclusionary.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Didn't you ask someone else that already? Of course it's not only gender. Why would you think I'd make what I think are fairly vehement arguments for self-identification in relation to one aspect and deny it in relation to others?

E2a: I've been around so-called 'identity politics' a fair bit, and on occasion I've seen a very similar process to what we're discussing here going on in relation to the exclusion of people of mixed ethnic heritage from (politically) black groups as well as from the 'white' 'norm'. It's human nature to ascribe categories to things, especially once they're named - I didn't reply to your earlier point to me about more than two genders, but my immediate thought was that we'd pretty quickly fix any 3rd, 4th or 17th gender with as many absolute attributes and expectations as there are about the current two. I think the idea of a spectrum is more useful, in relation to gender but also (back to your question) in thinking about definitions of ethnicity, social class, age, (dis)ability, etc.

The thing about spectrums in terms of identities that have at least a partly physical aspect is that some things are better suited to them than others.

Race is a good example where anything other than a spectrum makes no physical sense - the binaries are created despite biology, not because of it.

But does that work with gender? Most of us think of ourselves as one gender or the other, and we think that way in part, or even largely, because we match ourselves with the gender that physically fits us. In that sense, the binary fits the biology for most of us. Also, for a trans person, do they want a spectrum? Or do they just want to switch sides in a binary system?

imo, what I'd like to see is a reduction in the importance of gender as your identity, rather than necessarily an alteration of it. So you may still identify and be indentified as male or female, but in your everyday life, it isn't an important thing either to you or to the people you are interacting with.

 

[billy_bob]

But does that work with gender? Most of us think of ourselves as one gender or the other, and we think that way in part, or even largely, because we match ourselves with the gender that physically fits us. In that sense, the binary fits the biology for most of us. Also, for a trans person, do they want a spectrum? Or do they just want to switch sides in a binary system?

Yes, most of us think of ourselves as one or other, but to what extent is that because the binary demands it? I've no idea what the answer is to that. But I think plenty of people who have no thought that they're 'on the wrong side' are still often conscious of the label feeling like a poor fit, and perceive others to apparently be much more at ease with it.

imo, what I'd like to see is a reduction in the importance of gender as your identity, rather than necessarily an alteration of it. So you may still identify and be indentified as male or female, but in your everyday life, it isn't an important thing either to you or to the people you are interacting with.

Great! When does it start?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Great! When does it start?

I think it has started. Long way to go, clearly.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yes, most of us think of ourselves as one or other, but to what extent is that because the binary demands it? I've no idea what the answer is to that. But I think plenty of people who have no thought that they're 'on the wrong side' are still often conscious of the label feeling like a poor fit, and perceive others to apparently be much more at ease with it.

I don't feel a poor fit with 'male'. I do often feel a poor fit with various expectations of 'male behaviour'.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

But does that work with gender? Most of us think of ourselves as one gender or the other, and we think that way in part, or even largely, because we match ourselves with the gender that physically fits us. In that sense, the binary fits the biology for most of us. Also, for a trans person, do they want a spectrum? Or do they just want to switch sides in a binary system?

This is probably a semantic quibble, but surely there's a distinction between sex and gender? Most of us think of ourselves as being biologically either male or female, but our gender identities are more fluid. Hence people saying things like 'he's so masculine', 'he's not very very manly', 'he's effeminate' 'she's so butch', 'she's a toy boy' and so on. These socially constructed identities seem to represent something more like a continuum.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

This is probably a semantic quibble, but surely there's a distinction between sex and gender? Most of us think of ourselves as being biologically either male or female, but our gender identities are more fluid. Hence people saying things like 'he's so masculine', 'he's not very very manly', 'he's effeminate' 'she's so butch', 'she's a toy boy' and so on. These socially constructed identities seem to represent something more like a continuum.

I'm not sure there's a well-defined distinction between sex and gender, tbh. People try to define them separately, but I'm not sure you can.

But yes, gender identities and gender expectations are certainly fluid and culturally conditioned. These are the things whose importance I would like to see diminish. But even here, this stuff is complex. If we're heterosexual, we want to appeal to the opposite sex (gender!), and I think most of us do play up to gender roles as part of doing that.

 

[billy_bob]

I don't feel a poor fit with 'male'. I do often feel a poor fit with various expectations of 'male behaviour'.

I guess generally that's how I'd see it in relation to myself too. OK, but then we're back to how much of gender identity and definition is down to physical, innate characteristics and how much is learnt behaviour, social construction etc. I'm sure we're all talking about more here than the extent to which people felt happy with the bits they were born with.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

I'm not sure there's a well-defined distinction between sex and gender, tbh. People try to define them separately, but I'm not sure you can.

But yes, gender identities and gender expectations are certainly fluid and culturally conditioned. These are the things whose importance I would like to see diminish. But even here, this stuff is complex. If we're heterosexual, we want to appeal to the opposite sex (gender!), and I think most of us do play up to gender roles as part of doing that.

Google just gave me these two definitions:

Sex:

either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.

Gender:

the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).

I think that it's a valid distinction to make - that social and cultural understandings of gender are related to a biological notion of sex does not mean that the former reducible to the latter (or vice versa).