Why do some feminists hate transgender people?

[killer b]

Ok. I'm a bigot. I asked my second cousin (thanks for that) about that on the phone last week and they said that "she' is correct / preferred for now, btw.

bit of a snide trap to lay, that.

 

[goldenecitrone]

In that case "he" from your post is the incorrect. You said "she is now a he". The grammar of that suggests to me "she" also is the present tense state. Since you already had the knowledge that he still prefers feminine identifiers, I'm at a loss as to why you brought "he" into it at all.

Why is it incorrect? She is transitioning to a he, but prefers to be referred to as she for the time being.

 

[bimble]

bit of a snide trap to lay, that.

I wasn't doing a cunning plan. My point is kind of the opposite, that my difficulty is entirely one way, given that if the category of women is now that of an oppressed class, nothing to do with how for 99.9% of forever, people with wombs have constituted that class. Do you see what I mean?

 

[bimble]

In that case "he" from your post is the incorrect. .

Yes that was a mistake, you're right. Just proof of my confusion really, or bigotry as you will.

 

[goldenecitrone]

I suppose the alternative would be he is transitioning to a he, but prefers to be known as she for the time being. Far less confusing.

 

[spanglechick]

I suppose the alternative would be he is transitioning to a he, but prefers to be known as she for the time being. Far less confusing.

"She is beginning the process of transitioning" is enough, isn't it?

 

[Knotted]

Well that's a stupidly broad statement, I mean I can't disagree with it but it's pitched at such a level as to make it meaningless in regards to this discussion.

I mean I oppose restrictive gender roles and arguments that seek to reify them yet at the same time I clearly have to navigate the world as a socialised individual and not a living political tract, that means that with all the best will in the world I can't help but be part of their reproduction to some extent, much as a worker I clearly an involved in reproducing capitalism, whilst I'm obviously opposed to it.

This is half the problem with the whole debate, it is personalised to the point where disagreement is seen as invalidating peoples very being, there is no recognition of the necessary gap between the political discussion and judgement of individuals. Personally I'm not interested in asking people to justify themselves and how they choose to live. I don't think it anymore appropriate to question a trans person about their decision to transition than I do to start lecturing men who watch football or do other "gender normative" things, it's fucking rude for a start. On the otherhand if some guy in a pub started going on about how he was naturally born to like football or that it's cos "that's what men do innit" or someother essentialist shit, then yeah I'd take issue with their argument because the argument isn't about the reality of their love for football it is about them essentialising that in a reactionary manner.

I suspect Germaine Greer would agree with that. I don't think she is being personal. (edit: my apologies she was being personal, I'd forgotten.)

I don't understand this dogmatic insistence that things have to have social explanations. The whole nature versus nurture debate is old and stale. Being dogmatic one way or the other makes you look like a 70's throwback.

On the question of medicalising, this was not my intent. Illness and cure was not on my mind at all when I wrote what you replied to. Regardless of how much or how little you think there is a biological component to gender dysphoria there is no need to medicalise it.

By the welcome back.

 

[purenarcotic]

Your Jewish thing is a bit weird, bimble. Am I less Jewish than you because I did not experience antisemitism in school and wasn't bullied for being so? It's a but shitty to not fully accept converts on the basis that you had a shit time as a kid.

It's an odd example. We choose our religion but a trans person no more chooses their gender than I have chosen to be gay.

 

[bimble]

^ Ye, i know it's a bit shitty of me, and a bit weird too. Don't want to derail into a whole thing about whether jewishness is a choice (I don't think it is, certainly wasn't for my grandparents etc). But anyway, I have absolutely no problem with calling people by whatever pronoun they want to be called, I honestly don't, but do get confused when I try to understand what the category of women means: If we're saying its got nothing to do with your genitalia and also that there's no such thing as an essential 'womanly' type brain or way of being, then what is it?

 

[Knotted]

tbh my extremely tentative suggestion regarding these findings, especially the finding of less 'genderisation' among younger people, would be that this has nothing to do with your gender at birth and everything to do with how you're brought up.

Why do you think a study into "male" and "female" mental tendancies say anything about the nature of gender identity.

 

[kabbes]

Also, the child in question is your second cousin. And ffs, is not a "she".

First cousin once removed, actually. Second cousin means you share great grandparents.

 

[laptop]

Your Jewish thing is a bit weird, bimble. Am I less Jewish than you because I did not experience antisemitism in school and wasn't bullied for being so? It's a but shitty to not fully accept converts on the basis that you had a shit time as a kid.

It's an odd example. We choose our religion but a trans person no more chooses their gender than I have chosen to be gay.

Think again. I think it's an illuminating example.

In what sense did bimble choose to be Jewish - or "Jewish"?

Which reminds me. When it comes to genocidal oppression, there is masses of academic work demonstrating that it's the oppressor group that gets to choose who counts as a member of the oppressed group. In Rwanda people were killed because of how the killers identified them - obvious when put like that. I'm not aware of any work asking whether and how that extends to more everyday oppression.

 

[bimble]

Which reminds me. When it comes to genocidal oppression, there is masses of academic work demonstrating that it's the oppressor group that gets to choose who counts as a member of the oppressed group.

Of course. That's kind of what I meant about the jewish thing - my grandparents who survived the concentration camp were put there due entirely to the definitions used by their oppressors, not their own.
And by the same token, sort of, we've been saying for a generation now that the category of woman is a fiction imposed by patriarchy, right?
But then it gets confusing, because - if you want to do more than just pay lip service to respecting everybody's right to self-define, to choose their own pronoun etc- then you have to somehow accept that, even if only for trans people (?) an essential real thing called 'woman-ness' does apparently exist again?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And by the same token, sort of, we've been saying for a generation now that the category of woman is a fiction imposed by patriarchy, right?

It is?

 

[laptop]

It is?

In what ways is the category "woman" a thing-in-the-world in the sense that, say, "water" is?

 

[Knotted]

Well that's a stupidly broad statement, I mean I can't disagree with it but it's pitched at such a level as to make it meaningless in regards to this discussion.

Just to change tack a bit. One thing I think we can all agree is that racial identity is what you call a social condition. Only lunatics think we are born with an innate racial identity. So how do we understand someone like Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who tried to pass herself off as a black woman. I've no doubt that she was experiencing something that could be called "racial dysphoria as a social condition" and that this social condition has its own reality. But I would still say that the whole thing is fucked up and undermines anti-racism. I feel quite judgey about this.

Now I don't think that what might be termed "transracialism" is analagous to transgenderism. I think there is something else going on other than social factors.

 

[bi0boy]

Just to change tack a bit. One thing I think we can all agree is that racial identity is what you call a social condition. Only lunatics think we are born with an innate racial identity. So how do we understand someone like Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who tried to pass herself off as a black woman. I've no doubt that she was experiencing something that could be called "racial dysphoria as a social condition" and that this social condition has its own reality. But I would still say that the whole thing is fucked up and undermines anti-racism. I feel quite judgey about this.

Now I don't think that what might be termed "transracialism" is analagous to transgenderism. I think there is something else going on other than social factors.

There was a 1248714 page thread on that already. I think that's enough.

 

[bimble]

There's a lot of interesting stuff out there, about the difficult overlaps where trans activism meets gender essentialism.
Here's one: On the butchering of “essentialism”
("This trans and patriarchy asserted belief, that men and women are innately, biologically different, cannot be reconciled with the feminist position that this idea comes from sexism..")
& an example of the response to that:
No, The Existence of Trans People Doesn’t Validate Gender Essentialism

 

[Knotted]

There was a 1248714 page thread on that already. I think that's enough.

It's very relevant though. If you are going to say that transgenderism is a social condition then you are saying that a trans woman does not want to be a woman as such but a woman as society sees women (the idea of feminity is purely socially conditioned on this view). This is the core accusation from Greer and other feminists. Rachel Dolezal provides us with a case study. She has a socially conditioned different identity to her physical body (incidentally she herself uses the phrase "socially conditioned") and her blacking up is a result of her falling in love with certain stereotypes of black women.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It's very relevant though. If you are going to say that transgenderism is a social condition then you are saying that a trans woman does not want to be a woman as such but a woman as society sees women (the idea of feminity is purely socially conditioned on this view). This is the core accusation from Greer and other feminists. Rachel Dolezal provides us with a case study. She has a socially conditioned different identity to her physical body (incidentally she herself uses the phrase "socially conditioned") and her blacking up is a result of her falling in love with certain stereotypes of black women.

It's about as relevant as bimble's Jewish convert example. She didn't feel herself to be black from before she even knew race existed. By blacking up, she isn't aligning her external reality with an internal feeling that has always been there.

 

[bimble]

Now I don't think that what might be termed "transracialism" is analagous to transgenderism. I think there is something else going on other than social factors.

So you're saying there is an innate essential thing called woman-ness which some people have & some don't? What does that thing consist of do you reckon?

 

[Knotted]

It's about as relevant as bimble's Jewish convert example. She didn't feel herself to be black from before she even knew race existed. By blacking up, she isn't aligning her external reality with an internal feeling that has always been there.

Of course. That's why it's relevant. The point of comparisons can be to contrast and my point was that there is a contrast.

 

[Knotted]

So you're saying there is an innate essential thing called woman-ness which some people have & some don't? What does that thing consist of do you reckon?

If I meant to say that there is an innate essential thing called woman-ness then I would have said it.

 

[Thora]

It's about as relevant as bimble's Jewish convert example. She didn't feel herself to be black from before she even knew race existed. By blacking up, she isn't aligning her external reality with an internal feeling that has always been there.

Is there a time before children know gender exists?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So you're saying there is an innate essential thing called woman-ness which some people have & some don't? What does that thing consist of do you reckon?

Does it matter?

Gender is a construct built on certain biological realities, but it produces anomalies - the construct doesn't fit some even if their biology suggests it should. Frankly who cares exactly what that consists of? You don't have to fully understand the feeling that some have that they have been assigned the wrong gender, whether it's male or female, to accept that the feeling is real and deserves to be respected.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Is there a time before children know gender exists?

There's certainly a time before they are able to express what it is, no? You might know something but not know that you know it, and yes, I think there is a time before children know that they know it. There's a time before children properly know that others exist as individuals separate from them, after all.

And if someone says that, for as long as they can remember, they have felt something to be wrong, you have to take their word for that, no?

 

[ska invita]

I do wish someone would edit the title of this thread

 

[Thora]

There's certainly a time before they are able to express what it is, no? You might know something but not know that you know it, and yes, I think there is a time before children know that they know it. There's a time before children properly know that others exist as individuals separate from them, after all.

I'm not sure I understand your example that Rachel Dolezal is different because "She didn't feel herself to be black from before she even knew race existed." I'm not sure how you know this? And are you saying it's different to being transgender because a transgender baby does feel themself to be the other gender before they know gender exists?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm not sure I understand your example that Rachel Dolezal is different because "She didn't feel herself to be black from before she even knew race existed." I'm not sure how you know this? And are you saying it's different to being transgender because a transgender baby does feel themself to be the other gender before they know gender exists?

We're not conditioned to be a certain race from the moment we're born. That doesn't even mean anything - what does 'being' a particular race even mean? We are conditioned in various ways into our gender assignation from the moment we're born.

 

[Knotted]

Does it matter?

Gender is a construct built on certain biological realities, but it produces anomalies - the construct doesn't fit some even if their biology suggests it should. Frankly who cares exactly what that consists of? You don't have to fully understand the feeling that some have that they have been assigned the wrong gender, whether it's male or female, to accept that the feeling is real and deserves to be respected.

But are we to respect Rachel Dolezal's black identity?

Of course I think there is a difference and you think there is a difference, but you are saying that we shouldn't care about what the identity construct consists of. This is why political correctness is shit.