BitchLab has posted the following question:
So, what are the benefits of being a feminist? Which is to say, what advantages does it bring you? I don’t mean things like, “It gives you a way of seeing the world that is a better explanatory account of what’s going on than what we are raised to think.” I mean more like: institutional benefits or advantages. As an academic, does it get you more publishing opportunities? More opportunities to rise as a star? More opporutnities for grants? Talks? Conference presentations? As a writer, does it mean you’ll have more opportunties for writing?
Any thoughts? I think it’s an interesting and important issue. As feminism does become successful, so there will be advantages or beneifts, dont’ you think? And how is it that these can be played on and manipulated in ways that some of us find troubling?
I think that there’s usually some degree of benefit to claiming a profession, and that holds true for philosophy andacademic background. It’s true even if that specialization is bizarre or uncommon. Peter Singer the militant vegan holds views that are extremely unpopular, and even offensive, but people find him fascinating, so he has a job. Feminism in its various types can hold that kind of benefit even when it’s not very popular. It’d be stupid to ignore the drawbacks of signing on to a relatively unusual discipline with relatively unpopular ideas; a radical feminist women’s studies professor is not better off in that sense for having rejected dentistry or anti-feminism. It’s a niche that might have a niche market.
Belledame in comments points to another benefit, one that has to do with calling oneself feminist rather than being feminist:
Wrt the level of a Camille Paglia, though:
I dunno as I see it as an advantage of feminism per se so much, honestly. I mean, I wasn’t even aware till now, frankly, that she *did* ever refer to herself as a feminist. I think her “advantage,” such as it is, is similar to that of Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin or Andrew Sullivan or Alan Keyes: she provides a handy hook for the right wing to go: you see? I’m not a sexist/racist/homophobe; this sensible woman/black person/gay guy agrees with me.
Paglia has captured her niche–one that has brought her as much or more celebrity than many far more worthwhile feminist writers–because she is not feminist. She is explicitly anti-feminist, and says things about feminists and feminism that are as nasty as anything Rush Limbaugh ever came up with. She has nothing in common with feminists either as the majority of feminist thinkers and writers define themselves or as they are popularly understood. In fact, she seems both sexist and misogynistic, two positions which most people consider antithetical to feminism.
To people who want to be misogynist but don’t want to be criticized for it, she’s the perfect solution: it is difficult (if not impossible) to be more misogynist than Paglia. And if Paglia’s feminist, then we all are. If she’s not sexist, hardly anyone is. Her niche is a very different one than the first one I described; their potential is inverse. Her success is so great because we live in a backlash culture. She is a popular feminist to the extent that feminism itself is unpopular.
Well, I think because she’s a “strong woman” and has come out in favor of Teh Sex, among other kinda libertarian tendencies, some people tend to be more tolerant of her claiming the label than they would be of, say, Phyllis Schlafly. I’m not saying they’re right to be so; I’m just sayin’.
mostly what she is is a giant egocentric asshat.
and: OVAH.
How come it’s just academics we’re talking about, though? Sounds like anybody who’s worked at a Burger King or a factory isn’t included in the conversation, especially if you still do. Or work as a maid or a security guard or one of those invisible jobs. What about them? What’s feminism like for them? Sometimes it seems like everything is about those educated women.
of course what this all came out of was a rather agitated debate over who was and wasn’t an “anti-feminist.” starting with not Paglia but rather Ana Marie Cox, because she sniped at Katha Pollitt.
my point being: if Paglia wants to call herself a feminist; whatever (again, hadn’t realized she’d done so). I’m still not gonna leave my criticism at the level of “well you’re not EVEN a feminist so nyah.” she’s a reactionary misogynistic twit with an ego the size of the Crab Nebula; the fact that she calls herself a feminist doesn’t change that.
Sort of in the same way, you know, that people like James Dobson and R. Rushdoony call themselves “Christians.” And want to yank the label away from anyone who doesn’t toe their line, politically or theologically.
and how there are plenty of progressive Christians who want to distance themselves as far as they can from these theofascists; and yet I’m not aware of a concerted effort on their part to say,
“well, those people aren’t REAL Christians.”
Because frankly, the Dobsons and Rushdoonies of this world are better at that game, and there’s probably no point trying to beat them at it.
that’s my theory at the moment, anyway.
I just think something like “anti-feminist!” is wayyy too easy. And only works if the person cares about maintaining her/his feminist creds in the first place. If not, all you’re left with is the equivalent of
“Imperialist pig-dog!”
…which means exactly nothing to the great middle out there who have no idea what y’all are talking about except that the other person’s making arguments and you’re just throwing labels (which have no resonance to the listeners anyway) at ‘em.
ginmar, I think the problem is that most people here (and correct me if I’m wrong) are academics, or at the very least highly-educated people. While it would be nice to hear from “a maid or a security guard or one of those invisible jobs,” we can’t speak for them. If we want to know what these women are thinking, we need to get out into the field and ask them. This is why anthropology and sociology are extraordinarily relevant to gender studies and feminist movements; there will always be a problem of representation, and even if we are the ones to attempt to balance that, we’re still working through privilege. That’s not exactly a bad thing – if we can exploit our privilege to go good works, then we should – but it’s something we need to be conscious and critical of.
How come it’s just academics we’re talking about, though? Sounds like anybody who’s worked at a Burger King or a factory isn’t included in the conversation, especially if you still do. Or work as a maid or a security guard or one of those invisible jobs. What about them? What’s feminism like for them? Sometimes it seems like everything is about those educated women.
…Because we’re talking about potential benefits in terms of Camille Paglia’s career, really; I was separating specialization from Malkinesque professional apologism. The benefits of living by a political philosophy are a different issue, but feel free to expand on them in comments if you like.
In the academic world I move in, identifying as a feminist won’t buy you any special favors. In fact, mentioning feminist politics or perspectives in association with your scholarship often draws eye rolls and exasperated comments, “what, you’re still doing THAT old thing?” One colleague recently informed me that gender “is not an intellectually rigorous form of inquiry” (!!!). I blame this less on a sexist takeover of the humanities and social sciences and more on academia’s recent tendency to snub its nose at “identity politics” in any shape or form. While this new approach may stem from good intentions, it strikes me as yet another unfortunate, and premature, dismissal of feminism in the academy.
Tammy Bruce plays the same game Paglia does but is much worse. I think the only criteria for being a feminist in the minds of such people is to be nominally pro-choice.
There’s something else that separates Paglia from the Coulters of the world:
She can write. You may disagree with her, but she puts some mean sentences to the pad. And she’s genuinely erudite, not something you can say about Coulter. I don’t buy most of what she peddles, but I can’t deny that I’m not sometimes tempted. (William Gass is another example, although he’s a superior stylist–so much so, that I sometimes think his arguments don’t even matter. See On Being Blue, for example.)
That said, I often criticize identitarian arguments. Not because I disagree with the political agenda, but because most academics who theorize about identity do so from a philosophical base I don’t find convincing. The psychoanalytic-informed theories of identity, the essentialist arguments, the radically non-essentialist arguments, &c. I’ve done the reading–I think I’m a quarter shy of both a Critical Theory and Women’s Study emphasis–and I find most of the arguments dodgy in some fundamental way.
At this point, I want to reiterate something I’ve been hammering home elsewhere:
My criticism of the methodology doesn’t reflect a covert, conservative urge to foist feminism, gender studies, queer theory, African-American studies, Asian Studies &c. from the fold. It does signify an earnest desire that they’d stop fussing around with particular poststructuralist models of, say, human development, behavior and cognition. (Lately, I’ve been hammering this a lot too. What can I say? My world seems full of nails.)
Paglia:
“Male urination really is a kind of accomplishment, an arc of transcendance. A woman merely waters the ground she stands on.”
Okay, okay, she’s certainly an interesting writer. I don’t think she’s a good writer, and I do think she’s an asshole, but she can flourish and twirl like few others. So I half-agree, Scott.
Thank you, ginmar.
While it would be nice to hear from “a maid or a security guard or one of those invisible jobs,” we can’t speak for them. If we want to know what these women are thinking, we need to get out into the field and ask them.
Out into the field? To observe us in our natural habitat? Look Bryan, I’m going to assume you mean well…but geez! The reason you won’t find more blue-collar women participating in feminist fora is because it’s so goddamn alienating. Once you mention you don’t have (or are not pursuing) a college education, far too many folks talk around you, as if you weren’t there. And since you generally receive a heaping helping of that shit IRL, no need to seek it out on the ‘net, y’know? Just saying. I’m glad there are people out there (Barbara Ehrenreich comes to mind) who are willing to exploit that privilege; I’m not so glad that folks know her work but haven’t heard of the fabulous book “Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class”, a collection of essays from working class feminists. Or “Calling Home: Working Class Women’s Writings” by Janet Zandy. Or “Changing Our Power: An Introduction to Women’s Studies” which focuses more on working-class women.
Anyway….I don’t get any career benefit from declaring myself a feminist. But without feminism, I couldn’t have my career. I would have been legally barred from pursuing it. I would be a poor woman without feminism, since I’m not married. As a mother, I wouldn’t even have been able to pursue college as an alternative career track, because feminism is what put child care centers in colleges.
Every woman benefits from feminism, regardless of whether she considers herself a feminist.
Thank you Gawd, that there are more people out there who agree that Camille Paglia is a giant dipshit.
She can spin words, but only for the purpose of stepping on people’s throats and calling attention to her own bloated ego. The fact that people continue falling for her crap is astonishing to me.
Out in the field as in fieldwork, anthrotalking to people, discussing, reporting, documenting. Obviously there are exceptions, I’m familiar with the first book you mention, thought not the other two. As I said earlier, correct me if I’m wrong, but these books are probably edited and published by middle-class intellectuals and the writings are curated and mediated by a third-party. I’ll check out those last two books though, I’m curious. You’re right though, I did mean well, even if you did run into a problem with the language I used. I don’t know if it’s a problem one can get around though – we either ignore the working-class and wait for them to some opportunity to represent themselves or we try to study and understand them.
I suppose that when I talk about study, I’m not talking about stereotypical anthropological observation, but meaningful interaction and dialogue. It’s important for voices to be heard. Those collections you mentioned above are certainly steps in the right direction, but there needs to be engagement on all sides.
Out in the field as in fieldwork, anthropological and sociological work – talking to people, discussing, reporting, documenting. Obviously there are exceptions, I’m familiar with the first book you mention, thought not the other two. As I said earlier, correct me if I’m wrong, but these books are probably edited and published by middle-class intellectuals and the writings are curated and mediated by a third-party. I’ll check out those last two books though, I’m curious. You’re right though, I did mean well, even if you did run into a problem with the language I used. I don’t know if it’s a problem one can get around though – we either ignore the working-class and wait for them to some opportunity to represent themselves or we try to study and understand them.
I suppose that when I talk about study, I’m not talking about stereotypical anthropological observation, but meaningful interaction and dialogue. It’s important for voices to be heard. Those collections you mentioned above are certainly steps in the right direction, but there needs to be engagement on all sides.
I remember clearly a discussion in one of Sociology class last year — a very dude-like guy in my class went off on the 2nd-year-Social-Sciences-student self-congratulatory lament about how “we in have the benefit of an education so we can see all these social evils/means of control/conporate interests/blah blah I’m a douchebag, but weep weep for the unwashed masses who don’t know any better.” I told responded with a story of a guy I worked with who didn’t even finish high-school and had a better grasp of the “sociological imagination” than half the people sitting in that class. And the recent-immigrant Filipinos I worked with who could tell you _exactly_ about the golobal market forces that led to the conditions that they left the country to escape.
The assumption that academics are issues a special “we get it, and all you uneducated fucks are saps and dupes and pawns” card when admitted to University is classist, racist, and total bullshit.
That’s kinda what I was trying to get at – perhaps inarticulately – in my previous comments. We can’t presume to understand the working class unless we, you know, talk to the working class. Even then, it’s not the same direct understanding, but it helps to bridge the gap between “high-minded” (and often useless in a practical setting) theory and the stuff of real life.
I grew up working class and worked a blue collar job to put myself through college. Now I have a white collar job that pays pretty well.
My experience in both worlds has been: you keep your mouth shut about being a feminist!
I had the misfortune of reading a few of Paglia’s essays on poetry and popular music. I wondered how someone proffering such shallow arguments with those horrid metaphors was allowed to graduate freshman comp let alone get a book or three published. But yes, Coulter’s logorrhea makes Paglia look like freaking Shakespeare.
I’m not sure what everyone is on about academia for.
I don’t workin academia. As such, I find utterly nothing to benefit from by being a feminist and in fact have lost more jobs and gigsbecasue I am than I’ve ever earned.
My so-called “elite education” that people like ginmar rant about was mostly earned sitting in a library on my own. That is, I’m an autodidact and I worked my ass off to get the education I did get. The last thing I would do though is valorize the working class — I have actually mopped floors and done work as a maid. And you find my name in the credits in Nickle and Dimed.
God I have no patience for this horse shit sometimes.
As for the rest, piny, I dunno. Back in the day, when Paglia actually mattered to anyone, there wasn’t a whole lot of carping about how she’s not really a feminist — not in my circles anyway. I don’t recall anyone taking her that seriously. she was like a loud, irritating, squeaky wheel that people learned a bit about, just to be up on whatever outrageous thing she was saying, but mostly to counter any assholery from those who think she has something to say.
It was more like, “Oh really, Camille? Well, here’s the deal…” And an argument would ensue from the critic. That’s not to say that no one ever said she wasn’t an antifeminist or that she wasn’t a feminist. There just didn’t seem to be, in my circles, such an investment in calling her not feminist.
I suspect that has to do with the fact that, in 93/94 when I first heard about her, it was from second wavers who’d done their time in the wars of the 70s and 80s and they were pretty tired of the bullshit. Too often, they’d been charged with the label, “not feminist”. Which can be pretty irritating, especially if you were someone who’d paid dearly for being a feminist. E.g., one of my mentors who didn’t seem flustered by Paglia, Patai, Sommers was also someone who ended up a third tier research uni when she should have been teaching at Cornell. Why? Because she and 6 others dared sue Cornell for sex discrimination.
When you do that, and find that you’re blackballed (only 2 of the 7 would end up staying on in academia, the rest couldn’t find jobs) and then have your sisters tell you you’re not a feminist because of a position you take, well…. It’s a little tiresome.
Hence, she didn’t get flustered. She’d been there done that, maybe smirking at Paglia’s b.s. earned her a tee shirt.
I find Daphne Patai’s questions on the Women’s Studies list ridiculously hostile to what I happen to think is feminism. But, she’s been on that list since dogs ruled the Internet and I don’t see anyone running her off on a rail or saying, “Daphne, you’re soooooooo not a feminist.”
The problem with just hurling the label, “antifeminist,” is that it isn’t really an argument. It’s just a meaningless label that has to be defined and then defended. Unless you attach “antimfeminist” to a specific set of empirical claims demonstrating how Paglia is, you’re just poisoning the wells of discourse. For, as I argued in another thread, the point of engaging the Paglias, Sommers, and Patais is that, while they’ll never listen or change their mind, there are others learning how to be a feminist and others learn how to hone arguments. If you don’t ever demonstrate that for anyone, so much the worse for all of us, I think. (you as in generic you, not you piny.)
I can remember very specific instance of when I learned from other feminists how to engage these criticisms, by observing them in debates.
I grew up in the vanishing middle class and yes, got a college education, but spent the next year and a half driving a dump truck and sorting bits of pipe in hardware stores. I spent most of my time in school dumpstering to eat. I’m a security guard now. I’ve been doing blue-collar work ever since getting out on my own, and my degree won’t be useful for getting work, it seems, until I get another degree on top of it.
So no, I’m not properly blue-collar, not by birth, and I’d never claim their perspective. I’m not an academic elitist, either, I’d like to think, and I was doing the work I was doing to survive, not because I was slumming it. The point is, though, I can only hope to do work like Ehrenreich’s or Without a Net, to help one part of my world understand the other–on little things, like if a friend of mine from school ever went out “in the field” to talk to a friend of mine from work, they’d probably get pasted upside the head and deserve it.
Bitch Phd. is an academic. It makes sense she’d want to talk about academic effects of being an outspoken feminist. In my experience, feminist angles of study were, if mostly taken seriously among the other students I worked with, especially among anthropologists and historians, pretty ghettoized in nearly every other field; laughed off or presented incompetently in more general theory classes; and not considered particularly good research material. However, my use of them in my own work made that work possible and relevant, and even if I had to explain their use in small words to the professors standing over me, they were vital in my studies.
As to the truck crew? You could present feminist ideas now and then, so long as you didn’t call them “feminism”–that was an instant black mark and stereotype magnet. I worked with sharp, decent people, and barely any of ‘em have heard a good thing about feminism. If feminism did anything, it was ostracize the speaker and make ‘em look like, yes, an elitist jerk–even if its content wasn’t actually objectionable to most of the people there.
Sorry–I’m in moderation, but I may’ve made a mix-up with Bitch|Lab and misattributed some things about her education. My mistake.
I’m not sure what everyone is on about academia for.
I wouldn’t say I was “on about” it, but it was the only career choice I could imagine where one could conceivably have a positive, personal advantage by publically identifying as feminist. Elsewhere, reactions may range from “so what?” to “you’re what?!”
I don’t know if it’s a problem one can get around though – we either ignore the working-class and wait for them to some opportunity to represent themselves or we try to study and understand them.
How about trying *right fucking now* to stop objectifying us, Bryan?
How about instead of saying “the”, “themselves,” and “them”, starting saying “YOU working-class” and “YOURselves” and “study and understand YOU” – thereby acknowledging that we’re RIGHT HERE, all around YOU? Thereby *starting* to begin getting into that mindset of awareness that there are – not invisible minorities, in this case, but invisible *majorities* all around you in the real world, that your privilege blinds you to? (ObRef: CJ Cherryh, Wave Without A Shore.)
I can’t even parse the incomplete phrase, “wait for them to some opportunity to represent themselves” so I’m not entirely sure what it is that you’re expecting us retail serfs, manual laborers and cubicle drudges to do about our situation before you’ll deign to acknowledge our existence…)
What part of my post saying that academia needs to acknowledge (and not idealize or romanticize or inauthentically represent) the working-class gives you the impression that I’m not aware of the “invisible majorities” all around me in the real world?
Your criticism of my language is valid, and I’ll be sure to watch it in the future. My aim wasn’t objectification; I was speaking about a group of people and not to a group of people and I’ll try not to do that from here on out. You also didn’t mention this specifically, but I’m realizing now that “study and understand” sounds rather cold and obnoxious and I’m sorry for having said it. Study should be replaced with dialogue/discourse/&c and understand…well, understanding is important, but in the sense that two people understand one another, not in the sense that we understand the immune system or something equally empirical and scientifc.
My “incomplete phrase” was an unfortunate typo. My point though had nothing to do with waiting for anyone to do anything before we deigned to acknowledge your existence. I’m not sure where this insistence comes form that I’m not acknowledging your existence. The only point I was trying to make there is that if academics don’t make an effort to dialogue with the working class, then the working class with never have a voice in academia. Priviledge isn’t going to be automatically bestowed upon anyone and we can’t just sit around and expect books like the ones La Lubo mentioned to be published.
And, hey, right now we’re having a meaningful conversation, and that’s the only thing I was suggesting happen in so many words. Thanks for pointing out where I went wrong.
I find this thread really sad and the reason is that I read feminist boards for women’s issues and not trans issues.
Where I beleive this story could relate to conditions women experience and thus do women so good, it has turned into yet another incredibly boring trans lecture and doesn’t do women much good at all which is typical of the trans movement.
(I’m going to assume against my better judgment that this is not a driveby. I’m also gonna answer it as though you actually posted it to the thread you meant to.)
No one has mentioned “trans stuff” for the past several comments; there was a little discussion of the relative potential use of Barres’s experiences in the beginning, but that’s about it. Otherwise, this has been a discussion of sexism as it’s experienced by women. These women happen to be transwomen, but they have as much right to talk about misogyny as my mother does–and, in fact, seem to be coming to conclusions very similar to hers.
Here endeth the trans lecture.
“These women happen to be transwomen, but they have as much right to talk about misogyny as my mother does–and, in fact, seem to be coming to conclusions very similar to hers. ”
There certainly isn’t any ground to consider them women simply because men say they are women.
Would it be unfair for me to point out that this incredibly boring transphobe lecture doesn’t do women or anyone else very much good, particularly in this its umpty-billionth iteration?
This is a strawman, and I am done with you.
There certainly isn’t any ground to consider them women simply because men say they are women.
would superman with a different origin story be any less super?
And does he have less access to male privilege just because he happens to be from Krypton?
Wait, wait. This isn’t just a strawman by itself. In this context, it’s a red herring: we weren’t even talking about whether they get to call themselves women. We were talking about how unreasonable you were being when you crashed in here to complain about a “trans lecture” that wasn’t one. Evidently, the mere fact of transwomen talking is enough to turn any discussion into a trans lecture.
Stacy, have you seen the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel yet? What did you think?
“This isn’t just a strawman by itself. In this context, it’s a red herring: we weren’t even talking about whether they get to call themselves women. We were talking about how unreasonable you were being when you crashed in here to complain about a “trans lecture” that wasn’t one. Evidently, the mere fact of transwomen talking is enough to turn any discussion into a trans lecture.”
I’m no less reasonable than discounting women’s lives and joing in with patriarchy in considering that all a woman amounts to is a vagina, breasts and hormones.
It’s obvious you don’t value women’s live piny, but some of us do and don’t want our spaces filled up by imposters.
Actually, I think “transwomen” should have spaces on mens boards wherre they belong.
So what if it makes no sense? This other thing makes no sense!
This…is not a defense in any way, shape, or form. Look: this is a strawman, just as much as your first one. It has nothing to do with your irrational assertion that this thread–excuse me, the thread you meant to post to–had become a trans lecture. Since I have a commitment to making this board safe for women and transwomen, I must regretfully put you on ignore.
Anyway. Pirates of the Caribbean? Anyone?
Or maybe we could get back to talking about the actual subject of this thread, namely feminism as a political stance and its effects on one’s professional life.
“Evidently, the mere fact of transwomen talking is enough to turn any discussion into a trans lecture. ”
I take it that this a trans board and not for feminists?
Ooh, look! It’s the Feminism Police!
The label, badgering and shaming don’t bother me.
What, in your eyes what constitutes what you call transwomen [eyeroll] as women?
No. I’ve had this discussion with people who were a hell of a lot smarter than you. If you really cared to engage these views, you could go pick up a few books, or maybe check some message boards. I’m not interested.
I’ve read Raymond and Daly. They seemed good to me as they are good feminist women. I’ll promise you one thing. You’ve never had this discussion with someone of my intelligence.
No answer, ever occurs to the question of what constitutes these men as women. I’ve seen diversions, I’ve seen dodges, I’ve seen smoke screen, I’ve seen diversions, I’ve seen everything but an answer. Obviously if you’re so much more intelligent than me, you’ll be able to answer my questions with due dispatch.
Unless of course you can’t. Unless, of course, there is no answer and these overgrown dragqueens are just that. I’m not really interested in engaging trans, they’re a dime a dozen in women’s spaces and I experience them as men. I am interested when men use feminist spaces to propgate yet another men’s movement. Certainly such a statement would stick to you.
Try any of the approaches you like: dismissal, silencing or whatever, but your “you’re not very smart” approach is on the wrong woman.
You see there’s an irony here piny. You did what you did and that’s fine. But you didn’t care enough about women to be one.
This can only mean one thing and it’s no big secret – your interest in feminist space is not with women, but it’s to infuse feminist space with these dragqueens.
I’ve read Raymond and Daly. They seemed good to me as they are good feminist women. I’ll promise you one thing. You’ve never had this discussion with someone of my intelligence.
No answer, ever occurs to the question of what constitutes these men as women. I’ve seen diversions, I’ve seen dodges, I’ve seen smoke screens and diversions. I’ve seen everything but an answer. Obviously if you’re so much more intelligent than me, you’ll be able to answer my questions with due dispatch.
Unless, of course, you can’t. Unless, of course, there is no answer and these overgrown dragqueens are just that. I’m not really interested in engaging trans, they’re a dime a dozen in women’s spaces and I experience them as men. I am interested when men use feminist spaces to propgate yet another men’s movement. Certainly such a statement would stick to you.
Try any of the approaches you like: dismissal, silencing or whatever, but your “you’re not very smart” approach is on the wrong woman.
You see there’s an irony here piny. You did what you did and that’s fine. But you didn’t care enough about women to be one.
This can only mean one thing and it’s no big secret – your interest in feminist space is not with women, but it’s to infuse feminist space with these dragqueens.
With someone of your intelligence? That’s just asking for an ass kicking.
I’ve called myself a feminist since I first heard the word and realized what it meant. What it really meant was that I was not alone. I thought I was the only girl who didn’t wnat to date some horrible boy, live in a trailer park, have baby after baby, get fat and hopeless, and never go off and have adventures. My sister didn’t date till she was in her thirties. The other went the opposite way—married right after graduation. My brohter was the one with the education and he never married. I should be living in a trailer park somewhere. That’s not an insult, just a fact. If I had stuck with the education I got, I would have been stuck with the life it prepared me for. Feminism changed that. Feminism exposed me to WOMEN; women who were more than just that sidebar woman in the history books, the one woman every century who got a paragraph or two in a history. Feminism brought me to other women.
You can disagree like hell with other feminists, but the real test is this: when you need one another, they’re there. When they need you, they’re there. Then you go back to disagreeing. There are some things that you don’t compromise on.
Being a blue collar feminist means you get accused of being lesbian and a troublemaker. It means you get harassed more and regarded as asking for it. YOu get fired from all-male jobsites because you’re a trouble maker. The jobs that you want are the ones that need to be gender integrated. Everywhere you’re an outcast, but it doesn’t matter because you know you can count on other feminists, that they understand. Normal culture teaches you to hate and fear other women and to compete against them. All you learn is rivalry and the only positive reinforcement you get comes at the expense of other women. “You’re not like other girls.” When you’re a feminist, you say, “We all of us have a lot of the same concerns and the same experiences, and we’re all human.”
And I have to say I find the concept of ‘fieldwork’ and observing us alien women in the field to be incredibly offensive. We’re not frickin’ zoo exhibits. More blue collar women would be feminists if it weren’t assumed that we were somehow stupid and unaware.
It’s almost as offensive as referring to transwomen as drag queens. Like they and us somehow are second class.
Imposters?
Most transpeople are more authentically who they are than most cisgendered people. Why are they imposters if you think they think they’re something you think they aren’t?
Knifeghost, that sentence hurt my head, but in a good way.
What the etiology of ‘cisgendered’?
That sentence felt like a bit of ameatball coming out, but it says exactly what I want said.
As for “cisgendered”, all I know is what I’ve learned from Wikipedia and piny.
No Ginmar,
There is no such thing as transpeople. These are myths made up by men.
You and I are are socially constituted as women.
I noticed you call them “transpeople”. You wouldn’t just call them women and men, would you?
Piny, tried to dismiss me with bravado and them I asked the central and obvious question. “What constitutes these people as women?” The answer is that they are not constituted as women they are constituted as men which is what makes them imposters.
Women are not second class. Transwomen are a simple and ignorant set of political mythologies so men can have their fetishes.
piny, I’m sure you hear it all the time, but that’s the most blatant statement I’ve ever heard suggesting that you do not exist.
Wait? Why am I posting that on here? Clearly piny’s my imaginary transdude friend, I can just tell him in the land of make-believe.
You wouldn’t just call them women and men, would you?
Yeah Ginmar, admit that Firefighters are actually special neuter creatures who fight fires!
I love the sophistry sandra, please indulge us by enlightening us to your superior quanta (that is, the actual substance to your belief that transwomen aren’t woman enough for you) for womanhood, are lesbians women? Women who have a superfluous Y chromasome? Hermaphrodites who were subject to gender reassignment at birth which put “female” on their birth certificate?
Oh. My. God.
Things certainly blew up here while I was away.
First, the whole transwomen are or are not women issue. (Full disclosure for those who haven’t read my comments in the past: I’m a transwoman.) You know Sandra, I’m sure we could argue until the cows come home as to whether or not I’m just a boy in a dress, a drag queen, or a sweet transvestite from transsexualvania. (Actually, I’m not partial to dresses and makeup, but I do like Rocky Horror.) I’m not going to bother because there really isn’t any way I can convince you. You’ve made up your mind already.
I will say this however. I grew up in a very prejudiced family. My siblings, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and parents had more prejudices than you could shake a stick at. They had lots of ideas about jewish people, African Americans, Italians, lesbians, gays, women on welfare, feminists, communists, liberals—you name a group that they didn’t belong to and they had lots of ideas. There’s one thing that all of those ideas had in common: somehow, people who are different from us aren’t quite people—not in the way that “you and I are people.” I spent a lot of breath, sadness, and anger upon challenging their ideas. After a few years, I realized that they placed such value upon looking down on others that I wasn’t really going to have much of an impact on their hate.
About the only thing I had any impact on was their views of queer people… and that’s because they know me personally. Even so, they still look upon me with a little distaste—except for my mom. She was really quite wonderful, but that’s another story.
So, Sandra, you’ve made up your mind about me and people like me: transwomen are men trying to co-op women’s issues and transmen are seditionist traitors who are undermining the movement. For some reason, these prejudices are important to your view of the world, your view of yourself, and your view of the people around you. Since it runs that deep, I not sure what I can say to you.
You know, the most important thing for me to keep in mind is this: regardless of what you think, I, piny, little light, and others like us are going to go on being ourselves. That’s the most wondrous reply that we can make to your prejudice and I’m pretty happy with that.
Now, on to less delicate matters: Pirates of the Caribbean 2. It was great fun, but it wasn’t as good as the first movie. There was far more action and far less humor. The writers made a half hearted attempt at giving Elizabeth a greater role in the swashbuckling, but, in my opinion, they could have done far more with her role. Jack Sparrow was cute and fey as usual, but many of his lines fell a little flat. I think they need to search for better writers for Pirates 3. Yes, there will be a third movie. Trust me.
Do see the movie though. It was great fun, and as usual, the visuals were well done.
Gotta head of to work,now.
Oh, squirrel fur!
I meant to say “co-opt,” not “co-op.” Tofu, anyone?
“piny, I’m sure you hear it all the time, but that’s the most blatant statement I’ve ever heard suggesting that you do not exist.”
Here trans is the dominant discourse and feminism is not; and the dominant discourse generally grants itself the right to speak for a minority and to taunt and ridicule toward undermining when challenged. what this means is that a woman’s perspective is negated in support of men.
Note how piny has said, I’m not intelligent, and KnifeGhost have begun mocking and Stacy_m has begun mocking lesbian stereotypes. All all men are being supported through undermining and the establishment of hierarchy because a perspective challenging the dominant discourse is being presented.
I hope we do not go into infinite digress. Given that I do not recognize trans poltics and ideologies to have vailidity because they totally ignore feminist analysis and consistent with male power simply creates it’s own fictional social reality – 1.) Trans are “real” (simply because we say so) 2.) The trans position is valid (simply because we say so) 3.) People having lived as adult men are really women (simply because we say so) and we are adequately arrogant that we feel no obligation to ever address what is that consitutes them as women.
I apologize for my lack of intellectual acuity. Menu for the day is Tofu and Oxtail soup, a chinese recipe that is really a labor but well worth it.
So now I am being moderated and possibly silenced because I have taken a feminist position on a feminist board?
This is abolutely perfect.
“piny, I’m sure you hear it all the time, but that’s the most blatant statement I’ve ever heard suggesting that you do not exist.”
Just so we have a clear understanding, you are ridiculing. My position of course is that trans ideologies are a house of cards constructed through male dominance. I doesn’t have to be that way it’s just that trans ideology has been 1.) greedy 2.) arrogant enough to attempt to cram that down the throats of women.
Just to clarify. Of course, piny exists. In all honesty I don’t think any will deal with an actual root analysis of “trans” ideologies simply a construct one that is being forced on people which is the biggest collective fantasy since “men are better than women”.
If there is any question, I define trans as:
1.) an ideology
2.) an identity
3.) a community
4.) a political movement.
In using the word, I am not talking about people.
Um, could you the proceeding post, piny? I reversed the name and e-mail fields. Duh!
Geez. I’m having problems this morning. I meant to say, “could you please delete my previous post” (the one complaining about my first comment being hung up in moderation).
There’s nothing like a dose of personal incompetence to keep the ego in check. I’m going to go hide under my desk now.
This is all pretty interesting stacy. I am a feminist woman on a feminist board being silenced and controlled when I have yet to anything but to discuss poltics. Three of my posts are on hold where I clearly demonstrated the here, trans ideologies have the properties of the dominant discourse in silencing feminist discussion on a feminist board, thusly trans is employing the same techniques with me that men employ with women with the support of a feminist board yet.
I appreciate the spirit of solidarity, Sandra. However, Feministe has an automated type of moderation and many comments get temporarily hung up there. Many of my longer posts get hung up there for an hour or two before they post. Your posts should pop up sometime today. As far as I know, we are both running aground upon some server’s content filters rather than a human being’s sense of right and wrong.
FYI: I’m a transwoman and I’ve posted here a fair amount. Try googling my user name, StacyM, and this website’s domain name. You’ll see that we have very different perspectives on this issue.
Nice chatting with you, though.
“I appreciate the spirit of solidarity”
There is extraordinarily little. Since you are transidentified, I do not consider you to be a woman.
I know of you. Were you not a male bodied intruder on the MWMF grounds in 2000 with a penis on the festival grounds during the festival?
*smile* I’m not going to play games of prejudice with you. I’ve never been to the festival and I have no great desire to go. Please read my reply when it is freed up from moderation. Beyond that reply, I have little else to say to you.
Er, Stacy, I really don’t want you on my side at all, thanks. I’ll call transpeople what they wish to be called. Piny, it’s up to you. Myself, I’d prefer to call someone their gender of choice.
And if you’re going to brag about how damned smart you are, maybe it would help if it actually is in evidence.
I must have mistaken you for someone else. You are not connected with Camp Trans?
Trans will call my position “prejudice” or bigotry in order to dismiss me. The reason for this is that there is no actual reason to meet someones demands to relate to them as a woman when they do not even have an identity of “woman”.
I will not validate the identity of “transwoman” because to do so validates a male centered ideology that is aligned with patriarchy. So you see, my response to you is not personal as I will never recognize any trans-identified individual as a woman – simply because they don’t have an identity as a woman.
All the while, no one has ever answered the question, “what consitutes you as a woman?”
“And if you’re going to brag about how damned smart you are, maybe it would help if it actually is in evidence. ”
Well, I think one’s intelligence manifests itself in the quality of one’s questions. I notice that none of mine have been answered yet.
Actually, I don’t brag about my intelligence – except to counter bravado and undermining.
“Myself, I’d prefer to call someone their gender of choice.”
This is part of the damage trans does to women. For their benefit, we pretend gender is real when gender is socially a structure that oppresses women. I’m very aware, that whatever gender I perceive is located between my ears, in other words I’m doing the gendering where most people think it’s a na tural category “there there”. Hence this is part of the extensive damage that the trans movement does to women.
I really will never pretend that someone who willfully talks about having been a boy, is anything other than a man.
I noticed you call them “transpeople”. You wouldn’t just call them women and men, would you?
Deliverypeople are neuter creatures who delivery messages then, rather than a gender neutral term for delivery men and women? Transpeople is a term used to point out that their are transwomen and transmen who are BOTH, collectively transpeople, and that you not referring to either transwomen OR transmen but are in fact referring to transwomen AND transmen. Do you really think you’re smart or intelligent?
and btw StacyM, STFU, don’t you realise that the highest duty that goes to a feminsit woman is to go about defining who is and who isn’t an officially recognised “woman”, because remember that butch lesbians aren’t women, nor are women with XXY chromasomes, nor are those Transwomen who only had ot get a gender reassignment later in life because the initial one the doctors gave them at birth was incorrect, sure, they may be subject to patriarchal oppression just like REAL women, but their birth gender forever means that they deserve it, the stupid dragqueens.
Though, as transwomen are dragqueens, does that make Piny a dragking, and thus an actual woman?
Seriously Sandra, place your no doubt monumentally stupid definition of womanhood onto the table or get lost before people start whipping out “Trans Agenda” jokes at your expense, because you’re just coming across as nothing more than a sophistry loving idiot with some ratehr boring, patriarchally predetirmined bigotries that help make you feel secure because you have someone more hated by society than yourself to dump on.
KnifeGhost:”Why are they imposters if you think they think they’re something you think they aren’t? ”
I’m not necessarily referring to stacy here. But let’s examine this. I’ve seen husbands and fathers transistion at forty and fifty after having voluntrily lived there entire life as men. Their experience is socially male. Their way of understanding the world is socially male and they have no experiential background as women. Their solution sets are socially male. They understand the world with their voluntarily sought-out socially male background. They reap the benefits of male privilege and then have the termerity to invade women’s spaces.
They are most often transcentric and not woman centered just as piny is here. Piny has absolutely no justification for being on a woman’s board. Becoming a man clearly says, “I don’t care about women.”
They disregard feminist practice in favor of a trans identity politic which in all honestly squarely demands that I disregard the contents of my own experience for their sake which is the prototype for man-woman interactions. A woman’s experience is never honored. It must be the man’s and one a feminist board yet. Q:Who benefits from this? A:Men.
Er….if they have surgery, they are no longer men, but you are still employing an idiotically simplistic argument. Bravo.
Camp Trans? I belong to camp human, dipshit.
I take it that this a trans board and not for feminists?
Feminism does not reside in the reproductive organs.
Oy, vey.
You know, Sandra, this blog exists because a lot of people enjoy reading and discussing the writing of the men and women who post here. If it doesn’t correspond to your definition of feminism, I’m sure you could find a place that you would like better. Why waste your precious time reading and posting on a blog that you dislike so much? Don’t you have better things to do?
“Er….if they have surgery, they are no longer men, but you are still employing an idiotically simplistic argument. Bravo. ”
Is that not an essentialistic argument? Does an army man with his genitals shot off – become a woman?
Does a woman’s life experience mean nothing? Is a woman, by virtue of trans ideology, simply a vagina?
GinMar:”Er….if they have surgery, they are no longer men”
GinMar:”Feminism does not reside in the reproductive organs.
How do these to statements mesh?
You see, I think it’s you who employing the simplistic argument. Obviously the presence of absense of genitlia doesn’t have any absolute meaning but has a lot in terms of patriararchy.
So now, I’ve been called a dipshit and am the recipient of abuse here on a feminist board because in a very feminist fashion I am questioning a male ideology.
If Sandra’s so damn smart, why is she continuing to post comments in the wrong thread, even after it’s pointed out to her? I was enjoying the relevant discussion before she came in and wrecked it.
Do you have any fuckin’ clue what goes into gender-reassignment surgery? Go get a clue. Then come back.
It’s not very feminist to be obtuse. You don’t get to make excuses for deliberately ducking the point.
“Why waste your precious time reading and posting on a blog that you dislike so much? Don’t you have better things to do? ”
Hi sally,
This board does bear the name feminist as part of it’s name. I’ve said nothing about the board itself, but I have questioned it’s politics. Because I have questioned trans ideology, my intelligence has been brought into question by a man, I have been taunted, I’ve been called a dipshit and I’ve been asked to leave when all I’ve done is to ask questions.
Really if the trans movement is substantive, certainly it must have contents to respond to respectfully asked questions. Would that not be so?
I guess part of my interest here is see if the “pro’s” simply can ask simple questions and I am also concerned with the possibility that the prevailing ideologies here might be confused with feminism. What form of feminism supports a man undermining a woman and for another user to abuse a woman poster.
I’m unfamiliar with the name of the style of feminism you are practicing here. It’s not consistent with any feminism I know of.
If you really think your questions were respectfully asked, then I’ll have to agree with the people who questioned your intelligence. But I think you’re perfectly smart and know that your questions weren’t in any sense respectful.
I don’t know how long you’ve been reading this blog, but there has been quite a bit of discussion on this and other feminist blogs of the phenomenon of privileged people who demand that marginalized people drop what they are doing and answer the privileged person’s questions. It’s a shitty dynamic that puts the burden of education on the less-privileged person, because the privileged person is too lazy to do that work for him or herself and thinks he or she is entitled to have someone else do all the heavy lifting. If you really want your questions answered, you need to realize that the burden of education is on you, not on transpeople. You could start by shutting up and reading the archives. You could then continue to shut up and read some of the books that piny mentions in his posts. You could then continue to shut up and read this blog over a period of time. I’m sure that you would learn quite a bit. I know that I have.
“Do you have any fuckin’ clue what goes into gender-reassignment surgery? Go get a clue. Then come back.
It’s not very feminist to be obtuse. You don’t get to make excuses for deliberately ducking the point”
Yes, I understand that gender-reassignment exists. I believe that it’s properly administered to about 5 percent of the population whom receive it. The other ninety five percent have normal male life histories. For example, last summer ABCnews.com carried a story of a fifty year old pentagon colonel in the special forces who has a father and a husband. Military people are actively afraid of a “red baret” because they are trained to kill in an instant and with their bare hands and maybe a pencil. This man’s career had been murdering, killing and the destruction of life in a men’s world for thirty years of the most socially male form of existence possible. He went through the surgery and “poof” by trans logic that back ground is erased?
I’d never ever want to be around such a person – ever. But trans militates for this person to have access to women’s spaces when ninety-five percent of the time the sugery is a non-sequitor as it is administinered to people for whom it is inappropriate.
That a good clue! :)
“If you really want your questions answered, you need to realize that the burden of education is on you, not on transpeople. You could start by shutting up and reading the archives. You could then continue to shut up and read some of the books that piny mentions in his posts. ”
I maintain that the trans movement has been contructed for men and entirely by men. The trans movement shows NO evidence of feminist influence. I wouldn’t read what piny suggests beause they are clearly trans propaganda and have no feminist basis.
I think they are the ones who have privilege. Afterall, all cannot ask them questions without being called unintelligent and a dipshit.
Am I privileged? I am a woman asking other women about the rationale for supporting a horrible movement an insight free movement that casts women as the oppressor – of course since oppression is a class based phenominon, then that means that trans are not women since oppression is class based, it can only mean that trans are not a part of class woman.
See what I mean about this movement being entirely ill thought out? I want to say clearly that “education” about trans-people is to be indoctrinated into what is inevitably male ideolgy which hurts women. I will adopt adopt any of their terminology because their terminology has embedded distortions. I notice, that they can speak to me neither in straight english which I admit is patriarchal or in terms of actual feminism.
When a feminist woman points this out she is simply dismissed and attacked when all I’ve done is the say that as a movement, the trans movement has no clothes.
But then again, I’m not very smart.
“please indulge us by enlightening us to your superior quanta (that is, the actual substance to your belief that transwomen aren’t woman enough for you) for womanhood, are lesbians women?”
I don’t know that I have a superior quantum. Piny said I was inferior.
Yes. Lesbians are women.
“Women who have a superfluous Y chromasome?”
If their actual identity and life history was that of being raised as a women, yes, they are a woman. The entire question of chromosomes, being essentialists, is patriarchal in it’s consideration.
“Hermaphrodites who were subject to gender reassignment at birth which put “female” on their birth certificate? ”
Yes, I’ve even know intersexuals who began assigned as boys who are women.
Sandra… listens and hears a pin drop in row 259.
Ok, but then you need to drop the “respectful” facade, because this is not a respectful attitude. You do not respect piny enough to read what he has to say or to engage seriously with the ideas that have influenced him. You are not entering this space with an attitude of respect. You are entering this space with an attitude of contempt for someone who everyone else here does like and respect, which is why we’re here. And you really shouldn’t be surprised, given your hostility to one of the people who draws us all to this site, if you are met with something less than a warm welcome.
People here are not answering your questions because we’ve decided that you don’t have anything constructive to offer to this site. You aren’t entitled to anyone’s attention. You aren’t going to get it by demanding it. People will pay attention to you if they think there is something to be gained from engaging in dialogue with you. And right now, you come across as willfully ignorant and bigoted, as well as very rude. I don’t have the foggiest notion why you think anyone here would give you the time of day.
I don’t not believe that a woman is an object.
Patriarchy treats us as if we are objects and part of a constructed object reality. Men objectify us.
Trans objectify women by appropriating our labels and our spaces and treating us as objects. They do this by speaking of women as object you can be.
I think, a woman is a life process in patriarchy. No late transistioner has that process and ergo in the absense of that process and having chosen a socially male life process – that’s what they are.
Ok, but then you need to drop the “respectful” facade, because this is not a respectful attitude. You do not respect piny enough to read what he has to say or to engage seriously with the ideas that have influenced him. You are not entering this space with an attitude of respect. You are entering this space with an attitude of contempt for someone who everyone else here does like and respect, which is why we’re here. And you really shouldn’t be surprised, given your hostility to one of the people who draws us all to this site, if you are met with something less than a warm welcome.
It is a second wave feminist approach. I have confronted a male based ideology that is absent of feminist examination on a board that claims to be feminist.
“People here are not answering your questions because we’ve decided that you don’t have anything constructive to offer to this site. You aren’t entitled to anyone’s attention. You aren’t going to get it by demanding it. People will pay attention to you if they think there is something to be gained from engaging in dialogue with you.”
I think the reason people are not answering my questions is that I am saying, “the emperor has no clothes. I don’t think the emperor really does have any clothes and my rational is demonstrably feminist. Yours is not. You have chosen a rational from which men benefit and women lose. There has been abuse of a woman who has been respectful in challenging a male based ideology. In short men are being protected here at the expense of women. To be honest, I think that just saying that was an enormous offering.
I have also demonstrated that when any feminist woman challenges trans ideology here, they are likely to be subjected to abuse. You will not find any examples where I have been abusive to any person. I have simply challenged a politic. I have honored my experiences and will not have my experiences supplanted by those of men.
“And right now, you come across as willfully ignorant”
Of a male ideology on a feminist board.
and bigoted,
Bigoted means a bias towards a group. I a feminist biased toward women on a “feminist” board.
“as well as very rude.”
Yes, saying the emporer has no clothes when indeed the emporer has none is rude? Feminists in our struggles for women’s liberation are rude at times. Yet there seems to be a double standard. My intelligence has been questioned and I’ve been called a “dipshit “. Why was ginmar not called rude when I have not aggressed against anyone here and ginmar has clearly denigrated me.
“I don’t have the foggiest notion why you think anyone here would give you the time of day. “
I think we should drop the pretense. You can’t actually defend trans politics but you don’t want to admit that. Instead of admitting that, it’s OK to abuse a woman.
“You are entering this space with an attitude of contempt for someone who everyone else here does like and respect, which is why we’re here.”
You are saying that you are here to further trans idealogy and legitimize it under the guise of feminism to the point that you are willing to abuse a feminist woman who rejected trans ideology?
So it’s about “liking” someone and not about feminism?
Is it Stacy I was contemptuous of? What did I say that was contemptuous?
So, Sandra, you’ve made up your mind about me and people like me: transwomen are men trying to co-op women’s issues and transmen are seditionist traitors who are undermining the movement.
Please stop speaking for me. I believe I said that reassignment is appropriate for five percent of people. But \it’s not possible to experience what women experience when you have a different identity: ie – ‘transwoman’.
For some reason, these prejudices are important to your view of the world, your view of yourself, and your view of the people around you.
This is very true. It’s very painful to be around men. I have a deep need for woman spaces.
“Since it runs that deep, I not sure what I can say to you.”
That if you are an early transitioner that you’ll confront the trans movement and actually become a feminist.
I doubt that you will. It’s my guess that you allegiance is to trans and not women. If that’s true, it’s not a small thing. One’s poltics are a reflection of one’s identity.
This is typical of this entire board.
“And right now, you come across as willfully ignorant”
But I’m not. I know the issues even far better than stacy and my depth in feminism is deeper than anyone here except possibly ginmar. Her writing above was really beautiful and she has a deep appreciation of feminism, I can tell.
ginmar is a champion feminist. She’s intellectually honest and approaches ideas and debates freely. She’s not afraid to change her mind. She offers an outside perspective to keep lots of us here honest. And when necessary, she busts out a righteous anger to tell people how she sees it in no uncertain terms. She also has a great deal of respect for piny and his perspective. Kindly don’t try to buddy up to her.
It’s evident that you see feminism and trans-positivity as far more conflictual than most of us do. I gather that that understanding stems from a few things. I’ll identify as many as I can so you can address them without having to dig through the entire discussion. Feel free to rephrase how I state them.
1: Whatever it is that makes women women is lost when a woman transitions to life as a man, and cannot be gained when a man transitions to life as a woman.
2: “I maintain that the trans movement has been contructed for men and entirely by men.” I take that to mean that you believe that feminism and trans-positivity are more or less mututally exclusive.
3: “movement that casts women as the oppressor – of course since oppression is a class based phenominon, then that means that trans are not women since oppression is class based,” I’m not exactly sure what you mean there. Do you mean to say that Oppressor Group oppresses Oppressee Group, and that individual members of Oppressor Group can be said to oppress individual members of Oppressee Group? That how I understand the statement “class-based”. Men-as-class oppress women-as-class, rather than individual men oppressing individual women. Is that a correct understanding of what you mean in that passage?
4. “Their experience is socially male. Their way of understanding the world is socially male and they have no experiential background as women.” This one’s conjecture, and feel encouraged to correct me: you believe that women’s experience as women give them a better read on feminism than men can ever claim, because men have only experience as men and as such can’t look at issues other than through the lens of patriarchy? I understand that’s a bit of a jump, but it seems like that’s something you believe. Is that true?
I won’t address the statements above because I want to give you a change to respond first. But I will add a few things.
I think piny has an undeniable justification for being on a feminist board (this isn’t a women’s board, per se.): he was asked to be here.
I don’t know how you feel that your experience has been challenged, but I will suggest that you have been challenged not when you’ve honoured your own experiences, but when you’ve refused to honour other people’s experience. What experience do you have that you feel haven’t been honoured?
Sandra, generally we discourage serial posting around here.
” Kindly don’t try to buddy up to her.”
Do not attempt to control what I say. Why is that you feel it’s appropriate to CONTROL realtionships and even interpret other people motivations on this forum.
I’ve been appropriate, but be informed if you attempt to control what I say within appropriate limits, your behavior will be illuminated being controlling.
That was no an attempt to control you. I’m sorry that you feel like people are trying to control you, but that’s not where I’m coming from. If I misinterpreted your motivations, I’m sorry.
That aside, have I accurately read your perspective in the rest of my post? If you can clarify that for me, I can start to try to understand your perspective, and maybe try to address your previous questions. As it is, it seems that your perspective that mine (and that of most people on this blog) are different enough that we can’t get anywehere without first trying to understand where each other’s coming from.
Now you are dialoguing because you are interacting in a respectful way and certainly I will reciprocate.
1. It’s evident that you see feminism and trans-positivity as far more conflictual than most of us do. I gather that that understanding stems from a few things. I’ll identify as many as I can so you can address them without having to dig through the entire discussion. Feel free to rephrase how I state them.
May I make a possibly educated guess? You are in your twenties, you want women to do well and you feel sorry for trans. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. You have not gone through formal feminist consciousness raising and your peer groups being peers are pretty much the same. You would possibly describe yourself as a liberal feminist? Therefore transpositivity looks unconditionally OK? What if I were to say, that given a certain analysis certain portions and certain people were women and some weren’t? I suspect that any such analysis would be rejected and this is what I mean by the trans movement is greedy.
Thank you for permission to restate, I won’t need to do that as would like to preserve your meaning. I find your questions to be insighful and incisive.
I think women are left unprotected with uncondtional transpositivity and therefore it isn’t compatible with feminism. I am left unprotected because I very explicitly want to be around women and to me that means around women-centered culture and not the politically misunderstood faux-egalitarian components of liberalism or trans culture. In other words, I would be more respectful if trans were not EMPIRIALISTIC in the following ways. When someone is being colonized, the colonizer must always “educate” the colonized. In the case of trans, the education means that I must incorporate distortions from the male social standpoint about the material conditions of women and the impact the trans movement has on me. I must also deny my own feelings and senses. If I perceive a forty years man (in a social sense) to be a forty year old man, by trans ettiquette I must belie my own perceptions that says 1.) This person looks and sounds like a man. 2.) He has male features and big hands. 3.) He’s wearing a dress and often a wig. 4.) I learn he’s a husband and a father and has been married five time.
I am not ashamed that these feelings are labeled as transphobic. I really don’t care. They are my feelings. I am a rape survivor and I have been abused by men for a decade of my child hood and I NEVER socialize with men and the healing of woman’s space is a necessity to me.
I am saying that the foundations of the trans movement has been grounded in the percepts of men and not feminism. Trans has really never actually engage with actual feminist scrutiny to my knowledge. I am suggesting that there may be some room for it but in the absence of that scrutiny, we’ll never know because reactions such as the one that have occurred here are typical. This, I believe is because current trans understanding substance free as far as feminist grounding is understood.
I think you and generic trans have it reversed. Trans should listen to feminists. I think hard feminism is their one meaningful bridge, after all anything else is patriarchy, On to your questions:
“1: Whatever it is that makes women is lost when a woman transitions to life as a man, and cannot be gained when a man transitions to life as a woman.”
In a way this is a trap and I’ll step into it. It’s a trap because liberals see symmetry where there is none. If I say that this society is misogynistic and androcentric, you may agree and if you do, then you’ll have to acknowledge an asymmetry. Can I concretize the asymmetry any further? Yes, in a simple but rather deep single event. The asymmetry manifests itself in terms of the presence of a Harley Davidson motorcycle on top of the stage in the MWMF 2000 opening ceremony. In and of itself, this has little to no meaning but I would ask that you consider the setting, what is being celebrated, the culture that we live in and just what the appearance of that Harley means in the larger sense. If you say it wasn’t significant then what was it doing there?
If I say woman is made and not born which is the social constructivist position women’s constituting is invalidated which changes the meaning of woman. It’s a favorite queer/lbgttrans trick to say there is not grand narrative or singular oppression. Again I think the statement was written by men because ALL women know the feeling of being a second class citizen because we are women and growing up under those conditions.
To me, woman often means “friend and sister”. Under no circumstances would I ever apply those words to a forty year-old husband.
And hasn’t piny lost something? I’ll never call piny sister and to be honest, being woman-centered I really am not concerned with being inclusive of his experiences as a man. Do we not recognize that he has made a choice? Choice is interesting, it has an inseparable flipside, meaning consequence. I think piny in saying he cares not to be a woman, has abrogated his ability to say he cares about women or to speak for women and I think that’s a choices.
“Whatever it is that makes women is lost when a woman transitions to life as a man”
I would say yes. The choices necessarily breaks important connections WITH A PEOPLE. But you don’t really treat piny as a man. You actually treat him as a woman. You don’t ride heard on him in the same way women correct men women are in a clear majority. He has all the credability of a woman. Sadly enough because of poor boundaries, you treat piny as sort of a man and sort of a woman, therefore he really doesn’t experence “man”. In fact, he has more women’s privileges than he does men’s privileges. And in a very liberal way, you make women wrong by saying that stacy is more authentic than ginmar.
I will say the same thing piny has said only clearer. You don’t define someone when they have their tonsils out as being a tonsilite and it’s patriarchy that makes the big deal over genitals. So why is Stacy MORE authentic that ginmar? Can you see the basal essentialism and patriarchy in the liberal treatment of this philosophy?
Because this society is asymmetrical and patriarchy is the underlying context, I’m going to answer this carefully constructed syllogism which is designed as a trap. But the trap has a problem that comes from a male perspective. It fails to recognize there are actual asymmetries for men and women.
The trans-positive answer to the question is No. The feminist answer is yes, if you really accept actually support people going through transition. Part of that support would be to eject an FTM form your local lesbian club the moment he takes his first testosterone. (pick you own delimiter – may be when his voice breaks???)
“I maintain that the trans movement has been contructed for men and entirely by men.” I take that to mean that you believe that feminism and trans-positivity are more or less mututally exclusive.”
As it is currently constructed the trans movement works against women because it is grounded in a male social standpoint. Under it’s current construction and set of self understandings the trans movement is a disaster. It doesn’t not have to be,
“I’m not exactly sure what you mean there. Do you mean to say that Oppressor Group oppresses Oppressee Group, and that individual members of Oppressor Group can be said to oppress individual members of Oppressed Group? That how I understand the statement “class-based”. Men-as-class oppress women-as-class, rather than individual men oppressing individual women. Is that a correct understanding of what you mean in that passage?”
Here is the feminist definition of oppression: “Oppression is the systematic undermining of a subordinated class by a dominant class.”
Oppression is never on an individual basis. It is on a CLASS basis (class man/class woman). For trans to make women an oppressor class places them outside of class woman. In feminist parlance the statement should NEVER be made. This is an example of where trans have been rather insight free as they have been placing themselves outside of the class.
“Their experience is socially male. Their way of understanding the world is socially male and they have no experiential background as women.” This one’s conjecture, and feel encouraged to correct me: you believe that women’s experience as women give them a better read on feminism than men can ever claim, because men have only experience as men and as such can’t look at issues other than through the lens of patriarchy? I understand that’s a bit of a jump, but it seems like that’s something you believe. Is that true?
Very definitely and here is why and here is how feminist theory would help.
There are three major (Harsock,Harding, Harroway) writers on feminist standpoint theory which clearly explains the different realities members of class man and class woman experience. I think it’s based on a couple of things. The most visible are the differential social outcomes influenced by male privilege. These differential outcomes, in an ongoing fashion construct reality for us. They also effect awareness. It’s not easy for me to get anywhere with men but once I was able to get a man to see the following, there is a standpoint concept called epistemological privilege which really means the ability to see social inequities.
“Who is that has the most epistemological privilege? It’s the black Jewish, disable lesbian down the street who is originally from Asia.”
The man lit up in sudden insight, “Because ALL of those gradients are in her face?”
“Yes”, and he remembered this for at least half an hour and after that it was as if we had never had the conversation.
White men, are the least epistemologically privileged people on earth because epistemological privilege is inversely proportional to social privilege.
So I hope I’ve closed the gap that you perceive as a jump and it’s not a jump. It’s well described in feminist theory which liberal feminist never perceive to be a necessity.
So to respecfully restate your question:
“you believe that women’s experience as women give them a better read on feminism than men can ever claim, because men have only experience as men and as such can’t look at issues other than through the lens of patriarchy?”
At the first level, feminism is grounded in women’s experience not patriarchy. MEN with their privilege perceive the world from a male social standpoint. Have you ever heard the phrase, “does not get it”? It’s useful to reflect on that in terms of standpoint theory.
At the same time I am not assuming a social essentialism either.
Thank you for your astute questions.
I was actually referring to your contempt for piny, who is one of the bloggers here. You expressed that contempt here:
If you were willing to listen to piny, you would find that you could learn a lot from him. But you won’t, because you haven’t entered this space in a spirit of dialogue. You don’t think that you have anything to learn from anyone here. You think, wrongly, that you’re smarter than us and that you’re going to educate us about the error of our ways. And you aren’t. You aren’t smarter than us and I don’t think you’re going to change anyone’s mind about anything. I’m having a hard time seeing, therefore, why you think your presence here is a good use of your or our time.
Sandra S, kindly don’t b uddy up to me while you disavow piny.
It is a good idea to review goals. I acknowledge piny is eloquent and explains a lot about trans. I do not believe that any FTM can possibly claim to be woman-centered. Feminism is be definition woman-centered. Therefore in becoming a member of class man and by especially being a trans advocate and educator, I believe he has given up any claim to be a contributor in feminism because by definition he isn’t woman centered.
You assume I have not have heard his content before. Certainly I have. He hasn’t invented it.
I never claimed to be smarter than you. I do claim to have a very astute analysis of trans. I also claim that many of the alignments and behaviors that have been displayed seem to totally have vacated any libratory goal for women. I’ve seen that replaced by things that actually hurt women and there seems to be little desire to address that.
Why? Because these issue would confront preconceived notions and these notions came from men.
If you were willing to listen to piny, you would find that you could learn a lot from him.
How do you know this? I haven’t seen piny since he’s called me stupid. How would I know he has anything of interest to say? Again, I think extraordinarily little trans rhetoric
I think I’ve been pretty clear that the trans movement has been scripted by men from a man’s perpective with patriarchal blindenesses built right into the script. I’ve said clearly that feminism needs to be informing trans That may not be a message patriarchy wants to hear that’s why patriarchy functions the way it does.
My sense it is that you actually don’t want to engage because I challenge your belief system.
“Sandra S, kindly don’t b uddy up to me while you disavow piny.”
If I can’t question piny’s politics than why would you think I’d want to “buddy up” with you? I’d “buddy up with you because I perceived you to be a good feminist. However, I do not see the establishment of acceptance of trans politics as a chice i’d make.
So I’ll respect your request, by all means ginmar.
I really don’t care, SAndra. Your views on transpeople are offensive.
I haven’t said one word about “transpeople.” I have only discussed ideologies and politics.
As a feminist, I think trans politics are offensive.
What the Fuck!
Why is this Sandra person being allowed to hijack what was a good discussion?
Who is controlling this discussion?
You know, I was reading what I thought a very interesting discussion and thinking along here about my post and then suddenly, Sandra pops in like a blubbering, drunk crashing her sixth party for the night, completely unable to engage in any meaningful way with the scene at hand.
Piny, why has this discussion been allowed to be derailed by this individual who obviously cares about nothing but her own agenda, regardless of anyone else?
As a feminist, I find bloviating, all consuming egoists offensive, especially ones who use hatred and dismissal of others’ experience as the base for their so-called feminism.
Oh wait, maybe this does all fit into the discussion that shriveled under the weight of Sandra.
Piny, why has this discussion been allowed to be derailed by this individual who obviously cares about nothing but her own agenda, regardless of anyone else?
Never mind that agenda is called Feminism.
I know it well, and I use it all the time.
Um, that’s far enough that I won’t agree, but close enough that I won’t get in a huff about it. You’ve made some incorrect assumptions about what I believe, but our perspectives are different enough that I don’t expect you’d be able to get that from what I’ve said previously in this forum.
It seems to me that you feel that “women-only” space is an important part of feminism to you, and I agree. I think people have the right to decide who to associate with, and who not to. Frankly I also think you have the right to define for yourself who is and is not a woman, and fill your social calendar appropriately.
It seems to me that you feel that a transperson presence in women-only space feels like an intrustion to you, in a very personal way. You have every right to that feeling. But I think feminism is big enough that there can be cisgendered women only spaces, trans-positive spaces, and everyone welcome spaces. (“Space” refer to physical space, festivals, social groups, support structures, everything.) No one group or perspective has the right to claim the one-true-voice of feminism. There are feminists who aren’t comfortable in the Big Tent. This need not be a contradiction. An important part of feminism, to me, is the availability of choice. In this case, the choice to be in spaces where youre comfortable.
Feminists who aren’t comfortable in trans-inclusive spaces have the right to cisgendered-women-only spaces. A lot of feminists are comfortable with, and make the choice to be around, transpeople and the the handful of men who more or less get it. (It occurs to me that it may not have been clear from previous discussion that I’m a man, and a straight white one at that. You may or may not think I “get it”, and I frankly am not that interested in what you think. I am interested in hearing what you have to say and say what I think needs saying.) We all have the right to the spaces that make us comfortable.
Just as you feel invaded when transpeople are present in the cisgenered-women-only spaces you value, we feel invaded in this trans-positive feminist space by people who have no interest in trans-positivity. The moderators here do a fine job of letting debate happen when people seems interested in hear each other’s perspective, in fact they usually let it go longer than some of us prefer (I love a good debate, no matter how ugly it gets).
We feel invaded. (I don’t presume to speak for everyone, but I’m willing to go out on a limb.) We ask that you respect this trans-positive space just as I would respect your cisgendered-women-only space. You can do that by leaving, or by remembering that your perspective is your own, and that it conflicts with the norms the rest of us share (whether we agree with them or not).
I hope I’ve understood your sentiment correctly. Nothing’s worse than speaking from your convictions and feeling like you haven’t been listened to.
Hey, we can always play Transphobe Bingo, gang.
If she uses the words ‘sick’ or ‘mutilation,’ I only need two more squares for a blackout win.
I have neither used the word sick or mutlilated.
You see, in the way that “mutilated” is used, it assumes perfection in “nature”. However, stop and think about it.
I’ve spent 33 years in abortion lines since we got Roe. Everyone must have bodily autonomy and soveriengty. I spent too many years fighting FOR those things, not to notice the contradictions.
I do not think the “mutilation” argument is at all consistent with feminism.
But then again, I’m not very ‘mart.
KnifeGhost;
It seems to me that you feel that “women-only” space is an important part of feminism to you, and I agree. I think people have the right to decide who to associate with, and who not to. Frankly I also think you have the right to define for yourself who is and is not a woman, and fill your social calendar appropriately.
I agree with this.
It seems to me that you feel that a transperson presence in women-only space feels like an intrustion to you, in a very personal way.
My analysis is a little bit more nuanced that this. This is going to involve a distinction since I do not validate the word transperson.
My definition of woman is someone who is socially constituted as a woman and has a critical embrace of that identity.
To me, “transwoman doesn’t embrace the identity”. Therefore a trans-identified person would not meet my criteria and I would not want to share space with them. On the other hand, if they had a female anatomy, and critically embraced an identity as woman and had gone through what they went through early in life, I’d have no issue. At NO time would I ever support bringing up trans issues in womens-space or would I find late transistioners acceptable as they are not socially constituted as women. This corresponds to my earlier critique of the movement as being greedy. They want people who obviously have no recognizable claim to any feminist understanding of the word “woman” to be included. Knifeghost what has happened is that the number of woman-only spaces that are not filled with trans has shrunken to nothing. It has literally destroyed my community and I have none. I do not participate socially in mixed communities ever. It should be pretty obvious that I’m not a liberal feminist.
You have every right to that feeling. But I think feminism is big enough that there can be cisgendered women only spaces, trans-positive spaces, and everyone welcome spaces.
I would call the first a woman space and the second two mixed spaces.
(”Space” refer to physical space, festivals, social groups, support structures, everything.) No one group or perspective has the right to claim the one-true-voice of feminism. There are feminists who aren’t comfortable in the Big Tent. This need not be a contradiction. An important part of feminism, to me, is the availability of choice. In this case, the choice to be in spaces where you’re comfortable.
The ‘one true feminism’ question is one of great interest. Radical Women did write organizing principles and present them in Oct 1968 calling themselves “feminists”. What happens when you’ve layed out a movement with a strategy and a framework and others come and take the name and reject the framework you organized under? – a political act in itself.
To me feminism has absolutely nothing to do with comfort. I do not think essentialism and feminism can occupy the same space and because of the central cardinals of liberalism, I see liberalism as patriarchy imposed upon women. I look at feminism as having s singular mission which is to deal with the oppression of women in which I do not include anyone who ever voluntarily participated in life as a man.
Btw, knifeghost, I want to acknowledge you for a mature feminist interaction, by far the most mature here.
For the entire duration, of the interaction, I’ve been assuming that I have been talking to a member of class woman because that’s my default expectation on a feminist board. However, expectations can be recognized as being no more than that.
I could have been wrong…., no?
Ginmar,
Are you a mother?
Wait, wait…”husband and father,” ad nauseum…
Oh, my God. Rainsong? Is that you? I do believe it is.
RanSong?
Or maybe I’m just being paranoid. It’d be pretty fucking sweet, though.
You can read. The serial posts are also true to form. But don’t mind me.
Piny, why has this discussion been allowed to be derailed by this individual who obviously cares about nothing but her own agenda, regardless of anyone else?
I admit to enjoying the trainwreck. It’s amazing that this is the first such visit we’ve had, isn’t it?
???? I won’t even ask.
Piny, you get all the good trolls!
I just get Fitz.
Do I receive a “high quality troll T-shirt?”
Could you put Two waves on it? I have a deep appreciation for teal.
And Piny, I been informed you could teach me.
You have my ears and eyes.
Knifeghost, Sandra does NOT have the right to go on and on about how her so called feminist credentials entitle her to have her out and out bigotry considered normative or an essential part of the feminist movement.
Don’t go acting like one of those asshole men who are quite happy to be all gentlemanly and civil with misogynist trolls when they’re spewing some of the worst kind of hatred around.
Bigotry is not feminist, and anyone who is a bigot cannot be a feminist, because bigotry is all about hierarchies and deciding who you can hate on and who you cannot, and that is all patriarchy because it patrairchy cannot exist without those hierarchies and by indulging it on any lower level, you reaffirm it on a higher level. Which means that transphobia from “feminists” reaffirms male misogyny.
And anyone who reaffirms the misogyny of men and makes life worse for other women with their hatred cannot, by definition, be a feminist.
Let’s play trans bingo… there are two parts to the puzzle. When unhappy trans and trans advocates will shout
Bigot or transphobe.
Sandra does NOT have the right to go on and on about how her so called feminist credentials entitle her to have her out and out bigotry considered normative or an essential part of the feminist movement.
One of the first things trans will do to impede dialogue will be to cry bigotry. There is no doubt about it. I am woman-centered and feminism is a women’s movement. If being wman-centred is considered bigotry by trans then… that certainly seems misogynistic to me.
I do not recognize middle aged men as women. I just don’t. Nor would Janice Raymond or Mary Daly. Are you saying they aren’t feminists?
Lemme ask you something, Sandra: what’s it to you?
Why does this bother you so much? Were you taken for a fool by a transwoman?
Because, see, I’m a feminist, too. Enough of one to have been asked to blog at a place called “Feministe.” And while I understand the need for safe places, and I can see that there is an argument that transwomen benefitted from male privilege prior to transition and therefore can’t fully “get” what it is to be “women,” with all the social conditioning that entails, I just can’t seem to summon up the reserves of bile that you quite evidently feel about the issue.
So, again, what’s your deal? Why is this such a personal, heated, issue for you?
Because, frankly, you’re violating the “don’t annoy us” portion of the commenting policy here. At least for me.
anyone who is a bigot cannot be a feminist, because bigotry is all about hierarchies and deciding who you can hate on and who you cannot
Robin Morgan once said, “‘man-hating is an honorable and viable political act… the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.
Robin Morgan is one of the founders of Ms Magazine and had written several books on feminism, Sisterhood is Powerful, Sisterhood is Forever is another.
Is Robin Morgan not a feminist because you say so.
Are we into stripping feminist credentials today?
“Why does this bother you so much?”
I’ve said many times that I do not recognize the word transwoman. I have said earlier that I am a survivor of rape and have been abused by men.
My protest is the women’s only communitys have been invaded by middle age men in dresses.
You might understand that it is indeed a feminist issue when men invade women’s spaces. See, no dark mysteries here.
R. Mildred, I agree completely. But if I tell her she’s a bigot and should fuck off, she goes away thinking we’re all anti-feminists and pro-male-at-the-expense-of-women and all that fun stuff. If I convey to her that I hear where she’s coming from (but still disagree), she might feel heard, and leave alone satisfied in having been taken seriously. She deserves to be taken seriously, and disagreed with on those grounds. I find that I can best serve this shitstorm by being the guy who listens, cause I know everyone else has the calling out covered.
Sandra, a lot of women have on here. So have a lot of transwomen. While I don’t deny the importance of that experience for you, it doesn’t give you a unique right to set the terms of debate here. R. Mildred is right. You don’t have the right to come here and to deny the experiences of transpeople here or anyone else, and you don’t have the right to claim you have the straight goods on feminism. I’ll repeat myself — that’s as much an intrusion on us as you feel the presense of transpeople in your kind of feminism is an intrusion on you.
Well, Sandra, that sounds like you’re universalizing your own personal experiences and calling it feminist dogma.
And you keep talking about middle aged men in dresses? Would it be okay if they were young? If they wore nice pantsuits?
Many feminists recognize transwomen as transwomen (and often women, modifier free). You’re free to disagree. You’re free to organize your social calendar accordingly. You’re not free to deny the experiences of transpeople and expect us to shrug it off. Women take a lot of shit courtesy of the Patriarchy. Transpeople take a lot of shit courtesy of the Patriarchy. You’re not gaiing any sympathy or changing any minds. Why do you feel the need to still be here making people angry and turning them off of your perspective?
Frankly, Raymond and Daly aren’t the selection committee of who does and doesn’t get a Feminist badge. To paraphrase some of our nicer conservative trolls, feminists can disagree in good faith. However, a lot of those feminists won’t stand by silently when people deny trans experiences, no matter from what perspective.
Raymond and Daly’s feminist credntials are not in question here.
OOH, you whipped out Robin Morgan.
Yeah, she’s a feminist. And so am I, and so is piny, and so is ginmar, and so is R. Mildred. And, surprise! we don’t all agree on every point.
But, what Robin Morgan doesn’t have on me is the keys to this here blog. And we don’t have to give you a platform for bigotry and trolling and derailing threads.
This isn’t my thread, so I’m not going to ban you. But I think you’re disruptive enough that you deserve to be put on moderation.
“This isn’t my thread, so I’m not going to ban you. But I think you’re disruptive enough that you deserve to be put on moderation. ”
Doesn’t bother me at all. You see, it just bothers me that you call yourself a feminist, You don’t seem to care about the women’s communities these men have been destroyed. Given what I’ve seen here I couldn’t endorse this board as being consistent which feminism.
As my for discounting the experience of men. I don’t think so. I’m saying that’s what their experience is and that I do not share space with men.
You critique me for ignoring their experience. I experience them as men. In the spaces I’ve seen them they are not capable of even speaking about women’s issues. On Amp’s board, ever so properly it’s been brought to amps attention that one of them is Men’s rights Activist. He isn’t allowed to participate in feminist discussions which I think is most appropriate. Women are not fathers. Women are not husbands,
Herstorically women have not been allowed to have our own experiences. They have always been made subservient to men. I don’t think you care. I think you care about about the men and that’s NOT feminism.
“However, a lot of those feminists won’t stand by silently when people deny trans experiences, no matter from what perspective.”
Why not? Theirs experiences are the experiences of men. Letl’s get real. A fifty year old special forces colonel has not experience as a women. So I’m not igmoring their experience – they are and they are appropriating the label woman.
“You don’t have the right to come here and to deny the experiences of transpeople here or anyone else, and you don’t have the right to claim you have the straight goods on feminism.”
Don’t think these people deny their own experiences? They’ve said publcly they were men. They’ve lived men’s lives.
I’ll ask it again. What constitutes them as women?
” Transpeople take a lot of shit courtesy of the Patriarchy.”
Yes – but feminism is a movement for women – not men whether they are in pants suits or dresses. I think that’s something to be addressed by Men’s rights gtoups.
Hey piny!
You didn’t tell us: have you seen the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel? Did you like it? ;-)
(For those tuning in late, see the ends of posts number 30 and 48.)
I haven’t, but I’m curious. I’ve seen the first one, which seemed pretty handily plotted for a Hollywood blockbuster involving a theme-park ride. I hope the second one doesn’t disappoint. I might be able to get my dad to go with me.
I’m really looking forward to the possibility of a third movie, but I can’t say why without supplying spoilers.
I don’t think there’s much feminism here. Lot’s of trans, but no feminism.
As for my claims about feminism, other than a couple of vague and non-specific allusions, I haven’t seen specific opposition to anything I’ve.
I’ve seen it said that I don’t pay attention to “transpeople’s experiences.” I think I’m the only one paying attention to them.
I’m the only one here to say that someone who experienced life for fift years as a man – is not a woman and never will.
Any time I ask the question, “What constitutes them as women?” Random events will occur.
One thing will not happen. No one will ever answer the question. The reason is, they really aren’t women and that’s the trans house of cards and trans have destroyed the women’s community.
This board has aided and abetted that crime against women.
Oh, God, the Motherhood card, too? For fuck’s sake, already. Lemme guess, my hypothetical daughter or something or other. Whatever.
I saw the second movie, Piny. With all the eye candy in that movie if they’d just get Jason Isaac in there, I might never leave the theatre.
I haven’t seen the “Pirates of the Caribbean” sequel (it’s received mixed reviews from my friends), but went to see “Who Killed the Electric Car” last night–I highly recommend it.
“What constitutes them as women?”
Well Piny, I have to admit Sandra is an interesting sight, but I did like the discussion that started.
“Oh, God, the Motherhood card, too?”
Is there a motherhood card? I thought motherhood was one of our reproductive choices.
Actually, I knew of a ginmar on a board that had a baby. I was wondering if you and she were the same.
I’m sure I will be informed of my inability to grasp the topic of Sandra’s beef, but it seems the two sentences above contradict. If gender identity is indeed a social construct developed for the oppression of women by men, then would not gender identity be fluid?
It would seem to me that to deconstruct social proscriptions of gender identity would enable a freedom from such oppression that relies on the conformance and adherence to such socially mandated gender roles no?
To say, “I am a woman” or “I am a man” contains all variety of messages from the messenger to the receiver. Is the identity of a woman or man based solely upon the ‘junk’ they have? What is the need and origin of gender identity?
I agree with Sandra in some sense, as I have struggled with the stereotypical ‘dragqueen’ who often takes the socially ascribed female identity and not only makes a mockery of it, but will also in doing so, deny the experience of oppression that women who are fixed in playing such roles experience. “Look at me! Dressing gowns and high heels are fun!”
Also, I don’t think anyone would bother to deny that those men who play dress up and yet remain men socially have the convenience of maintaining their male priviledge while also enjoying the opportunity to play out the male proscribed role of what a woman is, how many times I have heard a queen say of a woman, “I am so much better as a woman than her!”
This I have to admit I have struggled with myself and have seen and DO indeed find offensive. But to say that this devalues and derails feminism in all forms is ridiculous. I would think that since women born as women still make up the majority of women as feminists, I am hardpressed to see how a small number of trans-men can possibly disempower the experience of all women.
Also, Piny’s experience as a woman is valid and I’m sure will remain with his experience forever. Therefore, the framework from which Piny or others like him function has validity. Those who choose to undergo the gruesome and ostracizing journey of transition surely have a need that transends social boundaries and stems more from inherent biologic drives than just social positioning. To lump those who seriously undergo true gender transition along with those who play at switching socially proscribed gender roles I think undermines and devalues their experience as well.
And again I say, if gender identity is a social construct that is fluid, then why the fuss? Would it not be more to deconstruct to be able to say, “Your identity as a man or women by how you dress, what you experience in such roles is a social proscription?” Therefore, the need to transition from one gender to another may indeed be founded in biologic terms, such as hormonal distribution more than social identity?
Voluntarily? I don’t follow you. If gender roles are socially proscripted from a young age, i.e., the one born with a penis is a boy and dressed as such and identified as such, how can someone ‘voluntarily’ do anything else?
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but as I understand it, the ability for someone who had strong urges to identify as the gender opposite what they physically possess has only recently arrived.
Does such a statement not also belittle the internal struggle and suffering of an individual who may have always had the urging to identify with or feeling of being the other sex been something to be held within as a secret? Is not the oppression of women by strictly assigned gender roles also denying and oppressing those who biologically do not or cannot fulfill the demands of those gender roles?
I understand the construct from which you come, but I think also that you lump all transpeople into some sort of trivialization of their experience which I have a hard time accepting.
Because the identity of a woman starts with her physical attributes at birth does it not? The assignment and social construct within which a woman must follow are just that are they not? Therefore, the experience that makes a woman valid in your eyes is only just that — experience as a result of social construct.
Therefore, as I said before, if a gender identity outside of biological constraints, is indeed a social construct and feminism is about deconstructing these social constructs, then what is your beef?
The experience of a woman who is physically born a woman is everything about her vagina, her breasts, her reproductive organs, everything. All her oppression, all social constructs derive from that.
So if we are to say that women or men should not have to live within these strict social constructs, do not then transgendered persons become valid? Valid in the light that one’s personal undertakings need not be justified to the greater social conforms? That all persons have an inherent right to engage in that behavior that pleases them without the fear of social reprisal or denial?
Is not feminism a sort of humanism that accepts that role assignments are just that alone?
Certainly, if a dragqueen were to make the assertion that they understand my experience as a woman growing up as a woman, or that they can somehow step in my experience by dressing up or going through transition, would be suspect and rightfully so.
But I haven’t seen that occuring here, so I’m not sure where the beef is in the origin of your argument.
Just the same if a woman who never had children or never had a relationship with a man, never was raped, never beaten up for being a female, etc. cannot ever know what my or many other women’s experience is and thus not understand the origins of it.
So see, its not just transpeople who may not be able to be the complete ideal woman that you seem to hold up here.
Oh? I believe the discussion that had begun on this thread had nothing to do wtih trans experience, you brought it here.
I also cannot understand how on earth you manage to see women as victims of a few individuals with experience different than the majority. What is the movement you are involved in that has you butting heads with a majority of persons not born women? I want to know.
Honest to god, in my daily life experience I deal with none, that is NO trans people or if i do, they don’t come up to me and announce their gender assignment status/preference.
Here on this board, if piny makes a trans discussion thread that I can’t seem to get my mind around (which sometimes occurs) or which doesn’t seem to interest me, I ignore it. Piny or any other person so described doesn’t need me to engage with them do they? I don’t see the pressure that feminist experience seems to be sliding under.
What I think the statement does speak to though, is the often total disconnect that many feminist activists have with the real everyday world that most people live in and the real everyday sexism that most women deal with.
The issues of oppression that women speak of experiencing in their daily lives go on. Classism and elitism within the core of the feminist movement, like so many other greater social movements, has caused a shift of many women away from it and thus alienated the experience of most of the women in this society.
The right has effectively taken hold of this capitulation by the feminist core and run with it. In other words, you are all tangled up and self absorbed in a web of your own making, wasting your energy and trying to divert and waste everyone else’s energy while the real struggle is larger and much more important.
You also deny the power that most women, when aligned together, have to make change to better society by saying that a small minority of people can actually disempower the larger group.
Absolute nonsense and very offensive indeed.
Let me rephrase that. I make the decision to move onto a discussion more aligned with my experience or one that deals with issues that I can relate to or that I feel have importance in my daily life.
Oftentimes Piny’s posts are long and require a lot of thinking that I haven’t time for or am just too damn tired to deal with. I have limited experience with considering the issues of transsexualism, so therefore, I try not to bore Piny or others by jumping into the deep end first and expecting them to save me when I am drowning.
By the same token, I would find it hypocritical to the ultimate to claim that I have a right to discount Piny’s experience or points and then demand that he recognize and validate mine.
Thank you Red, I had voiced my opposition to the thread being hijacked and no one cared. Glad to see I’m not alone, although in irritation and in giving up, I did respond to her.
BRAVO!
Three cans of water to every can of Concentrated Woman.
Shake well.
You know, I’ve been sitting on the sidelines watching this whole thing unfold and promising myself that I wouldn’t bother responding. But, here I go, against my better judgment.
The concept of “voluntarily living as a man” and the ways in which this pits those who transition “early” vs. those who transition “late” really bothers me. (Thank you for touching upon this issue, Kate.) I transitioned pretty early—at least for a Generation Xer. It started as early as 17, when I decided that I would never think of myself as a man, and came up to “full fruition” when I started living as a woman at 25 years of age. Quite honestly, the only thing that separates my life’s path from that of a woman who transitions at 40, 50, or 60 is social and economic privilege.
My parents had enough money to send me to college, which provided access to an environment that was far more accepting of queer people than my conservative hometown could ever have been. It was there, in the midst of doing political activism (mostly on abortion rights and other women’s issues), that I made a number of caring, understanding friendships. Those friendships sustained me. Therein, I found the kind of emotional support that made full transition a possibility. Were it not for that support, transition would have been extremely difficult.
The physical procedures that many transwomen under go are not inexpensive: years of therapy, dozens of visits to endocrinologists, hundreds of hours of electrolysis, and for some, surgery (very little of which is covered by health insurance). I would never have had access to these procedures in my mid twenties, where it not for my mother’s financial help. So, my ability to transition early rests solidly in economic privilege and the social privilege of having a strong support network. There are many, many women who transition late who would happily have chosen to do so at a much earlier age—if it had actually been a viable option.
I can not and will not abandon my support of those women because I had access to financial and social privileges that they did not. I would be a classist hypocrite if I did so.
Identity is far more complex than a single axis of oppression or privilege. Most people in this world have identities rich in intersecting forms of oppression and privilege. I was born to working class parents who lived through an era in which the steel mills provided a middle class income. I was born male and I live with and benefit from many of the privileges inherent in that experience. I was trained in the halls of academia and I benefit from the status bestowed upon those like me. I am transgender and I live with the widespread social ostracism inherent in that identity. I am a lesbian identified bisexual and I have lived with the heterosexism of the straight community and the fear of bisexuality of the queer community. I am a woman and I have lived with the disadvantages of sexism for most of my adult years.
These things are all parts of who I am. I can not and will not deny the importance of any of those parts of myself. They all share varying degrees of importance in establishing where I exist within this society and they affect the ways in which I see and interact with others.
Sandra, you analyze my life, piny’s life, and lives of many others via one axis of being: have our lives been touched by the “taint” of maleness, by the corruption of male privilege. In doing so, you are blind to richness of our lives and the lives of others. You are blind the unique voices and experiences that we can bring to feminism.
I have to say that piny does his best to include his past experiences as a woman in many of his posts here at Feministe. He often calls cisgender men on their sh*t by referencing his own experiences as someone who has lived on both sides of the gender divide.
You have assigned to yourself the privilege of serving as the arbiter of our identities. However, we’ve lived our entire lives being judged by others in how much we diverge from the metric of girlhood, boyhood, manhood, and womanhood. In fact, every single person on the face of this planet—cisgender or trans—faces those judgments in varying degrees. There comes a point in many people’s lives when they have to start listening to their hearts rather than the voices of judgment that surround them. I choose to listen to my heart. I suspect that piny has done similarly.
Sandra S: This is part of the damage trans does to women. For their benefit, we pretend gender is real when gender is socially a structure that oppresses women….I really will never pretend that someone who willfully talks about having been a boy, is anything other than a man.
Kate: I’m sure I will be informed of my inability to grasp the topic of Sandra’s beef, but it seems the two sentences above contradict. If gender identity is indeed a social construct developed for the oppression of women by men, then would not gender identity be fluid?
Actually Kate, I’m going to acknowledge your questions as being substantive. They help me see how nuanced my thinking is. Fortunately, I can identify the resources for your verification and edification: Sexual Politics by Kate Millet – Chapter II, available on the net– This radical feminist article is rather supportive of reassignment. Pay special attention to the quotes on critical period learning, it’s crucial to the understanding to identity.
The article makes a couple of things very clear. Fluid Gender identity is completely a political construction of queer and trans. It doesn’t exist. I fully believe that gender identity, actually class identity, is an artifact of patriarchy, FOR EVERYONE. Therefore at age two… there are no privileged identities.
People will manifest their identities…. No then lets consider this little person with a an ostensible penis. Notice I didn’t say male, and notice I didn’t say man –
Child 1:
If at three years old you ask that child what it is and it says, “girl” – there’s identity of girl there meaning everything that person will perceive will have that identity as a pivot point. Effectively what you have there is a traumatized girl, they will have see thing from a female standpoint and will be as woman centered as anyone else (which is rare these days). “Boy” doesn’t compute for this child. “Boy” is just plain upside and sideways. All children “decide” what they are, some have more validation than others, but identity IS STABLE.
This child has no agency until they establish independence from their parents.
This person is likely to grow up to be a woman and a pretty normal one. This person will never see things from the male social standpoint.
Child 2:
Has a penis. Ask them at 3 years, what they are and they say “boy.” They manifest a normal male social life and anticipated affinities.
They date girls or boys it doesn’t matter. But their identity is boy. They have stated all their lives that they are men. They applied for marriage licenses as men and looked fine at their weddings in their tuxes with their best men. At age forty they tell their wives and children they are “really a woman” and go through reassignment after having lived what appear to be socially normal male lives.
This individual, having consonantly aligned himself with male institutions and having sought out male rewards as a male is socially a male/man and always will be. He has a male history and understands the world the way men do. He will never be a woman. His percepts are framed by his identity which is male. Were his identity NOT male he could not have endured married in the social role as husband; the cognitive dissonance would have been too great. But they do. They do this all the time. That tells us a lot about the insides of the late transitioner who lived voluntarily as a male after acquiring agency.
There are actually two “agents” that validate an identity. The first is patriarchy. You notice I don’t pay much attention to it. I don’t privilege identities at all. (This is afterall feminist). But I look at their life histories and their choices. IF they remained men after agency, especially if they show evidence of pursuing male rewards, I’m going to relate to them as male.
Also, someone mention piny experiences.
I’m fully willing to acknowledge piny’s class membership as a man. I don’t have any trouble with that. BUT, in that case, in view of critical period learning and the way identity works, I would stipulate that piny was never a woman, meaning he never apprehended the world the way men do.
I would also because there is binary and because identity fluidity is a total myth they can’t contain both, simply because women and men DON’T contain both.
“It’s a shitty dynamic that puts the burden of education on the less-privileged person, because the privileged person is too lazy to do that work for him or herself and thinks he or she is entitled to have someone else do all the heavy lifting.”
Please understand, I KNOW trans rationales and see them as totally unacceptable in terms of the human beings work and also because of feminism.
Don’t pretend I don’t know it. Know ever so solidly that I reject it.
Oops. I forgot to include one more privilege that I benefit by: white privilege—a darned important one and an influence in my life that I need to spend a lot more time examining.
Looks like my main post, just before this one, hasn’t cleared moderation, again.
Blah.
You acknowledge their experience as men, but not their experience as transpeple unable to transistion, their experience as transpeople beginning to transition, so on. Of course, you don’t believe you have to because your equation “transpeople are not women, not-women are men” make them men in your mind. *shrug* That’s your right. But it’s not very welcome here. We like our feminism. You don’t. We make the choice to associate with people who generally accept our feminism, and you have the right to choose to be around people who accept yours.
Did transpeople “invade” your cisgendered-women-only spaces, or were they welcomed in despite your opposition? Is it possible that the reason it’s so hard for you to find cisgendered-women-only spaces within feminism these day is that there are very few people that prefer them to inclusive spaces?
“Also, Piny’s experience as a woman is valid and I’m sure will remain with his experience forever. Therefore, the framework from which Piny or others like him function has validity.”
This is a total non-sequitor and it does not follow just because you or the queer/trans movement says it does. It’s total fantasy.
Sorry, Sandra, you don’t get to draw up the guest list.
“Because the identity of a woman starts with her physical attributes at birth does it not? The assignment and social construct within which a woman must follow are just that are they not? Therefore, the experience that makes a woman valid in your eyes is only just that — experience as a result of social construct.”
No it doesn’t. Obviously it doesn’t. Parents attempt to construct it, but that ‘s not overly meaningful. No parent ever attempted to construct a butch dyke for that matter.
So being informed by BODIES is not the answer and this is an essentialist formulation. It isn’t feminist.
When i grew up, we didn’t know about vagina’s or penises. We never even heard the word, Sex. Probably when I was fourteen I saw a preview of a cowboy comical musical called “The Battle of the Sexes”. I’d seen the word before and didn’t know what the sexes were. I didn’t know what made us girls or boys, it appeared we just were. This is part of the object-reality created by patrirachy.
I like what Butler has to say about class identity formation. It’s not one decision, it’s thousands of microdecisions and informed by any old source. BUT since that’s not a clearly conscious process or one likely to be remembered e’ll probably want to attribute that to something like ‘body’, which is exactly what patriarchy wants us to do.
I knew I was a girl for a decade before I knew how vagina is supposed to play a role in that. I was twleve before I ever heard the word ‘penis’ and didn’t know what that meant. I was eighteen before I ever heard the word rape.
So see, its not just transpeople who may not be able to be the complete ideal woman that you seem to hold up here.
Are we fanatasing again?
But at times kate you ask incredible questions:
So if we are to say that women or men should not have to live within these strict social constructs, do not then transgendered persons become valid? Valid in the light that one’s personal undertakings need not be justified to the greater social conforms? That all persons have an inherent right to engage in that behavior that pleases them without the fear of social reprisal or denial?
Feminism doesn’t accept gender as being real. You can’t BE what doesn’t exist. This is why I say that there’s only one indicator really… and it’s the choices one makes in the course of one’s life.
This is why I say that that the whole movement needs to be deconstructed to it’s foundation and reconstructed along the lght of feminism.
MUCH to everyone’s surprise and and amazement – radical feminism may be more liberating for some than anticipated.
What is the movement you are involved in that has you butting heads with a majority of persons not born women? I want to know.
This would be everyone in the world. No one was born a woman. No me, not you, no one. This was the very first question asked in the book which kicked off the Second Wave, Second Sex.
Is not feminism a sort of humanism that accepts that role assignments are just that alone?
There are TWO questions here:
Is not feminism a sort of humanism
NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. Humanism is for everyone. Feminism is for women although ultimately everyone will benefit.
that accepts that role assignments are just that alone?
This would be radical feminism BUT there is another half which is social construction that is the socially constituating processes that shape a person. This is why we say women are socially constituted as a women. This also acknowledges the contents of our lives which people living as men do not have.
The right has effectively taken hold of this capitulation by the feminist core and run with it. In other words, you are all tangled up and self absorbed in a web of your own making, wasting your energy and trying to divert and waste everyone else’s energy while the real struggle is larger and much more important.
You also deny the power that most women, when aligned together, have to make change to better society by saying that a small minority of people can actually disempower the larger group.
I’ve neither BUT
Locally the women’s community is filled up by men in dresses. I certainly won’t attend any events. We have no community, no community centers, etc.
“Did transpeople “invade” your cisgendered-women-only spaces, or were they welcomed in despite your opposition? Is it possible that the reason it’s so hard for you to find cisgendered-women-only spaces within feminism these day is that there are very few people that prefer them to inclusive spaces? ”
I don’t know about “transpeople” they looked men to me. Actually I can answer you question. Any lesbian functions here are under the auspices of a lesbian services program in a clinic. Clinic mandate is to be all inclusive. Men are at the top of the feed chain of course.
Another comment. Repeatedly in this thread I’ve noticed a loss of distinction on what experience really is.
Experience, is very simple. We experience visceral feelings like happy, glad, sad,mad, angry, sad. That’s what experience is.
Anything beyond that is INTERPRETATION any trans “exeperience” outside of happy, glad, sad,mad, angry, sad is interepretive and is subject to feminism examination. Women’s experiences are, why not forty year old men?
What a lovely world you grew up in. These days or I guess in this social realm, most people haven’t the opportunity to just ‘be’, the social construct of gender is placed on most children and in different degrees. Personally, I can remember hating having to wear dresses as young as five years old and envying the priviledge my younger brother had of not having to wear such clothing that I felt differentiated me and made restricted me (by the fact that certain behaviors would reveal underwear and all boys would thus taunt — taught by their parents and others of course).
But, by the same token, you basically say exactly what I said, that the constructed reason for your physical differences meant nothing until at a later age, you were informed of sexual function. When such a light goes on is interesting for you, because I think many women share my experience of having been violated at a very young age and/or differentiated/segregated at a very young age and thus very aware of their ‘difference’ and regretably, their ‘purpose’ to the patriarchy as well.
But back to what I said at first, you say that gender identity is proscribed by the patriarchy, is a construct thereof and then you say it isn’t. Apparently, if you say it, it is feminist, when it comes from me, it isn’t.
No it doesn’t accept is as being real, which was my point all along, which you chose to ignore. Gender is a construct of the patriarchy and as such, is fluid and meaningless. And yes, a transperson makes choices; they choose womenhood or manhood, who cares?
What really seems odd here is that you feel the voices of transpersons are somehow oppressing you. I sense a severe phobia on your part that possibly you should examine.
Yes, yes yes! I asked that feminism is indeed a sort of humanism and it is. Sure, its specifically for women, but its tenants come from a humanist base.
Sure, and any transgendered male who purports to have the same constitution by experience as a born-women is an asshat. I don’t think a lot of sentient intelligent feminists would argue with that. If you find yourself in such a group, I’d suggest you disentangle from them post haste.
So fucking what. Let them have their pretend girlie space, why does this get your panties all up in a bunch? If you need other space, then find it or make it for yourself and others who share you opinions. Go write a fucking book, find your allies but you aren’t finding them when you rant with your supposed enemies.
What gets me most is that I can’t help but wonder what the hell your brand of feminism is doing to improve the experience of the average woman in this society?
No slam on lesbians, but what does lesbian space have to do with feminist space, unless being lesbian must automatically mean being feminst? And a superior feminist at that.
You know, I there’s color digital television these days, an oil magnate is in the White House, the Corvair rots in junkyards and women don’t have to be lesbian to be a feminist.
Sandra, I am struck by an oddity in the gist of what you have said in your posts on this thread. You claim that feminism sees gender as not being real and hence not existing. However, your general line of arguing is that there are only two kinds of castes under patriarchy: women and men. You either fall into one or the other, given your life choices and experiences. You’ve spent a great deal of time stressing the differences between these two castes and placing judgment upon who belongs to which caste. You deny the existence of an intersecting caste system—transgender vs. cisgender—and you find it extremely important that members of one caste (men) not intrude in the social spaces of the other caste (women). You have stated that firmly restricted social spaces for women are extremely important to you because of past abuse experienced at the hands of men. Most of your arguments focus on ensuring that social spaces for women are constructed to exclude nearly all transpeople because of incompatible life experiences. So, here is the irony: your words provide plenty of evidence indicating that you yourself have much invested in maintaining this duel caste system.
Very well said.
You seem to exemplify the very problem mainstream women have had with some aspects of the feminist movement. The seperatism of which you seem to speak does little to attract new converts to feminism and thus does little to uplift the condition of women worldwide or even in this culture.
As ginmar pointed out early on in this thread, academics seem to feel themselves having a priviledge to state the experience and the validity of women’s own experience by framing it in their terms, couched in study after study, book after book that average persons haven’t the priviledge to be exposed to.
When these women complain that the academic does not speak for them, they are deemed incompetent, ignorant and unaware. What irony that those who claim to wish to deconstruct, use the patriarchical structure of economic class to claim their validity. In a heirarchy, said validity has merit in the degree of distance one spreads between themselves and the social lessers.
By referring to readings that average women are not exposed to in order to justify your theories and invalidate the average women’s experience is exactly the kind of class exclusion that fuels the flames of those who wish feminism to be construed as an esoteric and out of touch theory.
Like one woman activist said very loudly during a conference I attended, when a group of academics, walking amongst themselves starting asking about this study or that, “Aren’t there enough damn studies? When is someone going to do something in the real world?”
They all turned and indignant said, “Who said that? Who said that?” Then turned back and continued walking and picked up their conversation where they had left off.
Although they knew full well who said it, they would not deign to stoop to discuss any action or recognize the frustration of a poor woman activist from the projects of Detroit. The experience was telling.
If your brand of feminism cannot embrace all allies and move toward greater social justice for all women and allies who feel the patriarchy subsumes them, then what is the purpose your feminism?
I’ve heard transpeople talk about how happy they are not that they’re living the life they feel is right for them, how glad they are that they are able to do so with less fear of reprisal than previous generations, how sad they are that they’re lost friends over it, and how mad they are over the violence and verbal attacks fellow transpeople suffer, and how angry they are that those visceral feelings aren’t seen as valid be some people.
How is that any different from your experiences as a woman?
Who is “we”? Women? Feminists? That subset of women and feminists that doesn’t accept transpeople as part of their movement?
You have the right not to attend those events. You don’t have the right to demand those events remake themselves to your specifications. How did transpeople come to be present in that community? Did they barge in and refuse to leave? Were they invited? Did they just show up and find themselves accepted? It’s clear that you feel intruded upon. Did anyone else?
Are there no other anti-trans feminist women that you can get together with in anti-trans feminist women communities? If there are, what’s stopping you? If there aren’t, well, what does it mean if you’re the only one who doesn’t recognize the validity and value of trans-positivity in feminist spaces?
Well said. Or well asked? You get what I mean.
“I mean more like: institutional benefits or advantages. ”
As a feminist man — none whatsoever. It only ever hurts me institutionally. Specifically, when I hit an old-fashioned sexist pig in a position of power, my statement of my beliefs in equality do me harm. (But hey, I get all that white male privilege, which is probably the only reason they actually talked to me in the first place.) But this is only to be expected. You think the white civil rights supporters or abolitionists got institutional advantages from their politics? No way in hell.
It certainly doesn’t attract romantic partners; when I express my indignation at some form of discrimination against women, the reaction of most men and women around me always amounts to denial that it’s a real problem.
Of course, I am not feminist for the perks. It would be immoral not to be feminist. Belief in the fundamental equality of the sexes is fundamental to me. (I’m not very sympathetic to essentialists, whether they call themselves feminist or otherwise.)
From a personal point of view, the ‘patriarchy’, although certainly doing worse damage to women, still constrains men in really psychically damaging gender roles (e.g. ‘boys don’t cry’), something which has only really been discussed in the last couple of decades, and which still hasn’t really hit the mainstream (but is well understood by most feminists now, if Ms. Magazine is representative).
(Sorry about the knee-jerk defensiveness, but I’m afraid that after encountering the “men can’t be feminists” reaction more than once, I feel the need to defend my self-description as feminist.)
Now, returning to the post at hand, I think you’ve made a very good point: any institutional advantages come from *calling* yourself feminist, not from *being* feminist. Thinking about it, I don’t generally advertise myself as a feminist unless the topic comes up: I simply state my beliefs, and point out anything sexist which comes up, without using the label unless someone else brings it up.
I love that you’ve brought things full circle to the discussion taking place before the derailment of this thread.
I really quite enjoy the exchange if ideas and perspectives that take place out here in the blogosphere. What strikes me, though, is that we don’t often tie these ideas in with direct action beyond the virtual world. It’s as though we are all taking part in a huge consciousness raising group, but we haven’t taken the next step. So, like academics, maybe the questions that we should be asking are, “How do we turn the discussions taking place in feminist and progressive blogs into action in the real world? How do we use these blogs as tools in this endeavor?”
Sandra S. wrote:
“I am a rape survivor and I have been abused by men for a decade of my child hood and I NEVER socialize with men and the healing of woman’s space is a necessity to me.”
That’s fine, and we respect that.
It does raise the question as to why you are here, this not being a woman-only space. Perhaps Internet socializing is different (safer?).
In one way you’re lucky. A woman-only space is sufficient for you. For those women who have been abused by women as well as men, there can be no such safe space constructed by mere sex exclusion.
“Personally, I can remember hating having to wear dresses as young as five years old and envying the priviledge my younger brother had of not having to wear such clothing that I felt differentiated me and made restricted me (by the fact that certain behaviors would reveal underwear and all boys would thus taunt — taught by their parents and others of course).”
Ah, some experiences are universal in the patriarchy. I remember envying the privilege that girls had to wear pants or skirts, as they chose (boys MUST NEVER wear skirts), to wear pink (boys MUST NOT wear pink), et cetera. Things get better over time, but it’s pretty hard for a five-year-old.
*smile* Nathanael, as a boy of about the same age (and onward into adolescence), I too remember envying girls for the clothing that they could wear. I felt horribly ashamed that I felt these things.
Ironically, as a woman, I am often rankled at the social expectation that certain settings, such as job interviews, funerals, and weddings, require that I dress in traditionally feminine attire. Sometimes I comply. Sometimes I do not. It all depends on whether I feel up to pushing against the tide of social expectation, whether or not I’m in the mood to wear such clothing, who will be upset by my clothing choices, and whether I am willing to lose face in that particular social circle.
“What a lovely world you grew up in. These days or I guess in this social realm, most people haven’t the opportunity to just ‘be’, the social construct of gender is placed on most children and in different degrees. Personally, I can remember hating having to wear dresses as young as five years old and envying the priviledge my younger brother had of not having to wear such clothing that I felt differentiated me and made restricted me (by the fact that certain behaviors would reveal underwear and all boys would thus taunt — taught by their parents and others of course).”
It does seem as though we grew up in different worlds. I didn’t say anything about gender. My remarks were about sex as patriarchy constructs it. We never had a brother, but neither my sister or I were made to wear dresses, which would be like making a fish swim. We loved dresses and were not taunted by boys. I’d like to say that we would have traded our Barbies right arms for our training bras but for me that preceeded Barbie by a year or so.
There weren’t any boys in my family and most of the time it was a loving matriarchy punctuated by a rare presence of a rather violent and brutal father providing the most powerful of feminist laboratories. Segregation seemed rather promising, hinting that we may live till the morrow. Segregation meant love, safety, nurturance, survival, peace and healing and oddly enough, it still means that to me these days. We didn’t worry so much about violation as we did survival. It seems rather strange you’d think that I’d want the decreased opportunities and choices, but yes I don’t want men in my life in any form. As far as sex was concerned, mother’s style of sex education was rather uniform. She’ run through the living and silently toss a book in our laps and keep running. We’d never seen this book and we laugh today as we noted that neither of us got beyond the first page that simply had genitals in dotted lines. We were really revolted. In spite of being told that “men were” better the speaker himself contradicted himself in the delivery of the message. Yes, I was aware of the difference. To me it appeared that women were kind and sane and that men were akin to the nuclear device testing on television as we ate breakfast before school.
No. I said gender-identity is an ARTIFACT of patriarchy. But there are rather distinctions that are being lost here. There is the old distinction that I thought most were aware of. “Gender is real, but not true.” This saying recognizes that gender as a power structure have devastating impact on the lives of women while being socially contructed and an object-reality or a product of the object reality called nature.
This would be great if men actually manifested themselves as women with the concerns of women but they don’t. They are concerned with trans issues – which are not women’s issues. Definitely I think one of the huge failing of the third wave has been this concept of “Allies”. I’ve been a feminist since the second wave began and I never heard until perhaps the late nineties or this centuries. The second wave didn’t conceptualize in terms of allies and we made a huge difference. (Someone asked me the other day what the third wave will be remembered for? We couldn’t cite anything. You ask about mainstream women. MAINSTREAM will never bring about a revolution. The very first thing with mainstream women is get them OUT of mainstream.)
But forty year old men don’t choose womanhood, they can’t. It’s not an experience that’s accessible to them with forty years as a man as a backdrop. Women do not have such a backdrop. To men, women are the other.
Kay, it seems to me that you are infused with some male-ism, not a surprise after listening to trans propaganda. Liberal individualism pretends that we don’t live in society in which we are independent and what we doesn’t effect other people. I wouldn’t care if forty year old men went through reassignment IF they didn’t invade my space. But they do. As a result, they have their wives and the kids they fathered and have displaced me from my community, the one refuge on earth where I could feel safe KNOWING I WAS FREE OF FORTY YEAR OLD MEN. But now they’ve invaded the one space we had. (Lesbians weren’t even asked this was a MANagement, decision.)
My sentiments are not anti-trans; they are pro-woman – who is feminism’s concern.
THEIR SPACE?!?!?! It used to be our space HOW did was it taken over by the transsexual empire? OTHER SPACE? This was space created FOR women by WOMEN. Here’s a piece of herstory. In the seventies, this group used to collect sperm for artificial insemination of lesbiansThere was a running two year debate over whether or not the presence of sperm violated women’s space. . (I think sperm is yucky but I don’t gender DNA with tails.) I live in a large city and there have been regular decreases in women’s space since 1985. LBGT as an institution has ravaged women’spaces and the lesbian identity with queer philosophy which is not compatible with feminism. Why do we need OTHER SPACE when we have this space. We have no community center nor any women’s books store. We have no community meetings. We no longer have a yearly gathering for our honored elder lesbians. We had nothing but this one thirty year old community space and now it’s full of men. WHY should women have to create another space? Why can’t they create their own? What is to protect us from their imperialism? .
The community that felt safe and nurturing to me has been destroyed and women don’t count but these men do by the standards of lbgt and rampant liberal egalitarianism propagated by women who grew up “feeling violated”. I know those feelings and no, because of male dominance and violence I didn’t have the basal security necessary to attend to those issues growing up. But those who did have that safety are villanizing women for wanting to heal in the absence of men.
Ready to talk to me about privilege, kate?
I’d recommend that you look back in herstory. Check this out: http://www.rainbowhistory.org/furies.htm
Notice this group included Meg Christian (founding performer of Olivia Records), Ginny Berson, (Oliva performer and manager), Rita Mae Brown (Ummm famous lesbian author), Mary Farmer (Founder of Lammas Women’s Book Store). Notice NONE of these women had college educations at the time the Furies existed. Notice that they turned out some of the most profound writing of the women’s movement without college educations. Notice that they are from working class backgrounds. There’s a picture of them. Please notice. This was the way it worked in my day and the middle and working class lesbians I knew at the time were feminists which is no longer the case. The RedStockings collective of New York is very similar.
Please know that it’s quite possible to make profound offerings to feminism without a college education. That’s not speculation. Our lesbian feminist libraries are full of such examples.
But academia is not innocent as it has been infused with queer thinking which is busy silencing women when we protect against the intrusions of men in our spaces.
Stacy, has asked really good questions. I’m going to take some time and respond to her in a separate note.
Well, that depends on the transwoman you are speaking of. I’m pretty darned concerned. I’ve done activism on women’s issues, including interning at NARAL and serving as an escort at abortion clinics. I’m itching to crawl out of my own burn out and do it again. On the other hand, I’ve known many cisgender women who really don’t care all that much about sexism or the concept of patriarchal oppression.
Huh. Well, we run in different circles, I suppose.
I earned a certificate in Women’s Studies in the early nineties and most of my classes focused upon thinking across race, gender, sexual orientation, class, age, ethnicity, etc. My instructors emphasized that the more narrowly defined feminism is, the fewer women will find value in it. Coalition building was encouraged by what we learned in our Women’s Studies courses.
Nearly all of those courses were taught by second wave feminists. So, SOMEONE in the second wave was thinking about this. From what I’ve heard, that thought was a direct consequence of women of color and poor women challenging the second wave as being too narrowly focused on white, middle class perspectives. Sadly, successive waves also seem to be stumbling upon this same problem (and I include myself when I say this).
I’m not going to drop any names, but at least one of my instructors was formerly a member of the Furies.
I also house sit for another former member of the Furies, but that’s a different story. I must say though, she seems pretty cool with my manly self invading her house so that I can take care of her critters. :-)
Oh, I’d also like to add that the best instructor that I ever had during my years in academia was that very same instructor from the Furies. She placed theory directly into the context of everyday experience.
Also, she was the first person I ever came out to.
By the way, Sandra, thanks for the link to the Furies page. Having know a couple of women from that group, I have an interest in learning more about its history.
Oops. I take that back. Looks like my instructor was one of the folks on the periphery of the Furies, rather than an official member of the collective. I see her name didn’t make the list at the website.
Looks like Meg Christian and Mary Farmer didn’t make the list either. I wonder where the division between “member” and “periphery” lies.
Renee, don’t you ever get tired of preventing women from feminist discourse? One.Trick.Pony.
Perhaps it’s time to talk about Brownies and collard greens?
Guys, come on, this troll is obviously a conservative man who either has spent a lot of time googling this evening or took the trouble to go to the library and jot down a quote or two. This is the walking, talking, living, breathing strawfeminist. “Boys! RUN!” I know there’s plenty of prejudice against transpeople in all communities including GLB, but come on. This hits every stereotypical highlight of feminism anyone can imagine, it may even be Jeff Goldstein. Taking this guy seriously is only encouraging him and he’s laughing. But remember, humanism is for everyone but feminism is for women, lol
Is anyone else laughing at the idea of a transsexual empire?
I’m very late to this discussion, but Sandra, I think you’re in the wrong place. This isn’t a woman-only forum. And while it is a feminist blog, we write about many different issues — if you scroll through the front page right now, you’ll see that we’ve written about painting, sex, Barry Manilow, LGBT issues, alpha males, tuna fish, blogging conferences, war, sports, snakes in a car and sensible shoes.
Woman-only and woman-centered spaces exist on the internet. They aren’t too difficult to find. But while Feministe is a feminist blog, we also try not to pigeon-hole ourselves. And you showing up, demanding what we do and don’t write about, and calling the feminist credentials of one of our bloggers into question (not to mention attacking and insulting him) is beyond the pale.
This discussion isn’t going to go anywhere, and it’s apparent that you have now thoroughly irritated just about everyone here. Feministe is not going to change into the kind of feminist space that you desire. I’d encourage you to look elsewhere.
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