musings on the radical-feminist-fringe hatred of all things trans
And although I might think of myself as a woman, someone else might be further down the spectrum towards womanhood than I am, and thus ‘more of a woman’ than me. (Rebecca Reilly-Cooper)
Clare Flourish has an interesting post called Liberation from Gender that pointed me in the direction of the article quoted and linked to above.
For a few months now, I’ve been intrigued by the radical feminist fringe that rails against anyone identifying as trans. I follow several blogs that spit fury, heap mockery and pulsate with hate towards anyone who considers themselves to be trans. It’s not pleasant reading, but my curiosity about what drives such an attitude within feminism keeps me from deleting them from my Reader.
To date, I have a couple of potential theories about their attitude:
- They fear for people, particularly their own children in some cases, making irreversible and potentially devastating changes to their bodies on the crest of a trend that is viewed as glamorising being trans. I can understand this concern, but it doesn’t explain sense of rabid disgust and hate. And there is never the allowance that in some cases it’s the best or only thing that individuals can choose in their circumstances.
- They have had terrible experiences with men in their lives, which colours their outlook on anyone born biologically male. I’m certain this is a key influence in many cases. Suspicion and fear run rampant, and in spite of the fact these radical feminists claim they want a genderless society, they can’t view people as people. People born with penises are The Enemy. Regardless. And given that they can’t accept trans women are a reality, they have to extend this to trans men as well – in their eyes, these are people who have been taught by society that to be a woman is lesser and this is the reason they ‘choose’ to be male.
But Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, quoted above, just gave me another potential reason I hadn’t considered: misplaced jealous possessiveness. In the article linked to above, Rebecca misinterprets a gender spectrum as having only something of value in the two majority clusters (which she confusingly assumes would see distribution along the lines of a height spectrum – another illogical assumption, but that’s another story).
Suddenly, I envisage gender non-conforming biological females faced with trans gender women expressing more traditional feminine qualities than they do, and rather than being delighted by the refusal to stick to gender scripts, feeling threatened that ‘more typical feminine qualities’ is claiming to be ‘more woman’. And this is why we see rants about periods and childhood sexism and a starkly self-contradictory possessiveness of the words “woman” and “female” that can’t possibly sit with their proclaimed desire to erase gender identity.
Rebecca concludes with a couple of fanfare-worthy sentences I’m sure everyone agrees with:
The solution to an oppressive system that puts people into pink and blue boxes is not to create more and more boxes that are any colour but blue or pink. The solution is to tear down the boxes altogether.
The only problem is, her entire article pirouettes around her personal box of oppression and marginalisation: namely the box she gives trans people that reduces their collective identity and shared gender experiences to nothing. Let’s tear down boxes by not making assumptions about people based on their biological sex or their appearance. But, please, let’s not make the mistake of telling other people how to dress, behave and express themselves, all in the name of freedom.
I think we trans women are more feminine than most women- it is why we cannot bear not to transition. There are a lot of women who really don’t fit the stereotype- my heterosexual radical feminist friend felt out of the loop because she was not lesbian, but such women can be straight or gay- who loathe the pressures to conform, really feel those pressures, really feel under threat not conforming, and also hate the idea of changing their own bodies.
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There’s a strange conflict in humans in terms of not wanting to be put in a box or treated like a stereotype, but feeling alienation if we’re not ‘normal’. The desire to fit in but stand out and be unique at the same time. The existence of trans women is clearly a threat to how some women view their status within society. They’ve decided femininity isn’t real in any formation because they simply can’t relate to being inclined towards any of the stereotypical behaviours. Why they extend that to the rest of humanity is beyond me.
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Hey violet-
Do you think a female coyote has any justification for wanting to ‘feel’ like a female fox, or even a male coyote? Is it even possible for that to cross their mind?
Ah yes, the lessons of nature are the finest of teachers.
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ColorStorm, at times like this, I can scarcely believe you’re serious. But, just on the off-chance you are, or anyone reading you takes comments like that seriously, here’s a link to some information from one of the finest teachers:
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/22/7-gender-bending-animals/
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Yikes violet,
that was an instant click and paste; which means you really did not digest the ramifications of a ‘female coyote wanting to experience the life of a male.’
Of course I am aware of the abberations found in nature. And fish do not live in birds nests either; now that would be odd.
But for God’s sake violet- you know what is ‘normal,’ or do you………
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Maybe you’re just too much of a deep thinker for me? That link certainly cleared up the notion that gender is binary in the animal kingdom, for me at least.
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Well, allow me to become even more unpopular than I am. Men are men, women are women. there is nothing you can do to change that XX or XY and it matters a great deal in terms of biology and how our brains work. Than there is culture and experience. Men will never know what it is like to grow up female, to perceive the world as women do, to experience the culture as women do. Transpeople are imitating a superficial aspect of womanhood, one heavily rooted in the same gender stereotypes that rad/fems seek to abolish.
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Yet are radfems not building upon gender stereotypes in assuming that trans-women are in fact, predetermined to behave like men, and that male behaviour is… What? Negative? That all men are predisposed to aggressive instincts? That men are naturally inclined to be violent toward women, or hold them back?
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From what I’ve read, they believe everyone should behave in a gender neutral way. So, instead of being either pressured into being what society says is a woman or a man, we should all be pressured into being what they say is gender neutral. Except, they only seem bothered about this when it comes to trans people …
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Deary me, you must come from an odd corner of the world if you truly see men and women as separate species. Granted, I see people falling broadly down lines that match their biological sex, but with many people having a mixture of all sorts of characteristics, and some people who by their actions, attitude and words, if I closed my eyes I’d expect the opposite of what I see.
More frequently I’m meeting people who I have no idea how to categorise, and I’m left with no clue as to their biological sex. People don’t have to conform to the cultural expectation of gender presentation anymore, and those don’t, really demonstrate that the simplistic presentation you give above (men are men, women are women) is pretty childish.
“Transpeople are imitating a superficial aspect of womanhood, one heavily rooted in the same gender stereotypes that rad/fems seek to abolish.”
Transwomen are behaving in a way that makes them comfortable. I can’t understand any argument that suggests they should do otherwise. Anyone who wants to abolish gender stereotypes is perfectly welcome to present themselves as they wish.
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But what does it mean to be a man or a woman? Can a man cook? Can a woman work? Can a woman be a pilot? Can a man be a stay at home father? You can either fall into assigning stereotypes or refuse to assign stereotypes. What you can’t do is choose which stereotypes suit you best whilst ignoring the ones that don’t.
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IB, one only needs to look at the autistic community to see that gender identity is a combination of genetics and social conditioning. We don’t seem to be aware of social pressures to adopt the gender behaviour of the sex we are born into. Often we don’t recognise gender behavioural differences until pubity or latter. Some will then take on characteristic of one gender or other, and not necessarily their biological sex. Others tend to be more ambiguous taking on different characteristics of each sex. Others remain more or less androgynous all their lives.
Yes, biological males tend to display masculine behaviours, and biological females tend to display feminine characteristics, I’m convinced that that’s all they are – tendencies. Social conditioning does the rest. But a lot of people don’t easily fit into that mold. Are you suggesting that those people (and I’m one of them) should pretend to be someone they’re not just so society can be binary when it comes to gender?
I often hear the claim that people choose not to conform to expected behaviours, but I ask you, did you choose to be the person you are, and could you easily choose a different set of behaviours if society demanded you do so?
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Great points Barry, thanks. I hope she responds, will be interesting to read what she makes of it.
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Biology is not a tendency, Barry. We don’t choose our XX or our XY. We don’t chose the hormones, they way our brains work, or the fact that women can become pregnant. These things are decided for us before we are born
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He didn’t dispute any of that Insanity. Read his comment again and try to think about it, apply it to people you know (even yourself).
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In 1972, every child born in the city of Dunedin in Aotearoa New Zealand, became part of a long term study (Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Developmental Study). Today that study is still going on, and has a 95% retention rate. The data from the study is available to researchers around the world.
One particular piece of research was the investigation of why some people inhibit a particular type of anti-social behaviour. It was discovered that a specific gene was involved. The gene has two forms. No one with the “good” form of the gene exhibited the behaviour, but many with the “bad” form did. We know that many genes do not express themselves unless certain environmental factors cause them to “switch on”. In this case it was discovered that those with a tendency to exhibit the behaviour, were subjected family violence in their formative years.
Notice I said “tendency”. Here’s the important part – only those who had the “bad” form of the gene AND experienced family violence experienced the emotions that can result in the anti-social behaviour. But not all of those who experienced those emotions went on to express them in the anti-social behaviour. The “tendency” is the degree to which those who have the activated “bad” gene acted on their emotion. That ranged from “hardly at all” to “all the time”.
You and I who have the “good” form of the gene, will never know what it is like for those with the expressed “bad” form. Who knows, perhaps there’s another gene or set of genes that determines how well that emotion can be managed.
Likewise, there’s probably a genetic factor in me being autistic, and some environmental factor or factors has allowed a gene, or more likely a set of genes to express themselves in what is known as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Notice the word “spectrum”. That is important. With effort, I can pass as “normal”. Many with ASD cannot. In other words there’s a range of exhibited behaviours.
Masculinity, femininity, sexual preference, gender identity, and more, are probably caused by the expression of dozens or perhaps hundreds of genes. While the X and Y chromosomes are no doubt the major factor in determining the expression of those genes, it would be foolish to believe they are the only ones. The outcome is a spectrum, with a tendency towards one end or the other. Society has in the past tried to force those who are not near either end of the spectrum towards one end or the other. Nature seems to be more tolerant of the non-binary than human society. Can’t we be wiser than our forebears and allow each of us to be who we are?
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Once we divorce our understanding of reality and morality from the natural world, it becomes possible to hallucinate any and all sort of nonsense and call it justice.
Once that happens, authentic human rights go down the drain.
Thank you, LGBT!
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This is what happens when laws and rules end up based on religious constructs. Thankfully people who didn’t choose to be gay no longer have their rights denied by these constructs.
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American law was originally based on natural theory which is secular.
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It’s been unduly influenced by religion since then.
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darth,
The fact is that American law is and always was, devoid of religion.
Natural law theory is a subset of Christianity but one does not need to be religious to understand and benefit from it.
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You think Christianity does not influence US law? Do you not swear an oath on the Bible before God when taking to the stand in a courtroom? (and that’s only the first example).
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We can’t forget that sometimes extremism is more about the extremist than the ideology they espouse. What we see in many TERFs are personality traits that can also be found in other varieties of extremists. Us vs. them mentality, confirmation bias, persecution complex etc. etc.
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A shame none of them wanted to pop over to defend their views.
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A shame, but not a surprise. Extremists of any creed tend to keep to themselves – they can’t handle dissenting views very well.
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