Unconditional surrender
The “Feminist” Library’s statement on “transphobia” and accountability:
… we feel it important to note that we come from different political histories as well as cultural and class backgrounds. However, while the Library has historically sought to encompass a wide variety of different perspectives, priorities, politics and stances, a by-product of this has been that we as a collective have failed to present a united and unequivocal stance on certain issues where it has been most needed.
Like, for instance, whether feminism should stop being about women and be about men who call themselves women instead. Talk about most needed!
We understand that in an increasingly hostile conversation regarding trans inclusion from in the mainstream press and certain sects of feminism, it is important for us to reiterate that we are a trans-inclusive organisation and that we stand in solidarity with all trans people in the face of mockery, denigration, humiliation and discrimination with regards to accessing healthcare and other legal rights. We wish to reiterate as members of the collective that we believe that feminism is a political project that works in service of all of us.
Emphasis theirs.
It’s a feminist organization but somehow the really urgent issue, the one that requires bold type, is the one about men who claim to be women. That pesky of the earth earthy stuff that concerns women just doesn’t matter all that much. The bolded issue is so important that it requires redefining feminism so that it’s about all of us. Women: the sex that doesn’t get to have anything for itself.
At the Feminist Library, we believe that feminism is a political framework that we can use to end all gendered violence and transform the world for everyone.
Then why call it feminist at all? Why not call it humanist? “Gendered” violence would include male on male violence, so that’s not feminism any more, it’s everyoneism. Opposing all violence is a fine thing, but women still need specifically feminist organizations and analysis, because of that power imbalance between the two sexes.
We wholeheartedly reject any feminist framework that seeks to define womanhood solely using biological essentialism or any feminism that seeks to re-inscribe rigid ideas of sex.
A feminist collective rejects any feminist framework that is for women.
Following a long tradition of writings and activism from black feminism, trans feminists and working-class women – we believe that there is not a singular, universal origin point for all women’s oppression across the globe nor should we attempt to find one. Our time is better spent remaining attentive to the dire social, political and economic conditions we experience as women and using feminism as a tool to end these conditions.
Yes, conditions we experience as women, not as men claiming to be women. It’s just hand-waving to pretend that working class women and men who say they are women are Just Another Subset of Women.
As a collective, we want to make clear our internal commitments to tackling transphobia. They are as follows:
…
– Not to feature trans-exclusionary groups on our panels or other events at the Library, or allow them to book the Library for their own events. By “trans-exclusionary” we mean groups that promote or implicitly/explicitly support policy changes that directly restrict trans people’s access to resources, groups that do not allow trans people to access their services, groups who use “sex-based rights” as a means of querying and questioning trans people’s right to exist or to access resources.
Emphasis theirs, again. So this feminist library is barring women who want to talk about sex-based rights, while casually pretending that such women “question [anyone’s] right to exist.”
The ideology makes people stupid, but it also makes them shockingly malicious. We don’t question anyone’s right to exist. If you say you’re an emissary from planet Neptune I won’t question your right to exist but I will decline to endorse your account of yourself. The two are not the same thing.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, we are always open to comments and feedback on our efforts.
Or at least they identify as always open to comments and feedback on their efforts.
This statement…well, I was going to say it was false, but since they prefaced with “we believe”, I won’t call it false, because they might genuinely believe that…but it is incredibly naive.
There is a singular, universal origin point for all women’s oppression – it is the simple, brutal fact of being a woman…based on our bodies, not on our ‘identities’. What they should be saying to be accurate is that there is no single, universal experience of that oppression. We experience it differently based on culture, socio-economic status, race, religion, geographic location…and other things like legal structures, etc. These are where we differ, not in the origin point of our oppression.
We are oppressed because we are women. Period. Some women experience other axes of oppression such as race, or disability, or religion, or poverty. Some women have better support services to cope; others have to get through it alone. Some women live in areas where there is at least a thin veneer of law supporting them; others find the law increases the oppression. Those are the points of difference…and I think feminism is well equipped to deal with those differences.
Transwomen do not experience an origin of their oppression that is the same as that of women. It does overlap, in that much of the hatred of transwomen by the right is driven by the hatred of women in general and the idea that they are weak and sissies; transmen are hated because they are actually women, and are getting above themselves by declaring they are men. That does give them a slight overlap of source of oppression on the Venn diagram, but they have a different origin of oppression. In fact, a lot of their oppression is their perception that other people are treating them as male when they don’t want to be male. They blame that on society, rather than seeing that being treated as a male is not a form of oppression. It is a source of entitlement. So their origin of oppression is different.
But women do, in fact, share a common origin of oppression, no matter how much our experiences differ because of other issues that overlap with sexism and increase the level of oppression.
I wish it were the case that they actually meant ‘trans people’ in their statements–because no women’s organisation excludes female trans people or restricts their right to access resources set aside for female people. (Even all women’s colleges, weirdly, accept and accommodate TIFs.)
Slightly OT
From this morning’s Newspaper, Adelaide.
It is a little early for the knuckle draggers to be out, but I won’t be surprised when the “waddaboutthemen” brigade arrives.
Read the article here
https://i.postimg.cc/3Nb09yWG/8-UJp-Ro8f-Wb.png
Do you know of anywhere that prohibits TIFs from using women’s toilets and changing rooms?
I’ve been busy so this thread is probably dead by now, but still: the only thing I’ve ever come across that discusses the bathroom issue from a trans man’s perspective was a piece in Radio 4’s Short Cuts, which they describe as “short documentaries and adventures in sound”.
Turns out trans men, like trans women, want to use the women’s toilets. And it’s jolly difficult for them because they have to work so terrible hard to project this image of who they really are, but then when they need to piss, they need people to misgender them (if misgendering is violence, does this count as self-harm, I wonder?) The trick is to go to the toilets with a friend, and talk to the friend while entering the toilets because when people hear the trans man’s voice they can tell that he’s… uh, well I don’t know how I should describe it. They accept his presence in the women’s toilets, anyway.
I shouldn’t mock. That part of the piece was actually fairly sensible if you just look at the “I get hassled using public toilets because I look masculine” aspect, and I agree that it’s a problem that a female person should not have. My sympathy ran out when the piece ended with a few minutes of self-obsessed navel-gazing drivel about a fantasy world where everyone’s “identity” is immediately clear to everyone else. And of course there was no mention of why it was important for trans men to use the women’s toilets, let alone why trans women also need to use the women’s toilets.
There were a number of images used in promoting “identity”-based bathroom policy that featured trans-identified females in women’s restrooms. The TIF was very masculine-presenting, usually with facial hair. The caption asked if we really want “him” in the restroom with our daughters.
I don’t think I saw any corresponding images of trans-identified males, either claiming they belonged in the women’s room with our daughters or they didn’t belong in the men’s room with our sons. It was “You are afraid of this masculine-looking woman in the women’s room, so of course you should vote to allow actual men in the women’s room”.
Impeccable logic.