Still mountains to climb

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Val McDermid tells us:

If I want to be with someone, I let them know. I don’t like to pretend. As a lesbian, that’s not always been easy. I’m old enough to remember Clause 28, old enough to remember men telling me they didn’t want me in the same changing room as their wives because I wasn’t a real woman. I knew people who’d spent fifty years in the closet but I didn’t want to live half a life.

Back then there was a lot of fear and hostility, especially in the working-class community I came from, in Kirkcaldy, Fife, but my parents were extraordinary. There was no big discussion or anything like that, just the understanding that they wanted me to be happy. In many ways they were the ones who gave me that template. Sure, they had disagreements, but it was obvious that they had each found the person they were meant to be with.

Life is a lot simpler for gay couples than it was fifty years ago — Scotland is one of the best places in Europe for civil partnerships — but there are still mountains to climb. I think the persecution of trans women has been appalling. Trans does not damage lesbianism. Womanhood is a big tent; it goes all the way from Kim Kardashian to me and everything in between. First, we bring people in, then we sort out the problems.

Well, of course womanhood is a big tent, because women are half of humanity. The tent is massive, but that doesn’t mean it includes men. If Big Tent Womanhood includes men then it’s no longer Big Tent Womanhood. Men are the opposite of women, and vice versa, so men can’t be included in womanhood; it’s a logical impossibility.

Comments

2 responses to “Still mountains to climb”

  1. Mike B Avatar
    Mike B

    See, this is why I keep my gay mouth shut and tend to change the subject whenever “trans” comes up. Who am I to “man-splain” to a woman–a lesbian, yet–what’s in her best interests? (To me, “sex” is inborn, immutable, profound.)

    I fear that this issue will only resolve when something catastrophic happens.

  2. Bjarte Foshaug Avatar
    Bjarte Foshaug

    One paragraph in: “I think I know where this is going”.

    Three paragraphs in: “Yup”.

    Well, of course womanhood is a big tent, because women are half of humanity. The tent is massive, but that doesn’t mean it includes men. If Big Tent Womanhood includes men then it’s no longer Big Tent Womanhood.

    And, as I keep saying, if you redefine “womanhood” to include some biological mals, it no longer includes half of humanity. You can’t define some males in without defining a lot of females out. If you define “woman” as “person who thinks/feels in ways xyz (best left unspecified)”, that inevitably excludes any biological female who fails to think/feel in ways xyz. How many females still fit inside the tent is hard to say since we’re never told what “ways xyz” are (apart from “whatever ways trans-identified males happen to think/feel”). Let’s just say I seriously doubt that many females would say they fit the new definition of of “woman” if they knew exactly how this requires them to think or feel. Indeed the new tent is almost certainly going to be orders of magnitude smaller and less “inclusive” than the old one. Once again if TIMs are women, they’re the only “women”.

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