Reading the intro part 2.
Organisations resisting self-determination discursively position it as ‘dangerous’, arguing that it enables ‘men’ (a category frequently presumed to encompass trans women and non-binary people assigned male at birth) unfettered access to women-only spaces. Trans people and allies often describe proponents of this approach as ‘TERFs’ because they tend to support trans women’s/girls’ exclusion from spaces such as women’s toilets, changing rooms, rape crisis centres, shelters and feminist groups.
That’s because trans women and girls are not literally women and girls, they are men and boys who have adopted the label “trans.” The label is just a label. It’s just a word. It’s not magic. I could say I’m a trans house or giraffe or oak tree, and I wouldn’t literally be any of those things. Feminist women want to “exclude” male people from women’s shelters and rape crisis centers because they are male people, whatever label they apply to themselves. This isn’t such an eccentric view that it requires a pejorative name.
Proponents of anti-trans ‘bathroom bills’ argued that they were required to protect the safety of cis4 women, who could supposedly become victims of harm committed by trans women and non-binary people, who, in turn, were (implicitly or explicitly) positioned as ‘men’ who ‘identify as’ women.
The scorn in “supposedly” is interesting. Do the authors genuinely think that trans women can’t possibly ever do harm to women in private closed spaces? If so I have to wonder how they line that up with the known facts.
Yet, this notion of toilet ‘safety’ is part of a wider protectionist politics around (cis) women’s bodies that function to protect idealised notions of white female vulnerability (Patel, 2017; see also Koyama, this collection).
White? What’s “white” doing there? Nothing; it’s just another rock to throw.
The cultural positioning of trans women as dangerous to cis women relies on gendered conceptualisations of (cis, implicitly white) women as necessarily fragile in relation to (cis) men, who in turn are conceptualised as having superior physical (and sexual) prowess.
Oh implicitly white – of course. Implicitly according to whom? Well, the person who typed the word, and what more do you want?! This is top professional academic sociology right here so have some respect. Karens, white fragility, implicitly white, cis, boop boop beep beep.
Also, by the way, kindly just throw overboard everything we’ve ever known about male strength compared to female strength and the connection to sexual violence – that is all ancient cis history now…except when we’re talking about Jeffrey Epstein, at which point the clock reverses for as long as it takes.
By positioning (cis, white) ‘females’ as a category uniquely vulnerable to the threat of ‘male’ violence (and especially ‘biological’ male sexual violence), trans-exclusionary arguments around toilet access – including those advanced by self-proclaimed feminist groups – lend support to the gendered and misogynistic discourses that have long positioned (white) women as the ‘weaker sex’ needing protection (by men, from men).
Just look at that shit. The parenthetical (white)s proliferate like fleas on a sweaty dog. This, my friends, this is appropriation – theft of anti-racism for the purpose of throwing shit at feminist women who won’t obey the orders to call men “women.”
It’s pissed me off enough that I’m pausing it for now.
Comments
12 responses to “Fighting dirty”
“Discursively positioning” is an interesting little euphemism.
It seems more that women of the non-transcult variety want to physically, not merely discursively position men in skirts outside of the ladies’ room.
Pretty much the same way that men in skirts don’t just want to discursively position themselves on the other side of the “cotton ceiling.”
The euphemism is like a crystallization of the transcult equation of verbal statements with physical violence.
https://medium.com/@mirandayardley/girl-dick-the-cotton-ceiling-and-the-cultural-war-on-lesbians-and-women-c323b4789368
OK, this is a bit of a confused mess, but if I’m reading it correctly it is a wonderful example of a strawman (strawwoman?) argument built on nothing more than the author’s assumptions asserted as fact. Are we really meant to believe that (white) feminists think that only white women are vulnerable to male violence? Further, are we also meant to accept that (white) feminists have long been crying out for men to protect them?
Utter horseshit! With these suppositions I think that the author is revealing where the real undercurrent of racism lies hidden, if only in the implication that women of colour lack the intelligence to see through such a blatant attempt to turn them against gender-critical feminism. “Look at this, you women of colour, see how the white feminists think that you are not threatened by male violence. The proof is right here in this piece that I’ve just concocted from my own completely false narrative. Join my side in hating them.”
I don’t understand this ganging up on “white (especially middle-aged) women” that I see all over the place. A “woke” friend made the audacious claim that most of the people protesting against masks were white middle-aged women. As if white middle-aged women can’t possibly have valid concerns.
If it’s silly and sexist to want public toilets that are exclusive to women (men are no threat!) then the case for allowing transwomen into women’s public toilets falls apart.
No, they shouldn’t be allowed. No woman should be allowed. All toilets must be unisex. Anything else is misogyny.
Do they really want to go here?
Down here in the Deep South, it is correct that it’s mostly white people who are “protesting” and/or simply not wearing masks. But the vast majority of those people are older white men. It’s quite common, in fact, to see white families in a store where the man is unmasked and the women and children are masked.
File this one under “Why are women blamed for everything”…
This is the age of troubled people taking over – Trump, bin Salman, Johnson, Bolsonaro, Erdoğan, Netanyahu . . . not a coincidence that this is happening when it is.
So much for peer review, when you carefully select your peers from those drinking the same “cool”-aid
Random, that is my experience here in the midwest, too. Mostly men…if there is a couple, and only one is wearing a mask, it is ALWAYS the woman. And the people I see not wearing masks are younger than I am…not quite middle aged. Parents of children? Almost never masked, and their children aren’t either. College students? Only masked if required because they are the ones behind the counter. Thirty and forty somethings? Very unlikely to be masked. Those of us over (or pushing) 60? Not quite universal masking, but close. And I have not seen a single black person in this town ever wear a mask, so I’m not sure the white is appropriate, either. (To be fair, we don’t have many people in town who are not white, though we do have a growing Hispanic population).
To be a trans ally, just follow these simple rules:
1. Accept things that are evidently untrue as evidently true
2. Make shit up
3. Appropriate the issues of other groups, especially women and racial minorities, and claim trans as more oppressed
4. Make shit up
5. Repeat mantras over and over
6. Make shit up
7. Threaten violence on those who disagree with you
8. Make shit up
9. Throw around allegations of harm and threat without any actual examples, or with appropriated examples
10. Make shit up
iknklast, I would add to that:
11. Redefine every word in the dictionary.
12. Continue to talk and act as if we were all still talking about the same thing.
13. Make shit up.
Bjarte, I’d change your #11 to undefine every word in the dictionary by declaring all words to be social constructs and therefore free to mean whatever one needs it to mean and only for as long as that meaning is necessary. This of course means that all undefinitions of a word are equally valid/invalid (delete as appropriate), but said validity/invalidity is entirely dependent on which sjde of the argument one is on.
Then make more shit up.
Presume means to take something as fact without evidence. They are slyly implying we have no particular reason to place trans women within category ‘men’.
But the inclusion of trans men in those spaces, meaning it is not a blanket exclusion of trans people.
This is simply a product of some spaces being reserved for a demographic – all such reservations exclude some category. In the case of a women’s rape shelter, the category being excluded is the male sex.
Smaller people are vulnerable should the larger people be violent. Women are smaller than men. QED
An so on. The whole thing stinks of these word games.
Acolyte of Sagan, “undefine” sounds about right. It’s not as if any of the circular formulations (anyone who identifies as anyone who identifies as anyone who identifies as anyone who identifies as…) we’re presented with actually qualify as “definitions”.
But reality is discursively constructed, Ophelia, so if people discursed you to be a house, giraffe, AND oak tree, then you would literally be those things.
It’s so obvious, even children whom I’ve told to say that it’s obvious say that it’s obvious.
Do better.