Unconditional acceptance
That post in which Derrick Jensen responded to Oregon State’s no-platforming of a talk of his –
The issue was apparently that he has said cis women shouldn’t have to share “sleeping and bathing” space with males and by “males” he seems to mean trans women.
I’m a founding member of an organization called Deep Green Resistance. Given that gold standard studies show that 25 percent of all women in this culture are raped within their lifetimes, and another 19 percent fend off rape attempts, and given that many members of this organization have themselves been sexually assaulted, and given that the overwhelming majority of sexual assaults are committed by males, the women of this organization decided that when we have conferences, they wanted for their sleeping and bathing spaces to be for females only. That’s it. That’s the beef of those who identify as transgender and their allies. The issue was not mentioned in the book of that same name. This was the sole issue: are women allowed to bathe and sleep and organize and gather free from males?
I of course agree with them. Given that we live in the midst of a rape culture, where at the very least a significant minority of women have had males attempt to sexually assault them, I don’t understand why any group of women should be forced–against their will–to allow males into their most vulnerable spaces.
Quite possibly the issue is more that he says “males” when he means trans women.
Also I don’t understand why it’s an issue, because who shares sleeping and bathing spaces anyway? I don’t want anyone of any gender anywhere near me in my sleeping and bathing spaces. But maybe the DGR does budget conferences and people share rooms. (Ick.)
His larger subject though is no-platforming as such. One of his fundamental themes is the distinction between disrespect and disagreement.
You deplatformed me because you say I disrespect those who identify as transgender. You are both scholars, both at a major university. I respectfully ask both of you to find any place in any of my books or articles where I have disrespected those who identify as transgender, where I have committed the sort of hate speech that would cause one to be deplatformed from a university committed to open discourse and discussing the most difficult issues of our time. This is not a rhetorical request. Please do look, and see what you will find. And let’s be clear: I mean disrespect, not disagreement. I would hope that when speaking to two scholars at an institution of higher education I would not have to detail the difference between disrespect and disagreement. Generally, unless participating in some form of fundamentalism, people understand that disagreement does not equal disrespect. The understanding that disagreement does not equal disrespect is in fact a necessary part of living in a pluralistic society. That understanding should be central to any institution of higher education. Sadly it is not central, and is becoming less central by the day.
To be honest I would say it is disrespect to call trans women “males.” I would say that is disrespect more than disagreement, although it may be based in disagreement about what the criteria are or should be for saying who is male and who isn’t.
But the distinction is still an important one, even if the execution of the distinction-making isn’t always good.
You wrote: “Honestly, we had not been tracking this issue closely. We realize that the issue is a small blip in the entirety of your body of work.”
My response: Approximately 7000 words out of probably 5 million published, or .14 percent, or only 14 words out of every ten thousand (I can guarantee I use swear words more often than that), and even those written only after I began receiving death threats. It’s less than a blip. It would be like disagreeing with eleven words out of this entire missive I’m sending you. And that “blip” is not disrespectful, but simple disagreement. Why am I not allowed to disagree with an ideology? When did slavish agreement with the philosophers Michel Foucault and Judith Butler become a precondition not only for speaking at a university, but for even being considered to be respectful?
You wrote: “But it is a big deal here at OSU, where unconditional acceptance and respect for everyone is a value, and for us this includes transgendered people.”
My response: You are both scholars. Please name one place in any of my books or the two published essays I mentioned where I disrespect those who identify as trans. Once again, not disagree, but disrespect. Once again, this is not rhetorical. Disagreement is not disrespect.
The two can overlap, though. The two can be present together. I understand his point, believe me, but it’s not the case that disagreement precludes disrespect (and vice versa).
I think part of the problem is that a terrible rhetorical coup has taken place in Academia, and that in this case we seem to be confusing “unconditional acceptance” with “adherence to an ideology” and “disrespect” with “political disagreement.” That is a rhetorical coup because it makes discourse impossible. Those who perpetuate or support this confusion have made it–and you are going along with this–impossible to talk about the subject (or, clearly, any subject, including the murder of the planet), because any disagreement on that particular subject is immediately labeled as a lack of acceptance and as disrespect (and the person who disagreed is deluged with rape and death threats, and blacklisting: the irony of the recipient of these threats and blacklisting then being accused of a lack of acceptance and of disrespect does not escape me). As someone to whom honest discourse is as vital as my own heart, I cannot tell you how much I resent the manipulation of discourse such that mere disagreement with an ideology–any ideology—is silenced as disrespect.
Further, what do you mean by “unconditional acceptance”? Can someone skip every class and do no homework without you flunking them? Do you have to unconditionally accept them and pass them? Or can you unconditionally accept them as human beings but still have a specific metric for whether you allow them to pass the class? Can someone attend school without either having a scholarship or paying tuition? Or would they eventually be removed from campus? Is there a metric for whether the school allows someone to take classes and to be called a student? Can everyone be on the basketball team? Or can some students be unconditionally accepted by everyone involved but still be excluded from the basketball team, and not be called members of the varsity basketball team? Can anyone attend graduation and walk across the stage and receive a diploma, or are there some metrics in place such that some people are unconditionally accepted by everyone involved but are excluded from receiving a diploma and being called graduates? Are military veterans allowed to organize with others who share their experience, or can anyone join every one of their organizations? Can military veterans (or African-Americans, or American Indians, or Mexican-Americans, or for that matter physics majors or members of a sorority) unconditionally accept other students as human beings but not allow them into their organizations, or more to the point, their most intimate spaces? And as for yourself, if a student wanted to shower with you, would you have to accept that, else you’d be risking failing to unconditionally accept that student? Or are you allowed to have boundaries? Likewise would a student be forced to shower with you? Or is the student allowed to have that boundary? Why can I not unconditionally accept those males who identify as trans, yet not wish for them to be allowed to shower with women who don’t want to shower with them? Everyone else is allowed to define boundaries: why are these women the only ones who can’t say no? I don’t understand why believing that women are allowed to have boundaries says anything about whether I do or don’t accept people.
How about if all of us get to have the boundary of showering and sleeping alone if that’s what we prefer? That would solve this silly issue at a stroke. Make all restrooms unisex with stalls, give everyone privacy, problem solved.
Indeed. The college my child is interested in has a limited number of dorm rooms that are gender inclusive. They consist of several single rooms sharing a single bathroom unit. I understand that schools are constrained in that they already have the traditional freshmen dorms of double rooms with common bathrooms down the hall, but in the long term I hope more dorms get converted to a style similar to the gender-inclusive style. I’m not sure sharing a room with a stranger has to be a rite-of-passage for college students.
Now, given a situation where shared rooms are for some reason required, excluding trans women from dorm rooms and bathrooms intended for women based on fear of rape comes across as disingenuous when rape statistics for trans women are just as alarming as the statistics for cis women.
The same can apply to spaces such as changing and showering spaces at swimming pools, gyms and so forth. Who decided we should shower communally? I recently spent a day at Parco Delle Piscine in Sarteano, Italy. I was delightfully surprised to find that they had rows of small changing spaces (intended for individuals, but large enough to accommodate a parent and a child or two) and showers in individual stalls with proper doors.
I really dislike the use of “males who identify as trans” rather than transwomen.
However, I *really* like the idea that everyone deserves privacy. For goodness’ sake, I’m sure that if you put it that way, the transwomen who want to attend a conference would be about the *first* people to say, “Yes, please!” because they don’t want roommates who may end up treating them like freaks.
I agree with you and Anat on all aspects of the shower issue.
Jensen makes good points in theory, but he has a huge blind spot about which aspects of his own position are a combination of disagreement and disrespectful. It is at the least very rude to call a trans woman male when you presumably know they don’t want to be called that, regardless whether you’re doing it based on disagreement over the definition. And it’s totally disrespectful to base your position about bathrooms and sleeping spaces on the suggestion that trans women are some kind of special rape threat without, apparently, any evidence of that. (Where it gets dicier is when people have genuine worries about actual male rapists abusing liberal access to places where they can rape, but if that’s a legitimate concern it can be addressed rationally with safeguards or by designing bathrooms better.)
That said, his point about needing to distinguish is totally valid. Say I tell someone that I identify as Chicana. One person disagrees that I should identify that way because they think that all ethnic identities are artificial, or they think identity itself an empty concept. Then a second person tells me I’m a fake Chicana, I’ll never be a real one, and mocks me for identifying that way. How silly it would be if I claimed that those two people were really doing the same thing. .
Great analogy.
Mind you, I think I get why trans people don’t necessarily like to hear discussions of the artificiality of gender…but at the same time I also don’t think that necessarily gets to shut down all such discussions. I think we need such discussions. (But we don’t for instance need to force them on trans people, which I hope I haven’t been doing. I don’t think discussing the subject on my blog is much of an imposition on trans people.)
Yeah, I feel terrible about the despair some must feel seeing something they feel so strongly about discussed that way. But it’s just not the same as, say, debating whether a certain race of people are really human, or pathologizing a race.
“Mind you, I think I get why trans people don’t necessarily like to hear discussions of the artificiality of gender…but at the same time I also don’t think that necessarily gets to shut down all such discussions. I think we need such discussions. (But we don’t for instance need to force them on trans people, which I hope I haven’t been doing. I don’t think discussing the subject on my blog is much of an imposition on trans people.) ”
If a particular feminist blog seems like it isn’t the place to analyse gender because it has dedicated trans women commenters or writers who aren’t gender critical, then I don’t comment about gender at those blogs. (ie. not forcing my views on trans people). So instead I go to blogs where critical thinking about gender is permitted.
Unfortunately it really isn’t that simple for the women who maintain the blogs allowing critical analysis of gender. It seems first they get told they are transphobic, and at that point they can (1) decide to recant, and make sure to regularly denounce other feminists as transphobic (I’m not a TERF, *that’s* a TERF) or (2) decide they would like to continue blogging about gender. If the latter, they will be labelled TERFs and good liberals everywhere warned not to read or discuss the views of the TERF on any subject. Additionally, the ‘TERF’ faces verbal abuse, threats and attempts to make her unemployed.
Then, one day, an intelligent thoughtful woman, like so many intelligent thoughtful women before her, perhaps notes the dearth of online critical discussion on the issue of gender and how it can harm girls and women (there are blogs out there, but all run by TERFs and so off-limits, hard to find or inaccessible). Intelligent thoughtful woman blogger starts thinking and talking about gender online. Intelligent thoughtful woman blogger faces accusations of TERFhood, and demands that she apologise for thinking out loud about gender. Intelligent thoughtful woman blogger refuses to do so and is attacked and shunned. And so the cycle repeats, IMO.
teslalivia, what a great comment.
Re: change rooms and toilets and trans women being able to be safe.
I read a great comment on this subject “Cis women just need to chill out”. This is exactly what needs to happen.
The tricky part is, that means undoing a lifetime’s warnings about how dangerous men can be, how we can be raped and killed if we do not keep ourselves safe, how if we are harmed by a man it will be our own fault for not keeping ourselves safe.
The woman in the change room whose hackles are up because she reads a trans woman incorrectly needs to start thinking “this is a person, who like me, is also at risk from the violence I have been taught to fear.”
Stopping The Threat of Male Violence would also be helpful.
It’s interesting to me what specific targets seem to be being selected for this treatment…important voices whose ideas about things besides gender we should all be hearing and thinking about are, it seems, being almost systematically shut down.
I’ve argued recently the same as Ophelia, that communal showers are the problem, not trans women.
At my gym there are a lot of men (generally old men for some reason) who lounge around the locker room naked for long periods. The locker room includes a sauna, a TV area, and a few pieces of equipment; men lounge naked watching sports, conversing, etc.. On one occasion I was using a treadmill and the only other man present came and stood directly in front of the treadmill, and slowly dried himself off, taking various poses and trying to make eye contact with me the whole time. Usually there’s nothing so blatant; just a lot of weirdly prolonged nudity.
Apparently they like it, so it’s probably not going to change. But I can’t go to some other gym that doesn’t have this phenomenon, because they all do. I’ve looked for alternatives. There was one gym with a coed sauna and a rule requiring bathing suits when using it, and I considered switching.
But for plenty of cis het men and women, communal showers and rows of exposed urinals (or toilets–I’ve seen that) are pretty upsetting. The fact that some people in that space might be predatory in some way only adds to that. And still nothing to do with gay or trans people; I’m thinking of cishet exhibitionists, and cishet bullies who put on dominance displays involving their big penises.
Being one of those people I think gay and trans people are being made a lightning rod for this problem. E.g., the thought that someone in there might also be attracted to them increases their discomfort past a tipping point, where they were prepared to put up with the chronic toothache of being exposed and subjected to a bunch of (what amounts to) exhibitionism.
British comic Michael McIntyre has a great routine on this.
https://youtu.be/DHfHXtXXq-A
Holy shit, that last paragraph… dude, the horse is dead. Stop. Put the whip down.
Still, if he wants someone to point out a place where he’s disrespected trans people, well, how about that paragraph right there? He’s essentially just repeatedly calling them liars and fakes. Seems a bit like disrespect right there.
Seriously, what the fuck is it with this “what if they want to shower with yooooouuuuu?!” thing?
That’s not a well considered argument that he’s being prevented from voicing. It’s not an argument about personal space and privacy, it’s a rhetorical tactic designed to induce an emotional knee-jerk reaction to those terrifying trans predators who are out to get you in particular! It’s alarmist bullshit on par with the “my students terrify me” narrative. Relating to the next post, I’m pretty sure it’s the same argument made by the Duggars against the acceptance of trans students in schools. Yes, I’m aware that I’m poisoning the well by pointing that out, but it’s true, and it was a bad argument to begin with anyway.
Don’t get me wrong, I have massive problems with communal showering or changing or even swimming, to be honest with you (though I think the swimming thing is probably just a personal hangup that I need to get a grip on, because I like swimming) but it’s not that the person who keeps making eye contact with me at the most uncomfortable moments might be trans – it’s that there’s someone who keeps making eye contact with me at the most uncomfortable moments. It’s just so weird to me that people are so quick to freak out about gay or trans people in their horrifyingly open showers, but seem resistant to the idea of just giving people a little privacy.
Women definitely are and should be allowed to have boundaries, but I don’t see why you’d have to single out trans people as someone it’s reasonable to have boundaries about when apparently the idea of having a general “no humans around me when I’m showering, ‘k?” boundary is off the table, and I don’t see how he doesn’t see how that says anything about whether he’s accepting of people.
All this stuff about allowing people to force their way into people’s most intimate spaces… you want to know who gets into my most intimate spaces? The people I’m most intimate with. Nobody else. Intimacy is the sole bar for entry, not the relationship between your gender and what it says on your birth certificate, not what that gender is, not even eye colour (which I’m weirdly shallow and picky about) nothing else but intimacy. So why is that relevant? If somebody is intruding on your intimate spaces, then there are probably already laws covering that, and we could probably just focus on making sure that people respect that other people’s intimate spaces are private, and not to be entered into without an invitation.
Anyway, say we agree and trans women are banned from women’s showers. Where do they go? Does he want to send them to the men’s showers or something? Because there are some pretty huge issues with taking that route. Or maybe we make new shower blocks specifically for trans men and women? But I’m pretty sure that’ll be more expensive than just making the existing showers more private, not to mention being a target to the more aggressive transphobes and making a everyone who uses those showers a target too. I don’t see that working out, somehow, and I’m not entirely sure why he wouldn’t be able to see the issues with it either.
A Masked Avenger @ 11 –
YIKES. That sounds frankly unbearable.
I don’t use gyms, so I’m not familiar with the whole getting naked in front of other people routine. At the tiny girls’ school I went to that didn’t happen – we didn’t have showers. (Which is probably gross, now I think about it, but then I was careful never to work up a sweat anyway, so whatever.) I’ve never been in a situation where I was expected to get naked in front of random other people. I wouldn’t do it. The whole idea is revolting. Provide cubicles ffs.
I think he has some very important points about the chilly climate and about shutting down opinions. Supposedly people value free speech and robust discourse, and even if someone has a bad idea that is much better aired than being shut down. It is very much a concern that disagreement with a position now more often than not is responded to with torrents of abuse. It’s pretty appalling when you get down to the level of threatening book burnings, you are way past of the point of civil discourse there.
If people are putting out book considerations “Manhood Acts” by Michael Schwalbe might be of interest.
“Quite possibly the issue is more that he says “males” when he means trans women.”
Not really, he points out he is using the dictionary definition of woman, adult human female. Unfortunately you cannot have it two ways and assert that it’s offensive to say a male is a male, while at the same time pushing the born in the wrong body idea which implicitly says something about characteristics of that person and it cannot be that it is entirely socially constructed. I also cannot figure out why it is not considered offensive (and anyone asserting otherwise rather ruthlessly shut down) and contradictory to the people formerly known as women to force them to be described as “people with uteruses” and “vagina havers” and have the essential characteristic of femaleness that defines them discarded for a definition of woman that is circular – a woman is a person that identifies as a woman. Respect is earned, as they say, it can’t be demanded when a person doesn’t extend to the other the same right and respect to define themselves and speak about their realities.
“Also I don’t understand why it’s an issue, because who shares sleeping and bathing spaces anyway?”
Lots of people. Gyms, hospitals, sports facilities, women’s refuges, schools, swimming pools all mean people have to share communal space to some degree. It’s simply not practical at all times to have private single use facilities, you can have that in your home but outside of that communal facilities are a reality. Again, I think there is something very hypocritical here, people say it’s fine for women/female persons to have boundaries, but then turn around and deride them as exclusionary, and cast every female person that asserts they have a need for privacy and spaces for themselves as bigoted and phobic. It seems that many just turn around and dismiss women too easily and declare themselves mystified as to why they are upset about what were hard fought for spaces suddenly being declared open to all comers (and yes, that is the effect, and notice it’s not really happening to other groups that assert common interest). Other options, like making male facilities safe for all users, some reasonable criteria as to who can go in or options of a third separate space for those that have particular needs with regards this don’t even get a mention.
Women’s concerns are real. Male violence is real, and we know the problems in societies like India women have with a lack of facilities where they can safely perform basic bodily functions like urination or deal with menstruation. Women’s female bodies are sexualised like nothing else, but no one is interested in hearing about their discomfort at the prospect having to change beside males, males like the ones that cat called them them in the street just half an hour ago. Interesting how people can accept the idea of Schrodinger’s rapist, that they just don’t know the intentions there but don’t accept the fact that identities are subjective things and there is no way to tell if someone is genuine and fine to be accepted there and who might be abusing that subjectivity for voyeuristic intent or to predate on them. It probably is that in most cases it is fine and it’s definitely not that it is the claim that trans persons that are the risk here coming from me, but the case of Christopher “Jessica” Hambrook in Canada proves that the risk of someone abusing the situation is real and not imagination, let alone bigotry. Also just google about bathroom videos, I won’t link to anything but there are many voyeur websites out there purporting to show stealth video of women on the toilet and that is now, with sex-segregated facilities in the main. It doesn’t help to simply remove any protection, however illusory against that sort of behaviour. Some filter is needed to protect people and allow them basic privacy rights.
http://www.torontosun.com/2014/02/26/predator-who-claimed-to-be-transgender-declared-dangerous-offender
I am familiar with the whole getting naked in front of other people routine, having done it all my life. For the last twenty years I have been using the gym at a community aquatic centre. The men’s changing areas are fully open, as are the shower stalls. I wrap a towel around myself when walking from the change area to the showers and back.
My wife tells me that in the women’s changing areas there is a similar communal changing area, but with a series of cubicles along the wall, and that the shower stalls have doors. The young women, she says, tend to cover up and the older ones let it all hang out.
The aquatic centre is currently undergoing its regular 5-year maintenance and the gym users have been promised a relocated gym with dedicated changing facilities. I am cautiously looking forward to this, as it should mean I don’t have to share the changing facilities with groups of 8-10 year olds. Not that I care either way about being naked with a lot of 8-10 year old boys but they do tend to be very loud. How communal the new changing facilities will be I do not know.
Anat at #2 asks
I think it was a consensus thing. And it does appear that the consensus is shifting, but I think there are many (particularly men) who are still quite comfortable with it.
Nevertheless it does appear that there are many who are not comfortable with communal nakedness, whether the sensitivity is personal, male-female, cis-trans, hetero-homo or young-old. And I think those people should be catered for. I expect that unisex, non-communal facilities will generally take up more space and be more expensive than communal facilities. I just noticed today at our gym that in addition to the men’s and women’s communal facilities, there are several changing and showering cubicles on the other side of the corridor, possibly intended for small family groups. Maybe a combination of communal and non-communal facilitites is the most efficient.
Redwolf – yes, women have serious concerns about rape, and in cultures such as the US seek privacy from men (this is not universal – in the Netherlands people don’t bother to seek privacy for changing in or out of swimwear on a public beach). However this concern is the same for cis women as well as for trans women – whether pre-op, post-op or no-op. Trans women are just as unsafe in facilities intended for men as cis women. Where can trans women safely pee? (In my workplace the answer is – in the women’s restroom. In my child’s school the answer for students is – either in the girls’ restroom or in the gender-neutral one; and for adults – all staff facilities are gender neutral.)
Regarding terminology – a trans person that has their status recognized legally has a different gender designation than they were assigned at birth. Thus a legally transitioned trans women is legally female (regardless of what kind of medical transition if any she has undergone). Yet, it seems Jensen would consider them male? What about a trans woman who underwent all available medical procedures for MTF transition – in what sense is she not a woman? Not female?
Regarding using terms as ‘uterus havers’ – well, sometimes the uterus is the salient trait by which to define whom the specific issue applies to. Anything related to pregnancy, maternal health – prenatal and postnatal, access to abortion – these apply to people who have a uterus, whether male, female, or other, but not to people who do not, whether male, female, or other.
To Redwolf, again – yes women need to be safe from men. Excluding trans women from those that need such safety is transphobic. Claiming that trans women somehow endanger cis women by sharing facilities is transphobic.
@Redwolf, 15
You know this is nonsense, right? It’s not like trans women are strutting around, saying that they get to define themselves, and that cis women therefore no longer have the same right to define themselves. Everybody has the right to define themselves. What you’re complaining about is lacking the right to define other people, which is something we probably don’t need to be doing most of the time anyway.
Bullshit. The problem isn’t that people want privacy and spaces for themselves, it’s that people are actively resistant to privacy and spaces for themselves until the idea that the horrifyingly non-private spaces might be shared by the wrong sort of people. I don’t know about lesbians, but gay men have had the same stigma in men’s changing rooms. If you want privacy, then have privacy, not exclusionary exhibitionism.
Yes they are, and as far as I can tell, nobody here has said otherwise. But I can’t help but notice that you seem to think you’re speaking for all cis women here (and I don’t want to speak for women, but it fucking infuriates me when MRAs pull that trick) while advocating for sending trans women into men’s toilets and changing rooms, which I can’t help but suspect would be a concern for women. So surely what you actually mean is “women’s concerns are real, and only cis women’s concerns are to be considered”?
Jennifer Chavez@#8. Thank you for your kind words. I’m grateful for all the work that Ophelia does in writing and moderating this blog, and for the insights offered by the commenters here.