Bang out of order
This happened a couple of days ago: an activist trans man and a feminist woman on Channel 4 News.
Activist Jack Monroe clashed with a feminist academic during a fiery TV debate on trans issues on Thursday, calling the belief that trans women aren’t women “bang out of order”.
Monroe sat alongside Julia Long, a lecturer in sociology and long-time feminist, on Channel 4 News, after the publication of the first report by the Women and Equalities Committee in Parliament.
It wasn’t “fiery.” There was evident irritation, but no flames. In the next paragraph the Huffington Post said the report “sparked the fury of Dr Long,” which also isn’t true. Neither of them displayed “fury”; it’s all nonsense.
In the heated exchange, Dr Long hit out at the committee’s findings that people should be free to self-identify and select their own gender, claiming that this would place those victimised by male partners in jeopardy.
Again – the exchange was only mildly heated, and Dr Long didn’t “hit out” at anything. What’s the point of all this silly exaggeration? To make women and trans men look out of control?
Long said: “I’d like to begin by saying I think it’s really ironic that the first act by this committee that calls itself the women and equalities committee, the first report that they publish is something that actually antithetical to women’s rights.”
It is, actually. Trans rights are a separate issue from women’s rights.
She cited the case of Christopher Hambrook, a prisoner who exploited laws in Canada which allow for self-declaration of gender in order to carry out a series of sex attacks at two separate womens’ shelters.
Monroe hit back, saying that example was extreme.
“We call all pull cases out where we can say this has happened and that has happened but those cases are very, very rare, and to try and deny services to women on the basis that those women are trans women is abhorrent,” Monroe said.
“I was raped by a cis (to be defined by the gender assigned at birth) man and again by a lesbian woman… I don’t use either of those experiences to try and deny cis straight men or gay women access to rape crisis services.”
Long replied: “The kind of language that Jack is using there is really illustrative of the heart of this problem where even terms like male and female are becoming meaningless.”
“But who are you to decide who is a man and who is a woman?” Monroe asked in reply.
So let all the women’s shelters fill up with men, since no one can tell who is a man and who is a woman? It’s all just a mystery? If a woman is raped, she can’t tell the police a man did it, because who is she to decide who is a man?
I’d never realized how low, how non-existent, the standing of women is. People can spout that drivel in public and even get put on television to say it and then have sympathetic reports written about it.
No group, aside from women, is supposed to sit quietly and listen while some outsider tells them what they are.
This is Not Okay. Hosting it is Not Okay. Huffpoing it is Not Okay. Stop it.
I am not clear on exactly who is being or was denied rape crisis services.
Long replied: “The kind of language that Jack is using there is really illustrative of the heart of this problem where even terms like male and female are becoming meaningless.”
“But who are you to decide who is a man and who is a woman?” Monroe asked in reply.
Conflating different things and shifting goal posts. Male and man and female and woman don’t have to be the same thing. At first, trans folk were insisting they were different so that people would say, “Okay, man or woman; whichever you say you are, you are.” But now that that’s been accepted by society, the new message anyone who says they’re a man is *male* and anyone who says they’re a woman is *female* (except, really, many trans people think this sounds absurd). And if someone says “Males shouldn’t be allowed into a shelter for females harmed by males”, the cry is out that you’re saying you get to define who is a man and who is a woman. No. You’re saying identity and social role is less important than bodies *in one situation*. Monroe is shifting meanings on Long to make it about identity again.
As usual, Samantha has hit the nail on the head.
This absurd switching of terms must stop.
I used to think most of the tension between trans activists and those who disagree would be solved if all would agree to just keep the concepts “man and woman” separate from “male and female” – keep gender and sex strictly and separately defined. I thought people from all directions were just carelessly mixing the two. But I’ve since concluded that there is a very intentional project afoot to make it impossible for female-bodied women to talk about themselves with any term other than “cis,” a term which many of us have a serious disagreement with. Now, if you try to use “female-bodied” you’re branded a TERF and shunned.
(1) When people call me a female mathematician, they aren’t making some weird distinction between female mathematicians and woman mathematicians (not my favorite construct), they’re using “female” as the adjectival version of “woman.” Given how common this usage is, I really don’t think you’re going to have much luck insisting that female only be used for people assigned female at birth. The concepts are not distinct.
(2) Am I supposed to unable to access shelters etc. because, when I was born, some doctor said “it’s a boy”? My body is not female by your definition, but it has been treated as such by society. What, precisely, do you propose I do instead of going to women’s shelters?
Hi… Thing 1: From what I am hearing human people attesting, as individuals and also medical professionals, gender is a continuum, and Thing 2: Sex is a continuum.
My opinions: Thing 1: Gender boxes are not necessary except in specialized cases. Thing 2: Sexual ID is not necessary except in specialized cases. Thing 3: I support that people use facts, tempered by reason, to address the special cases, from places where they are safe, for example, public discourse.
In support of reason: Thing 1: My reason tells me that in my daily life, I have no purpose, no righteousness, in identifying someone’s gender or sex experience. Thing 2: A shelter for woman targets of abuse is not daily life, it is a highly specialized, highly stressful, psychologically tortured, and potentially dangerous setting.
In conclusion, yes, women who are trans, like women who are cis, desperately need safe crash pads to escape batterers. Yet, this is not the time [someone has just had the f*ck knocked out of them] or place [Exanaplanatooch] to expect crime victims to grapple with gender-egalitarianism.
Thank you.
#7: No, thank you!
randomforest, if people are calling you a female mathematician (Hi! by the way. What’s your specialty?), I’m guessing you’re presenting as a woman full time and people actually understand that’s your identity. One thing that gets iffy is when someone isn’t changing their presentation, but only tell people what gender they are supposed to be– one does one’s best to remember their pronouns, but a weightlifter with a beard and menswear isn’t actually endangered by using the men’s room just because the inner sense of gender experienced is female.
You’re being consistent. You belong in the ladies’ room.
As for shelters– places that shelter abuse victims already, if well funded and organized, will sponsor apartments for the rare victims who are not physically female– whether cis male or trans woman, there are abuse victims who would be better served by private quarters.
And
There is a lot of difference between “separate” and “antithetical”. Separate is a reasonable position (though there is overlap and tension too).
Thank you for explaining my own meaning to me, Deepak, but I already knew that. You missed the point. I’ll explain. The fact that the first report by the Women and Equalities Committee in Parliament was devoted to trans rights is antithetical to a focus on women’s rights. It would be just as bizarre and antithetical to purpose if an Immigration and Equalities Committee in Parliament started off with a report on trans issues.
@Ophelia
I didn’t explain your own meaning – I commented on the words you used as opposed to the one that Dr Long did.
You now are saying you do agree that it is antithetical – That if the *first* report deals with the issue of trans women , it is opposed to women rights (not that it is bizarre or separate or that the priorities seem to be incorrect) , a position that only makes sense if you hold that trans women are not women.
See again you are using a different word with a markedly different meaning – bizarre. The correct analogy would be (if you wanted to support the use of the word antithetical) a human rights commission decided that its first report would be on how to implement Sharia law.
In any case I do not find your analogy to be bizarre – An immigrations and Equalities committee could have its first report deal with gay people or women or children or lgbt or just trans – Its just the first report.
Ah there it is. Sprinkle a little blood in the water and hope the piranhas will show up. Nice job, Deepak.
I had a similar reaction to Deepak’s second comment. Blood in the water, indeed.
Geezus, yes, trans women are women, but an organization dedicated to women’s rights should, I don’t know, maybe, perhaps, on the off chance they actually care, report on broader women’s rights. Like, I don’t know, why not report on the rights that affect 51 percent of the population. Antithetical to that? Ignoring that 51 percent to focus on the extremely small percentage of women who are trans.
Oh, sure, one of these days, down the road, once they have established their credentials and demonstrated that they truly are dedicated to and care about the rights of 51 percent of the population, maybe then they can get around to reporting on the rights specific to trans women.
But holy hell, what part of this don’t you get: Since trans women are women, asking a women’s rights organization to fight for broader women’s rights *is* asking them to fight for trans women.
@Samantha #9
[General note: sorry if this has gotten too off-topic from the original post.]
Thanks for your response!
Okay so I mean you can talk about a weightlifter with a beard in menswear, but this example is really atypical of trans women. More likely is the following scenario: a young teenage trans woman is homeless (as a horrifying percentage of transgender youth are at some point in their lives) and seeks access to a homeless shelter. She’s been abused by men for a good portion of her life, and yet the shelter tells her she has to be housed with men (or just refuses to house her) because of her genitals (young homeless trans women usually can’t get surgery), facial hair (same note), and/or legal status (same note). You are right that they may offer to house her but only in isolation — this is better than nothing, but still not ideal (isolation *just isn’t good* for humans, usually, as perhaps the spate of suicides by trans female prisoners held in isolation in UK prisons last year attests.)
I can’t provide a ton of solid citations for the commonality of the above, because researching trans people is really hard and there are very few reputable studies available. But the ones we have mostly attest that the facts above are reasonably common (especially the statistics regarding homelessness and abuse). The most recent study I’m aware of that actually looks at how shelters treat trans women is https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/report/2016/01/07/128323/discrimination-against-transgender-women-seeking-access-to-homeless-shelters/ (obviously it is a very small study and I understand being skeptical of it, but I think the results look solid, in principle if not in specific numbers.)
My point in saying all of this is like. Okay. So I don’t hugely care about semantics or who gets called female (though I do, obviously, have a preference on that matter!), what I care about are the women who need help and can’t get it because some homeless shelter employee decided they weren’t pretty enough to admit to the shelter. I mean, seriously, that’s what we’re talking about — deciding who’s pretty enough. If I were denied access to a shelter it wouldn’t be because of my genitals, unless they stripped me, it would be because I have a deeper-than-normal voice and possibly a bit more facial hair than usual. Both of which are within the range of cis female characteristics. Unless you implement strict policies that deny access to all trans women, that’s what you’re left with: deciding if a woman is conventionally attractive/feminine enough to let her access a shelter.
As a policy matter, I just don’t think that works.
p.s. I’m told that sarcasm is my natural way of being. I’m not trying to be combative, and I apologize if I seem that way. I do feel strongly about this, but I don’t want to come over aggressively.
p.p.s. My area of mathematics is topological graph theory :-)
Okay, a few things. Firstly, Jack Monroe is not a trans man, but is non-binary (this is stated in the video).
Secondly, towards the end of the video, in response to Monroe pointing out that Long was relying on a cherry-picked extreme example (about a man who wasn’t a transgender woman, but had adopted a disguise), Long refers to a 2011 Swedish study and claims that it shows that trans women, whom she calls “so called trans women,” have the same rates of sexual violence as (cis) men. Monroe didn’t have time to rebut it, because the segment was abruptly cut off by the host. This is unethical and misleading. The primary author of that study (Dhejne) disagrees with Long’s conclusion:
http://www.transadvocate.com/fact-check-study-shows-transition-makes-trans-people-suicidal_n_15483.htm
Williams: Other anti-trans activists have seized upon your study to make certain fact assertions about a supposed inherent criminal nature trans women possess, as exemplified by the following twitter exchange:
i.imgur.com/08VQAE2.png
Using simple language, would you please speak to those using your work to support the fact assertion that trans women and cis men are alike when it comes to perpetrating incidences of rape, murder, torture, etc? In other words, would you please clarify the following:
A.) As to the “male pattern regarding criminality” your study reviewed, would you please speak to whether your sample is representative of the trans population as a whole?
B.) Does your study support the notion that trans women, epidemiologically speaking, are likely rapists?
C.) Did your study show that trans women, epidemiologically speaking, are just as likely to rape cis women as cis men?
D.) In the way that your study’s morbidity and mortality sample is reviewed as two chronological groups, did you use the same chronological metric for your criminality sample and, if so, what did you find?
E.) Is your “male pattern regarding criminality” a simple comparison of percentages of overall conviction rates between cis males and trans women or is it a quantitative conviction category comparison between the two? In other words, trans women (who may experience around a 50% unemployment rate4 5 6) will generally bear a greater burden of convictions associated with social oppression, poverty and homelessness (squatting, loitering, panhandling, prostitution and non-violent crimes such as drug use and petty theft) than cis men. When your study looked at the “male pattern regarding criminality” between cis men and trans women, are you saying that your data shows that cis men are being convicted for crimes associated with oppression, poverty and homelessness at a rate similar to that found in the trans population?
Dhejne: The individual in the image who is making claims about trans criminality, specifically rape likelihood, is misrepresenting the study findings. The study as a whole covers the period between 1973 and 2003. If one divides the cohort into two groups, 1973 to 1988 and 1989 to 2003, one observes that for the latter group (1989 – 2003), differences in mortality, suicide attempts and crime disappear. This means that for the 1989 to 2003 group, we did not find a male pattern of criminality.
As to the criminality metric itself, we were measuring and comparing the total number of convictions, not conviction type. We were not saying that cisgender males are convicted of crimes associated with marginalization and poverty. We didn’t control for that and we were certainly not saying that we found that trans women were a rape risk. What we were saying was that for the 1973 to 1988 cohort group and the cisgender male group, both experienced similar rates of convictions. As I said, this pattern is not observed in the 1989 to 2003 cohort group.
The difference we observed between the 1989 to 2003 cohort and the control group is that the trans cohort group accessed more mental health care, which is appropriate given the level of ongoing discrimination the group faces. What the data tells us is that things are getting measurably better and the issues we found affecting the 1973 to 1988 cohort group likely reflects a time when trans health and psychological care was less effective and social stigma was far worse.
Long isn’t doing anything helpful by spreading faulty and fear-mongering information about transgender people. Disappointing to see this crap on the news, unchallenged. It’s shit like this that makes me so frustrated with feminism, or more accurately a transphobic branch of it, even though I’m a feminist myself.
And finally, this:
is an appeal to hyperbole and moral panic, same as Long’s argument. It’s a bad faith exaggeration of Monroe’s position.
(I’m fairly sure that last year, Ireland adopted a legal self-declaration scheme for transgender people, becoming one of only a smattering of countries so far to do so. As far as I’m aware they haven’t imploded yet under the weight of men filling women’s shelters and prisons.)
” (I’m fairly sure that last year, Ireland adopted a legal self-declaration scheme for transgender people, becoming one of only a smattering of countries so far to do so. As far as I’m aware they haven’t imploded yet under the weight of men filling women’s shelters and prisons.) ”
The fact that *as far as you are aware* there have been no negative consequences for women following a self-declaration scheme being adopted in Ireland, does not negate the need for due consideration of the possibility of laws allowing men to enter what are meant to be safe places for women (particularly those women who have experienced male violence) for improper purposes. There is nothing wrong in exercising due dillegence. Just because *as far as you are aware* nothing has been reported *yet*, doesn’t wipe out that obligation to ensure that negative consequences are considered.
There seems to be no such consideration of potential negative consequences (with regards to impact on women) in the drawing up of this report. This is despite a range of considered and by no means “scare mongering” submissions from a variety of womens organisations and some professional organisations. The (women’s) voices that did raise concerns were not even called to submit evidence to the committee and none of their issues raised are reflected in the final report. They seem to have been rejected out of hand. A strange response to Women’s organisations from a committee with “Women” in the title. In fact Maria Miller is on record as saying that the only “objections”, as she terms them come from “women proporting to be feminists”… So if you don’t agree with Maria Miller then you are only “proporting” to be a feminst. Who is Maria Miller to determine who is and who isn’t a feminist anyway? And please, no tiresome diatribes about “TERFS”, a term most commonly used online to shut women up and throw them into the “untouchable” heap. Unless you think the Fawcett Society are similarly branded with this modern day mark of Cain.
The report is essentially a “wish list” supplied to the committee by trans lobbying groups and reflects none of the considerable issues raised by voices outside of that circle. It shows no weighting of consideration of the rights of women as a protected characteristic under the Equalities Act 2010. It is a poorly drafted and entirely one-sided report. NOBODY is saying that transwomen do not deserve support. All that is being asked for is a careful consideration of the drafting of legislation to ensure that sex-based protections are not negated by legislation that effectively robs “sex” as a characteristic of any meaningful protections what-so-ever, and opens the door to improper use.