Highlighting how mainstream feminism constantly forgets about trans women
The Independent reports breathlessly on the history-making excitement of more pushing women aside so that trans women can be in the center. It’s the story of Anna Lee running for NUS Women’s Officer, again.
A student at Lancaster University looks set to make history by becoming the first-ever openly trans woman to run for a top national role with the National Union of Students (NUS).
That would be great…if only it were a different top national role.
Anna Lee, who is currently vice president of welfare and community at the university’s students’ union – as well as featuring on the women’s campaign committee (trans* rep) at NUS – is aiming to become women’s officer with the national student campaigner.
But it’s that one.
Isn’t it fascinating how eager people are to shove women out of the picture?
Highlighting her determination to get to where she wants to be, Miss Lee said: “When the transphobic ‘feminists’ come and try to tear me down, I will just fight harder and, with the help of amazing activists, we will show them, together, that the NUS women’s campaign demonstrates a progressive approach to inclusive feminism, not only ensuring the campaign is proudly trans inclusive, but that our campaign is a place where feminist activists can thrive – whether they’ve been involved for five years or five minutes.”
See that’s one glaring reason she shouldn’t be the Women’s Officer – she hates feminists. Not a good fit.
Highlighting how mainstream feminism constantly forgets about trans women, she added: “Let alone a queer trans disabled lesbian woman.”
First priority: bash feminism.
Mainstream feminism constantly forgets about trans women? That’s funny. I thought trans women were now central to (not to say fashionable within) mainstream feminism. I thought it was that icky old “radical” feminism and its refusal to jump on the new gender bandwagon that was the problem.
Damn, a woman ran to be women’s officer? Truly horrific. A woman who is part of marginalized communities who are not typically represented in these institutions running to be women’s officer? Even worse.
Randomforest – not at all. What’s disturbing is that a trans women, who wants to represent all women, is prepared to exclude a large number of committed feminist women who actively fight for women’s rights from her remit to represent, on the basis that they do not actively adopt and support ALL trans* dogma as a given beyond all question.
That frankly is just as divisive, exclusive and damaging to the fight for women’s rights (including trans*) as the worst of the TERF’s.
How can you possibly represent women when you grew up male? Growing up male and growing up female are such completely different experiences that lead to very different ways of seeing the world.
So here’s the deal: I’m gonna head south, get myself a deep,deep tan, some rasta-weave and then I’ll write a book about being Black in America.
Trans people should more properly represent other trans people because that’s what they’ve been experiencing all their lives.
We have trans people representing women and Whites working as NAACP reps.
And WHICH trans-dogma must the Big Bad Feminists kowtow to….this week? Part of the whole transquisition is rooted in changes in the fashionable rationales for trans people.
Whether, and to what extent, gender is innate has become the most rapidly moving goalpost in history. Understandably, trans-folk have jumped back and forth around this question. But…their rights and social condition cannot be dependent upon enforcing mutually exclusive orthodoxies on everyone else.
John @4: Except that increasingly, trans identification is occurring at a much earlier age (while actual hormone therapy and reassignment surgery is still delayed, hormone blockers to prevent puberty until the child is mature enough to make a final decision permits them to live as girls through the entirety of their pre-teen and teen years). More and more trans women will grow up in a culture that largely treats them the same (shitty) way it treats all women, with a side-bonus of hate if they fail to ‘pass’. Your comparison would be more akin to claiming that Barack Obama has no business claiming to be black, since his mother is white. The fact is, he’s been acculturated as a black man, and the same thing is going to occur with trans men and women as well.
@6 Those with trans identification that occurs at an early age will grow up battling the doubts surrounding their true gender. That will be their struggle.
Being born and growing up female involves a whole other set of difficulties and dilemmas which really have nothing to do with angst related to gender identity questions.
The person in question here, Anna Lee, grew up battling doubts about her gender identity.
The women she may one day represent grew up battling restrictions placed upon them by a still largely misogynistic society.
It’s a case of apples and oranges.
My reference to the NAACP was an aside to Rachel Dolezal, a White women who grew up White and who never experienced what it’s like to grow up Black in America, but who claimed she’d always*felt* Black.
Rachel was of Slavic/Scandinavian descent…and very blond
Freemage @ 6
Genuine question. Why? I would have thought that for this to occur something would have to change. We should be able to identify the thing or things that have changed.
One hypothesis would be that a sizeable number of children have always gone through a gender fluid phase of development that has ultimately resolved with some reverting to there assigned at birth gender, some identifying as gay and some identifying as trans*. Under currently fashionable trans* philosophy there is clearly a presumption that when a child, even a very young child, identifies as trans*, that’s it. They’re trans*. Hence ages or trans* identification will drop compared to previously. This is essentially just a change due to data classification.
Now that may well be a healthier outcome overall. Undoubtedly many children with genuine trans* identification have felt pressure to hide this from their families and others. Other children would have come out to families and support networks, only to be pressured to conform. Final age of identification would then have been delayed.
Under this hypothesis we would be replacing a number of false negatives (individuals having their trans* identity suppressed) with false positives (individuals identifying as trans* at a very young age and being unconditionally supported in that identity, when in fact they were/are just going through a phase that resolves back to an assigned gender – straight or gay).
Like I say, that’s an obvious hypothesis to explain your statement. Do you have another, and is there really solid evidence that shows another mechanism and that would knock back the hypothesis above?
But the consensus so far is that the majority of such children will not grow up to be trans. Most childhood gender dysphoria doesn’t persist.
http://4thwavenow.com/2015/04/11/research-evidence-most-gender-dysphoric-children-grow-up-to-be-gay-or-lesbian/
That’s just it–there doesn’t need to be.
Yes, the core hypothesis you put forward (a brief period of questioning that ultimately resolves itself, and with that resolution being predominantly in the direction of the child’s biological sex) is what I personally believe as well. It’s the part I bolded above that I do not believe is as predominant as you seem to–that children who do have that questioning period are automatically being shuffled into the ‘forever trans’ category.
Rather, the mainstream trans view that I’ve seen on blogs and articles seems to be advocating a larger ‘room to question’ period, via parental permission to explore their identity and the use of hormone blockers until the child resolves the situation in their own mind.
In the case of children who explore their identity before resolving to their biological sex, this would still result in a greater awareness of what cultural forces are present in children’s lives; this awareness can only increase empathy.
In the case of children who ultimately continue to identify as not their biological sex, however, their experience in life will be mostly identical to that of children of their final gender who never had a questioning period.
So, two individuals born with penises both go through a questioning period around 7 or 8. During this time, their parents agree to let them explore those questions, putting them on hormone blockers for a few years when puberty is about to hit. One of them decides that he’s a boy after all, he stops taking the blockers, and continues on, having spent a few years actually getting all those cultural messages young girls get, from the Princess Mafia to being encouraged to not do math and science. It will at least be harder for him to claim that no such discrimination exists.
Meanwhile, the other child finally confirms that she is a girl. At that point, hormone blockers are replaced with hormone therapy. During the entire formative period, she’s received all those coded messages (including those that are only delivered by other women). Her primary distinction arises from the biological aspects–she knows nothing of menstruation or the possibility of getting pregnant, and so on. This might make some issues–important ones, at that–less personally urgent to her, but I cannot see it being so great that it outright disqualifies her from being treated as a woman in feminist circles.
Re ©7:
This is perhaps a bit of a tangent, but I don’t agree with that characterization of the issues surrounding Dolezal.
Blackness in the US is complicated significantly by the history of slavery and the One Drop Rule. There have been people who were told they were black, regardless of appearance, because of black ancestry. I have always considered myself black, despite my light skin and brown hair, because of my black father and his family. But I have not grown up with the experience of having dark skin, and the effects such skin has on how others perceive me, and my life was not permeated with black culture, so my blood claim feels odd.
Dolezal, on the other hand, did live embedded in black culture, and from many reports was an effective and well respected leader in the NAACP (who don’t actually restrict leadership positions to black people, anyway). She lacked the bit of ancestral legitimacy I might have, but in most other respects she has qualifications that would far exceed mine. What if she had a black ancestor many generations back? Would it matter? Why should it?
You may recall Lani Guinier, whose nomination to a civil rights post in the Clinton administration was withdrawn, sparked in part by deliberate misconstruction of some legal essays she had written. She published a collection of essays later, which I read.
One of the contentious points she raised was that it is a fallacy that the best advocate for a marginalized group is always a member of the group. This fallacy is the basis for a lot of representation rules. Sure, a member of the group is more likely to understand the issues, but that is far from guaranteed, and it is even less guaranteed that a person is an effective lobbyist or organizer or speaker due solely to membership in a marginalized group. But membership in the group is easier to assess, hence it is the characteristic that is used.
Dolezal was apparently effective. Her appearance (attempts at skin darkening aside) is not all that different from mine, nor that of my cousin who is half Norwegian, but who might also identify as black.
Good points. I posted about a long interview / article about Dolezal some weeks ago, which gave a pretty sympathetic account of her reasons and her history.
@11
It isn’t just a question of Dolezal lacking ancestral legitimacy; she didn’t grow up facing the restrictions and obstacles many Blacks have to deal with.
That Dolezal would tell bare faced lies time and time again to her entourage, her friends and associates and even the press in an effort to pass as Black is just a bit perverse. She was a fraud artist who continually induced people…even close friends… into error, and who made good money doing so
There are already more than enough Black people in The States with the passion and abilities to represent Blacks and to clearly articulate what they experience.
So let’s let them do the job.
@13
I agree, she didn’t grow up facing certain obstacles. Neither did I. Yet I think she, and various other white leaders in the NAACP, are more capable than I would be at leading the fight, despite my possession of that all-important characteristic of bloodline. Some of the organization’s leaders, including past president Walter White, have been black people who “passed” for white. Some have been white. Not all have been those who have experienced discrimination against themselves directly. Experience counts for a lot, but not for everything.