Tell the family
Sarah Ditum and Julie Bindel were on Victoria Derbyshire’s chat show this morning to talk about free speech and no platforming. Behold a clip:
Student tells feminist Julie Bindel why her comments on transgender people are offensive #VictoriaLIVEhttps://t.co/WXVAMr2Isr
— Victoria Derbyshire (@VictoriaLIVE) April 25, 2016
I haven’t seen the rest of what they say yet, assuming Derbyshire kept her promise to return to Julie after the news, but this on its own is worth discussing.
There are people, there are people who are incredibly vunnerable [sic] who do feel very specific types of harm. Tell the family of trans people, the families of queer people who have committed suicide because of the likes of people who have invalidated their identities – Julie Bindel.
That claim is contemptible moral blackmail. No, feminist women talking about gender do not cause trans people to commit suicide, and it’s sheer bullying to claim they do. No, people don’t get to silence feminist women who need to talk about gender more than anyone by accusing them of causing suicides. No, trans activists don’t get to declare a monopoly on talking about gender while women are still viewed as and treated as the subordinate, stupid, frivolous sex.
In every other situation, if I threatened suicide unless the Universe pageant validated my identity as most beautiful human ever, if Rachel Dolezal threatened suicide unless she was accepted as black, if some assistant prof threatens suicide unless the Mensa crowd make him a member, in every case therapy for the person involved would be the solution. You can give yourself any identity you want. It’s just not up to others to necessarily agree with you.
Except when it’s women. Then and only then, it’s always up to women to clean up every mess whether it has anything to do with them or not. And somehow that glaring point seems to be invisible.
People may commit suicide because they feel despised, and lack the support necessary to help them withstand scorn. That is tragic. And NOBODY should suffer in that way, suicide or not (though many of us have and do.)
But I am skeptical of the claim that people have committed suicide because others “have invalidated their identities.” I’m not even sure what “invalidating [someone’s] identity” means. Not agreeing 100% with someone else’s self-perception? That’s pretty much universal. Needing constant validation of one’s self-perception, as quixote noted, is unhealthy.
My university roommate’s narcissistic ex-boyfriend threatened suicide constantly as a means of emotional blackmail, blaming her (in advance) with his death if he followed through. This is no different than the histrionics leveled at feminists who believe, rightly, that males remain male even after their claims to womanhood (while they (transwomen) have no concept of the realities of being raised and socialized as a female, from birth, and thus continue to behave with patriarchal-driven male attitudes towards and about women even after their claim is made). Transactivists also continually blame women for any male violence they might encounter, while at the same time expecting our protection from such male violence by our opening up female safe spaces to them. It becomes our responsibility to act as their protectors and saviors, by centering feminism on them, not females. It is just another form of male narcissism, one that enforces the stereotype that women should willing to give up their own freedom and self-protection, and put the needs of all others before their own…. especially those of men.
Just as i believe that there should be no legal discrimination i towards gays and lesbians, i feel the same about transmen and transwomen; however, I draw the line where it begins to negatively effect girls and women, and we are made to feel at fault.
I think one of the problems in such discourse is that “cause” is a word that is context sensitive. In real life there is very seldom an obvious cause. You have a number of factors that contribute to a certain outcome and people tend to name the last contributing factor that sets things in motion as the cause, tending to put the full blame on the person responsible for that last factor and mostly ignoring the rest.
So assuming some feminist said something which sent someone over the edge to commit suicide, people will tend to regard the words spoken as the cause and mostly ignore all the other factors that made this person so extremely vulnerable that words like this would have such an effect.
There is no way one can claim a direct link between criticism of some transgender policies and the suicide of transgendered people.
People, be they transgendered or not, commit suicide for a whole host of reasons. Every individual case is different. They may have some similarities but each incidence of suicide is unique.
And it IS blackmail to claim that certain statements made by feminists lead directly to some transgendered individuals killing themselves.
Some transgendered people feel they’ve made the wrong decision. Others are profoundly unhappy with the results of their transition. Still others think that their transition has changed little or nothing.
That is a very strong accusations. That someone is driving other people to suicide. An accusation like that can’t just be made against someone on live tv, and not be required to present or at least point to strong evidence. Tarring someone like that is horrific.
Suicide threat is a common tactic of domestic abusers. “I’ll kill myself if you leave.”
It’s interesting that there doesn’t seem to be a simple relationship between perceived privilege and suicide rates. In most countries, men are more likely to kill themselves than women. In the USA, white people are more likely to commit suicide than black people, although Native Americans are most likely of all. And unemployed people have a higher than average suicide risk, but so do some high-status professions like physicians and dentists.
It’s complicated, is what I’m saying.
It’s worth looking into why transgender people have such a high suicide rate both before and after transition. I imagine body dysphoria is horrible to live with. But attempting to shelter them from any type of criticism (real or perceived) is counterproductive.
The premise itself is flawed.
It is not the responsibility of anyone to validate anyone else’s identity. Putting that responsibility on women who are feminists is an outrage to reason. We cannot forbid people discussing mental illness in the public sphere because it may be heard by someone who may despair.
That is what the man is saying. Someone who despairs may hear what you say so we must not speak of all these things that may cause people to despair. Unless everything you say encourages them in their delusions you must be silenced so no one hears you.
Girls commit suicide after being bullied because they are female and unpopular, or female and suspected of having been sexually active (or even a victim of rape), or female and outspoken. Why does no one talk about the epidemic of emotional violence against the cis gender girls?
It is indeed, yet that’s at the core of the particular brand of trans “activism” that is so influential right now. Sadly, ironically, pathetically, contemptibly, current trans “activism” is all about putting all the responsibility for the well-being of all trans people on women, especially feminist women. And an astonishing number of feminist women are buying right into it.
My impression of trans activism couldn’t be more different. Even allowing for the use of embellishment-as-emphasis prose, this just seems utterly out of touch with reality. The vast majority of trans activism I see, support, and engage in, is focused on things like
* Education: attempting to give accurate information, and correct misconceptions, about transgender people
* Raising awareness of issues faced by transgender individuals.
* Combating bathroom laws, health-care restrictions, and other forms of gratuitous discrimination that harm transgender people.
Yes, there have been no-platform campaigns; TERF accusations; and such – the ethics, integrity, and any sexist-stench of which can and should be criticized/called out. But the claim that this is what current trans activism is “all about”? Like a FOX news enthusiast convinced the ACLU is just a bunch of atheist lawyers trying to make Christianity illegal; I feel one would need a *very* biased source of information, filtering out a majority of conflicting data, in order to put stock in such a claim.
If I were to survey recent trans-activist social media messages; by count of twitter messages, facebook posts, blogs, and youtube videos – I would be shocked if more than an insignificant fraction of them decried gender-crit feminism, leveled accusations of “TERF”, or compelled people to support no-platform-campaigns. But maybe that’s my male-privilege coming through (after all, TERF “witch-hunts” wouldn’t affect me, so maybe I’m just ignorant of their popularity within trans activism). Maybe *I’m* experiencing the confirmation bias; maybe *my* perceptions are skewed… I actually tried my best to check this: with a neutral survey of “current trans activism” social media to see how widespread this stuff actually was.
I took the time to circle back and document the results, as I feel they show just how big a gap there is between “what trans-activists are concerned with” compared to the perception that “trans-activists have a single-minded obsession with attacking gender-critical feminists”.
I started with a youtube search of whats currently “hot” in trans activism. I went to youtube, searched for “transgender activist” (without quotes), filtered for “This Year”, sorted by “View Count”, and pulled the titles of the most widely-viewed trans activist related videos uploaded in the last 12 months:
Okay, so 1 out of ~20 on page 1; quite a departure from “all about”. Plus, the one “hit” is a *debate*; so it’s just as conceivable that it draws its view-count popularity from its appeal to feminists sympathetic to Sarah Ditum (and not from an anti-feminist obsession among trans activists). And regardless of who it’s popular with, it is certainly not a gone-viral, call-to-arms video urging trans activists to “go forth and platfom feminists no more”.
I checked twiitter next; just searched “trans activist” and started scrolling. Barely a crumb there, either. There were 2 hits out of about the first 100 tweets even pertaining to alleged trans-phobia among feminists (one being a retweet of the twiter comment addressed in the OP; again nothing close to trans activists collaborating to boot prominent feminists from public discourse).
Next, I checked a couple prominent trans-activism/advocacy websites.
https://www.susans.org/ does make a few mentions of “TERF” (spanning years of content), but falls far shy of “pre-occupation”. One page therein addresses the acronym head-on. https://www.susans.org/2015/07/25/trans-exclusionary-radical-feminism-what-exactly-is-it-and-why-does-it-hurt/ It’s an opinion piece that at least strikes me as fair; describing TERF as a set of beliefs and behaviors that go way beyond mere reluctance to answer that-one-question with a definitive and unqualified “YES”.
http://www.glaad.org/issues/transgender has an active feed of news summaries and articles pertaining to transgender activism/advocacy. I surveyed the most recent 20 pages in there (80 article titles): not a single hint of seek-and-destroy plots against TERFs; not one call to no-platform a feminist.
I checked my local transgender activist organization (through which most of my “IRL” activism is conducted). Admittedly, it’s an organization geared toward support for parents of transgender children; but in theory, that shouldn’t sway it too much from whatever thing “trans activism is all about”.
First, I scanned this page, which is frequently updated with information pertinent to trans activism: http://www.transparentstl.org/in-the-news . I saw nothing remotely indicating feminist women were responsible for the well being of transgender people, children or otherwise. I also used Google’s “site” feature to search for various words/phrases:
Your search – site:transparentstl.org TERF – did not match any documents.
Your search – site:transparentstl.org “no-platform” – did not match any documents.
A check these searches are working:
site:butterfliesandwheels.org “TERF” – About 631 results
site:butterfliesandwheels.org “no-platform” – About 389 results
I ran out of steam here, but fully acknowledge that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. Conceivably my male privilege precluded me from being as neutral as I aimed to be [side note: certain internet douchebros might make such a statement sarcastically; I am 100% sincere]. Whatever the case, I’m coming up empty. Are there “current trans activist” groups that gather together for the core purpose of attacking prominent feminists? Are there groups with facebook pages, youtube channels, and/or blog lists “all about putting all the responsibility for the well-being of all trans people on women, especially feminist women”? If so… where?
Kevin – that’s why I said “the particular brand of trans “activism” that is so influential right now.”
And as for
Yes. Yes it is. Well spotted. It absolutely is. Yes it is indeed male privilege not to have to worry about the way feminism is being ripped to shreds by aggressive, hostile, misogynist trans “activists.”