A clue as to the narcissistic element
Julie Bindel on the potential peak trans moment:
The latest target in the vicious and often violent war being raged by extreme trans activists is one of my all-time heroes – the world tennis champion and LGBT rights campaigner, Martina Navratilova.
Navratilova has been accused of being ‘transphobic’ as a result of a tweet responding to a question from a follower about transgender women in sport.
‘Clearly that can’t be right. You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard’, tweeted Martina.
‘For me it’s all about fairness. Which means taking every case individually… there is no cookie cutter way of doing things.’
Julie notes how reasonable that sounds, and how predictable it is that some fanatic would pick a fight over it.
Martina’s main accuser is Dr Rachel McKinnon, an academic philosopher, transgender activist and competitive cyclist who won a women’s event at the UCI Masters Track World Championship, earlier this year. McKinnon, who I will refer to as ‘he’ and ‘him’ as his behavior appears to me to be classic male machismo, demanded that Navratilova apologize and criticized the comments.
Precisely. That’s why I did, too. Demanding to be called “she” and “her” while brandishing all the weapons in the macho bully playbook in the faces of women is not social justice but a fucking insult.
If anything gives us a clue as to the narcissistic element of the trans activist campaign it is this tweet from McKinnon:
‘You…realize I’m a world champion trans woman athlete who happens to publish and speak worldwide on trans athlete rights … right?’
That is correct, dear readers. McKinnon did the, ‘Don’t you know who I am’, to MARTINA!
McKinnon is kind of turning out to be the Trump of trans activism.
Finally, the world is waking up to the fact that the extreme transgender activists are nothing but men’s rights vigilantes, that hate women, but that unfortunately had the majority of well-meaning liberals in the palm of their hands. Never has any so-called social justice movement in the past commanded such authority and instilled such fear. Coming after Navratilova was one bad move too many.
Come on out, the air is fine.
(This is 100% intended as constructive criticism, and I hope it will be taken as such.)
I don’t think it’s a good idea to say you’re going to consider someone a man because they’re acting like a man. Isn’t a main point of feminism that people should feel free to act outside of prescribed gender categories? Obviously a women acting like a jerk guy isn’t what we’d hope would come out of that, but, still, saying “you’re acting like a man, so I’m going to treat you like one” seems to undermine things.
Especially with respect to the current topic. After reading that having certain interests, tastes, and feelings are not proof you’re the wrong gender but rather an incorrect impulse to put such things in gender boxes, it doesn’t seem right to reject someone’s claimed gender based on their behavior. Rejecting Rachel McKinnon’s claim to be a woman based on “mannish” behavior also seems to imply you might accept the claim if McKinnon exhibited more womanly behavior. Surely that’s not correct.
Note that I’m not saying you should accept the claim that McKinnon is a woman. I just don’t think “you’re acting like a man so you’re a man” is the way to go about rejecting it.
Skeletor, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck…..
I have to admit, Skeletor’s got a point there. We can’t criticize the extreme trans position of reifying gender stereotypes into actual signifiers of gender but then use those stereotypes as weapons when it’s convenient.
After all, we don’t care for it when people label a cis woman as “mannish” because she supposedly acts like a macho bully. (See, e.g., nearly every prominent woman politician or executive)
There’s reification of stereotypes, and then there’s the world we grow up in, in which stereotypes are thrust in our faces all day long. Feminism hasn’t won yet, so the world still tells men they can and should dominate women while it tells women we should (whether we can or not) look like inflatable dolls. McKinnon reeks of having grown up learning he’s supposed to dominate women.
“McKinnon reeks of having grown up learning he’s supposed to dominate women.”
I agree with that. All that I take issue with is the notion that acting like that makes someone a man.
@Skeletor: I don’t think it’s a good idea to say you’re going to consider someone a man because they’re acting like a man.
I did not see anybody saying McKinnon was acting like a *man*: the comments are on behavior which “appears to me to be classic male machismo” (Julie Bindel) and “demanding to be called “she” and “her” while brandishing all the weapons in the macho bully playbook in the faces of women is not social justice but a fucking insult” (Ophelia Benson).
Toxic masculinity–patriarchal masculinity–hegemonic masculinity–all terms for certain bullying/oppressive gender behaviors that are historically associated with men. I’m torn as to whether McKinnon’s tweets are ones I’d categorize that way since I’ve seen (word for word) the same script used by women in some internet spaces.
Skeletor-
That’s the trap, isn’t it? (or the shield, whichever way you want to look at it.) You can’t criticize trans women for being stereotypically masculine acting, or taller than most women – if they want to be women’s basketball players, or stronger – if they want to compete in power lifting against women, or…. just name a trait we don’t want women ridiculed for because it’s not the ‘norm’ for women. If you do, you’re acting to reinforce sex/gender stereotypes.
WooHoo – instant win for any anti-feminist man who really wants to rub feminists noses in it. Not that it can be proven anyone has been so moved.
In fact, I’d say that badly acting trans women can ‘get away’ with a lot worse in public than badly acting gender conforming males, if they wanted to.
Julie Bindel has shown no qualms about calling a trans-identified-male a man, simply because that’s the fact of the matter. I read her comment as saying that she chooses not to use feminine pronouns in this instance because McKinnon is not only male but is engaging in stereotypically masculine forms of rudeness, so any reason to put aside normal practice for the sake of “politeness” have evaporated.
Skeletor, Screechy – I’ve had similar thoughts, but don’t voice them because I think it’s a bit more complicated than that, and I’m never sure that I’ve figured out the complexity fully enough to express it well.
But since you raise it, here goes. Maybe others who have also thought about it can add to what I’m saying.
Sure, a woman could theoretically act like McKinnon was doing, and from that we shouldn’t conclude that she’s actually a man. But since such behaviour is so vanishingly rare among women and girls and so common among men and boys, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to distinguish that behaviour ‘acting *like* a man’.
I am not saying that all men and boys are horrible and that all women are perfect angels. I have been bullied and undermined and treated badly by women and men throughout my life. Women also can be cruel and vicious and entitled towards other women. But the difference is the unabashed performance of shouty narcissistic inside-your-personal-space in-your-face hostile rage that springs out of nowhere as a reaction to one (as a woman) saying no to a male request. In my experience it can be elicited from most men if you say or convey ‘no’ to them, no matter how friendly or kind or not-blunt or deferential you try to be about it. The main difference among men is how many ‘no’s’ is sufficient to trigger the reaction. Whereas women can be entitled and horrible but usually not in this particular way. I guess it’s about the distribution among the sexes. At this point in my life, this behaviour is as identifiably man-related to me as observable male secondary sex characteristics (I don’t say penis-correlated because it’s not something I can know about).
Also, what is particularly ‘mannish’ about this display isn’t just McKinnon’s words/actions, it’s also the fact that he can get away with doing it in public. He’s not just acting like a man, he’s also being treated like one, whilst claiming to be a woman and wielding the claim of being the most-oppresstest type of woman as a weapon against women defending themselves from male colonisation.
In this situation, what is essentially being noted is that a man (who claims to be a woman) is publicly bullying women in the manner I described above, in a way that men publicly get away with very frequently. That a man is acting in a male-socialised way whilst claiming to be a woman. I don’t think that’s equivalent to noting that a woman is acting like a man, nor does it undermine gender-critical feminism, although it might seem so on the surface.
I hope that’s a little bit helpful and I’d be interested in other’s thoughts, although being Christmas and all it might take a while before I can re-engage.