According to this hierarchy
Jane Clare Jones on trans activism and intersectional feminism:
As many of you know, there was an act of vandalism by trans activists on an historic building where women were meeting to discuss the GRA proposals.
In Plymouth, on Saturday.
One of the posters the TRAs stuck up was this, which got me thinking (again) about the connection between trans activism and intersectional feminism.
When trans ideology first came on the radar (or my radar) around 2011/12, it came in a kind of trans activism/intersectional feminism pincer movement. This wasn’t an accident. So, my question is: what work is intersectional feminism doing to support trans ideology?
So, first off – CAVEAT. Nothing I’m about to say really has much to do with Crenshaw’s original thought. Intersectionality as an analytic method is basically unimpeachable. FEMINISTS – PAY ATTENTION TO HOW OTHER AXES OF OPPRESSION INFLECT THE THING YOU’RE LOOKING AT. As I say, unimpeachable. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about what I call ‘Tumblrized Intersectionality.’ And that’s not a method – it’s a dogma. In fact, it’s a catechism.
The first thing that’s really noticeable about that catechism, is how un-intersectional it is. It’s not about looking at any particular thing and trying to understand how all the axes interact. It’s a rigid set of views (pro-trans, pro-sex-work, anti-White Feminism TM etc) and a rigid point-scoring table which produces a hierarchy of who is allowed to speak and who must listen. According to this hierarchy, trans people are more oppressed than everyone else, and hence, their oppression must be prioritized over everyone else. In the context of feminism (and particularly in connection to the leveraging of the cis/trans binary) this produces the thought that feminism should centre the oppression of trans women over the oppression of non-trans women. That is, intersectional feminism functions to displace women’s oppression from the centre of feminism.
Emphasis added.
I keep wondering who set up that hierarchy and what it’s based on and why we’re required to agree to it and why anyone puts up with it for a single second.
What it works out to in practice is that trans women get to count themselves twice: as women and as trans, and thus Oppressed squared. With other intersections it’s just added, but with trans for some reason it’s multiplied by. Trans women are at the top and they’re at the top by a huge unbridgeable margin, because reasons.
Mere women, on the other hand, because they don’t have this magic multiplier, are not even really an oppressed class any more, because let’s face it, they’re…well, not good enough. They’re cis, they’re not trans, they’re women – kind of a triple whammy, you know? To be completely honest we hate them, so really it’s better if they just go away, lest we be forced to slaughter them all.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but this all seems to be one way traffic. “Trans-women” are the most oppressed minority, but no one ever speaks up for the “trans-men”.
Could it be that trans women are behaving in the same entitled way that we see too many men acting, and that trans-men are still living out the meek and mild feminine stereotype?
Excellent piece.
Roj you’re not wrong – at least, a lot of people have had the same thought, definitely including me.
I’d refine the part about trans men though – they don’t exactly live out the meek and mild feminine stereotype (as far as I’ve seen), but they don’t have the instincts that men do. They can do the presenting butch thing, but the automatic sense of entitlement is not instinctive.
That fist is appallingly designed.
#4, now you’re just being ableist!
The path of intersectionality seems always to lead to the personal grievance of whoever is writing or speaking. Personal hurts are real, and certainly transwomen have masses of ghastly experience to draw upon. But that doesn’t mean there’s any justification for the categorical rage against lesbians.
The parallel with incels is pretty strong. MY feelings are hurt, therefore all political or ‘progressive’ thought is really about ME and my resentment.
As i understand it, intersectionality is the idea that in a given society there are many different types of oppression, and some people fit into muptiple opressed groups and are therefore more oppressed than those who fit into fewer opressed groups.
How does that idea help? Given that different groups face different kinds and degrees of opression, and each individual faces a unique set of circumstances which might disadvantage them… How does it help to count up protected charactetistics and then rank the opressed?
And there must be people with one protected characteristic who are at a greater disadvantage than some people with two. Especially if we include class or lack of funds as a source of oppression: a white cis homeless man arguably faces greater challenges than a wealthy CEO who happens to be gay and black. How does intersectionality account for that?
By making sure that cis-women are always the bottom priority. They are the oppressors, not the oppressed. They are the ones that are causing all the trouble. White feminism, Radical feminism, Second wave feminism – it goes by many names, but it is always bad, at least in the reporting of the “intersectional” feminists who are much more intersectional than feminist, and often come across as arrogant, obnoxious, and condescending (and many of who are themselves white cis-females who apparently feel a s**t-load of guilt about being a white cis-female).
It’s like a theatre conference I was at one time where they had a panel on women directors – it should have been great, because I got to catch a glimpse of five specimens of an extremely rare species, so rare it may not be possible to save it from extinction unless we hurry. But it was spoiled by the introductions, where the first one introducing herself apologized for being white, heterosexual, cis, and a couple of other things I forget which would have added to her oppression Olympics scorecard. Never mind that there is no greater representation of white, cis-hetero women in her field than there are for the other groups; she is privileged because reasons. The same goes for playwrights – people think white cis-hetero women have a better chance of getting produced, but the numbers do not show that; in fact, they are more underrepresented than black women playwrights in terms of their percentage of the population. But no one sees that, because we have been conditioned not to see that. (I can’t say about LGBTQ because the studies I see don’t break down sexual orientation, but I can say that there is no evidence that queer people face an undue shortage in theatre; in fact, sort of the opposite. Their biggest oppression comes from having to write plays about straight people if they ever want to get them produced…and even that limitation seems to have gone the way of the dodo, though I have done no concentrated study to determine if the number of gay characters in plays is representative of the number of gay people in the population).
iknklast, your comment “…..there is no evidence that queer people face an undue shortage in theatre;” reminded me of an anecdote from the British writer and actor, John Sessions. He related that in the 1970s he was in a play starring the great Edward Fox, and they were sitting around talking during a break in rehearsals. Out of the blue, Fox said “I’m glad there are no homosexuals in this company,” which was news to about half of the male cast, including Sessions, who were gay. Fox continued, “The last one I worked with was an absolute shower of Berties.”