Oppressive and invalidating rhetoric
It’s starting already. A tweet cited Harrop:
They aren’t. But people who deny that exclusive same-sex or opposite-sex attraction exist, often in the name of transgender rights (nothing to do with transgender rights) are in conflict with gay and lesbian rights – being born this way. This from a gay supporter of trans rights:
The interlocutor said Harrop wouldn’t appreciate being cited, and in he popped to confirm.
Entirely. This comment is being taken out of context and my position and thinking is being misrepresented. Anyone using *my* words to justify *their* transphobia is doing so in bad faith, and / or is entirely ignorant re: what my opinion on this subject actually is.
So, I asked him a couple of questions.
Ok so explain it to us. Why do you get to say you can have a preference about genitals but feminist women don’t? Or to put it another way, why can’t you even try to understand that the issue is just as intractable for us as it is for you?
Why do you continue to call it “transphobia” when it’s NOT phobia – it’s just non-belief. You can’t help it about the genitals. We can’t either. Why do you see yourself as ok and us as evil? You could at least think about it.
We literally CAN’T see men as women no matter how strenuously they insist. Why does that make us evil but not you?
I think his view is that he does see trans women as women, it’s just that that doesn’t change his attraction or lack of attraction to the relevant genitals.
Our view is that that just doesn’t make any sense. Genitals are either female or male (barring a small number of intersex people); it’s everything else that’s fungible. Bodies are female or male; minds can mix things up however they choose. (Potentially. Socially speaking it’s not that easy, but at least it’s easier than pretending a penis is a vagina.) Harrop doesn’t actually disagree with us, but he’ll never let himself see it.
The questions that the transgender issue really raises:
Under what circumstances & for what purposes is it sensible or fair to treat men & women differently?
In circumstances in which it is sensible/fair, what criteria should be used to decide whether someone qualifies as a man or a woman?
The uncomfortable element that he is trying to skirt around is that if is all as mutable as that, there is nothing wrong with conversion therapy per se – consent still matters of course, but the fundamental idea of teaching gay people not to be gay is just fine.
It seems he is trying to find a way to make something acceptable for gay men that he does not accept for women or lesbians…and it may be okay with him, but at some point, he may be trying to figure out how to make that double standard fly without anyone noticing it’s a double standard.
Naif, I also find it easy to see how insisting that lesbians must have sex with transgender-identifying men (aka “chicks with dicks”) seems like a form of conversion therapy.
Why ‘must’ anyone, woman or man, lesbian, gay or trans, have sex with someone to whom they are not sexually attracted? It simply does not begin to be a philosophical or moral duty, supposed ‘rights’ have nothing to do with the matter, and McKinnon’s attempts at forensic bullying – ‘answer the question’ – are simply irrelevant to the issue.
I have just read Jan Morris’s ‘Conundrum’, by the way, which does eloquently describe the predicament of one trans-person; but there is in her book, nothing of the bullying (and very Western) stupidity about the sorts of ‘rights’ that so exercise such as McKinnon.
@ Papito #4
” I also find it easy to see how insisting that lesbians must have sex with transgender-identifying men (aka “chicks with dicks”) seems like a form of conversion therapy.”
Yes. That form is bog-standard misogynist reparative rape.
I’m old enough to remember when it was declared a vile transphobic myth for anyone to suggest that trans people ever try to “pass” as cis to “trick” people into having sex with them.
By implication, McKinnon is saying that would be hunky dory, and that you’re an asshole for even caring about a trans woman’s penis. I mean, it’s a “girl penis” after all!
A trans woman doesn’t try to pass to trick people.
Just gaslight them. (In the actual sense of undermining someone’s ability to trust their own perceptions and reasoning.)
That’s all.
Trans-women are, classically, subject to homophobic violence when they are caught attempting to pass. The victims, typically, being sex workers.
I’m not sure how well one can sort the statistics since crime report details aren’t consistent.
Of course, sex workers in general tend to be subject to violence of many kinds. So yeah, the police reports often don’t tell us it if was because the sex worker was trying to pass, was trans, or was just because of plain old misogyny. It is so difficult to sort those statistics.
Now, if it were in a group where other women don’t suffer elevated levels of violence for being women, it would be much easier. So, every other sphere of women’s life can show the murders are transphobic? Oh, wait…
If “stealthing” (secretly removing a condom without consent) is considered to be sexual assault – and men have been prosecuted for it in Germany, Switzerland, and Canada – then concealing your true sex for the purposes of tricking a partner into nonconsensual acts should also be considered sexual assault.
Where ya been, Screechy? These days all Right Thinking People agree that trans people are not obligated to disclose their downstairs mixup to potential sex partners. Except maybe just seconds before hitting the sheets. At which point any hesitation is proof of transphobia.