And we’re not listening
Ooh, novelty, the Guardian runs a piece explaining why trans people women deserve all of our attention all the time.
For as long as the human species has existed, so have trans people.
Oh? How would this writer (Eleanor Morgan) know that?
At what point in human evolution did it start? Is it possible that Lucy was trans? Should be have been calling her I mean him Luke all this time?
(In Amharic her name is Dinkenish, which means “you are marvelous.” Better.)
All women’s fears are valid, however they come to be. Our long history of assuming women’s narratives are inherently untrustworthy still lingers. When a woman says she is in distress, it’s like her words come with a pop-up ad saying: not to be taken at face value. Feeling truly heard when we talk about our distress, whatever form it takes, still seems like a rare thing; as though when we say we feel hurt, sad or scared, some kind of “hysterical” or deviant undertow is assumed. This is as true for trans women as it is for cisgender women.
No. This is why we argue.
Or at least, it may be as true (it’s not as if we can measure), but it’s not the same thing. I can easily accept that trans people face heightened suspicion, but what I don’t accept is the claim that it’s the same suspicion as the kind or multitude of kinds that women face, or that we can’t talk about women without bringing trans people into it. I don’t accept the invasion or the appropriation.
I’ve known pain and mental distress, but none of this makes me think trans women are any less “real” than me – nor that the term “woman” is being erased by the existence of trans people who want equal rights.
…
Are there experiences that make a woman real, anyway? Periods? Giving birth? Many women don’t experience the latter, some don’t experience the former. Or perhaps it is about knowing what a life spent reeling from the objectification of men feels like? Dealing with sexual violence and harassment? But, no: trans women face sexual violence, too.
The issue isn’t being “real.” The issue is claiming to be literally an X that in fact you are not. You are not a nail or an osprey or a peach. I know this because none of the entities named can read what I just typed. Claiming to be something isn’t magic. Sometimes it’s actual fraud and can get you in big trouble.
Trans people are saying they are frightened and in pain because people are questioning their rights, and we’re not listening. Where will this end?
What are women saying?
I mean, the best you can do for “trans” in early days would be “I prefer picking berries to hunting”… maybe that’s a meaningful distinction, I dunno, can’t really speak for our barely sentient or civilized ancestors.
I’ve known some pretty literate peaches.
And no transwoman ever has experienced either. I commented about this disingenuous argument recently, this not all women do x and not all women have y bullshit, which conveniently overlooks the fact that most women do or have done x and have or have had y whilst no transwoman ever has experienced any of those things. I also noted that they are careful to take only one female-specific characteristic at a time to play their #notallwomen game.
It’s just all so exasperating: the dishonesty and misdirection is so blatant, like watching a bad stage magician, but for reasons beyond my ken there are too many people who are pretending not to see how the trick is done.
You’re getting close: no. Suffering doesn’t make a woman a woman, either — nor does experiencing sexism. It’s not about what you like, or what you do. What makes a woman?
Being female. It’s a biological term, not a grand narrative.
Regular men face sexual violence too. Okay. And? Does that mean that regular men are women?
Well, no. Of course not. Because facing sexual violence doesn’t define women.
It describes the lives of many people who are women.
You want to talk about the sexual violence transwomen face? Please do. You want to campaign against that? Good on you. You will be making the world a better place.
But what does that have to do with the question of what makes a woman a woman?
A slight tangent: the utter disingenuousness of insisting that trans rights don’t and never could take anything away from women… No, they couldn’t, except where they could. You don’t have to look hard.
Well, for all her characteristics she cites, I can name one that definitely makes a “woman” not “real” – having a penis.
Having male entitlement and expecting that deference to continue is a characteristic of transwomen that women don’t feel.
This isn’t really true. I mean, the fears are real, we feel them, they are there. But not all fears are valid. If i am afraid a peach is going to rape me, that is hardly a real fear. Many fears are induced by delusion or paranoia; others are fear of harm that isn’t really harm (for instance, being called by the ‘wrong’ pronoun?).
And, when you broaden the category of women to include men-who-think-they-are-women, then it can be said that not only are not all women’s fears valid, but not all women are women. And that is a clearly ridiculous statement. It is what they are saying when they say there are women with penises, but they can’t word it that way because if you say “not all women are women’, they are saying something so clearly unsupportable that everyone will see the game.
And how do trans men fit into this explanation? Not even included as an afterthought. It’s shocking how unaware some people are that they’re only advocating for TIMs, i.e. making sure the men are happy is their only concern. I’ve certainly spotted the pattern.
#3 AoS
There is an incredibly basic principle of logic at play there, and the entire TRA movement is unable to grasp it. “All A are B” does not mean “All B are A”. “All period-havers are women” does not mean “All women are period-havers”. It is completely true that some women aren’t born with a functioning uterus, and so don’t ever have menstruation. The same goes for childbirth and other female specific things; being female specific does not mean 100% saturation.
The link right at the top takes the reader to a Guardian article which in turn links to https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13178-018-0335-z , where we read:
So that’s a relief. A study from ‘matched pairs analyses’ of undisclosed localities in Massachusetts finds that women who want to use men’s dunnies do not get assaulted, though perhaps they do get the odd proposition. Or do I have that wrong? Ah yes. Beg pardon. It’s about men who want the right to enter (unfortunate word there) rooms set aside exclusively for the use of women. In Massa bloody Chussetts. How well that might relate to NYC, LA, London, Paris or Sydney is anyone’s guess. But I suspect further PhDs might be required. We might need the services of an historian or two (hundred). What is the history of dunnies (rest rooms) across the ages and continents?
In Shakespeare’s Britain, there were none. The Bard famously wrote “All the world’s a stage…” He might just as well have said “all the world’s a shithouse.” There were no such things as toilets. If you felt the need to relieve yourself (say while in the pit at the Globe watching some thespian delivering a soliloquy) or while walking down the street with sword or dagger ever at the ready, you just did it on the spot: Number 1 or Number 2. Men and women both.
At a guess, I would say that it was the decline of ‘Merrie England’ and the rise of Puritanism, itself related to the rise of venereal disease following the Columbus expedition of 1492, that had a lot to do with it.
The thing that strikes me most about this poor lady’s badge-winning essay is:
“All women’s fears are valid, however they come to be. ”
If she believed that to be true, then she would let women keep dudes in skirts out of their bathrooms.
Yeah, the common enemy is male violence. And women don’t want that in their bathrooms, refuges, etc. And yet women can’t keep men who might exhibit this toxic masculinity, misogyny, and sexism out of their spaces as long as those men are saying they feel like women.
They keep saying their “rights” are being questioned.
That’s true only if you accept that Trans-identified males have a “right” to women’s spaces. Which is an especially sneaky and manipulative way of begging the question (“Those nasty terfs oppose my HUMAN RIGHTS!”)
For real. If I’ve asked someone to spell out what “trans rights” are I’ve asked a million times.
They seem to want to lump use of women’s spaces into a right to dignity. Well, if they have a right to dignity, don’t we? Apparently not, since our dignity includes not having men in our restroom.
Papito:
She didn’t say “equally valid” or that some valid concerns don’t get pissed on anyway. You’ve always got to leave room for “two legs good, four legs better”.
Omar, #9
I had a look at that link, and I have absolutely no idea what the “study” actually studied. I can’t even imagine what the structure was that they were following, and what or who the subjects of the study were. I don’t get what they are measuring or how they are measuring it.
If it’s true that trans people have existed for all time, it’s surprising that they seem to have waited until 1968 to make their literary debut, in Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge. (Yes I am aware of the Chevalier d’Eon and various others actually existing earlier examples, though in those cases it’s not clear if they actually believed they belonged to the sex-not-identified-at birth.)
maddog @#15:
As Winston Churchill said in another context, “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” A university theoretical physicist I once knew told me that important intermediate steps in a chain of reasoning are often left out of research papers, forcing those interested to contact the author/s for an explanation, thus enhancing the prestige and priority of the latter perhaps better than placement in a citation index.
One could, if one could be bothered and had plenty of cash, go to https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13178-018-0335-z and buy a copy of the full download ($$$), which could just possibly be what they want you to do.
Then again, if you were looking for action on a dull Saturday night, you could dress up in women’s clothes and go into the Men’s room down at the local football club claiming ‘trans rights’, and see how it played out from there.
Richard@16: There’s a tendency for trans activists to claim literally every historical personage who posed as the opposite sex as trans–despite the strong evidence that it was mostly gay men (who wanted to be able to love without being thrown into prison for buggery) and women fed up with gender role bullshit (and, of course, lesbians who didn’t want to be tossed in an insane asylum) doing the crossdressing through most of Western history. Joan of Arc wasn’t trans; she was simply a woman who wanted to do some swording.