We’re all fine
Rebecca Solnit ffs. I’d expect better from her.
She grew up in San Francisco. It was “in its heyday the loudest, proudest queer town around.” It was all about kindness and liberation.
As I’ve watched transphobia explode in the American right and the British whatever, I’ve thought over my own experience. San Francisco has been for a century or so a sanctuary city for dissident, rebel and queer people, so I suspect I have lived my whole adult life in a place with more trans people per capita than almost anyplace else. Transphobes are always warning us that if trans people live in peace and legal recognition and even have rights, there will be terrible consequences, but I assume that we here have long realized, at least to some extent, that dreaded future, and we’re all fine.
No, that’s not what gender critical people say. That’s the usual stupid caricature of what we say, which should be beneath Rebecca Solnit. We’re not saying trans people should not live in peace or have rights, obviously. And we’re not “all fine.” Female athletes who have lost medals, spots on a team, scholarships because a trans woman or girl took them are not “all fine,” they have been harmed, their rights have been violated, they have not been allowed to live in peace.
Despite this, people – many of whom are supposed to be feminists – keep coming up with lurid “what ifs”. My response to them is: trans women do not pose a threat to cis-gender women, and feminism is a subcategory of human rights advocacy, which means, sorry, you can’t be a feminist if you’re not for everyone’s human rights, notably other women’s rights.
In other words her response to us is just an assertion, and it’s an assertion that is not true. She doesn’t get to announce that “trans women do not pose a threat to cis-gender women” as if it were an obvious and universal truth just like that. Some trans women do pose a threat to women; some have already been violent toward women. Solnit can’t know that all trans women without exception are and always will be no threat to women, so it’s fatuous and also rude to announce it in that confident way. Solnit can’t even know that all trans women really are trans women as opposed to men consciously faking it in order to be housed in the women’s prison or compete against women in sport or be given a position such as Women’s Officer.
Saying all this and more is not a matter of being opposed to “everyone’s human rights,” it’s a matter of rejecting lies and fantasies and attempts to bully us into accepting lies and fantasies.
Second wave feminism produced the classic 1972 children’s album Free to Be You and Me, which I’d like to point out was not titled Free to Be Me But I Get to Define You.
Then don’t call us “cis.” You’ll have seen that she did call us “cis-gender” in that second quoted passage. And would she say that about Rachel Dolezal? Would she say that about white people who claimed to be black or brown? Suppose Eric Trump had a sudden conversion, and told the world he’s discovered he’s a Cherokee in his soul, no matter what he looks like on the outside – would Solnit tell us we don’t get to “define” him? Would she tell people who really are Cherokee that they don’t get to “define” him?
As a young woman dealing with endless street harassment and menace from straight men, I used to breathe a sigh of relief when I got to the Castro District, because that was the only place I was confident I would be safe. Reflecting back on these four decades, I figure I must have spent a ton of time around trans people in bars and clubs and street parties and protests (and yeah, public restrooms) without really noticing, which is maybe the point. OK, in 2015, at the last night at the Lexington Club, San Francisco’s last lesbian bar, I did gradually realize that the many nice young men in the crowd were trans men.
Uh…yes? And? She missed it, didn’t she. Why was there a last night for San Francisco’s last lesbian bar? In 2015? Why is she apparently cheering that fact? Does she actually think it’s an improvement that lesbians have disappeared into “trans men”?
It’s an embarrassing performance altogether.
I agree with everything you have written here. That article is a sorry mess of assertions, both the vague sort (so difficult to falsify) and those which are demonstrably false with just a moment’s Googling. Add the DARVO and the wilful blindness to reality, and I have to wonder what has happened to her. Traumatic brain injury? Or, more insidiously, cult indoctrination?
FFS, some of the stuff she denies ever happens is what turned me from a fully-immersed member of the trans cult into a gender-critical woman. Still with dysphoria, but able to understand the root of it now.
It wasn’t titled If You Act Like A Girl Then Maybe You ARE A Girl, either.
The people she’s calling “transphobes” have no problem with either gay men or men who fail to conform to what society says men are “supposed” to be like. Same with gender-nonconforming women, lesbians, and women of color. Yea, diversity and breaking down social barriers. It’s all good.
So why would placing transwomen, say, in the first category rather than the second suddenly mean that a person who respects both categories doesn’t respect either any more? It’s not about being open-minded or welcoming. It’s about whether transgender is also trans-sex.
That’s an empirical question which touches on science, philosophy, and politics. It’s not a personality test. But making it a personality test is tempting if it means your score is at the top — and the people who disagree with you are on the bottom.
“My response to them is: trans women do not pose a threat to cis-gender women” Or sure, someone said it so I have to believe it.
She doesn’t seem to know how subsets work, either.
Really disappointing–I have a lot of respect for her work. Wonder if she thinks transwomen get mansplained to? Just curious. Also, as someone posted elsewhere, this San Francisco?
https://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/patriarchy/male-violence/library-hosts-transgender-art-weapons-kill-feminists/
I never felt particularly safe in the Castro. I’m not that much younger than her, but by the time I spent any amount of time in the Castro it was very much male space. I didn’t necessarily feel threatened, but I certainly felt intimidated by being surrounded by men.
This is only true if trans-ness is socialised rather than innate. Thanks for the inadvertent admission.
Not everybody’s rights, women’s rights. Feminism is that subset of human rights advocacy which focuses on the female sex. This excludes men, even those that say they are women, and includes women, even those that say they are men.
Hopefully, this debate will evolve beyond all the (ironically) binary arguments that basically break down to ‘fer us or agin us’.
Sadly, I think they seem to have missed some of the crucial lessons of modern feminism: Men and women aren’t the same but so what – Such differences must be meaningless before the law. Opportunity must not be defined by sex. But if we don’t accept that there are differences how can we ever hope to understand concepts like safe spaces, and family leave?
In the end, though it’s hard, true justice cannot be achieved unless it’s founded in truth.
what she failed to recognize was that lesbian bars went out of business in part because lesbian erasure is a real thing.
The trans cult has a lot to do with it – both because of the trans “women” who have brought unwanted male sexual aggression into formerly lesbian spaces, and because so many young lesbians are being led down the garden path of medical intervention.
https://afterellen.com/general-news/569661-a-butch-eradication-served-with-a-progressive-smile
That’s a good piece.
I’m pretty sure we talked about this. You shitbaskets don’t get to claim that Free to Be You and Me supports your side of the conversation. No, it does not. Sorry, all protestations to the contrary are summarily rejected.
F2BU&M has a little song in there entitled “William Wants a Doll”. Your side of the conversation supports seeing William as a girl for that. Your side perpetuates and reifies (oooh, how I hate that word) gender roles and stereotypes like “girls play with dolls” and “boys play with trucks”. The only difference between you and the misogynists of old is that while they said being a girl entails playing with dolls, you insufferable smegheads say that playing with dolls entails being a girl. All you’ve done is reverse the goddamn Euthyphro, you plague boils.
So, no, you don’t get to bring F2BU&M into this to shield yourselves from any well-deserved acrimony, and you certainly don’t get to weaponize F2BU&M against us.
Fuckheads.
@10 Nellius, you’re making me grumpy. :D And I agree totally.
twiliter: One of my pet peeves in rhetoric is when a piece of evidence is cited in support of the conclusion it negates. Example:
The woke do this shit incessantly. It’s an effective tactic (despite being fallacious) for much the same reason as Gish Gallops work. You then have to explain that ¬B doesn’t follow and that A is misinterpreted. Neither makes you look good to the audience.
Yeah the appropriation of FTBYAM really bugs me too.
Lyrics, “Free To Be You And Me”
Transphobic.
Sastra: I watched that tape so many times as a kid that I immediately started singing the rest of the song.
And I haven’t heard it for decades.