What citizens will do with their sexed bodies
Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan tries to convince us that abortion rights and “trans rights” are much the same sort of thing (when in fact they’re antagonists).
Be it through forced pregnancy or prohibited transition, the state of Nebraska now claims the right to determine what its citizens will do with their sexed bodies – what those bodies will look like, how they will function and what they will mean. It is a part of the right’s ongoing project to roll back the victories of the feminist and gay rights movements…
Trans “rights” are mostly antagonistic to lesbian and gay rights too. Governments of course already do in some senses “claim the right to determine what its citizens will do with their sexed bodies.” We can’t use our bodies, “sexed” or otherwise, to murder or steal or kidnap or set fires – the list is long. We are our bodies, so laws that govern us govern our bodies. Trans people aren’t special in this way.
Abortion bans have been proliferating wildly in the year since the US supreme court eliminated the right in their Dobbs decision, declaring that any state can compel women to remain pregnant, and creating different, lesser entitlements to bodily freedom and self-determination based on sex. But as the abortion bans have spread like an infection across the American south, midwest, and mountain west, they have been accompanied by a related political disease: laws seeking to prohibit minors and sometimes adults, from accessing medical treatments that facilitate gender transitions.
It’s not related though. Trying to change your sex via surgeries and hormones is not related to ending a pregnancy. The two are different, and it’s not cute to try to link women’s right to say no to a pregnancy to narcissists’ putative right to amputate healthy body parts in a doomed effort to mimic the opposite sex.
It is not a coincidence that the states which have the most punitive and draconian bans on abortion have also adopted the most aggressive targeting of transgender people and medical care. The bills are part of the same project by conservatives, who have been emboldened in their campaign of gender revanchism in the wake of Dobbs. Both abortion bans and transition care bans further the same goal: to transform the social category of gender into an enforceable legal status, linked to the sexed body at birth and to prescribe a narrow and claustrophobic view of what that gender status must mean.
No. It may sound plausible but it’s not really true. Abortion bans aren’t about enforcing gender rules on women, though they have that effect in some ways. Abortion bans are about forcing women to bear children against their will. The lawmakers don’t care if those women wear jeans and hiking boots, they care about forcing them to push out that baby just as God intended.
Abortion and trans rights activists have long insisted that both abortion and transition are healthcare.
So what? People can insist things that aren’t true.
Abortion and trans rights activists have long insisted that both abortion and transition are healthcare. It’s an apt and worthy argument, considering that both involve the interventions of medical professionals, both facilitate the wellbeing and happiness of those who receive them, and both result in horrific health complications when denied, from the high rates of mental distress and horrific, needless pregnancy complications that have been ushered in by Dobbs, to the dramatic rates of suicidal ideation and mental health problems in trans people who are denied the ability to transition.
She forgot to mention the horrific health complications of transition. Botched surgeries, regrets, despair – they all happen.
FGM is banned in the US for minors, with no exceptions for religion or culture, and with no mechanism for a minor to consent. Pretty much everyone agrees that’s the right thing to do.
Unless of course it’s labeled “gender affirming surgery” and done for reasons of trans ideology; then suddenly banning it is violence, even genocide.
Exactly. What a goddam nightmare.
T mutilation surgeries have “horrific health complications when denied”? Really? What process of “health complications” result from NOT amputating a penis, for example? Seems to me that normal biological functioning is NOT a “horrific health complication” of any kind. Your hyperbole is showing, once again.
“No. It may sound plausible but it’s not really true. Abortion bans aren’t about enforcing gender rules on women, though they have that effect in some ways. Abortion bans are about forcing women to bear children against their will. The lawmakers don’t care if those women wear jeans and hiking boots, they care about forcing them to push out that baby just as God intended.”
About the only part of this I disagree with. You’re not wrong that abortion bans are meant to keep women pushing out babies, but I strongly suspect that that also ties in with making them beholden to the traditional homemaker/caregiver role, thereby dependent on men and unable to compete properly in the workplace. And hey, maternity dresses are so much easier to find and wear than maternity pants, so let’s get the ladies back in skirts while we’re at it. The GOP is quite willing to oppress women and take away their rights on multiple angles all at once.
The real error the author was making, of course, is that trans-ing ~reinforces~ traditional gender norms (like dresses and make-up and so forth). The Caitlyn Jenner interview with the line, “I knew I was a woman because I liked to wear dresses” was so blatantly ‘traditional’ in its view of womanhood that it came as no surprise that Jenner is a Republican.
Thing is, I CAN imagine a world where, beset by a common enemy, the TRAs and feminism could ally. Trans ideology (as opposed to mere group advocacy) didn’t have to become the current cult-like religious belief. Make the case that adults should have the right to surgically alter their bodies, if they wish (the anti-abortionists also try to make it very hard for women to get elective long-term contraception or tubal ligations, too, so this would be a better example of equivalent bodily autonomy). And encourage teens and younger kids to live without worrying about “girls’ and boys’ clothes and toys”–just wear and play with what appeals to them as a person,and let their peers do the same, without sticking a bullshit sepshul snowflake ‘non-binary’ label on it.
And honestly, most trans women I’ve met in person (as opposed to online) largely fell into the mold of just wanting to get on with life, without any great need to burst into women’s spaces. Even the public restroom debate could’ve been averted by both groups allying to push for safe, single-use and gender-neutral toilets, rather than the privacy-negating group-piss-boxes we’ve kept around for far too long.
But no, instead, the online/social media brigade took over the movement, and decided that it was easier to take women’s rights and well-being away than actually directly challenge the people who want them dead, and we’ve ended up with this insane three-way fight that does nothing in the long run but help the DeSantis’ of the world.
Freemage, among the real life transgender people I’ve known, most of them want to get on with their life. Many of their advocates, however, (mothers or others) push the trans line hard, post their pronouns, and often declare themselves “non-binary” (maybe so their kids will see how special they are). And among the ones I’ve met (all but one of whom were FtM), if not treated like their chosen sex, will fly into a rage and start calling authorities to get someone in trouble.
I attribute that last to a barrage of online lies from TAs. I also suspect that’s why most of them transitioned in the first place.
“, instead, the online/social media brigade took over the movement, and decided that it was easier to take women’s rights and well-being away.”
There’s a fair few transwomen who are quite open about their contempt for natal women. Grace Lavery springs to mind, as does Andrew/ Roz Kaveney:
I watch so many mediocre second rate hacks bore on about how we are a threat.
We are a threat to their mediocrity.
We choose to take control of our lives at any cost.
And that shames them.
Because they chose mediocrity.
We need to look at them and sneer
Not just Trans Pride.
Trans Arrogance.
https://twitter.com/RozKaveney/status/1659473400354439169
” Trans Arrogance “. Natal women feminists, according to Kaveney, are mediocrities who deserve to lose their rights and well-being, and be sneered at by trans women.
Freemage, yes, I suppose I agree with you that there is at least some element of Enforcing Traditional Gender Roles to it, but I think the punitive make the sluts suffer part is more basic. God himself said it ya know – because you ate that apple and tempted the man and blah blah blah it’s gonna HURT when you have all those babies. Bitch.