“Gender is not a topic for a bunch of cis people to sit around and theorize about”
So. Let’s drop in on the Socratic Club at Oregon State University for a moment.
They were going to hold a debate about gender, but then they decided not to.
We are sorry to have to inform you that the debate on Thursday, February 25th on the topic “Is Gender a Choice?” has been canceled. Our debaters were informed that some students on campus are offended by the topic of the debate and may plan to protest the event as transphobic, despite the fact that we had both sides fully represented. Because of this one of our speakers did not feel comfortable proceeding with the event. We are disappointed, but understand.
Both sides of what? There are two sides, and only two sides? Well it was a debate, and I suppose debates generally do have two sides, except for political ones which can have anything up to 375.
Anyway, the thing that interested me was this comment by someone named Arlo:
Gender is not a topic for a bunch of cis people to sit around and theorize about, or debate about, as if trans people don’t really exist, or that their identities are something that can be questioned.
This is the transphobic BS we have to deal with daily.
So when we practice our free speech to point out how things are affecting us as a marginalized group, and people actually listen and do something about it, doesn’t mean you’ve been denied anything.
Get over yourselves. The fact that you are all on here arguing that you should be able to be bigoted shitbags shows that you have not lost your freedom of speech. You’re just getting called out on it.The fact that any of you think trans people are just a small population of people just goes to show how little you know about the population whose identities you wanna debate about.
That interested me, especially the first sentence.
Gender is not a subject for “cis” people to talk about? It’s only trans people who get to talk about gender? Gender belongs to trans people, and no one else?
Why would that be? How could that possibly be the case? How could anyone think that? What is it about the current state of trans activism that is causing impressionable people to pick up such ideas? How could anyone think that trans people have a monopoly on gender, and only trans people have an interest in it?
Gender oppresses everyone. Gender oppresses boys and men who get bullied for not being tough and brutal enough. Gender oppresses girls and women for reasons I’ve been yammering about since before the railroads were built. Yes it is a subject for us to “sit around and theorize about” – all day long, in all weathers, in any company, whenever we feel like it. It’s not owned or monopolized or incorporated or patented by anyone who gets to shut us out of discussions about it.
A political movement that’s shot through with bullshit has am unhappy future. I hope trans activism can start to do better soon.
Do non-binary people get to talk about it? Do people who are unsure of what their identity is get to talk about it? Oh, I forget, everyone automagically knows their gender identity from birth and never questions either the system *or* their place in it, according to the Official Orthodox Perfectly Progressive version of gender.
Thank god you remembered in time.
No, of course people who simply don’t conform to “their” gender stereotypes don’t get to talk about it. If they did, I would get to talk about it, and we all know that’s not right. No no, it’s only for Officially Trans trans people, no one else. How do we know who is official? Someone tells you, and then you know.
Ophelia, you covered the first part of the above sentence. The second part interests me too. How does the speaker get “trans people don’t really exist” from “[‘cis’ people] theorize and debate about gender”?
I suppose one possible outcome from such proscribed discussion would be a hypothesis, or theory, that if we reject gender as a useful concept, nobody would be trans anymore. Personally I doubt it–there’s still biological sex, body mapping and dysphoria, and others reasons to be trans (if a reason is even necessary.) But that’s one possible contention. You can face it, and wrestle with it, and argue against it if you find it false or offensive. Is that really so damn difficult? And even if it is, is “it’s difficult” a reason to avoid grappling with questions?
A self-righteous and intellectually lazy subset of trans activists coasts on theoretical work done by second wave feminists, while excoriating second-wavers. And the world is supposed to accept their prohibitions against inquiry, and everything else they say, on their authority, because oppression supposedly automatically grants moral authority.
Socrates, and Plato, might have had a thing or two to say about the Socratic Club’s cowardice.
It really is a struggle at times to force oneself to care about the plight of trans people when crap like this happens…
I do it, because it’s the right thing to do, but it is really, really difficult.
Lady Mondegreen@3, I thought the same thing but didn’t give voice to my thoughts. Where has anyone ever said that “trans people don’t really exist” during all the discussions and debates that have been going on?
There’s a lot of hyperbole being tossed about and not nearly as much intellectual honesty as is needed.
I read that Facebook thread, and from the limited info there, the objection raised against the speaker who withdrew is that she is a white Christian feminist.
Is it really impossible for her to make a contribution to a debate about gender?
We had infinite discussions about whether homosexuality was a choice: and it ended up being very valuable in the end because so many different viewpoints were heard. People were educated by it.
“Is gender a choice?” seems like a really valuable debate topic to me.
My experience is:
1. I comply with gender assigned norms because I wish to avoid backlash. It’s hard enough being a woman with opinions. Add bucking gender norms to it? My life would be made miserable. I’m not up for it. 2. the behaviours assigned to me as a woman are preferable to those assigned to men.
Did I choose? Yes, I did.
What about other people?
So trans women are women in every respect, and it is bigotry to question this in any way.
But trans women are different in the respect that they are allowed to talk about gender issues.
Got it. It’s Animal Farm all over again.
Ah well. Lots of silly stuff goes on at college campuses. Contrary to what the right likes to pretend, it’s not a sign of the downfall of western civilization. It’s just people who lack power elsewhere in society getting a chance to flex their muscles and being kind of obnoxious about it.
And of course there is the same old complaint -so many of us are dubbed cis without our having any say in it just because we are not trans. They get to assign us a gender identity and we don’t get to debate whether we fit there, in the “other” gender or somewhere else all together because gender is inborn and we have lived within the confines of our biological body from birth so we must be euphoric about our gender. I call BS. Gender affects everyone not just trans and acknowledging that does not in any way deny the existence or lived reality of trans persons.
‘The fact that any of you think trans people are just a small population of people just goes to show how little you know about the population whose identities you wanna debate about.’
That sounds like an objective statement, not something that needs to be debated–and as far as I can tell it’s a true statement, particularly given how insistent this set of activists seem about labelling everyone who doesn’t meet their definition of trans as ‘cis’.
‘Ah well. Lots of silly stuff goes on at college campuses.’
Yeah, I hope that’s all it is, and I hope it’ll die down at some point. But it’s not like a) the divestment movement, that actually generated something worthwhile or b) it won’t hurt a lot of people before it does.
I have learned a hell of a lot, and been given a lot to think about, from reading what Ophelia and Rebecca Riley-Cooper have had to say on the subject.
Also learie I feel the same way you do. Someone in the comments to a blog post here a while back made a ‘devils advocate’ argument that if gender identity was a choice and not an inherent and fundamental aspect of everyone’s personality, and if women were second class citizens, why didn’t all women just become men and have easier lives as a result? I wrote a long-ish reply with several answers; one was that in some ways I was even less interested in subjecting myself to masculine behaviour rules than to feminine ones (not that I follow all of the latter very well, but I’m lucky/privileged enough that not following all of them at all times rarely results in physical violence toward me).
Someone is forgetting that the bulk of the examination of the whole concept of gender was done by feminists, not all of them trans, and without that the writer would have no word, no intellectual concept, to claim as his own and seek to control.
Sure, there were men engaged in those debates and the shrinks chipped in from time to time. Sometimes they had something useful to add – Adam Jukes, John Stoltenberg – at other times they were as much use as the proverbial chocolate teapot.
Then along comes our Socratic Club. No knowledge of history, no background reading, no respect for other people are required. Just grab a concept, claim ownership, redefine to suit your own narrow purpose and give everyone else a hard time. Great intellectual tradition you’re building there, folks.
I recall what happened to Socrates. He didn’t deserve it. With this lot I’m not so sure!
It’s true that lots of silly stuff goes on at college campuses and that it’s not a sign of the downfall of western civilization – but all the same I think it’s worth arguing with this kind of bullshit because it works as a kind of ratchet. (Or Overton window, if you prefer.) The many people who frantically want to be on The Right Side of this issue are nudged by their frantic desire to take the most batshit claims as the most Fully Progressive ones, and then demonize and shun anybody who queries them. We’re seeing this happen all over the place. Arlo’s ridiculous assertion is the kind of thing that gets said, and then the Frantic Adopters adopt it and say it too and pour gallons of boiling rhetoric on anyone who disagrees. The result is a complete and utter dog’s breakfast.
So I think we need to call the bullshit bullshit.
Also, ‘lots of silly stuff goes on at college campuses’ doesn’t acknowledge how this particular stuff unknowingly (?) plays into the more universal, and more powerful, social need to shut feminist women up.
In other words, requiring two posts for two sentences, most college silly stuff is anti-establishment, but this particular issue supports the establishment so may have stronger roots.
Quite so. All too often trans activism looks (and acts) like just another pretext to bash and re-marginalize women, especially feminist women.
Not surprised it was pitched as a two-sided issue: “Socratic Club” seems to be code at many universities for a group that discusses philosophy from a Christian perspective, and on that basis there is only God’s side and The Other Side (and scrolling down to the other topics this group has covered, I think my suspicions have been confirmed). But that actually makes it even more important to have the discussion – how can shutting it down be at all helpful in raising awareness and increasing understanding?
Ohhhhhh – that I did not know. I must say it does make the likelihood of a productive or interesting discussion seem much lower.
Well that does tend to put a “hemlock” on the whole conversation, as Maureen hinted above.
(Sorry for the inopportune levity.) (I tend to do that sometimes.)
I should clarify my comment about this being “silly stuff” was my follow-up to Knight in Sour Armor’s comment@5 about trying not to become cynical about trans issues in light of this kind of thing.
I certainly wasn’t trying to pull a Dear Muslima on you all and suggest that it isn’t worth discussing!
@ Screechy Monkey As someone who used your quote, I just wanted to say that I didn’t take it that way–I was thinking more on the lines of the idea that university is the time people often try out all kinds of extreme ideas to see how far these ideas can take them. And I think you were right, we could look at these extreme gender arguments as part and parcel of that–except that there are other more powerful interests that are also in favour of pushing this agenda. What I don’t know is how clearly either the students or the agenda-pushers realise this.
‘Socrates, and Plato, might have had a thing or two to say about the Socratic Club’s cowardice. ‘
Yeah, but they can be discounted for cis-male White Privilege. What else would they say? The shuttered minds aggregating into movements is a scary prospect. I see Cliven Bundy and Trump as potential role models for this kind of reckless posing.
Apparently, according to some trans women, even a trans woman caught wearing “men’s clothing” makes them “drag queens” instead of trans women. Clearly, trans activism is still grappling with core questions over what, exactly, makes someone trans. Yet many trans activists are acting as though these questions (whose answers seem to shift by the day, if not by the hour) are well settled, and anyone on the “wrong” side of them isn’t simply incorrect, but evil.
In other words, the trans revolution is currently developing along the lines of most other revolutions. As someone who can pass for a white male in North America, I have relatively little personal stake in the outcome of this revolution, beyond my own compassion toward the people who *do* have a personal stake. I think the optimal outcome is a world in which people are able to walk freely in the world, able to dress and express themselves however they want, without regard to what is “appropriate” for their age, or race, or class, or gender, as long as they aren’t actively hurting anyone else (and keeping in mind that “they’ll turn my children gay!!!!” or the like is not actually hurting anyone).
Will no-platforming (even from false-dichotomising Christian debating societies) get us there? That seems doubtful. But in any case, it isn’t people who look like me who are most harmed by this kind of activism; it is women (trans and not), it’s minorities, it’s anyone who wants to voice a countervaling opinion to the white heteronormative establishment.
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Arlo James (the person you quoted) sorta answered this in another comment:
See? It’s not a topic to be debated – as I gather, neither by cis people nor by anyone else! What we need is not a discussion but education. It’s very simple, really. On the one hand, there are the educators who know the truth; on the other, we have these poor souls who do not. You all here clearly belong to the second category. Any further questions?
Ok, joking aside: it’s not that easy for me to tell what really happened. In the statement of the Socratic Club we read that some students were “offended by the topic of the debate” – not by the choice of the debaters, mind you, but by the topic. That’s what they say and it is consonant with Arlo’s comment. However, there are also these words of another commenter from the Facebook site:
This is quite different. The claim here is that it was *not* about the topic but about the choice of the debater. So, what did really happen? Was it about the topic or about something different?
A cynic in me whispers that my question is incredibly naive. Truth doesn’t exist – isn’t this the Po-mo wisdom? From now on, count me converted. “In the beginning there was only Chaos”, and then out of the void appeared Rationalizations.
It’s a fascinating question. I, for one, would love to read more about the genesis and history of such phenomena. Is it really something new? Is it their invention or perhaps they are replicating some older patterns? I’m really curious.
Perhaps they could substitute the over/under tissue debate until they can find someone qualified to choose up sides on the ‘choice’ question, eh?
Ariel, yes, at least 3 people are talking the most eye-popping nonsense on that thread – like this careful and not at all circular explanation of what cis and trans mean:
But, they’re undergraduates (apparently). Maybe they’ll get better. (But then there will be new undergraduates. Oh dear.)
Gender oppresses everyone? I don’t feel particularly oppressed by gender. Or race. Or poverty. Mind you, the fact that I am an affluent, white male might be relevant here. But, everyone?
Have you never thought about the possibilities it has ruled out for you?
I don’t disagree that some people are content with the gender status quo and their place in it, and that those people fit the putative meaning of “cis” – but yes, I do think even they are (somewhat) oppressed by being limited in unnecessary ways.
But I would also agree with what I think you’re saying, which is that if you don’t feel particularly oppressed then that makes a difference.
There’s always a tension around this – around the fact that people can be quite content or even happy with a given status quo, and agitators may be making them less happy by alerting them to injustices. That was very stark in the Civil Rights movement, where becoming alert to injustices could be lethally dangerous.
I’m pretty young and relatively inexperienced in participating in communities that discuss trans issues so I’d appreciate correction of any of my ignorant statements, but it seems to me that sex and gender are constantly conflated in discussions surrounding what it means to be trans vs. cis. If someone has disphoria over their body, certainly that would be a case of being trans with respect to sex and not gender. Under the definition used by many more vocal trans activists, any person that wears clothing or displays a behavior that is outside of the gendered options assigned to their biological sex would automatically be placed under the umbrella of being trans-this makes the definition so broad as to be unwieldy. Disphoria is occasionally stated as not even being necessary to being trans-does this mean I could be trans and not even know it? I certainly act in ways that aren’t always conforming to the traditional gendered idea of what a man is. I wonder if it will come back around and transsexual will fall into fashion again as a descriptor, but I think it’s largely fallen out of favor. Maybe this is because transsexual became co-opted by the toxic sex industry/porn community?
Also, longtime lurker, even in pre FTB days-thank you for providing a good environment for discussion, Ophelia.
@Studebacher Hoch
I agree. Current, ascendant trans theory is all about “gender,” and the definition of gender is vague when it isn’t downright conservative. But criticizing “gender” is deemed transphobic.
It’s confused and backward and I fail to see how it helps anyone.
Ophelia: “Have you never thought about the possibilities it has ruled out for you?”
I recall when I was, oh, about 4, that I kind of wished I could be a woman because they had babies, which seemed rather neat. But I realised that was never going to happen and moved on. I didn’t really want to be a girl, because they always seemed to play with dolls. I liked being a boy, because they played rough and tumble games. You might say that i was oppressed by the closing down of choices in my life, but I was happy with that oppression, so…
My point, in relation to this topic, is that gender is not always oppressive, for everyone, and your comment that “Gender oppresses everyone” is too strong. But I would be fine with “Gender can be oppressive for people of all types: cis, trans, masculine, feminine”, as you detailed in the remainder of the paragraph.
More to the point, the fact that I am a cis, male person who doesn’t find gender particularly oppressive should not exclude me from discussions about it.
Mark, were there any skills you were intrigued at the thought of learning (painting, horse riding, playing piano, cooking) but ruled out, at least for a while, because you thought they were for girls?
Did you ever have trouble learning a “masculine” skill, like throwing a baseball, and get shamed for it?
Did you ever express emotions that you were told were unmanly and then felt awkward?
Did you ever find yourself having trouble talking to a girl or woman because you wanted to get to know her, but couldn’t think of any common ground?
Those are some ways in which gender harms many guys who are nevertheless not uncomfortable with gender expectations in general.
Good points, Samantha–I was trying to think of a response but you’ve done it. Also–have you ever been the object of violence, or threatened with violence, for your appearance, words or actions because they were deemed insufficiently ‘manly’, or have you ever altered your appearance, words or action to avoid violence or the threat of violence? This seems like a startlingly common experience among men I know. Have you felt like you had to know about or be an expert in things you had no interest in (e.g. sports, machines) so that you could engage in casual conversation with other men? (A male colleague told me that when he was in officer training his CO told him and his colleagues that it was mandatory for them to pick a sports team to support, whether they gave a shit about sports or not, study up on the team, and keep up with all the scores, players and trivia, because it was a necessary part of bonding with and being respected by their troops.)
Admittedly a second-order effect, but one way in which gender-based restrictions affect everyone is by eliminating in advance the possibility of certain pursuits and careers for 1/2 the population, resulting in lost opportunities for advancement of knowledge, technology, arts, etc.
I’m just remembering an incident that happened to me years ago. Office colleague needed to go out to a meeting or to run an errand, but it had unexpectedly started to rain and he didn’t have an umbrella. ‘You can borrow mine,’ I said, pulling out the one I always keep in my desk. He recoiled in horror and declined. And it wasn’t even covered in pink vulvas or whatever—if I remember right it was a dark blue/black check. And I was all ‘dude, you’d rather get soaked to the skin than carry an umbrella that isn’t solid black?’ Apparently so. I would think only an actual memory of violence would have caused such an agitated response.
Wow.
So odd that your umbrella isn’t covered in pink vulvas.
:) well I don’t lend that one out.