When women dare to spark
Now Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s daring to say that she thinks trans women are trans women has become a news item. I guess it’s shocking when women say things like “trans women are trans women.”
The LA Times tendentiously headlines:
Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie angers transgender community
And the Motoons “provoked the Muslim community” and Charlie Hebdo “sparked outrage” and on and on it goes.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian novelist and outspoken feminist, drew criticism from transgender activists after suggesting that the experiences of transgender women are different from women whose gender was assigned female at birth.
Which is ridiculous, because of course the two sets of experiences are different. In other contexts that’s seen as the whole point.
The Washington Post is slightly less accusatory, but only slightly.
Women’s issues are different from trans women’s issues, feminist author says, sparking criticism
Her comments propelled her to the center of a nuanced, long-running gender identity debate between some feminists and transgender rights activists. The dilemma is based on the belief that most trans women were born assigned to the male gender and were raised male until they decided to transition. As a result, some feminists argue, transgender women spent a fraction — or large part — of their early lives experiencing male privilege.
Which many trans women agree is true.
In response to Adichie’s comments, Julia Serano, author of “Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity,” called out non-transgender women who feel the “audacity” to comment on the experiences of transgender women without having personally lived them.
Meanwhile, Serano has previously written that before her transition, “nothing could have truly prepared” her for what male privilege would entail.
“I underestimated just how frustrating, infuriating and hurtful it would feel to have strangers regularly hurl cat calls and sexual innuendos at me, or to have men speak down to me, talk over me, and sometimes even practically put on baby-talk voices when addressing me,” she said.
Well that’s our point exactly. She underestimated just how frustrating, infuriating and hurtful it would feel to have strangers regularly hurl cat calls and sexual innuendos at her or talk down to or over her – which is another way of saying that she experienced male privilege. Not living through years of cat calls and being talked down to is what we mean when we talk about the different experiences. I do not see why we can’t just agree on that and move on.
Because agreeing on that would threaten the Transcult’s sacred dogma: Trans Women Are Women (in every way, and always have been, full stop, shut up, that’s why.)
And of course, we have always been at war with … (hang on, let me doublecheck … )
Oh, I guess then Julie Serano won’t mind being called out for having the audacity to comment on the experiences of women born women for precisely the same reason.
…Hello? Is this thing on? Hello?
Actually, I’m going to guess that trans men/women are immune to that logic, because having transitioned they have now lived as a man/woman, and thus are the enlightened ones that can speak about both from their lofty perch. Funny though that the trans men i.e. people that grew up female don’t seem to be half as pushy in that regard.
Perhaps because they were brought up to be sweet and nice and non-pushy?
Perhaps because they moved to a position of greater privilege, and appreciate the change?
Perhaps because some trans-women interpret ALL the crap they get as being trans, rather than recognizing that a not insignificant portion of it is because they are woman?
iknklast, or perhaps it doesn’t matter whether a person has a man-penis or woman-penis; as long as there is (or was) a penis attached then the sense of self-importance, superiority, and entitlement is pretty much a permanent feature to a large proportion of the people it is attached to.
I think it’s a package that comes pre-installed at birth; even if the penis becomes detached at some later stage, the rest is hard-wired into the system and is active for the lifetime of the unit.
The trouble with this line of argument is that there are women born women, ‘cis’ women in the jargon, who have also lived lives without years of cat calling or being talked over etc, and yet feminists do not usually consider these women as a separate category in the way some seem to want to consider trans women and which is causing so much friction and anger. It is hard to imagine a Jenni Murray article discussing whether these are ‘real’ women or not, with or without inverted commas. I agree with the Glosswitches and Bindels on the substantial points in this, but I don’t think this reasoning holds water.
“I’m going to guess that trans men/women are immune to that logic, because having transitioned they have now lived as a man/woman, and thus are the enlightened ones that can speak about both from their lofty perch.”
Can we even know what the outlooks and opinions of trans-people actually ARE? The cultists appear to be a fairly small group, but one that has latched onto a subculture that just begs to be victimized by them.
Are you sure there is any substantial number of women that are in that category? I have heard women say they have never been talked over IMMEDIATELY AFTER HAVING WATCHED THEM BEING TALKED OVER. The way women experience life is so normalized that many women do not notice it happening, because it is just the way things are. They don’t imagine them differently. I suspect the same with catcalls; they don’t notice them because they are background noise. And if it’s a big enough city, it’s easy to imagine they are calling to someone else, not to you, or to ignore them in all the other noise.
#6
There are undoubtedly some women that have never experienced a catcall or other lewd behaviour form men, but that does not disprove the idea that such behaviours are disproportionally associated with being female bodied.
#6, I can’t help but feel that you are focusing on the tree and ignoring the wood. There might be a few women who have never experienced those specific behaviours, maybe. How many women have never experienced any of the problems that are generally considered the dispriveliges of being a women.
Trans women no doubt have a really difficult road of it, but their experience is theirs. It overlaps with that of women and other dispriveliged groups in some ways. Ways you would expect may give them empathy with women’s struggles. It doesn’t make their experiences identical though.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
There may be, as iknklast says, some women who haven’t noticed catcalling or being talked over, or who have noticed it but haven’t realized it’s a pattern. Just plain living lives without any of it – that’s not very likely.
And the claim itself is kind of part of that pattern…
I’m pretty privileged. In fact, when considering world scale problems, I’m about as privileged as it’s possible to be. Born male and white into a relatively wealthy and very stable society with excellent governance. Tall, not ugly, born to educated parents and a mother who made sure that whichever way I turned I tripped over educational opportunities – which were essentially free if you could scrape together basic living costs. About the only disprivelige I can think of is that my parents divorced when I was very young, so we were in borderline poverty for around 10 years (with all the shit that goes with that) and I missed out on male role models. Then again, those circumstances have also given me a certain amount of moral fibre (I can say that since I’ve got out of poverty now) and a strong empathy for the plight of the poor, the socially disadvantaged and solo mothers.
Yet, and this is the point I have taken so long to get to, I have witnessed EVERY girl and women I have ever met be subjected to disadvantage and harassment as if they were swimming in a pool of it. It’s that sheer ubiquitousness that I think makes it so hard for people to see. I suspect I only see it because of the circumstances I grew up in and even then it took time and specific readings and discussions to actually realise what I was seeing.
I have had discussions with young feminists of the modern variety who claim they haven’t experienced any of this. When I itemise examples they have experienced within the last hour they look perturbed. Start asking questions about their lives and their foreheads wrinkle. The disquiet is palpable.
i think ‘victim hood’ is a bad thing to claim. I think claiming people are not victims and that some forms of discrimination do not happen or are actually privilege is worse by far.
I’m going to come right out and say that I have *practically* never experienced catcalling or groping in public. I’m almost 40 and if I add up all the times either has happened to me, I won’t even have to use all my fingers. I have experienced patronising attitudes and comments, but again not that many times. For the record, I don’t think it’s because I’m special, I think I’ve just been lucky.
However, I have been aware of the potential for these things for pretty much my entire adult life. Just because it hasn’t happened to me personally in any significant quantity, doesn’t mean I’m not aware that it typically is directed at the class of people I happen to belong to, and that as a member of said class, I am a potential target. Even if I haven’t experienced this much first hand, that doesn’t mean that the existence of this behavior in the wider culture isn’t a factor in my life.
I think this goes to the heart of the debate. It’s not (necessarily) about anyone’s personal experience, but about what position a person is placed in by society. I can shout from the rooftops that catcalling isn’t an issue in my life if I want to, but that’s not going to stop a man so inclined from viewing me as a potential target for catcalling. Or groping. Or being talked down to. Or as someone to patronise. Etc.
Addendum à propos Rob @12:
I must note, that there may well be disadvantages I have not been aware of, either due to the situation or my general obliviousness to people. I tend not to read people well and it’s entirely possible many things have just passed unnoticed. I don’t actually know how people would treat me if I were a man, so I have no real comparison point. Perhaps a man following me around would see things I don’t see.
One of the classic low level things that happen to women is being talked over or not having their opinion valued, yet a man will say the identical thing and it will be lapped up. I work in a professional field. I see this happen routinely and it is noticeable when the client or meeting chair recognises the value of the woman’s contribution. Why is it noticeable? It implies unusual…
Margot is quite right that individual experience will vary for all sorts of reasons. It does seem that the majority of commentators here do see that individual experience, while valid and important, does not make an argument that trumps societal experience. Modern feminism seems so soaked in the concept of individual choice that it’s political structure and founding seems to have been lost.
Though the primary focus of the article is Lawrence Summers’s contention that there are differences between men’s and women’s innate intellectual abilities, Professor Barres’s experience provides a great illustration of male privilege.
Transgender experience led Stanford scientist to critique gender difference
The prevalence of catcalling is very dependent on culture. I was never catcalled in Scotland but was catcalled many times in Spain, despite spending far more time in the former country than the latter. (Not that Scottish men can’t be sexist, but they’re more subtle about it.)
I’m also dubious of the proposal that oppression makes womanhood. That would suggest women in Yemen (bottom of gender equality index) are “more womanly” than those in Iceland (top of said index). That a woman in a Utopian society would not be a “real woman”. It should be okay to say biology is the link between all women, no matter the level of perceived or real oppression.
It’s precisely the sudden problematic nature of defining the word “woman” that speaks volumes.