At A Blog of One’s Own:
On 11 March, Legal Feminist (a collective of feminist lawyers, of which I am a member: tweeting from @legalfeminist and blogging at legalfeminst.org.uk) tweeted this:
That’s from a pre-prize novella Peters wrote called The Masker.
The Masker isn’t a one-off: there’s a genre. It’s called “sissy porn,” and “forced feminisation” is a popular trope among aficionados[2]. It is a manifestation of a phenomenon known as autogynephilia: a tendency in some heterosexual males to be aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women[3].
With “as women” meaning things like getting aroused by “forced feminisation.” Has it all, doesn’t it – not only stealing what we are, but also treating what we are as all about masochistic joy in violent subordination. Gee, I can’t imagine why we would object to any of this, can you?
In this novella, Peters explicitly eroticises violence against women. The fictional narrator is a masochist for whom dressing as a woman and being treated as female is the ultimate sexually arousing debasement; and for whom “treated as female” means “violently abused.” The single most chilling line in this extract, to my mind, is “meek as an abused woman.” The narrator is luxuriating in his own fearful, humiliated capitulation.
Would Torrey Peters luxuriate in being told to fuck all the way off and not come back? Because I’d be more than happy to oblige.
That being so, it is scarcely necessary to spell out what nerve was hit by our tweet about Peters’ longlisting for a women’s literary prize. Women are being told that transwomen are in every sense women; that we should unquestioningly welcome them into women-only spaces, spaces where we are undressed or in other ways vulnerable or wishing for privacy from males. We are told that if we have any doubts about the safety of extending that welcome, or if it makes us feel uncomfortable, that is because we are bigots.
And here’s this guy writing about how sexy it is to be punched in the face and getting nominated for a women’s prize for writing.
[T]here is – in The Masker and similar material – clear evidence that some proportion of male-bodied people who choose to dress as women are individuals for whom the idea of themselves as women – doing women’s things, in women’s spaces – is not merely convenient and comfortable, or even affirming and validating, but positively erotic. And that some proportion of that category regard femaleness as inherently debased and humiliating, and find the thought of violence against women arousing.
We’re entitled to find that an alarming and enraging prospect: we’re entitled to take strong exception to being co-opted as involuntary bit-part players in someone else’s kink. We’re entitled, too, to fear that some of those for whom the thought of inhabiting the role of an abused woman is erotic may also be aroused by swapping places and abusing an actual woman. The violently abusive language directed against prominent women who speak against gender ideology does nothing to reassure us.
As for me, not only does it do nothing to reassure me, it pisses me off and disgusts me and makes me wonder what the hell is wrong with people.
Torrey Peters has come to prominence by being the first transwoman to be longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. In other words, Peters is a biological male who is now in the running to win a prize that was conceived – and presumably endowed – on the basis that it would be ring-fenced for women.
What made the difference was the sickeningly misogynist nature of some at least of Peters’ writing.
A transwoman who has previously published misogynist and abusive pornography which treats femaleness as inherently degrading has been shortlisted for a prestigious prize for women’s fiction, and that fact has been triumphantly reported in the national press.
Exactly so.
This, to my mind, is blatant power play. Women have been abused, bullied, no-platformed, hounded out of their jobs, threatened and in some cases physically assaulted for putting forward civilised measured arguments against self-identification, and for explaining patiently and politely why biological sex sometimes matters, and even for writing accurately on the relevant law. Most of the mainstream feminist organisations and too many prominent individual women have capitulated and are obediently trashing women’s protections and reciting the mantra “trans women are women.”
This outrage – and others like it – feels like part of a victory parade: the more flagrant the outrage that we can be terrorised into ignoring, the more complete – meek as abused women – our capitulation.
And so we persist.
