The Cellar - Monopolising struggle

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Monopolising struggle

Some of our recent discussions on bigotry and oppression (definitions of, and ranks/divisions of oppression) have been playing on my mind of late. Now, I really don't intend any of this as an attack on Ibs. I respect her stance and admire her passion. But the conversations we've had in here have echoed a wider discourse that interests me.

So I found a couple of recent articles about a minor spat in the twitterverse really interesting. Basically, a feminist writer penned an essay for a collection in which she referred to women being expected to conform to the body shape of 'a Brazilian transsexual'.

The response from transexual twitterers was to drive this woman off twitter entirely. Amongst the really vile stuff she was also accused of not understanding struggle, of operating from a 'priveleged white feminist' perspective and of essentially being a part of the oppressor class/patriarchy etc.

Her mentor, and Godmother to her daughters, Julie Burchill wrote a scathing piece in the Guardian. Some of the language she employs is clearly designed to offend, but I get the sense she is really angry about this.

Quote:

To my mind – I have given cool-headed consideration to the matter – a gaggle of transsexuals telling Suzanne Moore how to write looks a lot like how I'd imagine the Black and White Minstrels telling Usain Bolt how to run would look. That rude and ridic.

Here's what happened. In a book of essays called Red: The Waterstones Anthology, Suzanne contributed a piece about women's anger. She wrote that, among other things, women were angry about "not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual". Rather than join her in decrying the idea that every broad should aim to look like an oven-ready porn star, the very vociferous transsexual lobby and their grim groupies picked on the messenger instead.

I must say that my only experience of the trans lobby thus far was hearing about the vile way they have persecuted another of my friends, the veteran women's rights and anti-domestic violence activist Julie Bindel – picketing events where she is speaking about such minor issues as the rape of children and the trafficking of women just because she refuses to accept that their relationship with their phantom limb is the most pressing problem that women – real and imagined – are facing right now.

So, what was it that Bindell said that was so awful it warranted protests at the Stonewall awards?

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2008/11/07...newall-awards/

Quote:

Campaigner Ros Kaveney said:

“Ms Bindel is advocating talking therapies for trans people in a way that almost entirely parallels the advocacy of talking therapies by the Christian right as a way of extirpating all LGBT people.

“If she does not understand that, as a lesbian, she is a turkey advocating Christmas for turkeys in an adjacent bit of the farmyard, then she is being obtuse; what she is doing is betraying not only the trans community but the entire LGBT community, and it is wrong to honour her for her other work when there is this colossal stain on her career.”

Quote:

Ms Bindel has apologised over the tone of a 2004 article Gender Benders Beware but stands by her view that people should question the basis of the diagnosis of male psychiatrists, “at a time when gender polarisation and homophobia work hand-in-hand.”

“Iran carries out the highest number of sex change surgeries in the world,” she said.

“It is unnecessary mutilation – in my opinion there is nothing ‘wrong’ with those who are currently seen as candidates for transgender surgery – they just don’t fit the gender stereotype.

“Surgery is an attempt to keep gender stereotypes intact. The diagnosis of childhood GID (gender identity disorder) follows old-fashioned notions of what constitutes appropriate behaviour for those assigned to the sex classes of male and female.

“It is precisely this idea that certain distinct behaviours are appropriate for males and females that underlies feminist criticism of the phenomenon of ‘transgenderism’. This view is shared by a large number of feminists of all ages and backgrounds.”

So, a differene of opinion then.

Anyway, back to Julie Birchill's Guardian piece:

Quote:

Similarly, Suzanne's original piece was about the real horror of the bigger picture – how the savagery of a few old Etonians is having real, ruinous effects on the lives of the weakest members of our society, many of whom happen to be women. The reaction of the trans lobby reminded me very much of those wretched inner-city kids who shoot another inner-city kid dead in a fast-food shop for not showing them enough "respect". Ignore the real enemy – they're strong and will need real effort and organisation to fight. How much easier to lash out at those who are conveniently close to hand!

But they'd rather argue over semantics. To be fair, after having one's nuts taken off (see what I did there?) by endless decades in academia, it's all most of them are fit to do. Educated beyond all common sense and honesty, it was a hoot to see the screaming mimis accuse Suze of white feminist privilege; it may have been this that made her finally respond in the subsequent salty language she employed to answer her Twitter critics: "People can just fuck off really. Cut their dicks off and be more feminist than me. Good for them."

It is somewhat troubling when, as a working-class woman who grew up at a time when women still needed their husbands signatures in order to get a loan, buy a car, open a bank account, etc., to be dismissed as part of the oppressor class by someone who grew up male and in a priveleged income bracket.

The dangers and discriminations faced by transexuals, as with any gender non-conformists, is very real and very immediate. But danger and discrimination are something girls are born to and learn to live with in various ways from their earliest development to their last days in the nursing home. The proportion of women who have experienced sexual assault or violence either as children or as adults is staggeringly high even in countries with a good record on female emancipation. Most, and possibly every, woman is conscious of the dangers portrayed as inherent to our gender from a very young age. If we have not suffered sexual assault or violence ourselves, we will know someone who has. In my own circle of friends there are several survivors of rape and domestic abuse.

The anger and sense of threat that trans people feel is understandable. But there appears very little understanding on the part of some of the real and immediate sense of threat the average woman feels walking to the bus stop in the dark, or locking the door at night when they live alone. From our youth we are warned against the dangers of walking in unlit areas at night. Against the dangers of wearing too alluring an outfit, or showing too much bare flesh. Against the dangers of leaving our drinks unattended in a nightclub, or going on a blind date, or getting too drunk to say no to men who will take advantage of our vulnerability.

The female life is bounded by warnings and dangers and messages of weakness and threat from cradle to grave.

And soooo many places, professions, fields of activity might as well have a 'Gurrls Keep out' sign plastered across their fronts for all the welcome they offer to anyone of the female persuasion. Right down to keeping the computer games magazines on the 'Men's Lifestyle' shelf in the newsagents, or as has been graphically demonstrated in recent news of the BBC's longstanding organisational culture of sexual harrassment, the expectation that female bodies are up for grabs or discussion.

I'll stop now, because I'm starting to rant...

Birchill continues:

Quote:

She, the other JB and I are part of the minority of women of working-class origin to make it in what used to be called Fleet Street and I think this partly contributes to the stand-off with the trannies. (I know that's a wrong word, but having recently discovered that their lot describe born women as 'Cis' – sounds like syph, cyst, cistern; all nasty stuff – they're lucky I'm not calling them shemales. Or shims.) We know that everything we have we got for ourselves. We have no family money, no safety net. And we are damned if we are going to be accused of being privileged by a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs.

It's been noted before that cyberspace, though supposedly all new and shiny, is plagued by the age-old boredom of men telling women not to talk and threatening them with all kinds of nastiness if they persist in saying what they feel.

The trans lobby is now saying that it wasn't so much the initial piece as Suzanne's refusal to apologise when told to that "made" them drive her from Twitter. Presumably she is meant to do this in the name of solidarity and the "struggle", though I find it very hard to imagine this mob struggling with anything apart from the English language and the concept of free speech.

To have your cock cut off and then plead special privileges as women – above natural-born women, who don't know the meaning of suffering, apparently – is a bit like the old definition of chutzpah: the boy who killed his parents and then asked the jury for clemency on the grounds he was an orphan.

Shims, shemales, whatever you're calling yourselves these days – don't threaten or bully us lowly natural-born women, I warn you. We may not have as many lovely big swinging Phds as you, but we've experienced a lifetime of PMT and sexual harassment and many of us are now staring HRT and the menopause straight in the face – and still not flinching. Trust me, you ain't seen nothing yet. You really won't like us when we're angry.

I don't necessarily agree with her choice of language. But I can understand her anger. We are fighting the wrong fucking battles people. Choosing the wrong enemies. We are being divided and thoroughly fucking conquered. As evidenced, I think by the low number of young women who now consider themselves feminists.

One of the key problems I think, is the assumption that as far as female emancipation is concerned, the battle is won, the new lines have been drawn and we can all get on with something else. I think the battle is far from won, and the lines are being redrawn again further back along the path we thought we'd done with. In Britain right now the brunt of the recession and austerity measures is falling disproportionately on women. And disproportionately on the poor and low waged. And old attitudes that place the blame for their suffering firmly onto women's own shoulders, whether in assumptions of females as sexually suspect in rape trials and childcare provision for single mums, or assumptions of rampant masochism in the case of women who stay with abusive partners, are resurfacing.

Quote:

But danger and discrimination are something girls are born to and learn to live with in various ways from their earliest development to their last days in the nursing home. The proportion of women who have experienced sexual assault or violence either as children or as adults is staggeringly high even in countries with a good record on female emancipation.

You know, as a mother of teenage boys coming into their adulthood, I read this portion of your post Dana, and it just makes me think that as a parent, I'm terrified of the danger of violence to my sons when they enter the world as adults. It's just a thought, but maybe all the minority groups (women, transgender, gay etc) might have a case, but there's plenty to worry about as a parent of just about any other kid too. Even young males.

nb. I recognise that this is entirely not the topic, but it's just something that occurred to me as I read the op.

Oh I don't for a moment suggest that boys have danger free lives, or are not subject to threats. But the messages we tend, as a society, to give to boys and girls about danger are very different. And the nature of the threat is also different. For boys the message is that there are dangers in the world and they need to have ways of tackling those dangers. Girls are taught that their gender makes them peculiarly and inherently endangered. And the way to try and avoid danger is often to minimise displays of femininity.

I'm not suggesting, incidentally, that women are the only or prime sufferers of oppression, violence and discrimination. Patriarchy is often wheeled out as female suffering under male oppression, but the reality is that under a patriarchal system, most people male and female, live under a form of oppression. Gender, class and race all work together to produce variable experiences and identities.

Female and male emancipation and equality are two parts of the same basic equation. As is the not yet fully understood territory between male and female.

Speaking as a feminist myself, I think I should say ....

... uhh, what do you want on that sandwich?

The big picture in today's world... it's all about MEEEEEE.

What an interesting perspective, Dana. I never knew this was happening, but I'm not at all surprised about it, especially considering your statement...

Quote:

But, of course they are threatened by smart femininists and its a shame, because of all people, they should be 100% more understanding of the struggle women face.

I grew up being a feminist, but only because I never ever had to count on a man to help me. Everything I did and got for myself was all due to my own efforts. At 50, I refuse to suffer stupidly backwards men, but I am not totally free from their prejudices against women and sometimes still have to take a few steps to get around them.

When I enter the ghetto every day, I must steel myself and start a kind of paranoia against the many dangers. I am a hated minority there.

A month ago I had to call for a jumpstart of my car... and later found out there was an armed robbery that happened at the same time, same block, while I waited in the dark for assistance.

But if I was a woman, I wouldn't even go.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanaC (Post 847646)

Yes. I find it more than somewhat troubling to be assigned a label (especially 'cis', which refers to covalent bonds and has no relevance to gender), defined, and dismissed as an oppressor in what comes down to yet another exercise of upper socioeconomic class male privilege.

I have an inherent dislike for Julie Burchill.
But way back when I used to buy the Independent on Saturday it ended up mainly to read her op ed. Sometimes she even changed my mind. Other times she allowed me to question my opinions and strengthened them.

If all that kicked this off was a comment about the pressure for women to look like Brazilian transsexuals, I have no idea where to respondants' vitriol comes from. I wish I had a tenner for every time I read that haute couture is designed for boys with tiny perky tits (the further opinion that this is because fashion is dominated by gay men also follows). There seems to be reasonable circumstantial evidence for this.

Birchill writes in her usual "fuck you if you don't want to hear it" style, but she does have a point on the validity of suffering. I do believe that some transsexuals are made not born, by the world and the culture they live in. The same way that some gay men live straight (or straightened) lives because of the culture and times they are born in.

Psychology is in its infancy.
Roll on the advent of Iain Banks' The Culture.

As an observation, I have an opinion that the more marginalised a person feels, the more bigoted they become against other marginalised groups, even their own. It's no joke that most of the gay men I've known (and there have been many for one reason or another) are the most bitchy people I've ever known.

I'd absolutely agree with that, Ali. Just like bullies are usually abused at home, and in extremely patriarchal societies it is often the women who push harder for the boundaries on their daughters than the men do.

Some interesting responses to that article (which was pulled from the website and an apology given by the editor), including this one:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...rans-community

Moore's statement uses transexuals as an example of a parody of women that it is offensive to expect real women to live up to.

Bindel seems to be accusing gender reassignment surgery - a core desire of many transexuals - of being a sexist plot to prevent woment from acting like men.

Burchill continues the subtext of transexuals being pretend women, by calling them a sort of female minstrel show.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey (Post 848917)

Bindel seems to be accusing gender reassignment surgery - a core desire of many transexuals - of being a sexist plot to prevent woment from acting like men.

That's not how I understood her point. I thought she was saying that gender reassignment was being pushed for by male psychiatrists to ensure gender conformity of some sort. Male to female, and female to male. Basically, she was suggesting that the problem isn't so much that someone is born the 'wrong' gender, but that our concepts of gender are so fixed and polarised as to make those people feel like they're in the wrong body. That rather than surgically altering them to be more in line with the gender they feel, we should expand or dismiss the gender definitions in a way that includes difference.

I can see the argument. I am not sure I agree with it, but I can see the argument.

Also that only a certain type of female form is being idealised in some cultures.
I'm not sure Maggie L would agree with me, but she certainly wasn't a woman who wanted to conform.

Women, whether born or "created" are subject to a heck of a lot of pressure to be "real". Funnily enough, that reality doesn't always happen naturally. How many born women feel pressure to have surgery when nature doesn't provide them with what society thinks they should have? Oh and how many men (with no gender issues) are put in the same situation? Very, very few. I know no men who have had surgery, but many women.

There are more "real" actresses in the UK than the US as far as I can tell with my limited television time. And FAR more than on Brazilian TV. Not every woman in every office, street, coffee shop, bar is 5'8"+ and 8 stone. Men on TV are allowed to be chubby. Even Hollywood leads (as long as they are in comedy films.) Women have to have immovable tits and arse, NO bellies and perfect hair. Fair? No. We should be worried about 50% of the globe being set against an almost impossible standard rather than a small amount of trans* people being offended. They're switching one set of prejudices for another. And I feel for them. But lets look at sheer numbers here people.

An interesting response to this issue, again in the Guardian (my regular read ;p):

Quote:

I remember, many years ago, reading about women who'd had mastectomies after breast cancer, and had been sent home with little bags of sand that they'd been told to place in their bras. It devastated them that this was considered an adequate substitute for a breast. Happily, things are different now, and every effort is made to incorporate whatever breast reconstruction is possible as an integral part of breast cancer treatment.

However, delighted as I am that this is the way things are now, it wasn't what I chose for myself. I opted out of reconstruction after I'd had breast cancer. I'd had enough of hospitals, clinics and surgery. But it wasn't an easy decision. Perhaps, in the future, I will have it. But it won't be because it will help me feel more like a complete woman again.

Frankly, if my entire body was removed, and only my head remained, somehow attached to machines that kept me alive, I'd still feel entirely female, just as I felt as a child, before my breasts had developed, before I even knew I had a vagina or a womb.

I have a memory of when I was very young. I remember trying to persuade myself that perhaps little girls grew up to become men, and little boys grew up to become women. Even at that age, I knew it was impossible, that of course it didn't work that way.

I know, too, exactly what inspired that strange wish. My father had bought my mother a new iron for her birthday, and my mother had been really upset. She had told my dad how insulted she felt, how awful it was that he imagined that this was some sort of treat for her.

My dad was bamboozled. "But you said you needed a new one." She told him what it was like, being stuck at home, while he went out to work, seeing other people, being in the world. She told him she resented that even though she was at home all week, he still left her at home on a Saturday morning while he went to play golf. I thought that sounded miserable. I didn't want to grow up and get an iron for my birthday, instead of being able to saunter off to the golf course to swing one.

Luckily for me, feminism happened before my young adulthood, and I had many more choices than my mum did.

My childhood yearning to grow up a man was transitory, a response to adult descriptions of a gender role. It had no biological roots. As I say, I know in my head that I'm female. I need no breasts, no vagina, no fallopian tubes to tell me that. If, as an adult, I'd had difficulty becoming pregnant, and doctors had examined me to find my fallopian tubes were poorly developed, or not there at all, I'd be no less a woman. That happens sometimes. Nobody's perfect.

Yet the memory of that moment of misery, that brief encounter with the helplessness of feeling my gender destiny was wrong, yet inescapable, has stayed with me. If my wish for masculinity had not been a thought that faded, but a feeling that grew, well, that would have been terrible. My male mind would have been trapped in my female body, in some sort of hideous locked-in syndrome of gender. How strong would that feeling of incarceration in gender expectation have become as I underwent puberty? It doesn't bear thinking about.

Quote:

In the late 1980s, there was a schism among feminist activists whereby some radical feminists began excluding women whose female identity was anything other than entirely conventional. This exclusion has been controversial and small-minded from the outset. It continues to this day, even though it seems plain that the last thing needed by women who have suffered so much trauma to be accepted for what they are, is this fundamental and fundamentalist rejection. Likewise, it's not surprising that women whose identity is so hard-won are often intensely interested in the subject of gender politics.

Some people do not seem to see that gruelling gender-reassignment is undergone to make the bodies of women less male, or, in the less highly publicised process of female-to-male transition, the bodies of men less female. We are, as I say, who we feel we are in our heads. Trans women, like so many women who have had breast cancer, sometimes need the help of surgeons, because it is helpful for one's social body to support and confirm one's biological identity, not contradict it.

That's why it's so awful to talk of trans women as men who have been castrated. Such people are women who have had the biological misfortune to have been born with bodies that are out of kilter with the much more complex biology of their female minds. That too, is why the trans community prefers people not to talk of being biologically or born female as opposed to trans female. Trans people are biologically or born female, but with detail of the flesh that traduces their ability to be physically and socially accepted for what they are.

The saddest thing is that feminism is all about liberating people from rigid ideas about the immutability of gender, about not stopping people from being able to do things just because they are female. It certainly shouldn't be about telling people that they are not quite female enough to be awarded with a shining medal saying: "Oppressed".

The whole article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-female-enough

The 80's schism within feminism is interesting. Provides a little background to Burchill and the two friends she spoke of. It explains, I think, why the response amongst the trans community to that article and those feminist writers, was so strong. It's clearly a long-standing division that has spilled out into wider public debate with this recent flurry of hostilities. Somewhat at odds with the picture Burchill presents of her friends as innocent victims of a powerful trans lobby.

[eta] I should add at this point that the history behind all this stuff is entirely new to me. I have an automatic shutdown switch in my brain whenever I encounter 'feminist' writing on the whole. By which I mean writings about feminism and the feminist political scene. With the exception of writers on gender history pre 20th C.

Ok, I'm not going to quote from this one, because I would end up posting the entire thing :p

As part of the response to the furore over Burchill's article, 'The Panel' in which various people are invited to give an opinion on a current issue, sought the opinions of four trans writers on what feminism means to them. I recommend reading it. Very interesting and certainly gave me food for thought.

This whole debate, along with a parrallel ongoing debate over the definition of feminism in the wake of a recent Mumsnet poll showing fewer younger women that ever who self-identify as feminists, has got me thinking quite a lot about my own definitions of and responses to 'feminism'.

I may write more about that at some point. *glances at the half smoked Saturday special in the ashtray* but not right now :P

Darling, you know Mumsnet is a spit away from the Mail on Sunday, right?
I would not be surprised to find a poll on gay marriage respond at 80% negative, while an attendance at church poll respond at 20%.

Thanks HM, that was a really good read!

@ Sundae: oh, I know, I know. I don't give the poll itself a lot of credence, but it hit the news and sparked a load of comment and discourse on the role of feminism in today's world, and whether younger women relate.

How hate speech dies

An interesting column at TIME.

Quote:

All epithets, even such ugly ones, push back against their own demise, and when it’s clear that they’re doomed, their remaining adherents find coy ways to nod in their direction or come up with slippery substitutes. During the early years of the civil rights movement, when Negro was a perfectly acceptable term but its ugly cousin was already falling out of favor, southern politicians like Alabama Gov. George Wallace grew fond of the pronunciation “nig-ra,” luxuriating in the first syllable and then surrendering only grudgingly to the hedging of the second. Deliberately misusing the noun form of a group’s name as an adjective is another too-cute way of giving offense while pretending to do nothing of the kind.

Jewish food and Jewish doctor mean the same thing as Jew food and Jew doctor, but one version is intended to sting. This is the same schoolyard device many members of the GOP continue to use, with their endless variations on the term “Democrat party” instead of Democratic party, including George W. Bush‘s reference to the “Democrat majority,” and Bob Dole’s deathless “Democrat wars.”

Just why such a construction should be offensive at all is unclear—aside from the fact that it fails to honor the right any group should have to determine what it’s called. Zimmer thinks it may have something to do with the way the terms clang against the ear. “There’s a stress clash,” he says. “If you have two stressed syllables next to each other instead of having a non-stressed one between them it’s just harsher.” The -ish and -ic suffixes in effect serve as shock absorbers.