**TW: Radfems in the comment section**
Until fairly recently, I didn’t know shit about trans issues. I’m trying to play catch-up, but… yeah. So anyway, this is mostly a post about my complete and utter disappointment with the concept of radical feminism. Because when I started getting into social justice at first, the concept appealed: patriarchy really is at the root of the oppression of women, and thus the goal should be uprooting it, not simply carving out a space for women who pay a sufficient tribute to fundamental patriarchal principles.
But you know what? that “not just for women who pay a sufficient tribute to fundamental patriarchal principles” goes for all women, so conforming to patriarchal gender-essentialism absolutely counts too. So does including women whose oppressions happen along more than just the gender-axis, because denying that classism, racism, ableism, heterosexism, cissexism, etc. are things that aren’t the patriarchy is bullshit. counterproductive bullshit.
Anyway, at first I didn’t even know that this denial, and this conformity to gender essentialism was a thing that radical feminists did, because the 2-3 that I know aren’t saying nasty shit about trans women, and aren’t denying that they are women. And I figured the extremists at AROOO were some sort of exception, possibly specific to separatist/political lesbianism (yeah, I know). So, in parallel to “Not my Nigel”, I was suffering from “not my radfem”. It wasn’t until I discovered Womanist Musings that I started learning about the history and current reality of entirely too much of what counts as radical feminism, best exemplified by the exclusion of trans women from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Since then, I’ve made it a point to search out more trans activist voices (Natalie Reed first among them, since she’s also a skeptic and feminist), and as a result have stumbled upon the deeply fucked up shit that radfems do and say to and about trans women; like this shit, or, on a wider scale this shit, where they actually fucking wrote a letter to the UN Commission on Women saying that protections for trans people are dangerous because they undermine protections for women. and then of course is the fact that the history of feminism is littered with cis feminists who’ve advocated violence against trans women, and who are considered heroes in radfem cycles.
so yeah.
I’m done defending radfems and radical feminism. the decent radfems can do the defending and the cleanup themselves; I’m gonna be over here, being an intersectional feminist, trying to be an ally to trans women, instead.
RIght on.
We always appreciate new allies, particularly those willing to stand up for us. Thank you very much. <3
Thank you. X
Mostly, when I’ve come across radical feminism in academic circles, it’s been in the context of their positions on sex work and pornography, to which they tend to be deeply opposed. As I understand it, the hardline anti-prostitution stance taken by the Mackinnon/Dworkin school of thought can sometimes backfire. For example, the US has a policy of only giving federal international HIV/AIDS prevention funding to groups which sign a pledge supporting abolition of prostitution, a policy which some radical feminist activists supported. In some cases, this means that groups doing important public health work with sex workers in the developing world have been denied US funds. See this article by Aziza Ahmed, for instance: http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlg/vol341/225-258.pdf
And, as you point out in your post, some radical feminists engage in horrifically offensive transphobic rhetoric. Particularly Janice Raymond, who devoted a whole book to attacking and insulting trans people; not to mention Lierre Keith, Julie Bindel, Germaine Greer… it’s incredibly depressing how a movement that is supposed to be standing up against oppression can end up actually reinforcing oppression.
It’s been some time since I learned that much in a single paragraph. I didn’t even know Radical Feminism® was a technical term with an apparently precise definition, you know, like Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints®…
Depressing, but not surprising. With just a little dose of Dunning/Kruger, we’re all capable of being the dogs and pigs on Animal Farm and finding someone who is less equal than us.
The term radfem has been synonymous with transphobia in my mind for so long that this is a little strange to me to read. But thank you as well.
My eyes are open. Thanks.
[...] are glimmers of hope! Jadehawk, a cis woman, feminist, skeptic, and occasional commenter here, has served radical feminism the divorce papers, deciding to place herself firmly on the side of us trans-feminist folks. Hooray for [...]
(we were never married)
It’s the same fucking crap like the “gay lifestyle”. Why on earth should anybody put up with that whole lorry-load of shit if it was a fucking choice.
If being gay were a choice, nobody in their right mind would do it.
Why would you want to be mocked, bullied, discriminated against, prosecuted and possibly killed because of a choice?
And if that holds true for being gay, it must hold true for being trans about 100 times.
oh, so I guess it was a Catholic-style divorce, AKA an annulment. :-p
Thank you — never was a radfem, but still getting educated on trans people and this helped.
Gender is a sham. Gender identity is a regressive concept. There are no “ways of being” that go along with biological sex. Trans is fashion. Lighten up, it’s just fashion.
That said, there are trans people who require medical intervention to transition – I support legislation that protects trans people from discrimination using a non-stereotyping definition of gender identity. Query why you don’t? http://www.scribd.com/embeds/83995209/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list&access_key=key-1h7qq1t31z5fhiv7921h
(marriage is a regressive concept too)
PS – get in touch with your inner dyke http://lesbianseparatist.tumblr.com/
LOL at “they actually wrote a letter.” OH THE HUMANITY!
Since you’re new to this, I’d suggest not writing on things you know nothing about ;).
ALSO TRY A PRIMARY SOURCE IT IS NOT HARD http://radicalhub.com/2011/08/01/gender-identity-legislation-and-the-erosion-of-sex-based-legal-protections-for-females/
So, the new diversion is man-woman, male-female, where a transsexual woman may be a woman but not a female.
I call bullshit.
If they could bring up a shred of evidence that such a thing as a pro-surgery trans woman actually ever raped a “female woman” in a public toilet, or that a rapist had ever disguised himself as a transwoman and assaulted other women, they might have a tad of a point.
But they can’t and it’s sickening that for their perceived irrational threat they’re willing to throw other women under the bus because they don’t fit their own definition of “female”.
So the radfem blogger (Nine Deuce) who first got me thinking about feminism, is hardly a trans ally, but said some things about not hating on trans women recently, and then said more while dealing with a *ton* of backlash, and was like “ok I’m done talking about this”. :-/ I’ve also run across radtransfem who has some really good articles. Otherwise, I’ve never found a single radical feminist online who wasn’t seriously transphobic. Cheers.
“So, the new diversion is man-woman, male-female, where a transsexual woman may be a woman but not a female.
I call bullshit.”
I SMELL BULLSHIT. Seriously, that’s why its transsexualism. Sex change.
“If they could bring up a shred of evidence that such a thing as a pro-surgery trans woman actually ever raped a “female woman” in a public toilet, or that a rapist had ever disguised himself as a transwoman and assaulted other women, they might have a tad of a point.
But they can’t and it’s sickening that for their perceived irrational threat they’re willing to throw other women under the bus because they don’t fit their own definition of “female”.”
No, I care about sex stereotyping. Why are you such a woman-hating person that you don’t?
I am happy to be transphobic because being “trans supportive” means fucking over females. This I – and many trans people – won’t do. Change the definition of Gender Identity and stop fucking over females.
Buggy’s got a point actually. By insisting that gender is not determined by sex, Trans merely retrenches gender essentialism at a deeper level. It is assumed that there is a female or male essence, or combinations thereof, lurking beneath the deceptive veil of flesh. “A female in a male body” – yes, but a female what? Whence this essence? Surely this elusive psychic structure can’t be something immaterial, as that would entail dualism. You’ll be talking about male/female souls next! So it must ultimately have a physical basis, perhaps the possession or lack of a certain neural or chromosomal structure. But then you’re right back at “biology=destiny”, no different in principle from the possession or lack of a willy or womb. How regressive can you get?
Alex – ask your mommy where babies come from. Reality is reality. Regressive is this made up shit you are pushing.
I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean, Bugs.
For instant comprehensibility, just add coherence.
Try again.
(And enough with the tiresome Herbert Kornfeld impersonations – “shit you are pushing” indeed!)
Brain.
Microchimerism has been suggested as a reason, but, well, who knows. Anyway, the brain has a sexual identity, which usually lines up with the one of the chromosomes and that of the genitals, but any of the three can and sometimes do drop out of this agreement.
Principle? What principle?
The transsexual woman who told me that microchimerism was a possible explanation grew up knowing she was actually female, for no discernible reason and obviously without any external input that anyone has been able to imagine. It was horrible for her that her body became less and less compatible with that over the years.
Oh, Jadehawk, I just saw your twitter feed sidebar thingy. A downfaulted basin should be a syncline.
Oops. The Bonneville Basin is a part of the Great Basin, and that’s a pull-apart basin. So, what Carlie said – the Graben part of Horst and Graben.
http://www.scienceclarified.com/landforms/Basins-to-Dunes/Basin.html
you will not win anyone here over by demonstrating just how illiterate you are in science. It’s not even fucking controversial anymore that sex is mapped in the brain in exactly the same way the rest of the body is. This has fuck all to do with that you call “gender” btw.
lol. what the fuck do you know about non-stereotypical definition of gender identity, considering you don’t even know what it is?
from that link:
“advocates who frame gender identity as more important than sex”
“A theory of Gender Identity that values gendered appearance, expression, and behavior more than biological sex”
lol. see, this is why I can’t take you serious anymore. this lovely little strawman doesn’t leave much room for the femme, gay, trans man, for example; or for androgynes and a- and bigendered people. Neither is it at all capable of distinguishing between the state of current laws surrounding transition and “a theory of Gender Identity”
NOOOO REALLLY?!
did they excise your humor gland, or what.
oh, I’m not new to radical feminism. That’s why I’m leaving you in the dust, having outgrown that stage in my life. If you want to complain about someone not knowing what they’re talking about, talk to your buddy upthread who doesn’t know about body mapping.
just because your readers aren’t capable of following more than one link deep, doesn’t mean mine can’t.
no; fitting the body to the existing brain-mapping to relieve dysphoria, is not changing the sex, since both sexes are already present in the person: the mapping in the brain is for one sex, the body displays another.
that may well be, but your ignorance on the difference between currently existing (sexist, of course) laws about transition and what trans* actually means is impairing your ability to actually do shit about it, making you side with the kyriarchy.; and of course, you’re not are of the extent of your ignorance because of the Dunning-Kuger effect, which makes you just dangerously ignorant.
contradiction, since trans women are female.
from what to what? you don’t even know what gender identity is, so how can you demand the definition to be changed?
oh look. the racist pro-natalist troll from the other thread is agreeing with you. lol.
it does; seriously, go back to trolling about how foreigners are ruining your precious precious culture. You’re completely out of your depth here.
don’t confuse them with such non-specifics, David. they haven’t seem to have figured out yet that the brain is not one thing, but a whole bunch of different things that have grown one on top of the other. you say “brain”, and they are likely to accuse you of saying this: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_UBOROA1rJ84/TUrUI-5Et8I/AAAAAAAAARg/APxK_j9ny-c/s1600/male-female-brain2.jpg
I don’t have one. sexual orientation doesn’t work like that.
Jadehawk, are there any resources regarding body mapping in the brain and its relation to sex that you would recommend in particular?
I have a number of useful links on that topic here
Great, thanks! #gonnabeejumacated
[...] my last post actually attracted two radical feminists, one of which provided me this deeply flawed 2-page document which demonstrates a lot of the flaws in radfem understanding and treatment of trans issues. So I [...]
You’re right. I couldn’t be more specific because I don’t know the details, or even whether they are known (well, probably most of them aren’t).
*snort* Hey! I, like, totally have loads and loads of chocolate neurotransmitters! I must be… sorry. Couldn’t resist.
*off to munch choco flakes plagiate, having had 2 huge brownies for dessert*
Yeah, I really hate myself, sorry
*hangs head in shame*
Where the fuck do you get that I don’t care about gender stereotyping?
Could you define that first, please?
Please define the words: woman, female, sex, gender.
Are, in your opinion, transwomen women, female or neither?
Am I self-hating for having boobs and long hair?
Or would short hair mean I hate myself because I want to be a man?
I must be a totally confused mess. I’m a femme with short hair…
Help me radfems, how should I hate myself?!
DM:
That’s clear enough, admirably clear in fact.
It’s interesting that you privilege the brain (or parts of the brain) over the genitals here. You would be horrified if such a person were subjected to brain surgery to conform his mental state to his genitals (if such a thing were possible), yet you presumably have no problem with surgery on the genitals to make them conform to the mental state. (JH: “fitting the body to the existing brain-mapping to relieve dysphoria, is not changing the sex, since both sexes are already present in the person: the mapping in the brain is for one sex, the body displays another“.) Both genitals and brain are both physical structures (meat) so why should one take precedence?
The only answer I can think of is that the brain is the source of our sense of self-identity as autonomous agents and this sense, however illusory it may be, matters to us. OK, but then I ask: In what does this sense of being a female a male body (or vice versa) consist? What makes these feelings “female” (or “male”)? The structure of the brain might determine them, but what characterises them? There must be some differentiating content otherwise “male” and “female” become purely arbitrary labels applied to particular brain structures of no further consequence. To say “we call that brain structure ‘female’ that normally accompanies the functional genital structure called ‘female’” is all well and good – but if the typically corresponding female genital structure is lacking in an individual, how does that individual know s/he is “really” a female? S/he can only know that (and desire to live his/her life accordingly) if there is subjective yet definable mental content that corresponds to the objective structure of the brain. What might that be? The desire of a child born with a penis to wear “girls’ clothes” or play with “girls’ toys”? Whatever it is, you can see how the concept of the sexed brain is inseparable from some kind of gender essentialism. “Male and female he created them.”
JH:
Onwards and upwards …
Unless you’re attempting some dishonest word-game in which you equivocate forced reassignment with voluntary, why would you assume that she would be horrified at the possibility of this hypothetical brain-sex-reassignment?
A strong sense of belonging to a category and of what one’s body is supposed to be like, perhaps? I’m not trans* so I can’t really say, but here‘s an illuminating article about your question precisely.
But no, you can’t get from “gender identity is an actual thing” to “gender comes with a set of obligatory character traits”.
and this would be bad because…
gender essentialism is about gender expression, not gender identity. accepting the existence of an emergent property of the brain that gets interpreted as “female” says fuck-all about how such a self-property would be expressed. That is cultural
do I need to explain proxemics again?
Maybe I should increase the confusion and begin* to explain the complexities that hide behind that. CAIS has been mentioned. Apart from this, if you have a Y chromosome but lack the sry gene on it (“sex-determining region on the Y chromosome”), or if you lack the next gene in the signal cascade (it’s on chromosome 6), you won’t be phenotypically male either.
And then I should mention that all of this sounds as if female development is the default (for vertebrates) and male development only happens if it’s specially switched on. That used to be textbook wisdom, but recently a paper I haven’t read** showed that it’s quite a bit more complicated than that – which explains why so many women grow a moustache after menopause: estrogen production drops, androgen production keeps going at its background level.
It’s not exactly intelligent design :-)
* That’s all I can do. I’m really not an expert on that stuff.
** Pretty far from my main topic of interest.
I have no idea if I’d be horrified.
Provided, of course, informed consent were given!
I really don’t think “mental state” is the right term here. It’s not something you can change like an opinion.
Yeah.
If the article Forbidden Snowflake has linked to doesn’t help (but I’m sure it will), all I can say is “ask transsexuals”. I’ve never been interested enough to ask, so I can’t tell anything beyond that article. :-|
What I can tell is that I’m not getting gender dysphoria from having bought 1.6 kg of household chocolate today. :-þ
Oh, and, what the article doesn’t explicitly mention is that some people have “none” as their gender identity. They’re by no means necessarily intersex (see below!) or asexual ( = having “none” as their sexual orientation).
Only to limited imaginations!
Heh. Thank you for confirming who I think you are. Even if we completely leave brains out of the equation, that quote glosses over this in blissful ignorance.
…it would upset Alex’s imagination of what the world is like.
Yes, please, because I don’t understand how this relates to the topic.
…which means… I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be, but the situation is just so hypothetical that I retreat to “making predictions is difficult, especially about the future”. For example, when I imagine being in a social situation, I generally completely fail to model my social anxiety/stuff, even though that’s not something I got yesterday.
simply extend the model further in than 6 inches-touch, to the body itself: being within 6 inches is less intimate than touching, touching is less intimate than penetration (and not just the sexual kind) of the body, and the “mind” (and therefore the thingy that creates it) is the most intimate. The degree to which people are unwilling to have these different zones invaded by others, the degree of possessiveness and anxiety about them they experience, etc. always gets more intense the closer in you get, even when the details are individually and culturally different. So of course most people would rather alter their body than their brain; in exactly the same way people are more willing to alter, for example, their home than their body.
Oh, that makes sense, thanks.
Alex, I recommend reading all 89 or so comments on the thread Forbidden Snowflake mentioned, and this thread as well.
Crikey!
FS & DM :
OK I admit it. When I discovered the posts you linked to were by “a magical young woman” who spends her time “thinking things about stuff and writing stuff about the things”, who “established Queereka, the first ever skepticism blog devoted specifically to LGBTQ issues”, whose interests include “linguistics, feminism, gender theory, queer theory, human rights issues, poetry, neuroscience, biology, Doctor Who, Dr. Strange and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”, I was about ready to throw in the towel. (Not that there’s anything wrong with Dr Who, mind.)
But no, I forced myself to read the posts and my prejudices were confounded. I found them clear, sincere, impassioned and thought-provoking. Their refreshing lack of rancour also compelled respect.
So:-
i) Sex is primarily determined by brain structure;
ii) The individual has a preconceptual awareness of his or her sex, a kind of primordial contentless self-identification;
iii) This pre-rational sense precedes conscious awareness of the outward bodily differences that typically distinguish the sexes;
iv) A person becomes aware that s/he is trans when s/he perceives that this innate awareness does not ‘match up’ with his/her outward bodily structure;
v) This innate preconceptual awareness naturally seeks outward expression;
vi) There is no essential connection between the sex-identity and the forms of sex-expression adopted, whether in manner or dress; any normative conventions are culturally determined;
vii) If a young trans person adopts socially conventional modes of expression, this is merely because s/he has been exposed to them from birth.
Have I got it?
yes, that’s pretty much it.
This is bullshit. This is like finding some detestable piece of shit article about how its feminist to wear high heels and make up and serving the divorce papers to feminism in general based on that.
You know who else called herself a radical feminist for awhile? A blogger who made “age play” porn of herself. Here is how it was addressed by other radical feminists:
http://www.feminisms.org/3130/radical-feminism-just-making-it-up-as-we-go-along/
As if *being* a radical feminist isn’t anything but getting dumped on all the damn time, by everyone, including the vast majority of other feminists. Thanks for adding to the pile, but I’m not a fucking gender essentialist and I am not anti-trans either. Neither are most of the radical feminists I know. I’ve addressed the problem of transphobia in my community, and so have many other radical feminist bloggers, I go and argue with people on their own blogs about how it is wrong to be a feminist and say anti-trans things, but I guess it isn’t enough for you compared with one blog that says something different. There are pages of arguments on IBTP about this, to show how the anti-trans people are not the majority of our community. What else could I be doing? Kicking people off their own blogs? Calling myself something else sure as shit wouldn’t fix the problem, it would just make me feel less responsible for it.
It would be disingenuous to pretend that my feminism is something other than radical, it is a challenge to male oppression, especially the gender essentialism of the patriarchy. That doesn’t fit any other type of feminism that I am aware of.
I direct you to the radfems who showed up here admitting gleefully to transphobia.
Again, I’m quite aware that the concept is not non-rescuable, and that there are radfems who aren’t transphobic assholes. I’m just not interested in rescuing it and I’ll leave that up to you and the other non-transphobic radfems.
And secondly, I’d like to point out that plenty of women of color have left feminism for womanism, to let us white feminists clean up our racist shit. There’s nothing inherently wrong in this.
good for you and I hope that it’s radfems like you who will become the leading voices of radical feminism someday.
strawmanning me isn’t going to help your argument. linking to one blog or another as a demonstration of what is going on is hardly the entirety of my sample size.
as noted at least twice in this essay, I am aware of both non-transphobic radical feminists and of the fact that it’s a VERY useful concept, per-se. I just can’t be bothered defending the movement as it is anymore.
*snortle* If you’re not outraged, you haven’t been paying attention. :-)
As far as I can tell, yes.
BTW, I’d like to take this apart.
Sounds like woo, I admit. Was that what you thought? I haven’t asked, but it’s not difficult to come up with other explanations for “magical”. For instance, “special” is now down the euphemism treadmill. I don’t know, but it may well be that trans* children tend to come up with explanations for why they’re so different from the other people they know that include magic. That would be analogous to the fact that it’s commonplace for children far enough down the autism spectrum (probably farther than I) to become convinced they’re not from this planet.
That just means she’s not going to restrict herself to a topic but will treat everything she finds interesting, to the extent she’s interested. In other words, a personal blog. :-|
Yeah, the name is dreadful. So what? Not everyone is a poet laureate.
What, can’t you imagine such a broad range of interest? Do “gender theory” and “queer theory” sound too much like woo? (I’ve never bothered to really find out what they are.) Or is My Little Pony just too repulsive? :-)
[fixed your blockquote fail -- JH]
[...] social movement ended because their methods/goals became mutually incompatible. Recently, blogger Jadehawk, divorced herself as an ally to the rad fem movement. She clearly lays out her reasons in her post. [...]
FS:
Duh, proxemics.
JH:
But if this distinct identity is rooted in the very structure of the brain, why is it so implausible that it would tend to express itself in certain distinct forms of thought and behaviour? And if that is so, one would naturally expect it to be in turn socially expressed through cultural norms which, therefore, may not be quite as arbitrary as you would wish.
DM:
I refuse to believe a fan of MLP could harbour rancour.
Don’t take it too seriously. It’s just that “LGBTQ”, “queer theory”, “human rights issues” etc have roughly the same effect on radtrads as “family values” or pro-choice” have on those of a liberal persuasion.
Proxemics explain why people are likely to prefer SRS to your hypothetical pill against gender dysphoria, not why Jadehawk is supposed to be “horrified” at some hypothetical other person hypothetically choosing the pill.
Also, let it be known that I consider this discussion of Jadehawk’s hypothetical reaction to another person’s hypothetical choice to take a hypothetical gender-dysphoria-curing pill more useless than a porcelain hammer.
It’s not “implausible”, it’s “largely disproven”.
not so much “implausible” as against available evidence, since most things considered “masculine” have at some other point in time/in another culture been considered “feminine”, and no masculine behavior and preference exists that isn’t also exhibited by women, and vice versa
You need to know that Alex likes it when people are consistent in their philosophies. …Which is great, except he wants people to be consistent along one of the few lines he has managed to imagine so far, not knowing there are many more.
I don’t mean to pile on… just… it’s not a priori implausible at all; it’s just that, a posteriori, all of the proposed differences that have been studied so far have failed to hold up. I repeat: so far. It’s entirely possible someone will find one or ten tomorrow, and if so, it’s entirely possible that such a difference or ten will show a statistically significant correlation to cultural gender stereotypes around the world. It just hasn’t happened yet, as far as I’m aware.
Given this track record, I expect that it’s likely that any such difference will be something few people have ever consciously noticed and few if any cultures take for granted. “Statistically significant” doesn’t mean “obvious” by a wide margin. But, again, you’re welcome to put some evidence to the contrary on the table.
Short version: we’re scientists, not philosophers.
All I can say is glad you came to the right decision JadeHawk. I can’t support a group who thinks it’s alright to champion themselves at the expense of another either, all they did was play into the hands of a patriarchy they say they do not want. How is fracturing minorities a winning strategy? Even if you ignore science, why can’t they at least have basic political strategy?
Blog post about this paper about people whose gender identity switches back and forth involuntarily (some of those people can predict when it will happen, some can’t).
Warnings:
– The paper is in Medical Hypotheses, a journal famous for having published crap. Remains to be seen if this paper raises the reputation of the journal or the journal destroys that of the paper.
– One of the interviewed people says: “If I’m in male mode and I see someone crying, I’ll think more along the lines of ‘Man up… while if I’m in girl mode I’ll think more long the lines of ‘Oh sweety!’” Well, I’m always in male mode, and I don’t think I’ve ever thought anything comparable to “man up” or “grow up” when seeing someone cry. It’s evidently possible to make testosterone and oxytocin at the same time. :-)
The rest looks solid to me, however.
(…Interesting that I have access to Medical Hypotheses at a museum of natural history. Elsevier must be selling it in a bundle.)
From the full text: