Gender, and politics

[juliet]

According to a leak in the Sunday Times (and let us set aside how bloody annoying it is to constantly be finding out about policy by 'leaks' to the press), the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act to make life a bit easier for trans people, are not, despite the consultation showing 70% support for them, going to happen. And not just that, but there are suggestions that things may be made *more* difficult for trans people.

This is all aimed pretty squarely at trans women (and trans children; there's also a risk of treatment being made even harder to get for trans kids which, given how hard it is already, is pretty horrifying). It will, of course, affect other trans people. (As it happens, it is unlikely to affect me personally, as a non-binary person who is pretty invariably read as a woman, except for the emotional impact of the whole shitty business.)

I find it hard to write about this, partly because of how very distressed it makes me. Scared for my friends, and for the kids I support via Mermaids. Sad and confused that this strange thing has happened in some strands of British feminism that has led to this place where some people believe that in order to protect cis women they need to further marginalise trans women. (And other trans people, but this particular debate is squarely focussed on trans women and largely ignores trans men and non-binary people other than to paint them as deluded; as above, that doesn't protect them from its effects and impacts.)

Laurie Penny has written an excellent (long) article talking about how British feminism got here and why the transphobia currently highly visible in some strands of British feminism is bullshit, so there's all of that; she's saying it better than I can.

Self-ID (which is still a legal declaration with legal force, not, like, something you print out off the internet) has existed in other countries for years, with no ill effects or resulting issues. The 'safety' issue is a massive red herring. Men wanting to abuse women don't *need* to pretend to be women and sneak into women's toilets to do so; it's not like rapists and other sexual assaulters generally face any significant consequences for their actions. How about we focus on that? In any case, when was the last time you got asked for your ID (still less your birth certificate) to go into a public lavatory? If you do start asking people to prove their gender before entering a single-sex public space, who do you ask? Everyone? People who don't look 'feminine' enough? Whose body shape doesn't match your expectations? (Whose expectations?) How the hell can this possibly be 'feminist'? (This sort of toilet policing has already started happening to cis women who don't 'look right', indeed happened to a butch lesbian friend; and the N Carolina 'bathroom bills' were unworkable and were in the end struck down.) Women's refuges have been including trans women for years, because trans women, like cis women, can be victims of domestic violence.

Trans women get this much scrutiny precisely *because* of misogyny and the patriarchy: it's the same damn struggle. Trans rights are human rights; trans women's rights are women's rights; black trans lives matter; and this is all intersectional. That's it.

Comments

[lilysea]

I'm a 43 year old cis woman.

I have been made to feel unsafe and/or groped by cis men
on buses
on trains
in pubs
in pedestrian underpasses

I have never been threatened or groped by a cis man in a woman's toilet.

And I have never felt threatened by a trans woman ANYWHERE.

The panic over trans women in women's toilets is ridiculous...

[juliet]

Yes! Ridiculous but has very real impacts on people :(

I'm sorry you've had unsafe experiences. They fucking suck.

[slightlycanted]

Sorry it's all so draining and distressing. I find it more emotional than other struggles that affect me; I'm annoyed but incredulous at sexism and homo/biphobia but this really gets under my skin. Have popped off some letters.
Wishing you support and good chocolate.

[juliet]

Yes, exactly that re getting under my skin in a way that other things don't; thank you for articulating it. I too have written a couple of letters.

[sfred]

This! I have written letters too.

[laurashapiro]

Damn right, and I am so sorry that our fucking stupid country is exporting its patriarchal bullshit this way.

[juliet]

ohhh no, this is all home-grown :( (as per the Laurie Penny article, though it's fairly long so only worth reading if you are interested in the history of British feminist thought & transphobia) Mind you some of it's being funded by the conservative right from your side of the Atlantic, it is true.

[laurashapiro]

Well, that's awful. ): But as the TERFs unite, so can we.

[rydra_wong]

I find it hard to write about this, partly because of how very distressed it makes me.

Yeah. It's been hitting me hard, and I have some idea of why in my case but it's tricky to explicate without making it all about me in ways it isn't (given that I id as cis, if gender-non-conforming). But it's been fucking me up.

[juliet]

:( That sucks; I'm sorry.

(I tend to think too that supporting trans people in all their various guises actually opens more space up for everyone including cis gender-non-conforming folks.)

[rydra_wong]

I am very sorry it's hitting you hard also.

I tend to think too that supporting trans people in all their various guises actually opens more space up for everyone including cis gender-non-conforming folks.

*fervent nodding*

I know the space I breathe in, psychologically speaking, was carved out to a large extent by people who were/are various kinds of trans and/or non-binary. Which is one reason I feel a strong obligation to show up and fight.

(And also this is very much an attack on that space, which is part of why it's hitting me on a personal level, I think.)

[rydra_wong]

Women's refuges have been including trans women for years, because trans women, like cis women, can be victims of domestic violence.

Yeah, my work stuff involves some stuff with organizations supporting survivors of IPV and/or sexual violence, including refuges.

So I know that in the actual field, this is a non-issue. The laws as currently written would potentially allow refuges to exclude trans women, I believe, but they're generally not choosing to do that and it's fucking FINE.

There are a tonne of major issues deeply concerning the people running refuges right now (many of which involve the fact that the sector's been GUTTED by austerity); inclusion of trans women really isn't one of them.

Also: people who have survived violence are not thereby made into perfect pure passive saintly victims. So all of these organizations have to have mechanisms and processes for handling it if a servicer user's behaviour is potentially risky or harmful to other services users.

It's not that everything is perfect and safe and harmonious just as long as you don't have any of those Eeeevil trans women in the space, nor is anybody's safety preserved in any way by excluding trans women.

FUCK. This is such a non-issue on the ground, for the people who are actually running the refuges and fighting for the rights of survivors.

Which is evidence that the people trying to weaponize it don't really give a shit about protecting survivors.

[juliet]

Thank you for sharing your work stuff! Yes, I too understand that there are Equality Act exclusions which can be applied if needed but generally aren't.

So all of these organizations have to have mechanisms and processes for handling it if a servicer user's behaviour is potentially risky or harmful to other services users.

Yeppppp.

Which is evidence that the people trying to weaponize it don't really give a shit about protecting survivors.

Yeppppp even more. UGH. It is rage-inducing.

[rydra_wong]

So all of these organizations have to have mechanisms and processes for handling it if a servicer user's behaviour is potentially risky or harmful to other services users.

Yeppppp.

The TERFs have this biological essentialist belief that being a cis woman means you are made out of flowers and butterflies and nurturing-Earth-Goddess-love and incapable of aggression or causing harm to another human being ever.

(Which sits weirdly with their pretense at being "gender critical", but NEVER MIND.)

Strangely, this turns out not to be true. Because of how women are actually people.

[juliet]

I find it frustrating on, like, a theoretical level, because I have a history of radical feminism (in a trans-inclusive kind of a way) and a lot of what is going on, even from the people who are actually in a strict sense "trans-exclusive radical feminists" rather than "non-radical-feminist anti-trans people", is...not compatible with what I understood radical feminism to be *about*.

[rydra_wong]

Historically, IIRC (it's been ages since I read up on this) there was something of a split, with one major strand of radical feminism becoming very biologically-essentialist about gender even though that's in total contradiction to some of the other ideas (gender as wholly a social construct, etc.). So this is not coming out of nowhere or devoid of ties to older traditions of radical feminism. There were definitely bouts of this sort of stuff in the late '70s/80s etc.

Even though most of the current TERFs are not in any sense "radical" (or, in many cases, "feminist").

[juliet]

Yeah; I think the thing is that 15-odd years ago when I was hanging out in squats and so on, the prevailing feeling was that that strand was definitely Old, and (I would have said at the time though evidently I was wrong) falling out of the discourse along with political lesbianism & separatism & so on. Sigh.

(I also have a tiny mini hobby-horse around restricting "TERF" to people who are actually [edit to add: at least in theory or in their own world-view] radical feminists of some stripe who are trans-exclusive; other people being "anti-trans activists" or something of the sort; but I fear that ship has sailed.)

[emperor]

It's really shitty :(

[juliet]

Yeah :(

[rydra_wong]

Trans women get this much scrutiny precisely *because* of misogyny and the patriarchy: it's the same damn struggle.

Yes, it's the time-honoured patriarchal game of policing who's a Real Woman and who's failing. Which has never, ever benefited women, and I have no clue why some cis women imagine it's going to start now.

[juliet]

WORD.

[elisi]

Seems we spent our days in the same unhappy place. :(

[juliet]

Ugh :( lots of sympathy to you too.

[elisi]

Feeling better since apparently the push back had an effect! (See last night's post.)

I think the depressing thing is that I absorbed a lot by osmosis and going back to get a proper overview is just awful. :(

Background (I have five minutes left of my lunch break and am feeling chatty) I sort of came at the issue sideways, originally? I have trans friends in fandom, but they were just friends, so the whole trans thing was a vague background, in the same way I knew that some lived in America or were gay or whatever.

And then in (goes to check) 2010 a non-binary character appeared in my head. I don't think I even knew the term, I just knew that they were neither male or female. So then I had to do research and figure out pronouns and generally went on a minor journey of discovery for which I will always be grateful. (Also Jamie is one of my favourite characters ever ♥) I probably got stuff wrong, but I tried to do my best to explain that I was trying and hope people would look on my creation kindly, and so far no one has complained...

I think I had a point. Hm. Well I need to get back to work, so I might have to come back to it. Unless it was that Jamie is a brittle, defensive character, because they've been bullied & discriminated against their whole life. And it just hurts me that I knew that instinctively? And that the more I find out, the more I realise that it's not just people being uncertain or whatever, but so much of it is deliberate. :(

ANYWAY. Let people pee in peace.

[juliet]

<3

[sfred]

...when was the last time you got asked for your ID (still less your birth certificate) to go into a public lavatory? If you do start asking people to prove their gender before entering a single-sex public space...

One of my worries is that they'll try and close loopholes around this by requiring a gender recognition certificate to change the gender on a passport or driving licence, which will fuck over a whole load of people (including me, but others will have it worse).

[juliet]

Yes I’m worried about that too. Especially as I suspect it too could be changed by “guidance” (to DVLA and Passport Office) but I don’t know to what extent they’re government run & why they’ve made the ID decisions they have currently, if you see what I mean.

I do think that the Commons equality committee will be deeply unimpressed by any proposed change of that sort.

[sfred]

Yes, I don't know how current processes were decided.

[flick]

I think this is partly addressed at me? (And sorry for the slow response: it's never a good day when there's an ambulance involved.)

I don't think you're deluded. I don't know exactly what your thought processes are other than a passing mention here of questioning your gender earlier this year; I'd intended to grab half an hour with you at Easter, in fact, but there we go (I chickened out at Dublin, which I regret). If you asked me to guess, I'd say that you don't feel any resonance with modern stereotypes of womanhood (and possibly motherhood), so you've made the logical choice to disassociate yourself from them. I do get the logic, but I think a better choice (especially, given your position of relative privilege) would have been to stand up to those stereotypes and be a good counterexample. IDK, I may be totally off base there: if things ever get back to normal, maybe we could still grab that half hour?

FWIW, I'm personally relatively unconcerned about women's toilets, because I personally am also in a position of relative privilege. I worry more about places such as prisons, and school changing rooms, where that privilege is largely absent.

If you're interested in another long article, please do read the one I linked to. I'm sure you'll disagree with a lot of it, but it might help you to understand where people are coming from.

[juliet]

More just that there has been a lot of it, this week.

If you asked me to guess, I'd say that you don't feel any resonance with modern stereotypes of womanhood (and possibly motherhood), so you've made the logical choice to disassociate yourself from them. I do get the logic, but I think a better choice (especially, given your position of relative privilege) would have been to stand up to those stereotypes and be a good counterexample.

I've called myself a woman for most of my life and been perfectly happy to ignore and/or 'stand up to' stereotypes as required throughout. I don't feel it's a particularly good fit as a label; my primary feelings about gender are that I'd rather not, thanks. So I don't, any more. Other people with similar feelings may make different decisions, which is their choice, just as mine is my own. I don't think that gender identity is something one *owes* to anyone else.

Stereotypes of gender do of course exist and get pushed on people (children especially, as has been extra clear to me since L was born, but adults too) all the time, which is infuriating rubbish which limits people of all genders. I'm not going to stop pushing back on that because I don't use one of the main two gender-labels any more. And it's not like I have suddenly thereby become personally immune to the effects of those stereotypes, because I am still put into the 'woman' box by the vast majority of the people I interact with. But even if that weren't the case it's still a pretty important part of my feminism that gender stereotypes are toxic bullshit.

School changing rooms are shitty environments for all children -- the absence of any trans kids in my class at school most certainly didn't keep me safe. Trans kids are much (much) more likely to be at risk in school than they are to pose any kind of threat to cis kids. As is pretty clear from listening to the kids I support through Mermaids and the experiences of the trans kids I know personally. And the tenor of the current debate in the UK puts those kids even more at risk, which is properly scary.

Believe me, I really do know where people are coming from on this. I've been engaged with this stuff for actually decades plural by now. If I haven't read that particular article before I've read others like it. I've spent a lot of time discussing it and thinking things through. I know where people are coming from; I disagree.

I'd rather not take this discussion further on here (it's been a bit of a week tbh); would be happy to talk about it in person though (assuming cons etc do ever return in The Future Times).