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

[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.)