Final Word on The Big Gender War
These are all the thoughts in my head on this topic, I think it’s actually pretty obvious why everyone is arguing and I think that in fact EVERYONE is basically right -up until the point where they start getting rude and violent and everyone needs to back the fuck down and think about what actually is going on here.
I’m about to piss everyone off because I’m about to explain why “trans women are women” is a true and useful phrase and that ‘cis’ is a helpful word and not a slur.
But then I’m also going to explain that women are women and men are men and trans women should not be fighting for access to women’s rights and services and need to back off from Radical Feminism.
Lastly, I want to say that although different factions of feminism do and need to exist, there is an important overlap in the issue of gender as an enforced social norm that everyone needs to be fighting together to eradicate. Because sexism is bad for everyone bruh.
Locating Gender - there’s Gender and there’s gender, yknow?
Gender is a self-reflecting relation between the identity of ones inner being, a self which exists as a sexual being, to the expression and presentation of the self as a being in the world which occupies a position, in part dictated by identity as a sexual being.
“Femininity” and “Masculinity” are useful terms to describe the modes of relationship to the self that we call gender, but the terms are insufficient because they appear to relate to female and maleness which are much more strictly binary as sex than as gender expressions. There are no sufficient synonyms.
Sexism is related to a value judgement whereby the gender identity of a person is expected to match up with the sex of a person - enforcing “femininity” on women is sexist, defining femaleness in terms of femininity is sexist, denying people the possibility to express feminine and/or masculine elements of personal identity as gendered elements of the self as a sexual being, that’s oppression.
Social Norms Are Sexist
Femininity and masculinity have expressional content relating to clothing, personality, preferences, abilities, physical attributes (including but not limited to phenotypes of secondary sex characteristics).
Femininity and masculinity are related to a master/slave dynamic in relationships of all types (personal, social, political, romantic and professional). Words associated with femininity are loaded with negative value connotations related to weakness, uselessness and submissive/passive behaviours. Femininity is the exploited and not the exploiter, it is presented by masculinity as the exploiter not through value positive notions such as strength and persistence (these are masculine traits) but through wily deception, manipulation and trickery.
Eve and witchcraft, feminine wiles and female rape of men.
Femininity is accused of underhand persuasiveness in the manipulation of the masculine and thus rape culture and victim blaming arises.
As a society (and related to capitalism) we engender all aspects of childhood and consider the gendering of children to be a celebration rather than a dictation of their gender identity.
We assume that sex and gender always match and mould the gender identity of children to fit the loaded genderedness of personality and preference etc types. This is sexualisation of children. Certain choices are not made available to children, most notably the choice to have feminine preferences when male-bodied. Males who are allowed to express feminine preferences are considered weak, abnormal, broken. Parents who permit this behaviour are seen as abusive, neglectful and socially deviant.
Children should not be exposed to explicitly sexual content during the period in which their sense of self as an authentic and in part sexual self is emerging. Children are easily influenced by the people and ideas around them and the presentation of possible ‘selves’ that may emerge is well-meant but will result in an inauthenticity if the child does not allow emergence to be entirely a spontaneous and self defining process.
Freedom to express gender identities outside of the female/male prescriptions of society are more open to females than they are to males, especially in children.
Male bodied people can be confused into thinking that a feminine personality type can only be correctly expressed as a self relation to a female body. This is the key difference between sexism and gender dysphoria.
There are a myriad of kinds of relations between the internal and objective self, gender is only one of them. All of those relationships can be dysfunctional and the solution to dysfunction can be found either in addressing the inner sense of self (changing stereotypes and ideals), addressing the relationship itself (coming to accept and embrace the raw materials given by the physical reality of the body in this relationship) or the physical reality of the body itself (changing the outer self to better allow the outward directed expression of the inner self)
Which is the best part to address and the best way to address it is deeply individual and it would be unreasonable to expect a ‘one size fits all’ approach to be successful in every case.
The diagnosis and treatment of mental health and self-realisation, recognition, acceptance and ideation issues should be research based and the medical profession is not being properly funded or directed to examine these treatment possibilities.
As a result the offered treatments, enforced treatments or lack of treatments are hugely insufficient and there is much suffering of individuals as a result.
This does not help the socially-enforced ideations of personal goals and worth from being internalised since the systems in place to support authentic self-actualisation are simply absent.
The model for this understanding of the distinction between sex and gender can be outlined thus:
On understanding of this structure we can identify misuse of terms; conflation and misappropriation notwithstanding. We can also use the model to identify the misunderstandings that fuel the debate of the new (post 2010) gender politics and identify where new terms are needed in order to frame the problems of radical and Intersectional Feminism, the causes that would best serve their interests and the issues on which each should draw their boundaries of participation and input.
Related important things to note:
The effect of Puberty blockers is fully reversible http://transhealth.phsa.ca/medical-options/hormones/puberty-blockers
Puberty blockers can be a helpful way to delay those bodily changes that particularly for male-bodied female-identifying teens would dictate severe limitations to the possibility of ever addressing the dysphoric relationship between the outer and inner self by changing the outer self rather than the inner or the relationship itself by other means. Puberty blockers allow exploration on an individual basis as to which aspect is best addressed to aid dysphoria without closing off any options entirely. It buys a person time.
Social gender norms are bad, but gender ALSO means something else, it is the name for one of the relationships between the self as an object in the world and the self as subjective experienced being, the seat of experience of the self. As such, there is a relationship between the self as seen as an object and the self as experienced as a subject, this may be a non-ontological distinction but we are by nature social animals so in terms of lived experience it is very real.
3rd wave feminism seeks to eradicate the notion of gender, by which we mean eradicate the notion of femaleness and maleness as social ideals and expectations because they are always sexist. However, 3rd wave feminism also needs to accommodate for the freely chosen expression of that self-relational aspect of experience which is labelled femininity and masculinity such that a woman wearing lipstick does not become a bad feminist, but nor does a man wearing lipstick become a woman in the social or the biological sense.
The reality of this relationship can be framed in terms of sexuality identity, in Iran, forced gender reassignment surgery is oppressive because it is based on the assumption that a gay man is a defectively bodied straight woman and that is not the case.
What is destroyed in this act of forced GRS is the possibility of relating to the self as male and the other as a sexual object that is male and that is masculinity in a real sense because it has a biological element in terms of bodily relation to internal self as well as an interpersonal and thus social element in terms of relation to the world from a position of being at least in part a sexual objective being and to another sexual being as a sexual object.
The sexual revolution of the 60s gave the freedom to express sexuality as part of the self both as a relation to society from the perspective of a being in the world and in terms of the private relationship to another as two sexual beings whose bodies matter to that relation.
The burqha is oppressive because it denies the possibility of that social relation of the self as a sexual object to society in general while preserving the sexuality as relational only privately between two individuals, which is an ownership relation - the husband owns the wife’s sexuality, it does not belong to her and has no place in forming part of her general selfhood in relation to society.
There are several important relational aspects to selfhood that need to be distinguished clearly:
Relation to the internal self (2 way cyclic relation)
inner to outer - sense of self to be pushed outwards in self-expression via preferences, personalities, appearance etc
outer to inner - comfort and identification with the raw materials available (the physical body as given rather than chosen) to form the modes of self expression
Relation to the other as sexual partner (2 way reflexive relationship)from object-identity and subject-identity
subject identity to other - preferences to be respected and reflected
object identity to other - facticity of bodily sex and sexuality which is not preferred (implies chosen) but given
Relation to society (individual to society 1 way) presentation or gender expression of self to the world as a being which has some gendered sexuality which needs to be unquestioningly accepted.
Relation of [society] to [relation of {self} to {self as object}] (1 way- other direction from the above) expectations of gender as matching to sex, gender norms, oppression and sexism
Progression of self-formation and realisation of ideal self (as far as possible) through key stages of development (physical and mental hand in hand):
Age 2-3: recognition of bodily sex differences, understanding that girls and boys have different bodies in obvious external ways. Inconsequential apart from toiletting but toddler masturbation is part of this process of self-realisation and should not be misinterpreted as a sexual act but an act of bodily discovery like any other (babies are scared of their own limbs before the realisation that they belong to them and then that they can use them to do stuff)
Age 5-7 first crush (recognition of self as object with sexual content but without maturity to articulate meaning of this objective self). Adult language is borrowed, same sex attraction is not an indicator of sexuality as attraction can be to those who typify and embody the ideal self (role modelling) or towards those who will later become objects of attraction as objects in relation to ourselves as objects.
Children develop a distinct individual personality by around the age of 7 and it is unlikely to change in its fundamental aspects after that point. This is vital for the recognition and diagnosis of gender dysphoria as signs may emerge at this stage that should not go unnoted; counselling and guidance will be needed in making decisions about the best part of the self-self relation to address and the best method of addressing it in order to fix any mismatching of subject, object and self-relation.
Age 8-11: Emergence of nakedness and body shame - part social (preparation for puberty, tweenager years) part biological (recognition of self as sexual object and sexuality as private aspect of self to be acknowledged in order to establish healthy sexual expression through puberty). Individual privacy is vital at this stage and fear of the other as a sexual object is pronounced so exposure to sexualisation is extremely damaging to mental wellbeing and development at this age.
Puberty: acknowledgement of self as sexual object develops its relationship to society, self, and other as sexual objects and modes of self expression. Sexuality emerges although may change throughout pubescent process.
My gender identity is MY business and no one elses, even if they want to fuck me. Only my body identity matters then as a necessary condition of matching to sexual orientation of the other. I have a right to the freedom of expression such that I can outwardly project my inner sense of self and have that validated in polite society but it should not invite further comment. Thus Intersectional Feminism is concerned with the right to freedom of expression and the right to freedom of choice. This is a genuine feminist concern.
We can (and should) label a whole bunch of different sexualities as undeniable and unchangeable descriptive identity labels from the differing combinations of bodiedness, gendered self-relation, gendered other-relation (to an individual as gendered), other bodiedness (to individual as sexed). We cannot deny (feminists) that my self-identity as gendered is irrelevant to my sexual orientation because a) Iran is bad and b) avatar or brain in a jar. We cannot deny (intersectional feminists) that bodiedness of the other is relevant to my sexual orientation because it affects the relation between the self as an object and the other as an object, and base as that sounds that is how we fuck each other. Fucking each other is important.
We CAN deny the relevance of the gendered identity of the other, but not of the self, since the gendered presentation of the other is self-relational to them only so does not impact on us at all (this is what makes the enforcement or expectation of expression as feminine or masculine oppressive) other than to conform or not conform to the preferences we have about social ideas of genderedness (which is sexism and thus bad) or to preferences of interpersonal presentation which is about personality and personal appearance which are of course just about interpersonal compatibility. That I fancy feminine women is not a requirement for all women to be feminine, only a personal preference of what constitutes attractiveness in another to me.
We currently have only 4 sexuality labels on the basis of two variables, but if we acknowledge the reality of genderedness as a part of personal identity not dictated by biological sex but by a relation of the self in the world to the sex of the body and our ideation of the self as an embodied sexual being, we can see that we in fact need to identify and label 9 sexuality identities since there are in fact 3 variables, the sex of the self, the gender of the self and the sex of the other. Sexuality does not dictate the gender of the other since that is a personal preference which is not related to the biology of the self, only on the attractiveness preferences and wherever they come from is nuture and not nature based.
self body sex gender id sexed body of other sexuality label
M M M cis-gay man
F M M trans-gay man
M F M trans-hetero woman
F F M cis-het woman
M M F cis-het man
F M F trans-het man
M F F trans-gay woman
F F F Lesbian (cis-gay woman)
any any F/M bisexual
The word ‘cis’ has a meaningful use when discussing sexuality identity and within Intersectional Feminism.
It has no use in Radical Feminism because there are only references to biological women in that scope of concern so there is no need to specify within the framework of Radical Feminism that biological women are cis-gendered. This is only relevant in the predefined scope of Intersectional Feminism.
The word ‘cis’ is useful and the word ‘trans’ is irrelevant in Intersectional Feminism, since in this set all women share a gender identity (that is what “intersects”) but they do not all share female bodiedness, so ‘cis’ women are a subset of ‘women’ under this identified scope.
Importantly, the rights of trans men are to be rightly considered among the scope of Radical Feminism since they are female bodied, but not under Intersectional Feminism since they are not female gendered.
All the arguments between Transgender Activists and Radical Feminists arise SIMPLY from the confusion of not identifying the scope of argument before assuming shared definitions.
Within Intersectional Feminism AS A SCOPE, the definitions of trans activism make perfect sense and the phrase “trans women are women” is expressive of a truth within the scope.
Within Radical Feminism AS A SCOPE, the definitions of trans activism make no fuckin sense at all and the phrase “trans women are women’ is simply non-factual.
Always identify your scope and definitions before you start arguing!
As happens, social gender norms are a bullshit problem common to both types of feminism so that’s nice. These issues are important to address and a common fight of both brands of Feminism is the enforcement of gender norms onto children. If you don’t have children you may not know how all-encompassing genderedness is to children’s lives, but it is inescapable and damaging as it denies the child authenticity in the natural emergence of the outward expression of the inner self and that is correctly termed abuse.
Radical Feminists need to accept that transgenderism is real, that gender is real and that when we talk about gender we are referring to something OTHER than the oppressive social norms of female and male role-expectations.
Intersectional Feminists need to accept that there is still a pressing and practical need for a women’s rights movement that is based entirely on sex and not on gender and that the needs and priorities of those rights and oppressions are simply more important and have more at stake, and a wider impact on the population, they are more widespread, affect more people and endanger more lives and freedoms than the issues of Intersectional Feminism.
Intersectional feminists have a duty through their empathy rather than any identity with the sex based oppression of women to stand as allies to that sex based oppression. Intersectional Feminists should be the greatest allies of the Radical Feminist cause.
Radical feminists are already allied to the cause of eradicating gender norms in society (especially aimed at children) and to the cause of allowing gender identity and expression to be freely chosen and expressed without any threat of harm.
Intersectional feminists need to understand and appreciate that and find ways of standing for and fighting with Radical Feminists for those social solutions that can keep everyone safe from harm and not prioritise the self-validation and acceptance of trans women as being gendered in the same way as biological women can be (which is still a genuine concern) over the personal safety of women as determined by Radical Feminism, based on their biological sex.
It is necessary for a real understanding of gender, in terms of Intersectional Feminism, to distinguish between gender as enforced and gender as chosen.
Since the words Female, Feminism and Femininity are all etymologically related, it is easy to conflate the sources of oppression and their relatedness to different substantial and relational aspects of the self as “woman” and this conflation is where the argument comes from.
Feminism can be segmented in such a way that all oppressions are addressed and there are overlaps between types of oppression and their sources as well as important distinctions that need to be made.
Intersectional Feminism may arguably the wrong term for trans feminism to use but that doesn’t make transfeminism not about women, but transfeminism is about women as a gender and not about women as a sex so the lines need to be drawn between what are FEMALE issues and what are GENDER issues. Recently, Radical Feminism has been labelled “Vagina Feminism”, in which case what is usually called Intersectional Feminism would be rightly called “Gender Feminism”, but since Intersectional Feminism can be identified as concerned by the gender identity shared by all women and the rights related to that freedom of expression it seems acceptable to allow the term to continue. Radical Feminism is concerned with a different intersectional aspect of womanhood which is biological but it seems unimportant to distinguish in Radical Feminism that this quality intersects different ages, classes and races of biological women since that is tautological so I would argue that acceptance of the names given to each brand of feminism are not insufficient to distinguish between them, on the understanding that the scope of each dictates different definitions and identifying factors of femaleness that do not always overlap.
Gender Dysphoria
Gender Dysphoria is a real thing. People who do not have gender dysphoria should not call themselves transgender, some of those guys are just sexist - not for being feminine or masculine but for advocating that femininity and masculinity are in some real way connected to being female or male which is of course not the case. Being feminine does not make you a woman, but if we accept the terms of Intersectional Feminism that ones gender identity makes you a woman or a man, we must dictate that when gender identity does not match the inner sense of self as gendered that is the qualifying factor for both trans identity in terms of Radical Feminism, female identity in Intersectional Feminist terms and Gender Dysphoria in medical terms.
Even having a relational self identification as female with a male body does not imply that one must adhere to the false insistence of gender roles as socially factual, however it makes perfect sense that trans people DO this in practicality since they are not presented with any real option of self-expression until the gender norms are eradicated and it becomes normal to both accept the embodiedness of sex and the non-embodiedness of gender identity, if the self-relation is the thing that can be addressed without recourse to physical bodily changes.
The eradication of the gender expectations of society is one of the primary aims of all feminism and one that trans women and cis women should be fighting together. This can be a BRAND of feminism whereby a certain type of gender intersectionality can be acknowledged, this does not have any implications for Radical Feminism that is sex-based. It is rightly called “Intersectional Feminism’ then since it is about gender identity and not sex.
Brands of feminism:
BAME feminism (BLM etc)
Intersectional Feminism (gender based oppression and freedom of expression without risk to personal safety) “gender feminism”
Lesbian feminism (sexuality based)
1st wave feminism (Political presence - Saudi Arabia)
2nd wave feminism (Social presence - 3rd world)
3rd wave feminism (Gender eradication - 1st world)
Radical Feminism (Sex based oppression and freedom from personal harm) “Vagina feminism”
Vampire feminism (not really)
One issue that arises is that in political terms, the issues of Radical Feminism are of a far more pressing concern to a far greater number of people in any given country than the concerns of Intersectional Feminism. On these grounds, women’s issues as defined politically should be primarily concerned with the issues of Radical Feminism and political representation of women’s rights should come from Radical Feminism on the whole. That is not to say that the concerns of Intersectional Feminism are not politically grounded or relevant, only that they should be clearly distinguished and represented separately under a banner of gender discrimination rather than sex discrimination. Representatives of women’s rights in a political sphere need to be biologically female and representatives of Intersectional Feminism should rightly be female gendered people, it is arguably better represented by someone who is female gendered but male bodied since they are the key oppressed group among Intersectional Feminists since the rights of female bodied women are already represented in part by representation of Radical Feminism.
Quiz!
Do the following issues relate to Sex (protection from personal harm or disadvantage), Gender Identity (freedom to choose and freedom to express) or Gender Norms (sexist bullshit that we should try and eradicate together)
Safe Spaces
Domestic Violence policing and legislation
Rape and sexual violence (non-domestic)
Employment based reproductive rights (and discrimination on the basis of)
Employment based roles (and expectations and discrimination on the basis of)
Housing discrimination
Sexuality and Sexual preferences - labels and permissibility
Reproductive rights and healthcare
Gender Dysphoria in children and adolescents
GRA and The Equality Act
Socialisation of children
Identity education in schools
Sex and development education in schools
Sex segregation in sports
Pornography, Prostitution and Objectification
gender stereotyping - clothing and appearance, passing
gender stereotyping - societal roles and domestic servitude
privacy and personal safety
Capitalism, advertising, media and Socialism
Evolutionary bias towards social role labelling as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’
Intersectional Feminism seems to have a very limited scope of what it requires - the recognition, diagnosis and treatment of Gender Dysphoria and the threat to personal safety and privacy that arises from social norms that try to disallow gender nonconformism and thus aim to limit authentic gender identity expression to those acceptable norms (ie Iran, bullying, ridicule, violence)
There is some overlap between Intersectional (gender based) Feminism and Radical (sex based) Feminism regarding privacy and personal safety, however although there are common and overlapping sources of threat (ie cis men) there are still key similarities and differences between cis men and trans women and trans women and cis women.
A plethora of issues arise, which has been exacerbated by the violent threats to radical feminists from trans women and their allies. The differences exist on the same basis as the terms cis and trans are helpful.
The obvious solutions to the current heated and often abusive debate are as follows:
Recognition of the differences in scope between Radical and Intersectional Feminism
Political representation proportional to the population of the concerns of each type of feminism
Understanding of the definitions that differ between different types of feminism and where they arise from
Understanding the difference between gender as a form of expression to be freely chosen by an individual as an expression of their gender identity, defined as that relation between the inner self and the self as presented to the world outwardly based on sexuality including that sexuality which is self-related and not just other-related.
Acknowledgement of the overlapping concerns of Intersectional and Radical Feminism, primarily the enforcement of gender stereotypes by society that infringe on the freedom to self-express in an authentic way, especially as regards children.
This framework is robust enough to account for all concerns and requires concessions on both sides. I am entirely sick of arguing about this now and I will not blog again on the subject unless I am shown to be ostensibly incorrect in any of my assertions. Bring it.
Psara out.
Comments
Post a Comment