Renee, Alison, Ann, and All,

Like many of you, I’m in the midst of grading final exams and final
papers.  Due to time constraints my comments here will be more brief than
might be ideal.

First, I feel as if I must reply to Renee on at least one issue that seems
quite personal given this public forum, but I don’t feel that I can ignore
certain comments.  Renee stated (in regards to myself), “I think defining
oneself around a social construct and making that construct the most
salient thing about you actually shows a deep paradigmatic
misunderstanding of gender as feminist analysis understands it.” This
comment seems very presumptuous and even condescending.  I assure you,
Renee, if you knew me at all, you wouldn’t feel comfortable making such
claims.  Of course, my identity is as complicated and interesting as your
own. Have I chosen to meld part of my identity to a social
construction?....Sure. As have most of us.  Attaching one’s sense of self
to the identities of woman, man, athlete, feminist, white, liberal,
conservative, democrat, republican …is relevantly similar.

There are a number of interesting issues that have surfaced in the last
few emails….Here are a few comments.

In the last few emails (in this thread) there have been references to the
“transmovement” or the “Trans-world” or “trans-ideology.”  Such talk
reminds me of the joke of a few years ago about the “Gay-Agenda.”  The
joke identified the “Gay Agenda” as having to do with “drinking mimosas at
Sunday Brunch….grooming small dogs….and catching the sales at Macy’s.” 
The point was not to perpetuate stereotypes of gay men, but to poke fun at
those who spoke of the “Gay Agenda” as some powerful homogeneous movement
that had a common goal or strategy.   Similarly, there is no one
“Trans-ideology” or “Trans-movement.”  There are, however, a number of
trans-rights groups, trans-education groups, outspoken trans-individuals
and theorists who write on trans related issues.  If one is to disagree
with any viewpoint expressed by a trans-rights organization or a
transperson, it seems only fair to identify that person/organization by
name.  No one person or organization speaks for all transpersons.

One thing that I so appreciate about feminist communities is that, while
individuals may disagree with regards to certain fine theoretical points
of feminist theory, the grass-roots character of the movement is never too
distant.  That is, feminism remains to be about the actual lives of women,
and the harms that come from subordination, objectification, sexualized
violence... etc. Those who disagree with regard to theory do, from my
experience, come together and prioritize these real life issues.  Here is
my worry: that when one focuses on theoretical issues of gender theory or
trans-theory, or on the views of one transperson, the grave harms that
transpersons are subject to in this society get lost and go
unacknowledged.  I spend the bulk of my professional life involved in
researching and discussing theory, but I spend a great deal of my personal
energies on a more grass roots level.  This involves talking to other
tranpersons about how to keep oneself safe from violence, how to avoid
losing one’s job, how to deal with the psychological establishment, etc. 
It is difficult for some transpersons to participate in society (even at a
minimal level) without feeling constantly in danger of violence.  This is
real.  The intersections between trans-rights and feminism are obvious to
me.   Feminist theory can help explain why a transman is raped to be
“shown a lesson” that he is “really a woman,” or why a transwoman might
suffer harassment (or worse) when she is read as a woman by others, or,
(paradoxically) if she is identified as trans.  Similarly, understanding
why “sissy boys” and “butchy girls” are harassed by schoolmates involves a
propagation of certain myths regarding the nature of boyhood or girlhood. 
Yes, of course, there are many such examples of how a feminist perspective
explains such experiences.

A post from Renee asked what I mean when I said that I had “crossed the
great gender divide.”  I meant these words to refer to the fact that I am
a post-transition female-to-male transsexual.  Perhaps this was not
understood.  I transitioned at age 41, after decades of identifying as a
feminist. I’m not sure how big a box I need to stand on to show you that
feminist transmen exist. (This is a joke…I’m quite short in stature, but
the image works.)  Do I reference my publications? The content of my
lectures?  My life history? Write a manifesto? Or explain how now,
post-transition, I can tell my students (in both philosophy and women’s
studies) that, as a man, I’m less frequently interrupted, that my
competence (particularly of what might be seen as “male subject matter”)
is less questioned, and that, yes, I have been the recipient of male
privilege by those who don’t know the details of my history.  As a
philosopher who happens to be trans, I recognize that any explanations of
my trans-identity are speculative and theoretical, it is my life
experiences that are not. Your view, Renee, doesn’t seem to allow the
experiences of transpersons to have any voice at all, and this to me, is
not just anti-feminist, but deeply disrespectful.

Loren.


> Ann and Loren, et al;
>
> I wanted to address what you have shared and I wanted to respond rather
> specifically why I feel the trans movement as it understands and
> constructs
> itself is antithetical to feminism. Ann, I may have made blanket
> statements
> but I haven't seen any exceptions to what I said and therefore I am pretty
> comfortable what I said.
>
> First of all, I don't think feminism is all that diverse. I think there
> are
> people who call themselves feminists who diverge from it and this
> divergence
> is one on of the major reasons why feminism has come to so politically
> ineffectual. In my own experience, I became a radical because I came to
> see
> major problems in liberal feminism.
>
> But I wanted to focus on why feminists should take issue with trans
> ideology
> and what the problems are. One of the most serious anti-feminisms in trans
> ideology is the treatment of gender as a noun, as if gender is a natural
> entity and gender is something someone has. I'd submit that gender is a
> verb
> because it's a social and perceptual process. People simply behave.
> Observers gender(verb) the behavior and in doing so behaviors that are
> gendered are compared to prescriptions and norms. These behaviors are held
> in place by the insistence that gender is real and occurs in a nativistic
> fashion. Out of these constructions women are seen as being inferior to
> men
> because of supposed pre-social determinants of gender (as a noun).
>
> "I have never heard one remark that could be considered anti-feminist. I
> have had numerous heart-felt conversations with trans-women who, while
> celebrating the physical changes of transition are finding just how
> precipitous a plunge they have taken in terms of social privilege.
> Transmen, like myself, have our own experiences of crossing the great
> gender
> divide."
>
> What gender divide? Feminism sees two gendered (verb) classes of people.
> What divide are you referring to? What kind of Being are you proposing
> that
> this divide has?
>
> "Of course, whether one physically transitions or transgresses gender in
> other ways, one can barely help but consider the very difficult questions
> of
> what gender means in our society, the strengths and weaknesses of
> essentialist views, and how the psychological establishment holds a
> dominant
> position in our quest to be ourselves and to be understood by others as
> such."
>
>>From a feminist perspective, gender is a system of privations imposed
>> upon
> women (verb statement). It is not mysterious and its meaning is pretty
> clear. It manifests itself in terms of women making seventy cents to the
> male dollar, and eighty three percent of congress being men. It manifests
> itself in terms of the deep hatreds unleashed on Hillary Clinton during
> this
> election. Gender mean no women CEOs in the fortune fifty and two percent
> of
> the fortune 500 have women CEOs. That's the "great gender divide" as
> feminists understand it. Feminist analysis doesn't mystify gender - the
> trans movement does. What strengths in essentialists views? To borrow one
> of
> the most succinct quotes, "Essentialism and feminism cannot occupy the
> same
> space."
>
> "I would hope that this would be an opportunity to have these groups work
> together as opposed to having some groups (those who identify as B, L or
> G) distance themselves from the concerns of transpersons for fear of some
> kind of political contamination."
>
> I think defining oneself around a social construct and making that
> construct
> the most salient thing about you actually shows a deep paradigmatic
> misunderstanding of gender as feminist analysis understands it.  For me
> personally, I don't want to work with people who propagate these
> understandings and who have internalized trans-culture. I'm not worried
> about contamination, I worry about what trans ideology does to UNDO
> feminism
> and to situate women. We've see the phrase "gender variant". Such a term
> implies gender norms which is exactly what feminists want to eradicate.
>
> What I see is that trans-ideology is a set of distortions and unsupported
> declarations. It also is an extremely coercive movement. If I do not
> accept
> husbands and father as women, then I am transphobic. I don't accept
> husbands
> and fathers as women because women aren't husbands or fathers. The
> trans-movement presents a demand, that I pretend that I do see them as
> women. Along with that is a demand that my experience be trumped by
> someone
> else's voluntary life choices. I am supposed to relate to these people as
> if
> I accept them in a wholly undiscerning manner, as if they are all the same
> and as if they have the same degree of credibility. I do not think they
> do.
> I think some have quite a bit of credibility and other have very little.
> That's the politically homogenizing function of the trans umbrella.  If I
> voice that, the consequences are dire and punitive. To be honest, after
> looking at this, I've concluded that transphobia is a set of valid
> feelings
> and people are punished for having those feelings. But saying that takes
> enormous courage. Why should I fear saying, "this is what my experience
> is."?
> I am supposed to accept people with penises as women and pretend that they
> do not have penises. If I do not play the game, again the social
> consequences are dire. It's next to impossible for feminists to publish
> critiques of the trans movement. In these manners, feminist women are
> being
> silenced. It feels like the 1950's and the McCarthy era.
>
> Trans-ideology seems very twisted to me because of the placement of the
> "alter of gender" (noun as used by the movement). It doesn't have to be.
> People don't have to be constructed as natural objects who are
> pre-socially
> determined by "brain sex". Radical feminism has done a huge amount of work
> to unravel constructions around gender. Trans-world is busy re-tangling
> them. It isn't about contamination, it's very much about a reification of
> deeply rooted constructions providing patriarchy with its most bedrock
> justifications for the systematic oppression of women and treatment of
> gender as a noun and as if gender is some/thing that someone contains or
> conversely is contained in. It's also about a culture that has inherited
> from transvestites and crossdressers.
>
> Often people who are opposed to the trans movement speak for individuals
> constructing strawmen and then arguing against the strawmen. I hope I
> don't
> do that because I feel that there is enough wrong with the ideology that I
> don't have to.
>
> Ann, you mentioned transfeminism. What I have seen has either been pro-sex
> feminism which supports pornography and the prostitution of women or has a
> centrality in trans-issues. When feminism is seen as human rights movement
> perhaps it fits but when feminism is seen appropriately as a political
> movement addressing the material concerns of women, trans feminism just
> doesn't have much in common with feminism and I would assert is actually
> frequently at odds with it. I have seen a little of Julia Serano's writing
> which is essentialistic and again begins with a declaration, "I am a
> woman".
> There is never a statement of what constitutes this individual with male
> anatomy as a woman. Is she saying, "I am this kind of object"? Then there
> is
> the use of 'trans misogyny". Looking at the roots of misogyny, I
> understand
> it to apply to people with vaginas. However Serano is treated, I wouldn't
> think the word is applicable and that looks like yet another linguistic
> distortion and begging of the question. I have never seen transfeminism
> address choice or equal pay for women. On the other hand I have often seen
> many of the arguments employed by the men's rights movement against women
> in
> the form of "women do it too."
>
> I think there are places where these people could make contributions.
> There
> has to be a linkages between identity (not "identify as" but identity),
> epistemology and gendered standpoints.  But in order to look at these
> phenomenon, one would have to read and understand feminism in significant
> depth. I've never really seen that occur in a trans-identified person. One
> would have to see that ALL of our identities are constructed and that most
> people's identities are validated by patriarchy. The trans movement is not
> looking at such issues or asking such questions.
>
> It is for these reason that I'd say that the trans movement is not a
> friend
> to women.
>
> renee
>