[John Riley]

It doesn't take a lot of effort for one to ignore First Things. It does take some effort to be listed among its contributors.

It takes dignity and self-respect to not want to be listed among its contributors.

[Mark McDonnell]

It is entirely unsurprising that a movement devoted to reviving the religious right's anti-gay rhetoric from the 90s and early 00s, only now applied to trans folk, would be in bed with (and funded by) the religious right.

Hate's hate, even when its proponents call themselves "feminists" for the cultural cachet.

Hi Aaron,

It is tempting, and often with good reason, to blame the right for everything. But it does seem that a not insignificant strain of feminist thought is, for various reasons, uncomfortable with the idea of self-identifying transgender women being classed as 'real' women in the same full legal sense as those who were biologically born, and have lived all their lives, as women. You may not agree with them, I may not agree with them, but in their case it doesn't seem to be about right wing or religious bigotry and it seems simplistic to dismiss it as 'hate'. And if it is simply hate, what reasons do you see for it? The religious right had the 'justification' of scripture for their anti-gay rhetoric; what are the roots, in your view, of feminist 'hate' for trans people, if that's what it is?

I don't think the writers at the 'Trouble and Strife' website I linked to, an offshoot of the feminist journal of the same name formed in 1983, could be described as "calling themselves "feminists" for the cultural cache" and I doubt they are funded by the religious right.

https://www.troubleandstrife.org/new...re-killing-me/

Similarly, Julie Bindel, longtime feminist campaigner and 'co-founder of the law-reform group Justice for Women, which since 1991 has helped women who have been prosecuted for killing violent male partners'. (wikipedia)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Bindel

Or indeed Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch and one of the most influential feminist voices of the 20th century.

Here's British comedian and writer Jo Brand trying to pour some oil on these troubled waters.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...greer-feminism

[Aaron Novick]

It's actually not even a little simplistic to dismiss it as hate.

[Aaron Novick]

You may find this useful, Mark: https://majesticequality.wordpress.c...nism-is-bogus/

[John Riley]

I know it's tempting, and often with good reason, to blame the right for everything. But it is a fact that a not insignificant strain of feminist thought is, for various reasons, uncomfortable with the idea of self-identifying transgender women being classed as 'real' women in the same full legal sense as those who were biologically born, and have lived all their lives, as women. You may not agree with them, I may not agree with them, but it has nothing to do with right wing or religious bigotry and it seems simplistic to dismiss it as 'hate'.

But Mark, it's the oldest trick in the book for the condemnatory right to use legitimate debates among people who do not wish harm to one another as a beard to hide behind as they go about trying to outlaw and punish beliefs and behaviors they are incapable of accepting. It is playing the right's game to mix them up. Religious organizations played a huge role in creating the societies feminism has been working to change for decades. The religious right would like to erase feminism and replace it with the male-centered society of yesterday, and they would certainly like to make the transgender movement vanish from the earth. They do not care about the well-being of transgender people. They just want them to go back into their holes. I don't think that's true of the vast majority of feminists. It is unfair to feminist critics of transgender rights to color them with the same brush.

Feminists are having a discussion about where transgender women fit. It is a necessary discussion. The religious right wants to bury transgender women, and feminists, in a hole and bury them. It's important to not confuse which is which.

[James Brancheau]

A little middle of the road, Mark. Love ya just the same.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hONtmFgh3IQ

[Mark McDonnell]

The religious right would like to erase feminism and replace it with the male-centered society of yesterday, and they would certainly like to make the transgender movement vanish from the earth. They do not care about the well-being of transgender people. They just want them to go back into their holes. I don't think that's true of the vast majority of feminists. It is unfair to feminist critics of transgender rights to color them with the same brush

Hey John,

Obviously the point I'm making isn't coming across. I agree with all of this, and the last sentence is exactly the point I was making to Aaron. Let me recap what I've said:

In my first post (post #8) I recognised the First Things article as religiously inspired bigotry, however disguised it attempted to be. But I was interested to hear people's thoughts on some of the feminist critiques of the transgender movement. Just interested -- in a 'General Talk' sort of way.

Aaron then said, or strongly implied, that those voices aren't real feminists but are just people in the pay of the religious right. (post #12)

I responded to this by naming some actual people who, by anyone's definition, clearly are real feminists and do have some issues with aspects of the transgender movement which, whatever one might think of them, can't be said to be inspired by right-wing or religious bigotry.
(post #22)

Aaron then said that it's still just hate, and posted a really long article that I might find useful (not 'interesting' or 'informative' but 'useful' — slightly patronising that). I've read a bit. The writer takes a long time to make a point, but I will read it. (post #23, 24)

James sent me a great Pretenders song and made a gnomic comment. Love you too James.


Fwiw I sincerely hope that we can reach a point in society where trans people, along with everyone else, are able to live their lives happily and without prejudice or harassment. That really shouldn't need saying, but there you go.

[Aaron Novick]

Mark, were the suffragettes—historically important and really feminist as they were—not hateful when they were racist against black women?

Assuming that we can agree that they were, surely we can also agree that the historically important feminists who are transphobic are, insofar as they are transphobic, hateful.

Regardless, my claim was not that today's "gender critical" feminists are inspired by or derive from the religious right. I said they're in bed with them (clearly true) and borrow their rhetoric (equally clearly true).

Your first post expressed surprise that this should be so. My point is simply that this isn't surprising, since both are motivated by hatred of trans people. The enemy of my enemy and all. I'm not denying that this hatred has different sources in the two cases.

My point about cultural cachet was a response to the fact that a lot of folks who never gave a rat's ass about feminism, but who do love them some hating trans people, have suddenly become "feminists" now that they realize that it gives them a "woke" outlet for their hatred.

[Mark McDonnell]

I dunno, Aaron. No doubt there are plenty of bigots who are using 'feminism' as a convenient cover for simple, ugly bigotry. But I don't think 'transphobic' and 'hate' are the right words for some particular feminist points of view. Transphobia suggests a hatred of transgender people in and of themselves and I don't know that that's what is happening here. I think it runs more like this:
'I appreciate that although you were born biologically male, at some point you began to feel you were in the wrong body. I can appreciate and accept your deep and sincere belief that your true identity is that of a woman, that you live your life as a woman and that you may (or may not) at some point take surgical steps to transform yourself physically. However, I can't reconcile with your insistence that you are and always have been a woman in exactly the same way and to the same degree that I am, because you have not experienced the reality of womanhood in a male dominated society that I have. I am a woman, you are a transgender woman, and, while your existence and identity is absolutely valid, those are not the same thing'.
If anything, the essence of this is less transphobia than the suspicion of men that radical feminists are often accused of: they see this not as more women coming into the fold but as men claiming their territory. I'm sorry, but I can kind of understand this. I'm not saying they're right, but I reserve the right to be thinking about it.

The first website I linked to puts it like this. Read the whole thing, it might be useful. This doesn't read to me like someone filled with hate:

So, if feminist questions about gender identity are not a denial of trans people’s existence, or, indeed, their moral acceptability, what else might this ‘denial’ consist of? The complexity of the issues here can be condensed into the question of whether a woman is willing to accept the axiom that ‘trans women are women’. And while trans activists claim to push gender ‘beyond the binary,’ it is notable that this axiom exists only in relation to its absolute negation, that is, to the statement ‘trans women are not women’ or indeed, ‘trans women are men.’ When asked, as one often is these days, whether one believes that ‘trans women are women,’ the answer can only be ‘yes’ or ‘no’. One cannot respond, as many women would want to, ‘well, the answer to this question is both yes and no’.

Undergirded by an appeal to boy-brains and girl-brains, trans ideology’s core commitment is that a person’s gender is nothing other than their gender identity. Gender resides entirely in an individual’s private experience of ‘feeling like’ a man or a woman, and therefore, if an individual declares that they feel like a woman, then they are a woman, and moreover have always been a woman, in exactly the same way as non-trans women have always been women. From a feminist perspective what is lost in this account is the entire structure of gender as a system of oppression, a system which functions by identifying a person’s reproductive potential and then socializing women to fulfil the role of a member of the reproductive class. For many non-trans women the idea that the essence of being a woman resides in ‘feeling like’ a woman, is not so much wrong as incomprehensible. Our experience of womanhood is not an internal feeling, but a lifelong process of being subjected to – and revolting against – very specific social sanctions and expectations. Be quiet. Look pretty. Make yourself small. Smile. Don’t be too demanding. Accommodate other people.

When feminists raise these points, we are sometimes accused of indulging in ‘academic’ debates when other people’s lives are at stake, as if the constricting of female persons by patriarchy was somehow not about people’s lives. But this debate is not academic for anyone involved. For both trans and non-trans women, what is at stake is the ability to understand themselves in a way that makes their lives livable. For feminist women, the axiom ‘trans women are women,’ when understood to mean ‘womanhood is gender identity and hence, trans women are women in exactly the same way as non-trans women are women’ is experienced as an extreme erasure of the way our being-as-women is marked by a system of patriarchal violence that aims to control our sexed bodies.

This system of patriarchal violence also marks the lives of trans women, who are indubitably victims of the kinds of male violence feminists have spent years attempting to resist. To cast certain feminists as the principal threat to trans existence, it is therefore necessary for trans-ideology to sideline the patriarchal violence that affects both women and trans people, and instead, position feminists at the apex of a structure of oppression.

Anyway. Peace and love to all. Night night.

[James Brancheau]

Gnomic- ha, thank God. I've expressed about all I wanna express, over a span of threads. Cheers, Mark, and everyone else. Hopefully I'll start addressing my own work very soon. It is a damn good song, isn't it?

Note: Deleted much of the above. Just kinda want to move on.