Radical Feminism is not gender essentialism

[TC]

This blog post is not perfect of course but I thought it would be a good way to start a discussion on the false accusation of gender essentialism levied against radical feminists (which is of course itself a contestable term).


The most common criticism of radical feminist theory is that we are gender essentialist because we believe that women’s oppression, as a class, is because of the biological realities of our bodies. Radical feminists define sex as the physical body, whilst gender is a social construct. It is not a function of our biology. It is the consequence of being labelled male/female at birth and assigned to the oppressor/sex class. The minute genetic differences are not reflected in the reality of women’s lived experiences. Gender is the coercive process of socialisation built upon a material reality that constructs women as a subordinate class to men. As such, radical feminists do not want to queer gender or create a spectrum of gendered identities; we want to end the hierarchical power structure that privileges men as a class at the expense of women’s health and safety.

This assumption is based on a misunderstanding of radical feminist theory, that starts from the definition of “radical” itself, which refers to the root or the origin: that is to say, the oppression of women by men (The Patriarchy). It is radical insofar as it contextualises the root of women’s oppression in the biological realities of our bodies (sex) and seeks the liberation of women through the eradication of social structures, cultural practises and laws that are predicated on women’s inferiority to men (gender).

Radical feminism challenges all relationships of power that exist within the Patriarchy including capitalism, imperialism, racism, classism, homophobia and even the fashion-beauty complex because they are harmful to everyone: female, male, intersex and trans*...

Radical feminists do not believe there are any innate gender differences, or in the existence of male/female brains. Women are not naturally more nurturing than men and men are not better at maths and reading maps. Men are only “men” insofar as male humans are socialised into specific characteristics that we label male, such as intelligence, aggression, and violence and woman are “woman” because we are socialised into believing that we are more nurturing, empathetic, and caring than men.

Women’s oppression as a class is built on two interconnected constructs: reproductive capability and sexual capability. In the words of Gerda Lerner in The Creation of Patriarchy, the commodification of women’s sexual and reproductive capacities is the foundation of the creation of private property and a class-based society. Without the commodification of women’s labour there would be no unequal hierarchy of power between men and women, fundamental to the creation and continuation of the Capitalist-Patriarchy, and, therefore, no need for gender as a social construct.

Radical feminism recognises the multiple oppressions of individual women, whilst recognising the oppression of women as a class in the Marxist sense of the term. Rape does not require every woman to be raped to function as a punishment and a deterrent from speaking out. The threat therein is enough. Equally, the infertility of an individual woman does not negate the fact that her oppression is based on the assumed potential (and desire) for pregnancy, which is best seen in discussions of women’s employment and men’s refusal to hire women during “child-bearing” years due to the potential for pregnancy, which is used as a way of controlling women’s labour: keeping women in low-paying jobs and maintaining the glass ceiling. Constructing women as “nurturers” maintains the systemic oppression of women and retains wealth and power within men as a class.


Continues here: http://www.feministtimes.com/the-problem-is-capitalist-patriarchy-socialising-boys-to-be-aggressive-not-radical-feminism/

Thoughts, criticisms, opinions, elaborations, etc?

[motion denied]

Since when are women a class?

[Redistribute the Rep]

class
klas/
noun
1.
a set or category of things having some property or attribute in common and differentiated from others by kind, type, or quality.
"the accommodations were good for a hotel of this class"
synonyms: category, grade, rating, classification, group, grouping, kind, sort, type, variety, genre, brand;
species, genus, breed, strain, stripe
BIOLOGY
a principal taxonomic grouping that ranks above order and below phylum or division, such as Mammalia or Insecta.

2.
the system of ordering a society in which people are divided into sets based on perceived social or economic status.
"people who are socially disenfranchised by class"
synonyms: social division, social stratum, rank, level, echelon, group, grouping, income group; More

[jake williams]

I wouldn't identify as a radical feminist, but the core argument here (that the accusation of "gender essentialism" levied against rad feminism as a whole is definitely false, and that the insistence on rigorous materialism wrt gender practiced by a tendency, possibly dominant, within rad feminism, is actually the opposite of gender essentialism) is definitely correct. That's not to say that there are not people who identify as "radical feminists" who do buy into some weird metaphysics of gender, but nowhere near on the scale of the hipster pomo bullshit which still seems to be hip in universities.

And to be frank, while we're being politically incorrect (which rad feminism seems to have become), given that feminist academia seems to have sold feminist radicalism down the road for the sake of their collective academic career, I have enormous respect for folks keeping at it.


Re: "women as a class", the social relations of exploitation within the home (so to speak) are different than those outside it, which means that women aren't a "marxist class", but given the whole point of the theory is to make the distinction, it's not really a fair criticism.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

A significant number of self-identified radical feminists are sex/gender essentialists, and engage in hate campaigns against trans women. They're more often referred to as trans exclusive radical feminists (TERFs) now, to distinguish them from pro-trans radical feminists, even though TERFs hate that label.

[synthesis]

This blog post is not perfect of course but I thought it would be a good way to start a discussion on the false accusation of gender essentialism levied against radical feminists (which is of course itself a contestable term).

Are you saying that "radical feminism" is a contestable term? If so, how is it contestable?

[BIXX]

Now, I've never met a radical feminist who wasn't aligned with TERFs and the like, however this may be because the TERFs drive people away from using the term.

I would like to know more about radical feminism but I've always been under the impression that radfems had extremely oppressive views towards trans folks, among other problems. However these problems may not be there, I guess. I suppose I ought to get back into researching radical feminism.

[consuming negativity]

I've always made a distinction between radical and revolutionary feminism. The majority of radical (or liberal) feminists I meet face-to-face are just as ignorant as everybody else about everything except women's issues, and even then they're only ever as anti-capitalist as supporting Whole Foods and fair trade goods (see: they aren't anti-capitalist)... so they're still pretty ignorant about that, too.

I guess my bias here is that I find it annoying how someone could be so selectively blind as to recognize all of the rampant bullshit levied against women & non-gender conforming persons but not go 2mm further and see how intimately it's linked to the capitalist mode of production. I suppose it makes sense in the context that a woman can be born into money/class and be well aware of how maligned femininity is while remaining blissfully unaware of how being white and middle class are also factors influencing her life because they're only influencing it positively. But it still pisses me off. Am I the only person who continually meets these single-issue people where they'll be socialists or feminists or anti-racists and be conservative shitheads about literally everything else?

Oh, and I've never heard of "gender essentialism" at all but I don't see anything in the OP that I disagree with... so, perhaps this article just isn't aimed at me? *shrug*

[BIXX]

Oh, and I've never heard of "gender essentialism" at all but I don't see anything in the OP that I disagree with... so, perhaps this article just isn't aimed at me? *shrug*


Gender essentialism is more or less when you say that all women are like this, all men like that, etc... Often it conflates sex with gender as well.

[Skyhilist]

Trans women also face oppression based on their bodies too though, except the oppression that they face is more line the line of "how about you just act like a man, your body is masculine" rather than "it's been decided that you have female parts and therefore are inferior". If the point is to point out that the differences in oppression that cis women and trans women feel, then fine. Different marginalized groups feel different types of oppression. However, both cis and trans women have a lot of overlapping factors that contribute to their marginalization. So while it can be important to note that everyone doesn't feel the same exact type of oppression, it doesn't seem to make sense to divide cis and trans feminists as a result of this, as if the two issues aren't largely connected. Moreover, the central focus on body type and it's relation to oppression all too often does lead to TERFs, which are of course a problem. So long as things are kept in perspective though, I see no problem. Someone correct me if I'm wrong though, I don't have much experience with this type of oppression since I'm a cis white male.

[Rosa Partizan]

The exclusion of trans* women from some spaces is to support traumatised women who can be triggered by being in the same space as someone who was socialised male growing up. This does not mean that an individual trans* woman is a danger, but rather a recognition that gendered violence exists and that trauma is complicated.

on the one hand, this sounds convincing, on the other hand, I've read too much RadFem-blogs of Cathy Brennan and alike to know that there are lesbian RadFems who have internalized real hatred against trans-women because they consider them intruders who want to take away secure female-only spaces from "real" female lesbians. Those RadFems don't differ between sex and gender, otherwise they wouldn't be so transphobic. I can't describe with words how stupid I find this "they want to take away our space"-paranoia. Why would any man want to do this when the social stigma he experiences as trans-woman would be much more punishing than the "reward" of entering female-only spaces? (is it clear what I mean?)

[Quail]

^ I was actually going to make a comment about the bit that Rosa quoted. Trans* women (and people who fall outside the gender binary) are one of the most marginalised groups of people. It doesn't make sense to me to exclude trans* women from "women only" spaces because not only does much of the oppression they experience overlap with the oppression that cis women experience, I also don't know if it makes sense to say that trans* women have necessarily been "socialised as males". Also I guess it leaves out people who were born with ambiguous genitals - do they count as assigned female at birth, and who is going to check?

[PhoenixAsh]

To explain gender essentialism...everybody knows it...maybe you are not familiar with the term.

It is the notion that men and women act differently because they are inherently different based on their gender and that gender roles are simply determined by biology and necessary for a proper functioning of society.

[BolshevikBabe]

Radical feminism is inherently essentialist, even if it replaces the more obvious biologism with "male socialization", and the article posted here is very obviously transphobic since it assumes that this "male socialization" has some kind of eternal and universal effect which makes trans women threatening to cis women. Trans women are socialized as women, they have experiences which are women's experiences, and they are ostracized for being so while being gendered by others as "male". Take it from someone who knows.

I've seen this kind of dodging about too many times before not to realize it's based in transmisogyny, and the whole GenderWeek attempt to find a middle ground between TERFs and "trans activists" (a term which is highly alarming in itself) was just another example of it. Trans women's existence and safety isn't negotiable.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Aye. I think my biggest problem with the OP is the idea that sex precedes gender, and that "embodiment" is asocial or pre-social - as though reproduction isn't contingent on a whole host of social and technical factors.

I think this in turn points to important questions about women "as a class" that need to be asked - especially the notion that class can be biologically rooted. For example, one could point to close interrelationship between race and class in a North American context - does "blackness", for example, precede the emergence of the white supremacist racial order? I think the obvious answer is no, even though, obviously, dark skin clearly does. Similarly (and I confess that this analogy, like all analogies, is wildly imperfect), does "woman-ness" precede patriarchy, and the ordering of women's labour? I'd argue that no, it doesn't - and this is played out in the examples of cultures where gender isn't understood binary terms (where sexualization/gendering has often been understood quite clearly in terms of social roles). Point being, women aren't "a class" in-and-of-themselves so much as in a specific relationship to class (wherein their unpaid labour in the reproduction of the workforce is constitutive of proletariat as much as waged labour).

Which brings us to this gem:

The exclusion of trans* women from some spaces is to support traumatised women who can be triggered by being in the same space as someone who was socialised male growing up. - See more at: http://www.feministtimes.com/the-problem-is-capitalist-patriarchy-socialising-boys-to-be-aggressive-not-radical-feminism/#sthash.f3onSmSK.dpuf


So, what's problematic here? It posits that socialization happens on an individual rather than collective level, and that it is women's "embodiment" (eg being FAAB) which conditions her socialization exclusively, rather than her relationship to patriarchy in toto wherein trans women are exposed to the same social messages etc. as all other women.

It also implies that cisgendered women's being triggered by transwomen is something other than blatant transmisogyny, which, to be clear, it isn't. I want to be explicit about this, because I think there's this discourse that posits "triggering = bad" and that people have an inalienable right to be shielded from triggers. I disagree strongly. I have a friend who is triggered by a particular colour of orange (for reasons that are extremely understandable) - that does not make that particular colour of orange oppressive, nor should the demand for orange-free spaces be taken as a serious priority. These things have to be evaluated in their specificity. So, for example, while we could probably all agree that rape jokes are implicitly oppressive and shouldn't be tolerated in intentionally safer spaces, I would hope that the same couldn't be said about particular colours, let alone about transwomen.

[synthesis]

What's up with the asterisk?

[BolshevikBabe]

What's up with the asterisk?

Trans w/ the asterisk is generally used to denote trans as an umbrella term, i.e. including non-binary people.

[DOOM]

Well there are some radfems that actually hold a pretty reactionary opinion on transwoman.
http://www.transadvocate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/transphobia_mistake.jpg

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

It really depends on whether you are talking about real radfems or TERFs

When they get shitty attitudes towards those who are 'the others' within the LGBT community, I feel threatened. Fuck transphobia and fuck biphobia, like seriously...

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

on the one hand, this sounds convincing, on the other hand, I've read too much RadFem-blogs of Cathy Brennan and alike to know that there are lesbian RadFems who have internalized real hatred against trans-women because they consider them intruders who want to take away secure female-only spaces from "real" female lesbians. Those RadFems don't differ between sex and gender, otherwise they wouldn't be so transphobic. I can't describe with words how stupid I find this "they want to take away our space"-paranoia. Why would any man want to do this when the social stigma he experiences as trans-woman would be much more punishing than the "reward" of entering female-only spaces? (is it clear what I mean?)

Also, there have been plenty of transwomyn in abusive relationships who stay in these abusive relationships because as transwomyn they have more to fear leaving. There is an extra-layer of oppression there. They have the danger of being outed as trans added on top of the dangers that other womyn face. That is a way some abusers will discredit trans victims of violence. Then to make a bad situation worse, the lack of trans-inclusion at some DV centers makes it harder to get the help and services.

[ruth]

I am a radical feminist. Radical feminists view the oppression of women in terms of class. Oppression isn't about an individual treating you badly. It is about structural and institutional oppression of one group, by another.

So when we look at the oppression of women, we see how girls and women are oppressed on the basis of them having female bodies. For example:

- Girls suffer FGM because they have female bodies
- Baby girls are killed in large numbers, because they have female bodies
- Baby girls are treated differently to baby boys, because they have female bodies.

If a Mtof passes, then yes they will also experience misogyny, sexual harassment, etc.
However, if they don't, they are discriminated against on the basis of being Transgender. That is wrong, but it is different to the oppression women experience.

[PhoenixAsh]

That is an awesome story.

So what about women being mistaken for men?

[BolshevikBabe]

I am a radical feminist. Radical feminists view the oppression of women in terms of class. Oppression isn't about an individual treating you badly. It is about structural and institutional oppression of one group, by another.

So when we look at the oppression of women, we see how girls and women are oppressed on the basis of them having female bodies. For example:

- Girls suffer FGM because they have female bodies
- Baby girls are killed in large numbers, because they have female bodies
- Baby girls are treated differently to baby boys, because they have female bodies.

If a Mtof passes, then yes they will also experience misogyny, sexual harassment, etc.
However, if they don't, they are discriminated against on the basis of being Transgender. That is wrong, but it is different to the oppression women experience.

Let me guess, you're not transphobic, you're "trans-critical" right?

[Quail]

I am a radical feminist. Radical feminists view the oppression of women in terms of class. Oppression isn't about an individual treating you badly. It is about structural and institutional oppression of one group, by another.

So when we look at the oppression of women, we see how girls and women are oppressed on the basis of them having female bodies. For example:

- Girls suffer FGM because they have female bodies
- Baby girls are killed in large numbers, because they have female bodies
- Baby girls are treated differently to baby boys, because they have female bodies.

If a Mtof passes, then yes they will also experience misogyny, sexual harassment, etc.
However, if they don't, they are discriminated against on the basis of being Transgender. That is wrong, but it is different to the oppression women experience.

Don't you see how transphobia is connected to patriarchy though? Transphobia and the oppression of cisgender women aren't two distinct things with no overlap.

Also, I'm suspicious of your use of the pronoun "they" when you talk about transgender women. Wouldn't "she" be more appropriate?

[Rosa Partizan]

why are transwomen discriminated against? Why do we find men in women's clothing ridiculous?

Because there's nothing more ridiculous than being a woman.

[ruth]

I reject the use of the word cis. This article explains why.

http://liberationcollective.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/a-feminist-critique-of-cisgender/

[PhoenixAsh]

you do realize that article contradicts your earlier post on several points?

[ruth]

How do you think it contradicts it?

[Comrade Chernov]

There isn't really anything to "explain" about the suffix "cis". It's literally just the opposite of "trans"; "on the same side of" as opposed to "on the opposite side of", respectively. For example, in the Roman Empire, there existed the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Transalpine Gaul.

All I know is, in regards to radical feminism: to say that a trans woman has male privilege because of their upbringing is to say that a gay man or a lesbian has straight privilege because of their upbringing. It's the "straight and cisgender" norm that someone is boxed into by society, and for most people it isn't a problem because it matches up with who they are. Being closeted trans is the same dysphoria as being closeted gay. Transphobia is just as harmful as homophobia.

[Kaoxic]

What do radfems think of FTM trans?

As a simple measure we could employ is putting in 3 types of toilets for men and women and ungendered types. This way the women could feel like they have their space still while the transvestites wouldn't have to share with men. Sort of like the way they have wheelchair ramps for disabled access.

[Redistribute the Rep]

What do radfems think of FTM trans?

As a simple measure we could employ is putting in 3 types of toilets for men and women and ungendered types. This way the women could feel like they have their space still while the transvestites wouldn't have to share with men. Sort of like the way they have wheelchair ramps for disabled access.

Fucking shit

[BolshevikBabe]

This thread has gone down the pan about as quickly as I would have expected.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

@Ruth, you aren't even a real radfem, you are a TERF. I have plenty of friends who are real radfems and they would tell you to go back to Cathy Brennan and find an island that you, her and all 7 other "radfems" can be together without spewing your bullshit. I'm an anarcha-feminist, not a radfem, but y'all TERFs make me feel bad for my actual radfem friends because y'all motherfuckers give them a bad name.

[TC]

Since when are women a class?

Since societies have been organized where the labor and social status and position in power relations allocated to people was determined or substantially influenced by their sex. Being female has probably modified a person's class position for longer than behaviorally modern humans have existed. The development of intensive agriculture probably made the divisions more acute.


A significant number of self-identified radical feminists are sex/gender essentialists, and engage in hate campaigns against trans women. They're more often referred to as trans exclusive radical feminists (TERFs) now, to distinguish them from pro-trans radical feminists, even though TERFs hate that label.

Just because someone calls themselves a "radical feminist" doesn't mean that they're actually a radical feminist. Just like not everyone who calls themselves a "feminist" is a real feminist (see for example, the misogynist Sarah Palin). These words have meanings beyond mere self-definition.


Are you saying that "radical feminism" is a contestable term? If so, how is it contestable?

Because like the majority of political terms, from communist to liberal to conservative to fascist to anarchist, different people have advanced different conflicting definitions of it. I do not think this is a controversial claim. But not every definition is equally apt.


I've always made a distinction between radical and revolutionary feminism. The majority of radical (or liberal) feminists I meet face-to-face are just as ignorant as everybody else about everything except women's issues, and even then they're only ever as anti-capitalist as supporting Whole Foods and fair trade goods (see: they aren't anti-capitalist)... so they're still pretty ignorant about that, too.

I don't think this is very a fair set of claims. Your personal experience with people self-identifying as radical feminists can hardly be taken to indicate much about radical feminism as a political position. I have known ignorant people espousing nearly every political ideology including those I've identified with at the time.


I guess my bias here is that I find it annoying how someone could be so selectively blind as to recognize all of the rampant bullshit levied against women & non-gender conforming persons but not go 2mm further and see how intimately it's linked to the capitalist mode of production.

I appreciate your frustration but from my vantage point is is bothersome that people can recognize all of the ways oppression follows from capitalism without recognizing the way that sex based oppression is only partly due to capitalism, but mostly follows from older systems of oppression.

Multiple systems of oppression can exist at the same time - capitalism does not explain or account for everything.


Trans women also face oppression based on their bodies too though, except the oppression that they face is more line the line of "how about you just act like a man, your body is masculine"

It should be pointed out that this is in no way inconsistent with the original article.


So while it can be important to note that everyone doesn't feel the same exact type of oppression, it doesn't seem to make sense to divide cis and trans feminists as a result of this, as if the two issues aren't largely connected.

Transphobia is clearly connected to the oppression of non-trans women in that transphobia, like homophobia, stems from institutionalized and actively policed and enforced gender norms. Non-trans women are also oppressed in this way, although the forms of oppression are different.

But non-trans women also experience forms of oppression that trans women do not, most obviously being forced to carry pregnancies against their will, the cultural expectation and pressure to reproduce, and the reality is that non-trans women are impacted by disproportionate childcare expectations at a much higher rate than trans women. Trans women can't accidentally get pregnant at a less than ideal time, nor can they get pregnant as a result of their partners sabotaging their contraception. Nor do they experience medicalized violence during labor.

Glossing over differences in order to make some kind of a political affirmation is dogmatic.


on the one hand, this sounds convincing, on the other hand, I've read too much RadFem-blogs of Cathy Brennan and alike to know that there are lesbian RadFems who have internalized real hatred against trans-women because they consider them intruders who want to take away secure female-only spaces from "real" female lesbians.

I don't think I know who Cathy Brennan is but *real* radical feminists necessarily reject the notion that there are "real" women and non-"real" women because gender is a social construct. There is no authenticity beyond social convention. What biology matters matters only to people in a social context, not on some fixed or real essential level - the same biology could lead to different social realities if social circumstances were different.



Those RadFems don't differ between sex and gender, otherwise they wouldn't be so transphobic.
Well if this is the case then they shouldn't be regarded as radical feminists because distinguishing between biological sex and social gender is a core feature of feminism. Social gender is not the same as biological sex, it is created and imposed on it.


Radical feminism is inherently essentialist, even if it replaces the more obvious biologism with "male socialization", and the article posted here is very obviously transphobic since it assumes that this "male socialization" has some kind of eternal and universal effect which makes trans women threatening to cis women.

I don't see where any of those claims are found in the article.


I've seen this kind of dodging about too many times before not to realize it's based in transmisogyny, and the whole GenderWeek attempt to find a middle ground between TERFs and "trans activists" (a term which is highly alarming in itself) was just another example of it. Trans women's existence and safety isn't negotiable.

I didn't see anyone on that website argue that it was (not that I read all the articles)


Aye. I think my biggest problem with the OP is the idea that sex precedes gender, and that "embodiment" is asocial or pre-social - as though reproduction isn't contingent on a whole host of social and technical factors.

Reproduction, the potential for reproduction, and the presumption that someone could reproduce, are all hugely significant to the social reality of gender and to women's status in society. These are not negligible factors but central sites of women's oppression. Physicality isn't the only thing that matters but it does matter.

So, for example, while we could probably all agree that rape jokes are implicitly oppressive and shouldn't be tolerated in intentionally safer spaces.

We should all agree that rape jokes shouldn't be tolerated anywhere. That shouldn't have to rise to the higher standard of 'intentionally safer spaces'.

[TC]

Don't you see how transphobia is connected to patriarchy though? Transphobia and the oppression of cisgender women aren't two distinct things with no overlap.

Transphobia is clearly connected to patriarchy and there is also clearly overlap between the transphobia and general misogynistic oppression, but it doesn't follow that there are not also additional distinct forms of oppression that involve female biology and early socialization as female.

But I'm not really sure why this is an argument to be had. All forms of oppression are wrong and can be simultaneously opposed without conflating them together.



why are transwomen discriminated against? Why do we find men in women's clothing ridiculous?

Because there's nothing more ridiculous than being a woman.

I think there is a lot of truth in this, though it is more complicated.


There isn't really anything to "explain" about the suffix "cis". It's literally just the opposite of "trans"; "on the same side of" as opposed to "on the opposite side of", respectively. For example, in the Roman Empire, there existed the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Transalpine Gaul.

I think "cis" has some problematic assumptions. I don't necessarily want to get into an extended discussion about it and would instead suggest the following passages:

"Consistent with common usage of the term “cisgender,” the graphic below explains that “…if you identify with the gender you were assigened [sic] at birth, you are cis.”...

Feminism does not believe that asking whether an individual identifies with the particular social characteristics and expectations assigned to them at birth is a politically useful way of analyzing or understanding gender. Eliminating gender assignments, by allowing individuals to choose one of two pre-existing gender molds, while continuing to celebrate the existence and naturalism of “gender” itself, is not a progressive social goal that will advance women’s liberation. Feminism claims that gender is a much more complicated (and sinister) social phenomenon than this popular cis/trans binary has any hope of capturing...

... The cis/trans* binary is a gross oversimplification of the gendered dynamics that structure social relations in favor of male-born people. Gender is a socially constructed power hierarchy that must be destroyed, not reinterpreted as consensual, empowering, individualized “gender identities” that are magically divorced from all contextual and historical meaning. Such a framing invisibilizes female and feminine oppression by falsely situating men-born-men and women-born-women as gendered equals relative to trans-identified people. Though possibly unintentional, “cis” now functions as a significant barrier to feminism’s ability to articulate the oppression caused by the socially constructed gender differentiation that enables male/masculine supremacy. Cis is a politically useless concept because fails to illuminate the mechanics of gendered oppression. In fact, it has only served to make things more confusing."

From: http://liberationcollective.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/a-feminist-critique-of-cisgender/

It would be good to read the rest of the article if you have time.


All I know is, in regards to radical feminism: to say that a trans woman has male privilege because of their upbringing is to say that a gay man or a lesbian has straight privilege because of their upbringing.

A gay man who presents as straight, gets married to a woman and enjoys the tax benefits of straight marriage, who is a high ranked clergy member in an anti-gay church, who gets hired by a homophobe who would never hire someone known to be gay, - surely has benefited from straight privilege. Privilege is not something that resides purely in one's head but is the system of advantaging people in the world.




It's the "straight and cisgender" norm that someone is boxed into by society, and for most people it isn't a problem because it matches up with who they are.

It is precisely the point of radical feminism that gender norms are a problem for the whole of society. Gender roles to radical feminists are not just neutral things to match up with "who [one] is" - who one is is itself socially constructed and socially contingent, as are gender roles and gendered expression. Gender as currently constructed is to radical feminists, a hierarchical system. And simply because most people do what is expected of them does not make the hierarchy unproblematic. This gets to what is problematic with the term "cis".

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I reject the use of the word cis. This article explains why.

http://liberationcollective.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/a-feminist-critique-of-cisgender/
That site is full of trans bashing. Why should I take any of its arguments seriously?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Just because someone calls themselves a "radical feminist" doesn't mean that they're actually a radical feminist.
Are people like Janice Raymond, Sheila Jeffreys, or Mary Daly considered radical feminists these days?


I don't think I know who Cathy Brennan is but *real* radical feminists
Nice. The "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

From: http://liberationcollective.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/a-feminist-critique-of-cisgender/

It would be good to read the rest of the article if you have time.
Here's a quote from another article on that site:


Trans women are simply MAABs who have volunteered to adopt the mask of femininity through performativity, then demanded use of the social labels associated with the experiences of the female-assigned-at-birth humans. Born-women have no choice about their role in the play of compulsory heterosexuality; it is simply expected of us. Further, the so-called “trans woman’s” life experience is fundamentally distinct from natal women’s experiences in both breadth and depth. To refuse the relevancy and legitimacy of these specific experiential differences between women and “trans women” is to redefine “womanhood” to better serve male purposes. It shows blatant disregard and disrespect for the experiences and realities women who have lived as women and girls from their first breaths. It is misogyny, pure and simple.

From saying trans women are simply men who have "volunteered" to become trans, to putting trans women in quotes, to accusing trans women of redefining womanhood for male purposes, to calling the existence of trans women "misogyny", that is what transphobia looks like. And articles from that site are being posted here as if the site is objective and neutral?

The site has many articles by Elizabeth Hungerford, who is best known for co-writing a letter to the United Nations claiming that civil rights laws that protect gender identity will harm cis women and lead to trans women assaulting cis women, which is absurd.

[TC]

Danielle Ni Dhighe, respectfully, I don't see how searching through a website to pick quotes from other articles is useful to the discussion at hand. This thread is about radical feminism as a rejection of gender essentialism. No one is claiming that any website with radical feminists on it or claiming to be radical feminist is going to be consistently clean of any transphobia.

If you recall I wasn't the one who linked to the page on the 'cis' terminology - and while I don't even endorse that article I thought it was nonetheless useful in illustrating how the issue is more complicated than the explanation Chernov gave.

Lets have a real discussion here about ideas rather than shutting it down by picking out trolls on the internet who associate themselves with the labels we're discussing.


Nice. The "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

I think you are a little confused about what the "no true Scotsman" fallacy is. Wikipedia's description is surprisingly good:

"No true Scotsman is an informal fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion. When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim ("no Scotsman would do such a thing"), rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule ("no true Scotsman would do such a thing")."

As you should be able to see, this is *very different* then all claims of the form "x is not a real case of y".

My statement was not an ad hoc modification of the subject of the assertion (radical feminism) - rather it followed from the previously argued elements of my account of radical feminism (a position that rejects gender essentialism and one that requires more than mere self-identification as 'radical feminist'). Moreover I was referencing a specific rule for my case of what radical feminism entails - whereas the no true scotsman fallacy involves the opposite, making only a special case not a general rule.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Danielle Ni Dhighe, respectfully, I don't see how searching through a website to pick quotes from other articles is useful to the discussion at hand.
Because the site's issues with the term "cis" can't be unlinked from the site's opposition to trans people, especially trans women. Their issue with "cis" is problematic.


If you recall I wasn't the one who linked to the page on the 'cis' terminology - and while I don't even endorse that article
Now you say you don't endorse it, but you didn't say that when you recommended that Comrade Chernov "read the rest of the article if you have time."


Lets have a real discussion here about ideas rather than shutting it down by picking out trolls on the internet who associate themselves with the labels we're discussing.
So now all the trans-exclusive radfems on the Internet are "trolls" rather than representative of radical feminism, despite decades of transphobia from radical feminists? If you want to have a real discussion, let's start with that.

[synthesis]

But non-trans women also experience forms of oppression that trans women do not, most obviously being forced to carry pregnancies against their will, the cultural expectation and pressure to reproduce, and the reality is that non-trans women are impacted by disproportionate childcare expectations at a much higher rate than trans women. Trans women can't accidentally get pregnant at a less than ideal time, nor can they get pregnant as a result of their partners sabotaging their contraception. Nor do they experience medicalized violence during labor.

Don't you think, though, that the issue of reproduction also factors into transphobia?

The simplest way I can think of to put it is that a misogynist could say something like "The only thing women are good for is making babies." Then he could turn around and also say that "well, transwomen can't make babies, so they're not worth anything at all." So transwomen would then suffer all the day-to-day ramifications of "regular" misogyny while also not even given the meager respect and social position that comes from being "useful" to the mechanics of capitalism.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

Because the site's issues with the term "cis" can't be unlinked from the site's opposition to trans people, especially trans women. Their issue with "cis" is problematic.


Now you say you don't endorse it, but you didn't say that when you recommended that Comrade Chernov "read the rest of the article if you have time."


So now all the trans-exclusive radfems on the Internet are "trolls" rather than representative of radical feminism, despite decades of transphobia from radical feminists? If you want to have a real discussion, let's start with that.

You make some fair points, but I do know quite a few radfems who are trans inclusive and say that TERFs aren't real radfems and that they give actual radfems a bad name. I am not a radfem, myself (even if I am somewhat influenced by radical feminism, and even have some separatist ideas) but the point I'm getting at is that not all radfems buy into that "gender-critical" bullshit.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

You make some fair points, but I do know quite a few radfems who are trans inclusive and say that TERFs aren't real radfems and that they give actual radfems a bad name. I am not a radfem, myself (even if I am somewhat influenced by radical feminism, and even have some separatist ideas) but the point I'm getting at is that not all radfems buy into that "gender-critical" bullshit.
Oh, I agree, there are radfems who have a good line on trans women and gender.