Leah Torres is an OB/GYN who tweets at @LeahNTorres. She was praised today on Twitter for being gender-neutral in her advocacy for trusting pregnant people with their rights to an abortion — a stance I share, back and categorically endorse.
Psst! Come here! I have a secret 2 tell u…
A lil closer…lil more…
Doesn't matter what u call it: life, baby, fetus, next messiah…
— Leah Torres, MD (@LeahNTorres) September 23, 2015
…
Nothing overrules the autonomy of the pregnant person.
Not ideology, not politics, not religion, not beliefs…
Nothing.
— Leah Torres, MD (@LeahNTorres) September 23, 2015
Earlier, she wrote:
Clearly pregnant people can't be trusted…. https://t.co/OfIFPr2mfb
— Leah Torres, MD (@LeahNTorres) September 23, 2015
Our ex-colleague and recent embracer of all things TERFy Ophelia Benson sought this tweet out and attacked Torres for it, repeatedly chastising her for saying “pregnant person” instead of “woman”.
Women. The word is women. The people who can't be trusted are women. https://t.co/VAfDYYNTUs
— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) September 23, 2015
Those who become pregnant don't always identify as "women," @OpheliaBenson. That's why I use the inclusive term.
— Leah Torres, MD (@LeahNTorres) September 23, 2015
@LeahNTorres I understand that, of course, but I think it's a terrible idea.
— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) September 23, 2015
Women. https://t.co/ePXt7wCXpo
— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) September 23, 2015
Women. https://t.co/DdUX2zu9rC
— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) September 23, 2015
Women. https://t.co/RSzbrhYlnL
— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) September 23, 2015
Woman's. https://t.co/wfsQi94trD
— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) September 23, 2015
It's gross to erase women, too. https://t.co/BliTpbuw0F
— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) September 23, 2015
The rest of the exchange between them, up to and including Torres blocking Benson, pretty much has to be pieced together from this search. If someone could Storify it, that might make it more readable. I don’t have the stomach for it at the moment.
EDIT: M A Melby did a Storify of the exchange in its full context, making Ophelia’s antagonism much more plain.
Ophelia then characterised on her blog this aggressive move as basically casually mentioning that women are primarily affected by abortion on Twitter, as though she dispensed this wisdom into the aether undirected. I’m not linking it, because I don’t care to give her traffic for her bullshit, the more bullshitty it becomes. (This will no doubt not stop her from screenshotting some pullquote of me to call me a slimepitter or some nonsense again.)
The exchange is damning and angering, and blatantly transantagonistic. And I am betrayed that some of her commentariat, whom I once thought to be friends, were favoriting every transantagonistic stab and are offering weak-tea justifications for it all on her blog comments as though they are the ones who are thinking, and we who care about trans representation are just mindlessly repeating mantras.
Meanwhile, Ophelia justified her transantagonism thus:
And "ALL lives matter" specifies "not just black people." That's not hard either. https://t.co/8K42lkuCq6
— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) September 23, 2015
She also repeated this “mantra” — err, sorry, argument — at her blog where her commentariat nodded sagely.
Since it’s obvious these once-noble and intersectionally-minded deep thinkers have forgotten how intersectionality works, have some Venn diagrams.
“All Lives Matter” is offensive because it dilutes the scope of the problem. Even if there ARE white folks who are brutalized by police, they are not brutalized BECAUSE they’re white, and their numbers are so incredibly much smaller than the black folks that are attacked by police that per capita, inclusion of white folks into “Black Lives Matter” reduces the scope and severity of the problem to an unacceptable degree. See this diagram:
The demand to say “women” instead of “pregnant people” is offensive because it actually removes several sets of people from the scope of the question, and includes one major scope of people who shouldn’t be there. First, you lose anyone who isn’t a woman who has the functional reproductive organs to require reproductive services like access to abortion, including non-binary people and trans men. Second, you include women who cannot be pregnant, like trans women, women after menopause or a hysterectomy, or who are otherwise sterile.
Of course, these are illustrative only. They don’t have raw numbers to back them up, because they are not to-scale. And it’s possible a person or two in the white side of the All Lives Matter diagram might have been killed by police who really hate white people, but this is so vanishingly unlikely that I can’t see putting a dot in there for it.
Over at Ophelia’s there are lots of digs at us, at pro-trans activists, for not “thinking” about this subject. I have. I came to the conclusion that you’re wrong — that saying “pregnant people” does not erase women, and that the problem of abortion rights is not undercut by being more accurate about who’s impacted and not erasing the trans men and enbys who are doubly at risk of losing access to the services they need because they don’t present as women.
Trans folk experience a specialized subset of misogyny called transmisogyny — a pernicious sort of attack that damns men with “female” parts and women with “male” parts for the female / woman part of the equation. Recognizing this does not mean categorizing a specific problem as being a woman’s problem, nor that the word “woman” counts these people, because it doesn’t, and denying that fact helps solidify that secondary way they are at risk of not getting access to services. And because that causes undue splash damage, and redraws the districts unfairly so as to exclude some people who can get pregnant and requires reproductive services, I oppose it.
And as memory serves, this is how the whole transantagonistic thing started with CaitieCat last year during the Hobby Lobby decision. I steadfastly refuse to call abortion a woman-only issue, because I evidently have a better understanding of what the scope of the word actually entails than those TERFs who are, literally, excluding trans folk within the scope of their radical feminism.
It’s, by the way, because of this ongoing transantagonism that I’m perfectly willing to call those trans-antagonistic comments TERFy. Sorry, ex-friends and ex-colleagues, but the more you spout bigotry, the more likely I am to call you a bigot.
Allow me, I know a smattering of TERF-ese. [CONTENT WARNING, for the obvious]
“Natural human bodies” = “Whatever your doctor ticked in the M/F box.”
“Transgender theory” = “Anything a trans* person has said, which is convenient for my point.”
“Cotton Ceiling” = “Trans* people, especially trans* women, are treated as unfuckable even within the LGBT community.”
“Corrective rape” = “Having sex with a trans* woman.”
For some background reading, I recommend learning about Planned Parenthood’s attempts to teach trans* women how to rape lesbians. A tin-foil hats is optional, but recommended.
@49 is a pretty big wtf. Gonna attempt to translate and respond.
“So here we have it: This Lousy Canuck once had a pretty awesome theory of what it meant to me male and female. He probably used this sorting model until just a few years ago. And he was awesome and correct for doing so. Good for him for understanding the differences between boys and girls and understanding how babies are made.”
So Jason Thibealt, as most people, assumed a gender binary, and had to be taught otherwise. You allege the gender binary is a correct model, and that learning otherwise was miseducation.
“Yet somehow he moved from this mostly pretty accurate system of dividing up humans, and yes, this implies Lousy Canuck was a TERF from age seven until just a couple of years ago. Somehow in the name of skepticism or maybe just current coolness, he forgot there was such a thing as girls and women. They are assigned to this class because of their genitals at birth or even before now that we have had routine ultrasound for the last 20 years.”
This is getting really messy. You’re implying we think anyone who even believes in a gender binary model is a TERF, and conclude that means every one of us was a TERF before adopting nonbinary models of gender. We adopt nonbinary gender models becasue we’re super skeptical, or just wanna be cool, because challenging prevailing social constructs is what the cool skeptic kids do.
Also, forgot women exist? Is that supposed to be a reduction ad absurdum? Nonbinary means individuals can’t fall into a binary state? So if we challenge a binary gender modle, we’re saying women (and, presumably, men) don’t exist at all, and therefore, if we personally believe women exist, then we’re therefore lying or at least contradictory when we also claim to accept a nonbinary model of gender?
“Is it so shocking to say that girls and women actually exist? They are amazing.”
No one has ever said they don’t exist.
“But somehow “Woman” has come to mean a feeling a man has, rather than the properties of natural human bodies.”
Here’s the thing. A binary gender model determined by easily observable anatomy works in the majority of cases. It’s not like it’s a bad system, it’s just not as good or as accurate as a nonbinary model, which accounts for several important edge cases that the binary model doesn’t cover. Most people will be correctly assigned a gender at birth (or during fetal development thanks to ultrasound, as you mention), and live their entire lives as that gender, without ever having to worry about it. The binary model works in these cases. It’s not a wrong model. But just like newtonian physics remains a useful model that breaks down in certain systems, the binary model breaks down with intersex, transgender, and nonbinary individuals. Using a nonbinary model accounts for these edge cases while still perfectly accounting for the majority of people who can correctly be assigned a gender at birth.
And as for feelings, transgender is based on the properties of natural human bodies, but properties that aren’t as obvious as looking under a dinosaurs skirt. Everything about the nonbinary gender model is consistent with neonatal development.
“Transgender theory is CONSERVATIVE, anti-gay, and SEVERELY anti-lesbian. WTF is up with the “Cotton Ceiling”? The CC says that lesbians should be raped by M2Trans ‘lesbians’ intact dicks. Well, they never say “rape”, they just say that young lesbians need to take ‘female’ dick to prove they’re cool. This is pretty much corrective rape of lesbians.
“So yeah, Transgenderism is pretty much a right wing theory. Non-conforming people need hormones and surgery. it’s so weird that self-described liberals would pat themselves on the back for endorsing the same policy that amounts to the extermination of gay and lesbian people in Iran.”
WTF? You’ve completely, totally lost me here. I have no idea what you’re saying here. I’ve never heard of the term “Cotton Ceiling” and am kind of scared to look it up. All I can make out is that you’re accusing me of wanting to rape lesbians, which doesn’t sit well with me at all. I don’t in any way see how transgender status is involved in anyway with conservationism, or how this somehow exterminates gays and lesbians (many transgender people ARE gay or lesbians, by the way). So yeah, pretty much lost here. Could you clarify without the rape accusations?
*I tried several times to properly use the blockquote tag, and repeatedly failed. Not sure what I was doing wrong, but it’d nest all my blockquotes together, and included my own text sinde the blockquotes
@Francisco Bacopa, you are probably beyond hope if you are quoting the “cotton ceiling” as if it was a real thing. But for anyone else reading, this was a workshop attended by a handful of trans women years ago! A workshop organised by that evil organisation Planned Parenthood, OMG they are truly evil. Basically it was helping them cope with not being perceived as women by lesbian groups and not accepted as lesbians. That was it and if you believe it was helping them learn how to “rape” afab lesbians then you’re further gone than Trump and his ilk.
So your “corrective rape” lie is pretty outrageous, the issue here is TERFs who announce cis women who go out with trans women are not lesbians. Or the trans women they are partners with are not lesbians, such as Sarah Brown in the UK who gave an opening speech at the Dyke March here. A load of TERFs turned up to protest and shout during her speech, no platforming? She was then horribly harassed by TERFs writing to the lbdems to get her deselected/removed as a councillor – she was the first out trans politician in the UK.
You can read her speech to them, it covers the issues trans women have in being accepted in lesbian circles. Although obviously the majority are fine these days. TERFs who turned up to protest where shouted down by the afab lesbians present 🙂
http://www.sarahlizzy.com/blog/?p=225
@51 I read the link on Cotton Ceiling and I’m almost in tears. I hadn’t known about that. 🙁
This is the kinda nonsense that flies in TERF spaces.
Yes, it’s gender time cube once you gave up believing human biology actually exists. Think back to how you thought eight years ago and it all makes sense.
So I will lay it out here: There might not really be such a thing as gender feel brains:
Gender is not a thing that exists as an innate property of any human. Gender is a is a system of ranked power that is imposed largely by dominant men. It varies between cultures, but almost everywhere males are dominant and females are subordinant. We both know this is true.
So what is a TERF? I am male, so I don’t fit the RF part of TERF. Non-compliant women who believe that female biology matters are TERFs. Your mom and grandma are TERFs. Look up this whole Cotton Ceiling business. Heterosexual men who have been overcome by ladyfeelz said that lesbians are morally deficient for not sucking their (totally female) cocks or fucking them. This is simply corrective rape of lesbians, and from the liberal side. Liberals believe in the sexual autonomy of women no more than religious conservatives do.
And what about the “E” in TERF, exclusion? I think a few years ago you knew who women are, and it didn’t include males who asserted they had special ladyfeelz. Or at least you might have have understood that women, and you used to know who women are, might want to do stuff without any ladyfeelz males around. Why can’t women just do stuff without the intrusion of male persons who assert they are women because of their ladyfeelz? Seriously, it’s just that simple: Women sometimes want to do stuff without dudes around, including ladyfeel dudes? And why can’t women do this? Even if you believe that ladyfeelz make a male a woman, you ought to agree that women (and you used to know who women are) could at least sometimes exclude special ladyfeel dudes.
Or do women’s boundaries simply not matter to you?
timberwraith
Not to mention all those stealthy people who never actually produce gametes but never even notice because they never tried to have children. Or those whose chromosomes don’t “match” their genitals but who only discover this after happily living as their assigned gender for decades. Funny how people can live their entire lives without matching those “sciency” definitions and without anybody, including themselve,s ever raising an eyebrow about what gender they actually are.
Francisco Bapcoa
You know, nothing says “revolutionary feminism” like defining women as baby making machines. I could have asked some old Greek philosophers for that kind of wisdom, or the MRA contingent. As a cis woman, I resent that definition deeply.
Also, do you usually request to see people’s genitals, a gene test and and a certificate of gamete production before you make your call?
Funny story, during our last holiday a couple with a baby arrive at the campsite and took up residence next to us. Since it was pretty hot the baby wore nothing but a diaper so those all important genitals were the only part that I couldn’t see, but luckily the woman hung out a few clothes to dry so I could easily determine his assigned gender…
Oolon;
The Cotton Ceiling is real. The term was directed at Lily Cade when she announced on Twitter that she had canceled a porn shoot because she would not suck the cock of an alleged woman. About a year later Planned Parenthood Toronto held a workshop called “Breaking through the Cotton Ceiling”. This workshop was pretty much about how to pressure lesbians into accepting transwoman cock through guilt.
And how is the term “Cotton Ceiling” not dripping with rapeyness? It obviously refers to women’s panties, and “breaking through” is pretty damn rapey. But I guess that rape is ok when it’s special ladyfeelz dudes doing it.
Francisco Bapcoa
You know, this has no practical resemblance with reality.
First of all, claiming that trans women have been “overcome by ladyfeelz” is misogyny in itself. Ladyfeelz? Fuck you. Secondly, yes heterosexual guys are totally going to get free blowjobs by becoming trans women. They risk violent assault, have one of the highest murder rates (especially trans women of colour) as well as attempted and completed suicide rates. They get kicked out of their homes and jobs, they can be legally denied housing. When they are assaulted their attacker can claim “trans panic” in multiple US States. They have to fight for every single bit of medical care. Nothing says “overentitled guy looking for free blow jobs” like literally being on the lowest rung of the social ladder.
Ther are no “ladyfeel dudes”. There are cis women and trans women.
Sure they can. Just don’t call it a “women only” space. Call it a “cis women only” space. OH, wait, you can’t do that, because cis is totally a slur and saying it would mean you’d have to accept that trans women are actually women and that yes, you are excluding them.
You’re quite overstepping mine by reducing me to a walking potential incubator while demonizing my trans sisters as entitled wanna be rapists.
Giliell,
Actually, I do care what genitals potential sex partners have. This is what’s known as having a sexual orientation. I don’t think that’s so weird. And until now, I’ve never been challenged about it. But I’m a boring old straight male. Nobody cares about us. I like it that way
But what about those Cotton Ceiling male-born “lesbians”? They gotta get the validation of some lesbian pussy. I was brought up to respect women better than that.
Lesbians ought to be able to care about crotches just as much as I do. And gay dudes get to want dick as much as they want . I’m not all that interested gay dudes wanting my dick, and no gay man has ever said I was prejudiced for declining him. We men are mostly cool and respectful with other. I love this. Being treated like a human being is awesome! Wouldn’t it be cool if women could get more if this shit?
But that’s not how it goes with male persons who fancy themselves both women and lesbians. Nope, they gotta break through the Cotton Ceiling. That’s 100% rape language.
Francisco Bapcoa
Who said you must not care? Who ever said that anybody had to fuck people with genitals they don’t fancy? And yes, please, first hand quotes. Show me where trans lesbians actually said “we must make individual cis lesbians fuck those of us who have a penis, because if they don’t they are TERFS” or something like that.
Yeah, but you’re obviously not a source we should be turning to. You’re detached from reality and a misogynist. And a trans misogynist. There are no “male people who fancy themselves women and lesbinas”. There are straight trans womena nd there are lesbian trans women. None of them is “male”.
And of course bi trans women and asexual trans women and pan sexual trans women….
Isn’t human diversity amazing?
nothing says “compassion” quite like telling someone their desire to be loved is rape.
Francisco is saying some of the most transphobic shit I have seen in a while. Maybe I should consider myself lucky (?)
Also: Anyone skimming through the comment thread should go back and read timberwraith’s comment at 33. It is superb.
Also also: M.A. Melby made a storify that makes the exchange between Leah Torres and OB a bit clearer.
https://storify.com/MAMelby/the-language-police
What is striking to me: Just how fucking obnoxious Ophelia is. From Jason’s quotes, it already seemed obnoxious of her to keep tweeting “woman” at Torres. But the context is that Leah Torres was in the middle of debating abortion with various disingenuous Fetus Rights idiots, but because she said “people”, Benson had to swoop in to chide her for that. And some of the arguments she makes are bafflingly asinine (she responds to someone saying that the gender neutral language is good because it includes marginalized communities, to which Benson responds “so women aren’t marginalized? wow”. Logic master.)
My gf and I aren’t lesbians?! Oh jeez, better go tear down all my posters and turn in my L-card. I bet the Registry will be outraged that they overlooked my genitals! Should’ve stripped down so they could see! I’ll also be sure to tell that to the next person who throws a beer bottle at me downtown. “I’m not a dyke according to some dude in a comment’s section, you’ve got it all wrong!”
#logicalconclusions
My mother isn’t a TERF, despite having been a second-wave feminist. I’m pretty sure my grandmothers weren’t either. They were feminists, and the idea of gender identity (which people clearly have, so now I have to wonder where in the ether it resides if it isn’t in the brain) not being congruent with assigned sex was almost certainly confusing to them the first time they encountered it. However, they weren’t really big on deciding things for other people when they weren’t sure what was going on themselves, particularly when those things were important to other people and didn’t hurt them at all.
They were kinda cool that way.
Oh, and hey, I looked up Lily Cade. Turns out the trans performer talking to her didn’t say she should need to have sex with a trans woman. She did take shit for saying this made her more of a lesbian than people who did, but that has nothing to do with her personal sexual preferences. Big surprise. Still no “cotton ceiling”.
Francisco Bacopa is in moderation for repeated transphobia and transantagonism. Sounds primarily like he took “listen to women” to mean “internalize everything women say”, heard from the nastiest most bigoted women first, and that has thoroughly filled his buffers. Too bad that he seems entirely closed to hearing from non-transphobic cis women, like those here telling him that he is spouting bigoted nonsense.
There is no Cotton Ceiling. Nobody is bigoted for having preferred partner genital configurations. Nobody needs to be more flexible than they are on who they’re willing to have sex with. You just need to stop attacking women for having penises, or men for having vaginas (including those men this post is about, who need access to abortion services and are being denied by providers and elided by people like Ophelia).
If you happen to be flexible on partner genital configurations, great. If not, fine. Nobody is judging you for THAT — only how you actually treat the human being attached to those genitals.
I’ve never seen enforcement of the gender binary laid so plain by TERFs, so it is enlightening to see their ideology spouted by a male ally who only “listened” to the bigotry without also grokking their styles of defense. It’s TERF minus the pretensions at being morally justified; the anti-trans propaganda minus the pro-TERF damage control. Go back and keep listening to those TERFs so you can be a better footsoldier in their bigoted campaign, K?
🙁
^ Applicable generally here.
To this whole situation, not aimed at Jason Thibeault or any of the comments or commenters here. Its all just .. depressing. Sad to read about this. Sad its all happening like this.
(Adding for extra clarity.)
I just hate the idea that equality is some kind of zero sum game. And it’s really frustrating when people I know are intelligent do this. I feel, when Ophelia Benson says you should say “woman” instead of pregnant people or uterus havers, she’s not actually saying Woman are more central to the issue and that it’s disingenuous to use more inclusive terminology because it pushes the issue away from a woman’s issue. That’s what she’s saying, but it feels like she’s actually including non female afabs in the set of Women, and excluding amabs from woman. Am I being uncharitable, or putting words in her mouth?
To clarify, whether it’s her intention or not, her comments make more sense if she felt she “Woman” was already accurate, because it already includes the set of all people who can become pregnant.
I really really like Ophelia Benson as a writer, and was unaware of the terfy issues until very recently. Really sad about it.
Francisco is obviously full of it, but he should really listen to the trans women lesbians on Twitter and elsewhere who make it perfectly clear they want nothing to do with TERFs sexually or otherwise. No one wants to pressure them into anything, let alone sex! Usually trans status is already known, or done up front and is an extremely stressful experience due to the small number of horrible bigots like his friends. The whole “cotton ceiling” myth is a bizarre invention from some truly nasty people.
Careful there, “Cotton Ceiling” means different things to different communities. In the trans* community,
That “cotton ceiling” exists. One TERF definition is
Note that there’s a normative or compulsory component: lesbians must submit to sex with trans* women, otherwise they are part of the “cotton ceiling.” This version probably doesn’t exist.
I’m absolutely certain that there is the problem where a trans woman has a significantly reduced dating pool and thus can descend into despondency over just wanting someone to love them and finding very few people willing to do so. I don’t like the idea that the “cotton ceiling” is about trans women breaking through someone else’s underwear. I think that’s entirely a framing that was created by TERFs to damn the whole concept of trans women being considered non-viable partners; to recast it as a demand for compulsory sex (which is what reads like Timecube to me).
The TERF framing is conspiratorial and the term “cotton ceiling” is probably at this point so poisoned by that ideology that, now, the term can’t be used without hurting some trans folk — by reminding them that some people think their desire to be loved is akin to being a rapist.
It sucks that a useful term is so poisoned.
Gwen: my problem with her actions is that it demands that the people who can get pregnant accept the misgendering of “woman” for some political expedient that, frankly, doesn’t actually exist. And that using more inclusive terminology so as to include non-women, is actually ERASURE of women. And, like my Venn shows above, it includes people who CAN’T get pregnant, who aren’t actually affected directly by denial to abortion services.
@78 That’s kind of what I meant. Regardless of her intention, she’s telling trans men and afab enbies to accept misgendering as a woman, or be invisible. By saying that these “outliers” are insignificant enough to be non-mentionable, she’s effectively saying that everyone who can get pregnant is a woman, even if she acknowledges that the outliers exist.
I really appreciate all the people who are pushing back against this crap. Especially the cis people (e.g., Jason and I believe Gilliel is also cis. I know that there are others, too.)
I’m still in the self-doubt stage, where I vacillate between having it together enough to see that I’m trans and being sure that I’m just being stupid and deluding myself, so it’s hard to explain myself even to people I know will listen and accept. When I run across people like OB or Steppenwolf/Steersman or this Francisco guy, I can’t put a coherent sentence together. It’s all I can do to keep my head above water emotionally.
tl;dr: thanks! thanks! thanks!
Background on the Lily Cade thing, Lily Cade refused any sexual contact not so much with trans women but anything that might be seen as “male” because this would invalidate her “gold star lesbian” status and make her less marketable. The trans performer who argued with her over it (Chelsea Poe) was pointing out how ridiculous that was and that having once slept with a man does not make you less of a lesbian and sleeping with trans women certainly doesn’t. Chelsea Poe went on to argue it was transphobic for lesbian studios to exclude transwomen over what’s clearly complete nonsense (gold star lesbian status). Whenever Cade claims Poe was demanding sex from her that’s what she’s referring too.
Those arguments aren’t exclusive to the trans/cis divide either. You see them whenever a performer criticizes porn categorized as interracial. Whether they’re pointing out the inherit racism in most studios that do interracial (banking on the myth of the violent hypersexual black man, for example) or that it’s racist for white performers to insist they’d never fuck a nonwhite person, it ends up playing the same.
Wow. that storify.
Benson should be ashamed of herself. Her comments must have been really frustrating for doctor Torres.
Stephanie Zvan #68
So, the criticism wasn’t “Your genital preference is wrong”. It was “Stop saying our genital preference is wrong”? In other words, the exact opposite of what Francisco Bacopa was claiming?
I edited the Storify into the post at the appropriate juncture. I also restored a sentence that was apparently lost in drafts. :p
I’ve seen so many variations of Francisco’s tirade in the world. A member of the majority embraces negative stereotypes and distortions regarding a marginalized group, states them as factual information, and then bases their condemnation of the marginalized group using that set of stereotypes. Challenging those stereotypes and distortions are then dismissed as a denial of factual reality. It is as though they have reproduced rhetorical boilerplate directly from a Bigotry for Dummies© guidebook.
This reminds me so much of when a Christian shows up in an atheist space and states, “Atheists are immoral and nihilistic because they deny the authority of God.” Atheists then respond by explaining how their morality and ethics are formed and emphasize that empathy and caring for others does not need divine authority as a basis. The Christian ignores almost everything the atheists have explained and then asserts that any system of ethics/morality that is not derived from their god’s authority is a false simulacrum of true morality and ethics. References to disagreements with atheist morality as an embrace of self-serving “hedonism” are then deployed. Repeat this process a number of times until the resulting nausea becomes unbearable.
AMM
I’m wishing you the best of luck on your journey.
As it is my conviction that it#s the dominant’s group task to dismantle their privilege, I do what I can.
+++
It is as if Benson never heard about power gradients. She keeps comparing using “people” to “all lives matter” and trans men* and non-binary people who are affected by restrictions of reproductive health AND trans-specific discrimination to “occasional white victims of racism or straight victims of homophobia.”
*This is interesting (for a fucked up idea of “interesting”): Are trans men just occasional male victims of misogyny for Benson or are they subsumend under “women”.
Oh, and talking about “your grandma is a TERF”: My great grandma got arrested and sentenced to prison for protesting abortion bans. I have an idea what she would have said to somebody who attacked an actual abortion provider….
“Women. The word is women. The people who can’t be trusted are women” except…when they are not women! “Pregnant people” is literally the name of the group. So the word literally isn’t “women”. And do you really think the bigots trust trans and non-binary people etc.? Of course they don’t, you should know this if you look into how their medical needs are handled in suspiciously similar fashion.
Also, ya, she’s got the comparison to “all lives matter” completely backwards.
[…] "Woman" is a gender, not a marker of fecundity. […]
If “woman”, or for that matter “man”, is nothing but a gender (which would mean that, as an ungendered woman, I don’t actually exist), and all references to the term must reflect this new reality, how about words like “patriarchy” (which can’t mean male dominance or rule of the father, since trans women would be part of the ruling class and trans men wouldn’t), “gender roles” (which can no longer refer to rules imposed on any specific gender), “hetero/homosexuality” (I’ve heard several people say that their orientation is based on body types, not identity, but where do they stand if “man/woman” has nothing to do with body types), etc.?
Since there are cis people whose gendered experiences and identity have no overlap with that of trans people of the same gender (but plenty of overlap with those of the same sex) and vice versa, I can’t see how it’s possible to have one and only one definition of what “man/woman” means and still have that one version be inclusive.
freja: you seem to be making the same mistake as on the Accounting thread, conflating the gender “woman” with what sex you were assigned at birth.
It is perfectly possible and completely cromulent, in fact, to say that patriarchy is about male dominance or rule of the father, while understanding that trans men may, or may not, gain some of the privileges of being a man based on whether or not they parse to others as a man. They may, also, though, experience all the misogyny and all the problems of being misgendered on the side.
I understand you’re having problems relating to others’ gender struggles because of your own, but your experience does not map to others’, so please keep that in mind when trying to navigate this discussion.
Jason:
I don’t have any gender struggles. There are some people who don’t include me in their definition of “woman”, but there is no gendered aspect of that, since these people’s definition of “gender” is so alien to me that it can only be a kind of mental construct which I obviously don’t posses. I’m fine with that, and I’d relinquish the term “woman” to them in a heartbeat if there was anything meaningful to replace it with.
And that leads me to the problem of reducing “woman” to only a gender. If people’s social status is decided by whether they’re identified as male or female, and whether they’re identified as male or female depends on their genitals, then for all practical purposes, their rights have nothing to do with gender, only sex. If “man/woman” must refer exclusively to gender and not sex, any references to men or women in the context of oppression in said society are meaningless.
And for the most part, trans men are not oppressed because they’re misgendered, they’re oppressed because they’re correctly identified as people with vaginas. Similarly, trans women rarely gain male privilege because they’re misgendered, they gain it because they’re correctly identified as people penises. Because in most languages, the equivalent of “man” has traditionally meant “has a penis and testicles” and “woman” has meant “has a vulva and uterus”, and those biological body types and roles have been the basis for how people were judged, to the point where ungendered people haven’t even realized they’re different because gender has had nothing to do with the definitions they were defined by.
I know people whose gender, or personality, has put them at odds with their assigned sex role have tended to suffer from it too, but the basis was not gender (or ungendered people wouldn’t have suffered so randomly, based on whether their personality fit what was expected), it was sex roles. If we’re reinventing language to be inclusive to trans people, and reducing “man/woman” to the baggage that tends to come with certain genitals, and not the presence of the genitals themselves, then we need new and shorter definitions of “has a penis and testicles/has a vulva and uterus”, because there are simply too many situations where this is an important distinction.
Or we end up with this:
trans women are women.
trans women are biologically female.
trans women are womyn-born-womyn.
trans women are female-bodied.
trans women have female chromosomes.
trans women have female reproductive systems.
trans women’s genitals are female.
trans women’s secondary sex characteristics are female.
trans women have female voices.
trans women are female-socialized.
trans women are female in every possible way you can imagine, except birth assignment.
[…] promoted guest post by timberwraith on this comment, reprinted with permission. It was too good to leave in the muck of some of its surrounding […]
Well, no. There are plenty of people who don’t fulfill the sex roles of the gender they identify as. Reducing the problem to “sex roles” does nothing to make this more accurate. Nor am I anything like the first person to point this out in these discussions.
Okay, we have a language that is currently used imprecisely to describe two spectra as a single dichotomy. That’s an argument to develop better language, not an argument against it.
#90:
And what would be wrong with that, exactly?
@freja
Indeed, and there isn’t.
@88, freja
I think I might be able to explain some things based on my own reading on the internet.
All these words are a bit different for different people. You are a woman!
Hmm I thought everyone already knew that “patriarchy” should be based on the category of “men”, and this all sorts itself out easily.
None of these labels are ever going to be perfect. Think about it: not all people are attracted to the same people. Are all heterosexual men attracted to every woman? No. It’s a quick easy generalization. And always will be.
I don’t get this one, what are you saying here?
And I already responded to your last paragraph.
@90, freja
continuing…
People’s social status is decided by what group the oppressors perceive them to belong to. None of the rest matters.
See what I said above. But also, note that even their genitals are often not correctly known by these oppressors.
Sort of. Words don’t “have meanings” like that though. Especially ones that children learn to use every day long before they learn the supposed “meanings” of them!
What do they learn? To quickly categorize people based on how they perceive those people.
Again, see above for the real basis of it.
I don’t think that’s actually what is happening at all. It would just leave us with the same problem that started it anyways.
Instead, I think both kinds of perceptions of the categories are accommodated. Because it is the self perception (self identification) that the categories are being based on, not just “reducing “man/woman” to the baggage that tends to come with certain genitals”.
I’m kind of basing my answer here on self identification answers I’ve seen over at Pharyngula in discussions of this stuff. No one was ever (that I can remember) told that they were “wrong” to self identify as women based on their genitals or body. And I think some did identify as such for those reasons.
Also, I’m sure it’s easy to find tons of places where people say that self identification is the ultimate arbiter of whether someone is a man or a woman.
Thankfully we can always say “has a penis” when we need to! 🙂
That’s funny, I was thinking the same thing about Ophelia. On multiple subjects, actually, not just his one.
1. Nice poisoning of the well there.
2. What does that mean, “sought this tweet out”? Are you suggesting Ophelia was searching for tweets mentioning “pregnant people” so could give them a hard time?
3. So she “attacked Torres”, “repeatedly chastising her”? What bullshit. Did you fail to notice that not one of her tweets recommending the use of the word “women” was actually directed at Torres? Not one. She was commenting on tweets, not harassing the tweeter.
freja@90
Once in dance class, I half-joked to my partner of the moment that I hated being the lead, because I wasn’t all that masculine. For the rest of the class, she deliberately went limp and forced me to assert the lead.
It’s a puny example, but that’s the point: our lives are filled with small moments where other people’s beliefs about our gender are forced upon us. As people can vary dramatically, it’s almost certain that in some of those moments your beliefs about your gender will clash with theirs.
That may not be a big struggle, that may be a fraction of what other people go through, but that is still a struggle.
Let’s do a quick exercise: on a sheet of paper, write down the names of your friends in one column. Down a second column, write down when you learned they had a penis, vagina, or something else. Down a third column, write down the first time you though of them as a woman, man, or non-binary person.
In practice, “man” and “woman” have very little to do with what’s between your legs. Other cues are far more important.