thosepeskydames:
No feminism without trans* feminism
My response video to RadFem2012’s trans* exclusionary policies. There is no place for transphobia within feminism.
Reblogging again (sorry) because I basically just wrote this giant essay on the TPD Facebook Page so I thought I’d post it up here too, and it just made sense to attach it to the existing video post for reference.
We received a Facebook message from Jesse commenting on my video “No feminism without trans* feminism”, and with their permission I responded publicly because I’d rather open this up for discussion than just reply privately.
It’s quite a long one so please bare with me. I’ve replied in-line, from here on Jesse’s message is in the italicised quote sections. - Becca
“I am replying here, so as to have more space and a few hundred characters. RE: “what you mean by thinking and interacting as male,”
My partner and i attended a Namoi Brennet concert and in the audience were several transwomen. My partner is, as Daniel Pinkwater described himself, somewhat circumferentially challenged. As a result, she is used to the gaze men bestow on a room full of people - an appraising gaze that notices “attractive” people and classifies all others invisible. You see the person looking about and their glance just looks through you or past you, as you are obviously beneath their notice threshold. In her experience, she has experienced this non-verbal dismissal fairly often from men and although she grants that some women may do this, she has never seen a woman actually do it. Therefore, she views this kind of behaviour as “male” type. In this group of transwomen at this concert, they all did this.”
I think I know the type of superficially dismissive glance/attitude you’re talking about, and I can understand why you would consider this a more commonly ‘male’ type of behaviour, particularly as it’s a behaviour that’s often reinforced in the media as a male trope - that men only see ‘attractive’ women.
However, jumping from “x is a stereotypically male behaviour, that I’ve experienced from trans women”, to claiming that this means some trans women “act male”, therefore it could potentially be acceptable or understandable to exclude them, is straight out discrimination. To start with, this is an anecdotal example, as I’m sure you’re aware. Your partner even accepts that some cis women may do this, despite not having experienced that herself. This isn’t a problem of trans women “thinking and interacting as male”, but rather evidence that some trans women are superficially dismissive, in just the same way some cis women are superficially dismissive, and some cis men, and some trans men, and just generally some humans.
“Have you ever been in a room of just women who were talking, collaborating, discussing, disagreeing, finding consensus, whatever - and have been doing this for anything up to an hour, when a man enters the room? Although the man may do nothing in particular other than to enter the room… the women change the dynamic of their discussion. even if they do not feel this an intrusion, or a disruption. I have been in groups like this, where a an unknown woman enters the room and in the span of a few minutes, the room dynamics change, precisely as though a man had entered, and it turns out this was a transwoman. This is not always the case. This may not even be very often the case, but it is sometimes or occasionally the case.”
Again this is a leap using anecdotal evidence to justify discrimination.
To start with I am aware of the experience you describe of women’s only spaces being disrupted by the presence of someone male. This stems from the constant domination of discussion by male voices, even when they are in the minority, and the socialised tendency for women to be submissive/deferential to a male opinion. We discussed this in our week on women’s only spaces and it’s the reason women’s only spaces are so important.
However, what differentiates this from your example of an unknown trans women entering a women’s only space is firstly, that there’s a very real social power dynamic between women and men, which sits in reverse between trans women and cis women. Secondly, equating the two experiences lies in the transphobic refusal to accept trans women as women, and which is something cis women must learn to overcome and work past, not something trans women must accept.
You even accept that, “this is not always the case. This may not even be very often the case.” So sometimes, maybe, some cis women feel uncomfortable being open around an unknown trans women, and this is justification for excluding all trans women how?
The situation you describe could very easily be the result of a unknown woman, cis or trans, walking into an established discussion with a group that has already built up a trusting rapport. In particular if the group are unaware of whether the unknown woman is cis or trans then this can’t really be said to have an affect on the change in dynamic.
If on the other hand the group suspect or assume that the unknown woman is trans, the change in dynamic is probably the fault of their projected transphobia and cissexism than the fault of the new trans woman, which is exactly what we should be fighting against.
Would you consider it acceptable if a group of white feminist women became uncomfortable at the entrance of a woman of colour? Would this be grounds for excluding women of colour from a feminist conference? No, this would be instantly decried as the racism that it so obviously is.
“Now, I am all for all-inclusion. I want the discussion to be open and free and available to one and all. I don’t want people to be excluded for whatever reason, but I understand some people wanting to exclude some people because the mere fact of them is disruptive to the purpose of the gathering. I think we need to abandon this different attitude and behaviour for people based on their characteristics (gender, race, age, weight, etc) - it’s all bad… There is just one kind of person, the human kind.
But I am not sure you get any traction from forcing people who haven’t arrived at that place in their own hearts to pretend that they have.”
Again I ask, would you feel the same if a conference were set up stating that only white women could attend because the organisers had racial prejudices that they hadn’t yet worked though? Or if the conference was straight women only, or stated that you had to be of a certain class/have a certain amount of money to attend?
I find it very doubtful that any of these situations would be accepted, that people would defend the organisers bigotry and discrimination and state that we just had to wait for them to work through their prejudices on their own time.
No, people would protest, they would demand that the organisers shake off these prejudices which have no place in modern feminism and no place in society. The situation is exactly the same for transphobia, and there is no excuse for accepting it.
