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I’d like to share an exchange. This happened on a blog post entitled “We need to talk” where an article entitled “You Are Killing Me: On Hate Speech and Feminist Silencing” was heavily quoted.
I criticized the article but tried to move the conversation forward by suggesting that we use terms for gender preferred by a trans activist I know in order to make better distinctions.
This. This is extremely trans antagonistic.
The conversation remained civil and constructive. One of the people in the conversation thought I was being a bit unfair, so I defended my interpretation of the text.
The VERY next thing Jones says is this: “[Trans ideology] comes perilously close to naturalizing the oppression of women.”
I’m not just reading into things, k?
And then something really strange happened.
I’m tired of debating whether [the author] rises to the level of TERF or not. She’s not a TERF.
Since when was this a conversation about whether or not the author was a TERF?
This all started as trans people screaming that [the author] is a TERF and a horrible person.
I mean, people who identify as trans. Attacking [the author]. Come on. M. A. Melby. I’m growing increasingly tired of your objections.
I wasn’t the only one confused that this came out of the blue. The dismissal of someone’s anger towards the author as “trans people screaming” didn’t set well at all either.
The author did engage with some of the criticism but stated that she had no clue as to why anyone would be upset. Then argued against what was assumed to be part of “trans ideology” according to the article: that being cisgender meant embracing the social constructs of gender. That is something I’ve never heard a trans person say, but I have heard cis feminists say it, and rail against it, all the time.
I’m just saying that not being trans does not equate to being totally at home in one’s assigned gender.
Someone in the conversation disclosed that he was trans and told us that “the way this discussion has been going kind of creeps me out”. He explained that lack of adequate language in expressing the realities of trans people might be part of the issue.
To add to that, there are lots of people, especially people in power over us, who wish to define us and interpret who we are (or simply deny our existence) in terms that fit into their understanding of How Things Really Are.
Some of our language and our so called “ideology” is an attempt to assert the validity of our existence in the face of a dominant way of thinking that wants to erase us.
My friend put a fine point on what the article might represent. And yes, he used the dreaded term “TERF” to describe it.
The linked post is a perfect example of what I was saying about TERFs subtle and not so subtle bigotry. They provide a very polite reasoned argument that trans women are a danger to feminism and [cis] women. If you can’t see where that is heading there’s no hope.
SINMANTYX 
M.A. Melby (OP):
Interesting, and relevant, reprise or summation of some previous and quite complex discussions. However, while I very much question the reliance of many “feminists” on the hypothesis that gender and/or sex are “socially constructed”, I also think that many people, feminists and otherwise, are entirely justified in seriously questioning “the terms for gender used by a trans activist [you] know”. For instance, that article on “Gender Orientation, Identity and Expression” includes a graphic that emphasizes the “subjective experience” that undergirds each of those terms (orientation, identity, expression) which might more accurately and colloquially be referred to as feelings.
Now I’m not one to deny the reality of such feelings – obviously they have some neurological correlates – but it should be rather clear from even a cursory review of religious feelings that they are frequently a rather weak reed to be putting much weight on, that they very frequently do not comport at all with the objective realities we all share. And if that is at all a major component in most “trans activism” then one might suggest that it seems rather flagrantly arrogant for them to insist that everyone else has to be obliged to “use terms for gender preferred by [them]”, terms that have their roots only in their idiosyncratic feelings.
People aren’t things Steerman.
Not quite sure where you got the idea that I was arguing that people are things. Because I argued that feelings and their neurological correlates are things? That would seem just as untenable as insisting that I was claiming people are things if I pointed out that, for examples, feelings of hunger, phantom limb pain (1), cognitive illusions like the spinning dancer (2), and aliasing as in the wagon-wheel effect (3) may not correspond to objective reality.
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1) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb”;
2) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_Dancer”;
3) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing”;
Your projecting the concreteness of the physical world onto the labels we construct to make sense out of our own experience of self. We get to decide those things and confer meaning upon them.
So you’re arguing that claims by religious fundamentalists as to the existence and requirements of deities such as Jehovah and Allah should be accepted as credible? And that the attendent demands – such as those related to abortion, gay marriage, and the stoning of adulters and homosexuals – should be acceded to? Seems pretty much the same kettles of fish.
While you – and various trans activists – are entitled to “confer your own meanings” on such experiences, I and many others would call it the height of arrogance and totalitarianism if you were to insist that everyone else has to agree with those rather subjective interpretations.
Damnit, I saw that comment in some recent discussions and noticed I’d dropped an important [cis]. At least it’s not as garbled as the comment I left at bloody CBs place that looked like I was calling cis women, “actual women”. Strange how the trans cabal is not targeting me for summary execution. I guess as OB and ClaireOT were saying on Twitter, it’s because they only target women O.o
Steersman, you are comparing trans people, a widely hated minority with limited access to political power, with religious fundamentalists. Here in the US, religious fundamentalists have a lot of political power at their disposal. They are still viewed with enough indifference and favor to make their political leverage very real. They have deep access to the government via the GOP and a vibrant social conservative political movement. Their political power has a palpable regressive influence over the lives of religious/non-religious minorities and minorities of sex, gender orientation, and sexual orientation.
I can be fired, not-hired, evicted, refused medical services, and refused access to public accommodations and services with little recourse in most of the US. Bigots murder people like me on a regular basis. Our suicide rates and levels of poverty are through the roof. We are widely bullied and abused in public schools with little hope of receiving justice from the school bureaucracy. So, using rhetorical flourishes such as “arrogance and totalitarianism” is a ridiculous, shit move, which completely ignores the social and political realities which surround trans people’s daily struggle for existence.
So, you want to deny the authenticity of our lives? Stand in line Steersman… with the fundamentalists and social conservatives you fear. Stand in line with much of the mainstream, who thinks we are deluded freaks and losers. Your denial of our lives is hardly a cutting edge revelation born of protecting the world against the horrors of totalitarian power. You embody the social totalitarianism you condemn, though you see our demands for respect and dignity as an affront to your base of social power.
Here’s all you need to know about our lives:
1) We aren’t living our lives to please your sensibilities.
2) We aren’t living our lives to obey your rules.
3) We live our lives in spite of the judgmental vitriol of common place insults and a refusal to accept who we are.
4) We will do what we need to survive. That takes priority over cis people’s sensibilities and fears. Our lives matter more than your discomfort.
Every day lived, every year survived, is a flesh and blood rejoinder to the small-spirited abuse that is encapsulated by sentiments such as yours.
Ultimately, the authenticity of our lives and our being isn’t dependent upon others’ prejudicial notions. The authenticity of our lives isn’t dependent upon the way people bend “science” and “objectivity” to fit their prejudices and insecurities. I’m not going to magically de-transition to male because you think I’m a deluded fraud, denying scientific reality. I won’t spontaneously masculinize because of your ill sentiments. I will continue to walk though life, being the woman I am, without notice from others.
Ironically, the woman sitting next to you at the bus stop might be me and you’ll continue reading your paper and sipping your coffee because my everyday life and my everyday appearance are as mundane as most peoples’. In spite of your protestations of “Science!” and “Objectivity!”, we’ll pass each other on the street, in the grocery store, and in the office with little notice. People’s daily perceptions of sex and gender don’t come with background checks and chromosome tests.
Look, I can’t force you to accept me as the woman I am, but keep in mind that respect is a two way street. If you refuse to respect who I am, if you refuse to treat me with dignity, then I’ll yield no respect in return.
In keeping with that sentiment, kindly go fuck off.
I think it has more to do with our giving-a-shit than our gender.
Here you go Steersman: https://sinmantyx.wordpress.com/2015/07/25/so-someone-called-you-a-terf-now-what/#comment-3737
So you’re calling me a TERF? Or you just trying to suggest that your response to Damion is supposed to be the definitive rebuttal of the challenge to the claim that “trans women are women”? And if it is the latter case then I think there are any number of rather specious and problematic aspects to your argument that are seriously begging the question.
For instance, you say:
And specifically, you’re insisting that “trans women are [to be] accepted as fellow women” without providing any objective criteria, despite at least genuflecting in that direction with your later “gate-keeping” comment, that might unambiguously define the class “women”: kind of difficult to decide whether “trans women are women” without it. And rather disingenuous if not intellectually dishonest to ignore that point. But while one might argue, as I have done before, that this issue is somewhat academic and a tempest-in-a-teapot, it seems a rather slippery slope to define words and concepts in a way that permits contradictory or inconsistent conclusions and arguments: ex falso quodlibet (1), “from a falsehood, anything follows”.
In addition, one might suggest that your “questioning the authenticity of their identity” is a bit of a flagrant dog whistle, some egregious propaganda, some wrapping yourselves in the flag of “womanhood”. And some further begging of the question (2), i.e., assuming the truth, as an article of faith, of that which is, at best, merely a hypothesis to be proven. It is not a question of questioning their identity as individuals, of not respecting their claim to common civil rights; it is one of questioning their claims to be thought of, and treated as, members of a particular class – all on the basis of their (highly subjective) “lived experiences” which even you concede as being “inherently problematic”. Analogously, no one really doubts the “lived experiences” of those suffering from various auditory and visual hallucinations; but very few are willing to accept that those hallucinations are faithful representations of what has actually happened.
And I notice that you didn’t really address my analogy with religious feelings.
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1) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion”;
2) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question”;
I just didn’t want to repeat myself.
You’re REALLY confusing a few things and in doing so, you’re being unintentionally insulting. Your analogies (as has been pointed out to you) are inappropriate.
You’re still acting like gender identity is akin to reporting an observable thing – it isn’t.
If someone said “I do not have legs” and you can observe that they do have legs – they may be delusional. If they explain how they feel about their body or their assigned gender – that person is not communicating a observation of the physical world – they are describing an experience within themself and they are the only ones that could possible know that.
There may well be some little bit in the brain that tends to orient us towards an experience with our bodies or our social gender identity – but even if that were not so – the experience of transgender people is not inherently inauthentic.
I mean – we don’t currently know why sexual orientation is a thing – but if I told you that I was bisexual and you said – NO YOU AREN’T – that would be pretty fucking insulting, right?
Analogies aren’t perfect – but the analogies you are using are loaded with negative connotations. Please be mindful of that, okay?
Not my intention to do so. And “inappropriate” says nothing about whether they’re inaccurate or not.
I’ve conceded and addressed, or at least acknowledged, that “Gender Orientation, Identity and Expression” are heavily dependent on “subjective experiences”. However, what you, and apparently, many if not most trans-activists seem to be rather obstinately unwilling to address is that the terms male (1) and female (2), along with the related terms man and woman, have some rather tangibly objective correlates associated with them, notably that males produce sperm and generally have an X-Y karyotype, and that females produce ova and generally have an X-X karyotype. That the transgendered happen to be “describing an experience within themselves” that may be at odds with those rather “brute facts” (3) in no way changes – or should change them; really seems madness to think otherwise.
I’ve periodically thought that the transgendered experience might be due to something akin to the immune system rejecting a transplanted organ, except that it’s more an autoimmune response of the body rejecting various organs it was born with – maybe due to mosaicism (4). But the attendant feelings still seem not to detract from the fact that those organs are still theirs. However, I’ll concede that it is a rather complex issue and process. But that is not saying that their experiences are “inauthentic”, only that there may be many different reasons for them, and that they may be based on misinterpretations of one sort or another.
Yes, I’ll readily agree that analogies aren’t perfect – the nature of the beast. However, I might suggest that at least some of those supposedly “negative connotations” are possibly based on misinterpretations of what I’ve said – as in the dichotomy between subjective feelings and objective, external, realities. But I’ll try to keep that point in mind.
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1) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male”;
2) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female”;
3) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute_fact”;
4) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(genetics)”;
Steerman – stop – just – – –
If a person identifies as a gender that is generally considered inconguant with their body – that is not the same as wrongly asserting that their body is different than it actually is. PARSE.
“I’ve periodically thought that the transgendered experience might be due to something akin to the immune system rejecting a transplanted organ….”
Okay – no – no – no – no – no ——- no.
1) There is no singular “transgender experience” (no -ed btw)
2) Quit conjecturing about subjects that you know very little about – especially subjects that affect others deeply. It’s rude.
Stop being rude.
Go to PubMed – go to PubMed now. Or the AMA or the APA or whatever.
Go.
I love you Steersman, but do your homework before you come back.
No wikipedia.
No.
M.A. Melby:
One might suggest that your parsing of my statements is rather badly flawed as I don’t see that I’ve done anything remotely like saying that trans persons are “wrongly asserting that their [bodies are] different than [they actually are]”.
What I’ve said is that while the terms, the words, “male” and “female” themselves are “socially constructed”, they still refer to and denote some brute facts in the way of some specific physiological features and attributes that are quite real and quite tangible – or are you going to dispute that? But I’ve never seen anything similarly real and tangible – maybe some fMRI scans? – that might undergird or corroborate the “subjective experiences” of a trans person “feeling” themselves to be other than the sex corresponding to their physiology. That is, you can’t really point to, much less measure and quantify, anything that might uniquely define and differentiate between the “subjective experiences” of possessing different physiologies, although I suppose one might argue that who one is attracted to sexually might qualify. However, that one is attacted to someone of the same physiological sex doesn’t prove that one is “actually”, subjectively, of the opposite sex; it only suggests that one is homosexual.
But I’m actually a little surprised if not a little nonplussed that you, as a physics instructor – for gawd’s sake, are, in effect, peddling woo by putting so much reliance on claims based merely on subjective experiences. But then again, maybe you’re not the physics instructor but only her daughter. In any case, while it is probably quite debatable whether there’s anything more to the brain and consciousness than current physics – all the way down – it still seems rather clear that the genetics and neurochemistry of the brain play a very great role in shaping if not in determining our behaviours and our feelings – which very frequently don’t correlate all that well with objective “reality”. Which you seem to be going out of your way to repudiate – and with diddly squat in the way of objective evidence to justify it. Say, how’s it going in dealing with “the problem of turbulent flow” from a feminist-postmodernist perspective? (1) 😉
Ok, I’ll concede that my “immune system rejecting a transplanted organ” was probably an overgeneralization, that there is, no doubt, a fairly broad and well-populated spectrum of “transgender experiences”, although that is probably still less than 3% of the total population.
Why? In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king. If you have some evidence that would refute my claims, my conjectures, then I would think you would leap at the chance to use that as a “teaching moment” to lead your brethren, if not the rest of the great unwashed, into the trans promised land. That you don’t suggests that you don’t have any of that evidence, and are merely engaged in cheap posturing to forestall having to deal with that fact.
Teriwbly, teriwbly wude. One might argue that it is far more rude, if not actually bloody arrogant to the point of being fascist and totalitarian, for various trans activists to be rather arbitrarily attempting to redefine a word to comport with their rather specious dogma.
Why? “Bless your heart”? Because the “cut of my jib”? Because of my “(faux) intelligent (if prolix) writing”? (2) 😉
That kind of has the flavour of the Courtier’s Reply (3). And which suggests that your “Emperor” is looking a little threadbare. If you have something that refutes my quotations from or references to Wikipedia then put them on the table. Otherwise I think you’re obliged to let them stand – and to deal with them.
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1) “_http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/dawkins.html”;
2) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtier%27s_Reply”;
3) “_http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2015/07/seriously-unskilled-impersonation/comment-page-1/#comment-5230531”;
What did I say Steersman?
Go. You go now.
Timberwraith:
Not quite sure why I only recently received notification of your comment – maybe the colourful language you closed it with delayed its release – but it still seems worth addressing. You said:
While I’ll concede that I am in fact “comparing trans people … with religious fundamentalists”, that I am arguing that the two are analogous, I think it is more important to note that I am only asserting that some elements in each case are the same, not all of them. You may wish to take a gander at the Wikipedia article on “analogies” [1] for the details, but the Coles Notes version is that one can compare a 3-4-5 right-triangle with a 9-12-15 one and note both similarities (angles, ratios of the sides) and differences (magnitudes of the sides).
And, in that case, I think it hardly a case of mere “rhetorical flourishes” to argue that the efforts of various transactivists to redefine words such as “male”, “female”, “man”, and “woman” – and to then impose those definitions on everyone else, and to refuse to consider any objections to that imposition – readily qualify as manifest cases of “arrogance and totalitarianism”. And as a case-in-point, I might point to a recent debate [2] over transgenderism in which the “transwoman” Zoey Tur threatened to send another reporter “home in an ambulance” for having the temerity to question “transgender dogma”. Y’all may wish to give some thought to repudiating such ignorant, arrogant, and totalitarian spokespeople – not likely to be winning you many friends or positively influencing people.
Not really; merely questioning some of the problematic premises on which “your” (collectively speaking) “demands for respect and dignity” are apparently predicated. And, relative to your “I’m not going to magically de-transition to male”, I think the chief among those is the rather “arrogant” attempt to redefine “male” and “female” as other than, respectively, “the physiological sex that produces sperm” [3], and “the sex … that produces non-mobile ova” [4]. In which case, Caitlyn Jenner, for example, is still a man even if he now has a rather fetching “cowgirl outfit”, i.e., is a “transwoman”.
And I might note similar problems with “man” and “woman” which are defined respectively as “male human” and “female human”. I geddit that there is a vast spectrum of behaviours, attributes, and personalities that are associated, in a non-consistent way, with those physiological brute facts, but they are the starting point. Which “you” more or less wish to repudiate: “you” might as well insist that left is either left or right depending on how you feel on any particular day, or on which phase the moon is in.
While I do sympathize with your plight, with the maybe “difficult” hand that you’ve been dealt, and think it deplorable if not criminal the abuse that “you” – as a group – receive, I can’t see that it helps your case much to insist, rather dogmatically if not arrogantly, on redefining words and, more importantly, attempting to deny some rather important biological differences to which those words refer.
——
1) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy#Identity_of_relation”;
2) “_https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_GKUzpVcXOI”;
3) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male”;
4) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female”;
There you go Steersman – I allowed your patronizing, concern trolling, oddly fascist bullshit on my comments.
You’re welcome.
Marian:
You say po-tat-o, I say po-tat-oe; you say clockwise, I say counter-clockwise.
But thanks in any case; would that HJ could show as much in the way of “balls” – so to speak, as much intellectual integrity in at least being willing to consider other viewpoints: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” (Aristotle)
As for “concern trolling”, I think you seriously misjudge me, or my argument, or are unclear on that concept; from that proverbial “cess-pit of lies” (or inconvenient truths):
While I’ll “cop to the charge” of trying to raise a few doubts – hardly anything to be anathematized by anyone claiming the mantle of “skeptic”, I don’t see that as any different from people challenging religious fundamentalists over their dogma, and its effects on social policies. In addition, I think I’ve been pretty up-front and consistent with my opinions and arguments on transgenderism – what you see is where I’m coming from, more or less as I’ll concede it is a rather thorny issue.
We’re on a first-name basis? That’s no fair. I suspect your name is not Steersman?
Anyhow, let me explain.
patronizing: I suspect we all know what analogies ARE that was just obnoxious.
tone trolling: What the fuck does this have to do with Zoey Tur?
oddly fascist: Setting up a power-dichotomy between “you” and “the rest of us” and painting any imposition that “you” might have on “the rest of us” as inherently unreasonable.
M.A. Melby:
Good bet – but, in the interests of sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, it’s Jim, at least the first name is. However, if you insist then I’ll only use the “M.A. Melby”, but without the numbering of comments it is frequently impossible to tell who is responding to whom without explicitly referencing the latter.
Any more “obnoxious” than Timberwraith ignoring my argument about “arrogance and totalitarianism”, and referring to the irrelevant differences between transgender activists and religious fundamentalists? And you would be surprised at the number of people I’ve run across who don’t understand analogies. Many seem to know what the concept means in general but frequently have absolutely no clue about the specific details, notably that one is not asserting all elements in each case are the same. As a case in point, you might peruse, and be amused by, the difficulties that your “good friend”, Ophelia Benson, got into over her comparison, her analogy, between TAM and Nazi Germany.
Would you believe, as a “case-in-point” adduced in support of my argument about the “arrogance and totalitarism” of some transgender activists? Who seem to be touting themselves as spokespeople if not “exemplars” for “da movement”. As I clearly stated in my previous comment.
I think you need to take a real close look at what I’m saying and to try not reacting to strawmen. While I think that statement or yours is somewhat incoherent, or at least easy to lose the thread of it, I assume that by “you” you mean “transgendered people”, and that by “the rest of us” you mean those of us who are not. In which case, I hardly think it a case of “setting up a power-dichotomy” to note – mirabile dictu – that some 98% of us fall into two quite distinct classes – i.e., those who produce ova, and those who produce sperm – and each of which has a well-worn if not hoary label attached to it that’s been extant for at least the last 1000 years or so. Or are you going to dispute those facts?
So yea, I would call it “inherently unreasonable” – if not egregiously arrogant and totalitarian – for transgender activists to think that they can redefine such words and to try to impose those on “the rest of us”. Particularly when their redefinitions are so incoherent and inconsistent: if every person has a different gender then what’s the effing point? We might just as well give our full names or social security numbers when asked for our gender and be done with what looks to be a major clusterfuck.
Oh Jim.
If words and labels, or our idealized models, are insufficient for their purpose or inconsistent with observation, they should be revisited and revised. This is called “the scientific method”.
Marian:
Sure. But it seems that the whole thing with gender is that it is predicated on largely subjective and unobservable “feelings”. Not what I would call particularly “scientific”. The benefit of relying of more objective, quantifiable, and common measures like the gametes produced – ova or sperm – and the chromosome sets, the karyotypes.
And those measures rather clearly seem to be the defining or most central ones. While this is mostly outside my salary range, although it’s something I’m working on, it seems that the fields of cluster analysis, with principal components analysis as one subset, are a way of getting a handle on the concept of gender.
In which case, I find it rather surprising that you apparently think that any other less common behavioural or psychological attribute is more defining or characteristic of the classes “man” and “woman”. I really don’t think that “your” theories on gender really hang together at all: poorly defined and inconsistent. Also surprising in someone who supposedly has some knowledge of and commitment to the philosophy and principles of physics.
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