You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘gender identity’ tag.
Meghan Murphy is one of Canada’s leading Feminists. This quote is from her article – “Thanks to trans activism, 2017 saw a return to old-school, sexist dismissals of women and women’s rights.” Definitely worth your time to go and peruse the entire article. What I would like to focus on is how well this quote highlights one aspect of the feminist struggle against the various incarnations of patriarchy and men’s rights activism.
Feminists (those who struggle for the emancipation of women from patriarchy) are being attacked for merely naming the problem that they face. Gender is a problem, it is a toxic hierarchy that hurts both women and men. The liberal mainstream won’t have any of it though (quelle suprise~!~). Instead, the notion of gender identity is being enshrined in law and shoehorned into society which of course is good for men, but bad for women. Women brave enough to challenge the ideology of ‘gender identity’ are are routinely misconstrued, harassed, and marginalized. Why?
Questioning the dominant patriarchal narrative – and yes the transactivist narrative is inherently patriarchal – is challenging male dominance in society, and will always be vilified and marginalized.
The good news is that the dictates of reality defying ‘gender-identity’ platform, even if just superficially examined, are unpalatable to not only to the so-called ‘mainstream sensibilities’, but also to those who value rational arguments based on material reality and fact.
Feminists have known this pretty much since the beginning and the radical vanguard are now slowly being joined by those who appreciate the strength of radical feminist arguments and analysis.
Let us hope this trend continues and intensifies, because Patriarchy 2.0 is in dire need of a serious blaming.
“The notion that “gender identity” exists at all flies in the face of feminist analysis, which says being born female is what forces women into an oppressed class of people, regardless of whether or not they identify with that position. But this point, as well as the concerns women have expressed around the impact of writing something as vague and as regressive as “gender identity” into legislation, including questions around whether males should be permitted in female prisons, change rooms, and transition houses, go unacknowledged and unaddressed by trans activists and queer theorists like Barker. Instead, she paints challenges to this ideology as nothing more than a hateful, unfounded, irrational attack on trans-identified individuals, writing:
“A moral panic is the process of arousing social concern over an issue. Moral panics often involve scapegoating a particular group as the ‘evil’ responsible for a range of societal ills.”
Indeed, Barker sounds no different than the anti-feminists over at Spiked, who claim the #MeToo campaign is a “harassment panic” that demonizes men unfairly. She claims trans-identified people are vilified by challenges to and questions about transgenderism, trans activism, and policies that allow men to enter into women-only spaces, simply based on self-identification, intentionally declining to acknowledge that what women fear is not an abstract trans-identified person, but men, specifically. No one has argued, as Barker claims, that trans-identified people are specifically dangerous or violent. What has been argued is that males are a threat to females, regardless of how they identify. If this fact is indeed considered a “moral panic” in the eyes of people like Jones and Barker, then they are better suited for the alt-right crowd than they are among progressives.
Barker says that this kind of “moral panic” (commonly known as “feminism”) exists to “enable us to attack a specific group for problems we’re all implicated in”… As though we have no idea who is doing all the raping and beating in this world and as though women are equally as culpable…”
These are the threats that entitled misogynists in dresses regularly hurl at women. These are the actions of men when you disagree with them. Feeling progressive and supportive of the trans-cult agenda yet? I know I’m not. Male violence and the threat of male violence is the first tool use in patriarchy to oppress females, if these ‘trans-women’ had even one small fucking inkling of what actually being a woman in society is like, they wouldn’t do shit like this. But they do, almost every time. So if you go against their pornified-male-gaze based version of what a woman is – this is what you get.
Transactivsm isn’t progressive, it isn’t ‘inclusive’ and sure as cats shit in my garden, it ain’t no feminism.
http://vuvaliniterf.tumblr.com/post/167948405167/kaoticwitchmemes-bitter-badfem-
Funny sad really as the male entitlement that females have to deal with daily has begun to negatively affect those backing the whole gender identity hoopla. The truth as it was in the beginning as it is now – threatening male entitlement is verboten. I wonder how long it will be before the good doctor is called a T*RF.
http://auntiewanda.tumblr.com/post/166415122696/spencer-shayy-gender-critical-appspot-james
Miranda Yardley seems to understand the concept of material reality and the sex based oppression of females. In this snippet, they address some of the problems that arise when men pretend to be women.
“So far, so good. Yet at number 21, is our old friend Phillip ‘Pippa/Pips’ Bunce, who is “Head of Global Markets Technology Core Engineering Integrations Components” at Credit Suisse. You may remember ‘Pips’ from my piece ‘Drop The T and the Great LGBT Sell-Out’ where I commented:
I wish he would connect his own ‘gender fluidity’ to sexism, or even meaningfully address the structural sexism his own activism literally skirts around but again, this is just another missed opportunity which turns the potentially revolutionary into the properly reactionary.
In case you need reminding,
Pips identifies as gender fluid spending half her time as Phil and the other half as Pippa both at work and at home with her wife and children
What this actually means is described in ‘Mx matters as much as Lord, Prof, Ms and Mr‘ published by the Financial Times, where Bunce writes:
I like to be Phil one day and Pippa another, using different forms of dress and make-up to do so… I am straight… married for more than 20 years and have two children.
The citation given to Bunce is quite staggering, itself meriting its own dissectiom.
Pips took the conscious decision to be ‘out’ at work as gender fluid to embrace and advocate the importance of authenticity as well as to shine a light on the power and diversity of women in the workplace.
How does a man wearing hosiery, a dress, stripper wig and high heels ‘shine a light on the power and diversity of women in the workplace’? Rhetorical question: it does absolutely fuck all. It reduces being a woman in the workplace to the artificial construction of sex-based clothing, which itself is oppressive. I mean, seriously: if he is going to be a champion for women, he actually has to be a champion for women. Instead, he is rigidly reinforcing the very stereotypes women have fought against for centuries and reducing what it means to be a woman to a pantomime costume.
Multiple aspects of our identity, including gender identity/expression, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, disability and religion influence our experiences at work.
What is always interesting in transgender activism is the way that the nebulous and subjective thoughts and feelings of ‘gender identity’ (read: identification with sexist stereotypes) is leveraged and turbo-charged by equalising it to race, sexual orientation and disability. The material reality is rather different: racism still exists, homophobic attacks still happen and disabled people still struggle to find suitable places to go for a pee. And nobody anywhere has a non-circular definition of the subjective thoughts and feelings of ‘gender identity’.
But of course Bunce doesn’t give a fuck, because ethnic minorities, homosexuals and those of us with disabilities are the human shield that allows an economically advantaged, physically healthy straight white man to come into work wearing a dress and claim to be an oppressed minority, to be ‘a woman’ on those days and be the cuckoo in the nest which is supposed to be incubating, nurturing and inspiring a generation of female business leaders. What chance do these women have against the cross-dressing chameleon, the truculent transvestite, who appears happy to not only appropriate ‘woman’ but usurp ‘female’? What kind of intellectual idiocy allowed Financial Times and HERoes to fall for this transgender Trojan horse? Why is he one of forty nine women and not one of thirty men?
Our sex or gender may be the same, but our identities, our successes and our struggles are different and it is for this reason why Pips is proud to be a female champion in business.
I mean, seriously, I can’t even. This is a man, a straight man, who spends much of his life living as a man, claiming to be a ‘proud female in business’. To quote a phrase (thanks, Magdalen Berns), the minds of this lot are so open their brains have fallen out.
She is a member of the European Women’s Network/IT Women’s Council and had many external publications relating to gender equality published.
As we can see, to Bunce ‘gender equality’ means to raze to the ground the rights that women have, as women, so that men like Bunce can have rights, ‘as a woman’. This is not about equality, this is all about power, and it is oh so clear who is wielding the power. How dare this MAN have the audacity to sit on a women’s council in an environment dominated by males.”
Well said, indeed.
I’m sometimes asked why I give such serious side-eye to the term identity politics. This isn’t some sort of dogwhistle like the freezepeach moniker that gets affixed to people who want to say racist or sexist things and then hide behind free speech. Gender IDPOL is a systemic denial of the reality women face and an iron scold meant to silence and shame women who dare to speak out against the arguments IDPOL make.
The good news is that despite the abuse from the ‘progressive’ left and the usual abuse from dudes, brave women are speaking out against gender IDPOL, precisely because of its insidious nature and the implicit erasure of the female experience from the public sphere.
Ms. Sanchez writes a cogent essay that appears on the Feminist Current, I suggest going there and reading the entire work. However, I wanted to highlight this section in particular as it speaks to the material situation women face in society, and how IDPOL is obfuscating that struggle. Also highlighted are some of the rhetorical dodges genderists use to muddy the water when it comes to the reality of sex based oppression.
“This is because there is an expectation that women are inherently nurturing. Being forced into the position of caretaker translates to women having less savings, being promoted less, and accumulating less money in their pensions.
But gender identity politics reduces this reality — and womanhood itself — to a trivial, malleable identity. It is baffling that in a world where women and girls face structural oppression due to their biology, gender identity politics has thrived.
Susan Cox argues that: “The non-binary declaration is a slap in the face to all women, who, if they haven’t come out as ‘genderqueer,’ presumably possess an internal essence perfectly in-line with the misogynistic parody of womanhood created by patriarchy.” There’s a twisted, neoliberal cruelty in arguing that the primary problem with gender is its impact on the chosen identities of individuals, and not the way it operates systemically, under patriarchy, to normalize and encourage male violence and female subordination.
When confronted with evidence that, historically and globally, women’s oppression is sex-based, gender identity politics simply claims that sex itself is an “invented” social construct.
BUT male/female as two distinct categories is a system we made. bio sex is a classification we invented. these aren’t inherent in nature.
— Riley J. Dennis (@RileyJayDennis) July 9, 2017
In an article at Quartz, Jeremy Colangelo writes:
“Sex and gender are much more complex and nuanced than people have long believed. Defining sex as a binary treats it like a light switch: on or off. But it’s actually more similar to a dimmer switch, with many people sitting somewhere in between male and female genetically, physiologically, and/or mentally. To reflect this, scientists now describe sex as a spectrum.
Despite the evidence, people hold on to the idea that sex is binary because it’s the easiest explanation to believe. It tracks with the messages we see in advertisements, movies, books, music — basically everywhere. People like familiar things, and the binary is familiar (especially if you’re a cisgender person who has never had to deal with sexual-identity issues).”
But feminists don’t argue that sex is real because it is “the easiest explanation to believe” or because of what the media tells us. We argue sex is real because from the moment an ultrasound reveals a baby is female, her subjugation begins. And though “gender identity” is presented as an issue feminism must contend with, it is, as Rebecca Reilly-Cooper explains, completely at odds with feminist analysis of biological sex as an axis of oppression:
“Women’s historic and continued subordination has not arisen because some members of our species choose to identify with an inferior social role (and it would be an act of egregious victim-blaming to suggest that it has). It has emerged as a means by which males can dominate that half of the species that is capable of gestating children, and exploit their sexual and reproductive labour.
We cannot make sense of the historical development of patriarchy and the continued existence of sexist discrimination and cultural misogyny, without recognizing the reality of female biology, and the existence of a class of biologically female persons.”
Far from fluid, the realities of sex-based oppression are strict and enforced through violence — this is particularly true for women of colour and women in poverty.”
If gender identity is so amazing why are not females in large droves identifying as Men to escape their oppression?
Canadian bill C-16 passed.
“The bill updates the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to include the terms “gender identity” and “gender expression.” The legislation also makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender identity or expression. It would also extend hate speech laws to include the two terms, and make it a hate crime to target someone for being transgender.
Critically, the bill also amends the sentencing principles section of the code so that a person’s gender identity or expression can be considered an aggravating circumstance by a judge during sentencing.”
As with much of queer politics, defining terms is pretty much up to who you happen to ask, or what day it is, or really how you feel about it at the time. So, let’s grab some terms from some lazy searches on google. These two categories are now included in the the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code.
Wikipedia – Gender identity – is one’s personal experience of one’s own gender.[1] Gender identity can correlate with assigned sex at birth, or can differ from it completely.
“Merriam Webster – Gender expression – : The physical and behavioral manifestations of one’s gender identity People vary greatly in the extent to which they hold and convey gendered thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Gender expression refers to the way people convey their gender through mannerisms, behaviors, or expressions. — Robert C. Eklund and Gershon Tenenbaum (editors), Encyclopedia of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2014 For most people, … gender expression occurs so naturally it’s unnoticeable. Except when gender expression doesn’t match traditional notions of the gender assigned at birth. — Will Dean, The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, California), 12 June 2015″
Perhaps we should try one more source. Another definition of gender identity this time from Canadian Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, who introduced the legislation –
“Gender identity is a person’s internal or individual experience of their gender. It is a deeply felt experience of being a man, a woman, or being somewhere along the gender spectrum. Gender expression is how a person publicly presents their gender. It is an external or outward presentation through aspects such as dress, hair, makeup, body language, or voice.”
Luckily I also found a feminist response as well – Meghan Murphy responds –
“But these statements show a deep misunderstanding of what gender is and how it works. Gender is a product of patriarchy. Ideas around masculinity and femininity exist to naturalize men’s domination and women’s subordination. In the past, women were said to be too irrational, emotional, sensitive, and weak to engage in politics and public life. Men were (and often still are) said to be inherently violent, which meant things like marital rape and domestic abuse were accepted as unavoidable facts of life. “Boys will be boys,” is the old saying that continues to be applied to excuse the predatory, violent, or otherwise sexist behaviour of males.
The feminist movement began back in the late 1800s in protest of these ideas, and continues today on that basis. The idea that gender is something internal, innate, or chosen — expressed through superficial and stereotypical means like hairstyles, clothing, or body language — is deeply regressive.
Beyond misguided language there is the fact that we are very quickly pushing through legislation that conflicts with already established rights and protections for women and girls.
Women’s spaces — including homeless shelters, transition houses, washrooms, and change rooms — exist to offer women protection from men. It isn’t men who fear that women might enter their locker rooms and flash, harass, assault, abuse, photograph, or kill them… This reality is often left unaddressed in conversations around gender identity. This reality is sex-based, not identity-based. Men cannot identify their way out of the oppressor class so easily, neither can women simply choose to identify their way out of vulnerability to male violence.”
So here we be – enshrining more patriarchal norms into our laws – big surprise right? This legislation potentially represents a large step backwards for women.
“As unpopular as this fact has become, a man or boy who wishes to identify as a woman or girl, perhaps taking on stereotypically feminine body language, hairstyles, and clothing, is still male. He still has male sex organs, which means girls and women will continue to see him as a threat and feel uncomfortable with his presence in, say, change rooms. Is it now the responsibility of women and girls to leave their own spaces if they feel unsafe? Are teenage girls obligated to overcome material reality lest they be accused of bigotry? Is the onus on women to suddenly forget everything they know and have experienced with regard to sexual violence, sexual harassment, and the male gaze simply because one individual wishes to have access to the female change room? Because one boy claims he “feels like a girl on the inside?” And what does that mean, anyway?”
So which is more important male gender feelings or female safety? I would like to advocate here for gender neutral washrooms/changing area as the beginning of a compromise in this area. We still live in a patriarchy and sex segregated facilities are still necessary for the protection and safety of females in our society. The choice whether to co-mingle with men in washrooms or change rooms should be up to all those involved.
“We live in a time when women and girls are killed every day, across the globe, by men. Things like rape, domestic abuse, and the murder of Indigenous women and girls in Canada are still not considered hate crimes. Yet we have managed to push through legislation that may very well equate “misgendering” to hate speech.
Women are protected under the human rights code on the basis that we are, as a group, discriminated against on account of our biology. Employers still choose not to hire women based on the assumption that they will become pregnant. Women are still fighting to have access to women-only spaces (including washrooms and locker rooms) in male-dominated workplaces like fire departments, in order to escape sexual harassment and assault.”
I have serious misgivings about this legislation. The concerns raised by radical feminists such as Meghan Murphy, have mostly been brushed aside, unsurprisingly as her concerns focus on the female experience in society and how this legislation is going to impact females (thanks again patriarchy).
Critical analysis and more debate is necessary on contentious topics such as the now passed bill C-16 – I hope more discussions can be had and that so we can ensure the safety and security of females in our society.
“I understand the desire to be inclusive. The feminist movement has historically not been super inclusive or intersectional, particularly for women of color and lesbian and bisexual women. I think the third wave has been doing a much better, albeit not perfect, job of being more intersectional.
However, radical feminism is about females. We acknowledge the power structure as being male people oppressing female people. A trans woman can change her name, get surgery, do everything to try to become like females, but she will always be male, which comes with implications in three major areas: sex-based oppression, privilege, and socialization.
There are specific issues which only affect female people like menstruation, pregnancy, reproductive rights, and female genital mutilation. While not every female person is affected by these things, ONLY female people are affected by them. A trans woman never has to worry about pregnancy. A trans woman doesn’t have to spend money on a box of tampons every month. (Which are taxed as a luxury item in some states, by the way.) A trans woman from a culture where female genital mutilation is practiced will never be a victim of that practice. I recognize and understand that trans people are an oppressed based on being transgender and these things are complicated, but there are such things as sex specific issues and there is nothing wrong with having a movement to address those issues.
TL;DR radical feminism is about the liberation of the female sex and transwomen are biologically male. It doesn’t apply to “gender identity”.
May I just mention how effing pissed off I am that the effing backlash was so effing successful that people in the year 2017 don’t even know that Feminism is a political movement for the liberation of women.”
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…