Tag Archives: feminism

Trans Rights Defended: In Theory and in Practice

black-and-white photo of people holding up two signs: SUPPORT TRANS YOUTH and GENDER DIVERSITY IS BEAUTIFUL in front of a trans rights (striped pastel blue, pastel pink and white) flag

Laurie and Debbie say:

The assault on trans rights, with a focus on the complete erasure of trans children and youth, is relentless. What was once an extreme right-wing position has shifted into the mainstream. If you’re trans, or trans-adjacent, it’s incredibly easy to feel that everyone is against you; the threat to your existence is constant and manifest.

In this hateful climate, voices of defense and compassionate analysis are not only valuable, they are necessary. In this post, we lift up two such voices. First, Catharine McKinnon, well-known and appropriately resoundingly criticized for her decades-long opposition to sex and sex work, keynoted a roundtable on Exploring Transgender Law and Politics.  We make no excuse or apology for MacKinnon’s other positions, and we both remember her unremitting attacks on sex workers with disgust. Her unwavering opposition to all forms of sex work is not absent from this piece. Nonetheless, her analysis of the situation of trans people is remarkable, and quite original. Here are a few choice quotations from this long piece; we recommend reading the whole thing (perhaps skipping the anti-sex diatribes).

Much of the current debate has centered on (endlessly obsessed over, actually) whether trans women are women. Honestly, seeing “women” as a turf to be defended, as opposed to a set of imperatives and limitations to be criticized, challenged, changed, or transcended, has been pretty startling. One might think that trans women—assigned male at birth, leaving masculinity behind, drawn to and embracing womanhood for themselves—would be welcomed. …

… what women “are” does not necessarily define the woman question: our inequality, our resulting oppression. Those of us who do not take our politics from the dictionary want to know: Why are women unequal to men? What keeps women second-class citizens? How are women distinctively subordinated? The important question for a political movement for the liberation of women is thus not what a woman is, I think, but what accounts for the oppression of women: who is oppressed as a woman, in the way women are distinctively oppressed? …

… the notion that trans people are living in a fantasy, are imposters, while women assigned female at birth are living in material reality, and are the only real thing, is central to the so-called feminist anti-trans position. But sexuality, however social, is material, and trans people are sexually defined, objectified, violated, and living (and dying) in it at major rates. Their subordination and abuse, which includes abuse as trans, as women, and as trans women, is no fantasy. It also includes sexual abuse as trans men, feminine men, and trans nonbinary. …

… The notion that gender is biologically based—the philosophical foundation common to male dominant society and anti-trans feminists—is core to the reason why trans people know with their lives that they have to change their bodies to live the gender of their identities. Trans people do not need to make or defend a progressive contribution to gender politics to be entitled to change the way they inhabit gender. But trans people, in addition to all else they do and are, highlight feminism’s success—gender’s arbitrariness and invidiousness was our analysis originally—and feminism’s failure, or better our incomplete project—as the world is still largely stuck in what feminists oppose and fight to change, and trans people are determined to escape.

There’s lots more. But let’s turn to the amazing Julia Serano, whom we have written about before here and here.  Writing at Medium, Serano turns her gaze on the anti-trans parent movement.

We are currently in the midst of an all-out moral panic against transgender people. If I were to ask “who is driving this panic?” most people in the United States would likely say the far right and social conservatives who have traditionally been opposed to LGBTQ+ people. In the United Kingdom, they might say “gender critical” (GC) or “TERFs,” who frame their opposition to trans people as a feminist crusade. If you said “both,” well, that would also be correct, as these two groups have long been working together.

But there is a third faction driving this moral panic that has received far less public attention: the anti-trans parent movement. This movement is comprised of reluctant parents of trans children. They coalesce online to share stories, spread alternative theories that explain away their children’s transness, and exchange tips on how to coerce their children into “desisting.” Some of their theories are pseudoscientific (e.g., that trans identities are now spreading among children via “social contagion/ROGD”), while others are conspiratorial (e.g., children are being recruited via “gender ideology,” “grooming,” or “Jewish billionaires working to create a transhumanist future”).

Serano, always a brilliant organizer of her written words, starts with a well-sourced history of this movement and how people got caught up in it (all in the context of the overwhelming medical consensus for gender-affirming care). As with the MacKinnon, we recommend reading the entire article (which is shorter and more accessible than the first one).

Serano then turns to an analysis of how mainstream media covers the movement. Here’s just one example, featuring one of the many anti-trans parent groups:

Jesse Singal’s 2018 Atlantic cover story, “When Children Say They’re Trans,” may be the most influential article of this genre. There are too many problems with it to fully cover here. But pertinent to this essay, shortly after its release, one of the mothers who was featured in the article published a post on 4thwavenow entitled “What I wish the Atlantic article hadn’t censored.” The article, and the 4thwavenow editorial note that precedes it, claim that The Atlantic whitewashed all mentions of 4thwavenow from the article. In a separate tweet in response to someone wishing that Singal had consulted 4thwavenow for the article, the spokesperson for 4thwavenow replied: “Oh, he consulted. Heavily. Families profiled are 4th families. That was the censors’ line in the sand — removal of any mention of 4th.”

To be clear, 4thwavenow routinely compares trans communities and healthcare to “cults,” “brainwashing,” “lobotomies,” “mutilation,” “Big Pharma,” and “eugenics.” The fact that Singal and/or The Atlantic recruited parents from such a blatantly anti-trans parent website without divulging this crucial fact to readers is journalistic malpractice.

Stomach-turning, especially that list of comparisons.

Having made that point, Serano transitions to a clear rejection of the “concerned parent trope.”

If you understand … outsiders’ propensity to identify with cis parents rather than their trans children, coupled with parents’ tendency to disbelieve that their children are “really trans” (at least initially, and in some cases permanently) — then it becomes obvious how easy it is for journalists and media producers to manipulate audiences’ opinions of trans youth and gender-affirming healthcare with a few well-placed quotes from reluctant or skeptical parents.

I am not saying that journalists should never cover the difficulties and obstacles faced by parents of trans children — there are many and they can be recounted respectfully (see e.g., Meadow, 2018). But when journalists only tell the parent’s side of the story, or when they pit a parent’s trans-skeptical account against that of their trans child — implying that the former likely “knows better” than the latter — that should be a giant red flag for audiences.

And when articles and news stories mention trans-skeptical parents “seeking support” and finding “like-minded voices” online, that’s almost always a sign that said parents are involved in or interacting with the anti-trans parent movement.

Or, “nothing about us without us” applies to trans kids and trans adults, as it applies to everyone.

Thanks to Stef Schwartz for a pointer to the MacKinnon article.

======================

Debbie is no longer active on Twitter. Follow her on Mastodon.

Follow Laurie’s Pandemic Shadows photos on Instagram.

======================

The Threat Posed by Women’s Bare Arms

Michelle Obama in front of an American flag, in a simple black dress with bare arms

Debbie says:

Like every progressive in this country, and most in the world, I’m getting hard to shock. The Missouri legislature has shocked me, however, by adopting a dress code (introduced by a Republican woman legislator) that forbids women (including elected women) to appear on the legislative floor with bare arms.

You think immediately of Margaret Atwood’s Gilead, or of Victorian fashions and dress codes, but it turns out that this isn’t a fictional or ancient issue; it’s been around for much of the current century. One of the focal points appears to be that dread symbol of women’s strength and confidence, our former first Lady, Michelle Obama. I don’t remember following this at the time, but Mrs. Obama appeared at formal events with bare arms, and that caused a minor news flurry. Here’s a CBS piece from 2009, President Obama’s first year in office:

Never before, surely, has a set of bare arms launched so much discussion than in the weeks since Mrs. Obama appeared sleeveless at her husband’s speech to Congress in chilly February. Certainly not in equally chilly January 1963, when Jacqueline Kennedy wore one of her many sleeveless outfits to her own husband’s State of the Union address.

Noveck goes into various fashion analyses of Mrs. Obama’s arms, including the theory that talking about them distracts from the work she was actually doing as first lady. Of course, one of the reasons that her arms got attention and Jackie Kennedy’s didn’t is that, unlike Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Obama is Black and thus subject to vastly more scrutiny and criticism. It’s also true that Jackie Kennedy was first lady before the 1970s feminist wave, and fewer people were nervous, scared, or hypercritical–emotions which always arise when women proclaim strength.

The problem arose again in Canada, in very similar terms to today’s issue in Missouri, in 2019. According to Tina Lovgren at CBC News, the British Columbia legislature enforced what they called a “conservative contemporary dress code” forbidding bare arms, and also chastizing women who weren’t wearing slips so you could see that they had two legs (!) under their dresses.

The Obama controversy seems to have been mostly short-lived, though it reared up again now and then through the 8 years of the Obama presidency. The British Columbia dress code appears to still be in force today. The Missouri code, however, is perhaps more likely to get longer-lasting attention, in part because it is one of dozens of examples of Republican over-reach. While they scream about governments having “no right” to control the use of natural gas (which causes very significant health effects), they delight in using government to control bodies: Black and brown people’s bodies, pregnant people’s bodies, trans people’s bodies, and now female legislators’ bodies. Forbidding bare arms may be one of the least life-threatening forms of bodily control … and it’s also emblematic of what they believe they have the right to do.

Throughout Western history, women’s fashion has been a battleground in culture wars, a tool to control women’s power, and a marker for moral panics. Dress codes are a way of tracking how these movements progress–and Missouri has just issued another giant red flag, which must not go unnoticed.

======================

Debbie is no longer active on Twitter. Follow her on Mastodon.

Follow Laurie’s Pandemic Shadows photos on Instagram.

======================