by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 17, 2018 | Gender
For radical feminists, gender is understood as not merely a subjective internal sense of self; patriarchal gender norms are a product of culture, imposed on people and limiting everyone’s humanity.
by Robert Jensen / Feminist Current
I am routinely described as cisgender (defined as people whose internal sense of gender identity matches their biological sex). Because I have critiqued the ideology of the transgender movement, I also am often labeled a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). But neither term is accurate — I don’t self-identify as cisgender or as exclusionary.
Instead, I identify as an adult male who rejects the rigid, repressive, and reactionary gender norms of patriarchy, and I believe that radical feminism offers the most compelling analysis of a patriarchal sex/gender system. The feminist critique I embrace is not an attack on, nor an exclusion of, anyone who suffers from gender dysphoria or identifies as transgender, but rather offers an alternative framework for understanding patriarchy’s sex/gender system and challenging those patriarchal gender norms.
I used “patriarchy/patriarchal” four times in the last paragraph for emphasis: From a radical feminist perspective, nothing in sex/gender politics makes sense except in the light of patriarchy. (I borrow that formulation from the late evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, who said, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”)
“Patriarchy,” from Greek meaning “rule of the father,” can be narrowly understood as the organization of a human community (from a family to a larger society) that gives a male ruler dominance over other men, and overall gives men control over women. More generally, the term marks various systems of institutionalized male dominance.
In her 1986 book, The Creation of Patriarchy, the late historian Gerda Lerner defined patriarchy as “the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the extension of male dominance over women in the society in general.” Patriarchy implies, she continued, “that men hold power in all the important institutions of society and that women are deprived of access to such power. It does not imply that women are either totally powerless or totally deprived of rights, influence and resources.” The specific forms patriarchy takes differ depending on time and place, “but the essence remains: some men control property and hold power over other men and over most women; men or male-dominated institutions control the sexuality and reproduction of females; most of the powerful institutions in society are dominated by men.”
In today’s world, patriarchy comes in forms both deeply conservative (such as Saudi Arabia) and superficially liberal (the United States), and the laws and customs of patriarchal societies vary. But at the core of patriarchy is men’s claim to control — sometimes even to own—women’s reproductive power and sexuality. In patriarchy, men make claims on, and about, women’s bodies that are at the core of assigning women lesser value in society.
Radical feminists, therefore, focus on the fight for women’s reproductive rights, and against men’s violence and sexual exploitation of women. As feminists from various traditions have long argued, it’s crucial to distinguish between biological sex categories and cultural gender norms.
There are three categories of biological human sex: male, female, and intersex. The vast majority of humans are born with male or female reproductive systems, secondary sexual characteristics, and chromosomal structure, and there is a small segment (the size of this category would depend on what degree of ambiguity is used to mark the category) born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the definitions of female or male — anomalies of sex chromosomes, gonads, and/or anatomic sex. People born intersex, a biological reality, typically don’t identify as transgender.
Beyond “sex” is “gender” (the non-biological meaning societies create out of sex differences). Gender plays out in a variety of ways, including gender roles (assigning males and females to different social, political, or economic roles); gender norms (expecting males and females to comply with different norms of behavior and appearance); and gendered traits and virtues (assuming that males and females will be intellectually, emotionally, or morally different from each other).
In short: Sex is a question of biologically determined male and female, gender of socially determined masculinity and femininity.
The dominant conception of masculinity in U.S. culture asserts that men are naturally competitive and aggressive, and that being a “real man” means struggling for control, conquest, and domination. A man looks at the world, sees what he wants, and takes it. This is sometimes labeled “toxic masculinity,” which implies it is an aberration from some “normal” masculinity. But this understanding of masculinity-as-seeking-dominance is the default setting for most males growing up in patriarchy, especially through the glorification of aggression in the military, sports, and business.
All that definitional work is necessary to explain why I am not cisgender. As a male human, this patriarchal conception of masculinity is not my “chosen” identity, nor do I believe it is my fate. As a short, skinny, effeminate child — when I show people my church confirmation picture taken at age 14, they often assume it is a photo of a much younger girl — I never felt very masculine. As an adult with feminist politics, I reject and struggle to overcome the masculinity norms in patriarchy. If we were someday to transcend patriarchy, would I feel more “like a man”? That would depend on how the term was defined, but in the world in which I live, I refuse to embrace the patriarchal gender identity handed to me, a position I defend in a recent book, The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men.
So, I’m not cisgender and I’m not transgender. I am not gender fluid, non-binary, or multi-gender. I self-identify as an adult biological XY male who rejects patriarchal gender norms and works from a radical feminist perspective to eliminate patriarchy, primarily through a critique of patriarchal norms in contemporary pornography.
For radical feminists, gender is understood as not merely a subjective internal sense of self; patriarchal gender norms are a product of culture, imposed on people and limiting everyone’s humanity. In such a political project, no one who wants to challenge patriarchy is excluded. Anyone who refuses to conform to patriarchal gender norms is welcome. Challenging patriarchy’s claims about how “normal” males and females should think/feel/act is encouraged.
But in such a project, it is necessary to name accurately the world and understand patriarchy. So, radical feminists continue to distinguish between biological sex and cultural gender, arguing that sex is a biological binary (we are a sexually dimorphic species) and gender is socially created hierarchy (in patriarchy).
There has been uncivil conduct on all sides of this debate, but it is only radical feminists who are routinely told that their position is hateful and that they should be excluded from the conversation. This has happened to me on occasion (including a speaking invitation rescinded after complaints to the event’s organizers, and protesters at another event attempting to shout me down), although radical feminist women are targeted much more intensely and often.
The most curious thing about my experience is that people rarely respond to the specifics of what I have written and instead simply denounce me, asserting that my arguments are outside the bounds of appropriate dialogue and need not be addressed. Often the denunciations imply that either I do not care about the very real concerns of transgender people regarding mental health, suicide, and violence, or that by making my arguments I actually am contributing to the violence against transgender people. I have been told that opponents of the transgender movement’s policy goals are simply bigots.
But there are important policy questions that are not resolved so simply, such as rules for participation in girls’ and women’s athletics; how to assign scholarships in women’s colleges; public financing for surgery that destroys healthy tissue; and the use of potentially dangerous hormone/drug therapies, especially for children. In Texas, where I live, the debate has focused on access to bathrooms and sex-segregated changing facilities, and the serious challenges raised by girls and women — concerns about privacy and how ambiguity in who has access increases the possibility of assault by non-transgender predators — have been dismissed as irrelevant.
As I always remind my students, reasonable people can and often do disagree, but reasonable conversation is difficult if we cannot agree on basic definitions of sex/gender and if those with a radical feminist analysis are labeled bigots and marginalized.
After four years of writing about this subject, I invite that conversation, and have been fortunate to have it with some in the transgender movement. But I challenge, firmly but politely, anyone who describes me as cisgender or calls me a TERF.
Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men. He can be reached atrjensen@austin.utexas.edu.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 6, 2018 | Women & Radical Feminism
Featured image: Yuly Chan, a founding member of Chinatown Action Group. The smearing, harassment, no-platforming, and silencing of women who express feminist opinions about gender and prostitution is unacceptable.
by Cherry Smiley / Feminist Current
I can’t remember the exact words, who said it or when, but the general message was: courage isn’t the lack of fear, but doing something even when you’re afraid. I am writing this with lots of fear about a backlash that will almost certainly happen. However, I’ve reached the point where I can’t stay silent any longer and need to muster whatever courage I can and do what I think is right, regardless of the cost.
This past week, a woman I’m proud to call a sister ally, Yuly Chan, was no-platformed by a small group of individuals who appointed themselves judge and jury of acceptable ideas and speech. They claimed Chan was a violent, hateful woman whose political opinions were too dangerous to be shared in a public venue and demanded she be removed from a panel scheduled as part of this weekend’s Vancouver Crossroads conference. Chan had been invited by conference organizers, the Vancouver District and Labour Council (VLDC), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), and Organize BC, to speak on behalf of her group, the Chinatown Action Group. The Chinatown Action Group organizes to improve the lives of low-income residents of Vancouver’s Chinatown, many of whom are seniors. She was to speak to the incredibly important work of this group at the conference.
A recently-formed group called the Coalition Against Trans Antagonism (CATA) wrote a letter to the organizers, then an open letter that included a link to a website CATA had built, documenting supposed evidence of Chan as a threat to public safety. Although Chan was not speaking on the panel about debates around gender or prostitution, Organize BC members interrogated Chan about her politics regarding these issues and eventually refused to move ahead with the panel unless she was removed. Instead of condemning the unethical tactics and behaviour of CATA, intended to silence Chan and smear her as a hate-filled oppressor, the organizers cancelled the entire panel, sending a message that the organizers and their supporters were not willing to take a stand to ensure the needs of low-income Chinese residents were heard. As a result, the Chinatown Action Group was no-platformed right along with their representative.
CATA also demanded that the conference organizers issue a public apology for daring to invite Chan to speak about the activism of low-income Chinese residents of Vancouver. They also demanded that a policy be instituted with the guidance and approval of only “trans women and sex workers,” banning anyone “who promote[s] any form of oppressive, supremacist, and fascist ideology from being offered and/or provided a platform at any of VDLC, CUPE, and Organize BC’s future events.” But who decides which ideologies are “oppressive, supremacist, and fascist”? And why, in activist and academic circles, has it become common and acceptable to engage in witch hunts to rid “the community” (that is made up of whom?) of particular political positions that are grounded not in hate or violence, but in a radical feminist analysis (radical meaning “the root”)? Chan, and so many others who question and critique systems of power are being persecuted for having these feminist or critical politics. It is not violent oppressors, supremacists, or fascists that are being silenced and no-platformed in this case and others like it, it is feminists. There are limits, of course, to the idea of “free speech,” but what I am addressing is specifically discourse among activists and academics on the left.
Organize BC privately and publicly apologized to CATA for inviting Yuly Chan to speak on the panel. But I will not apologize for standing next to Chan and the Chinatown Action Group, and next to all people who have been no-platformed, threatened, intimidated, bullied, and even beaten for their political opinions.
What was Chan’s crime? Having a political analysis and sharing it. She is accused of promoting “SWERF/TERF” ideology. “SWERF” stands for “sex worker exclusionary radical feminist,” and “TERF” stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist.” These terms are used as insults against women with a radical feminist or class analysis of prostitution and gender. “SWERFs” and “TERFs” are accused of hating, oppressing, harming, and sometimes even killing trans women and sex workers, despite the fact no feminist engages in these practices.
I am of the political opinion that prostitution is a form of male violence that should be abolished. I am also of the political opinion that gender is a social construct and hierarchy that traps and harms women and should also be abolished. Today, these two sentences are enough to mark me as a violent, hate-filled, supremacist/fascist, and have the ability to destroy my reputation, livelihood, and potential academic or employment opportunities now and in the future. I have already been passed over for some opportunities due to my political analysis of prostitution, asked to leave conferences, told I’m not allowed to speak about prostitution when invited to speak about Indigenous research, and threatened with police involvement. I have been intimidated and harassed due only to my politics, not my behaviour. These are only some examples of some of the backlash that I, and other women, have experienced for speaking our opinions. This backlash, however, doesn’t just include no-platforming, but also threats and acts of violence. To many, this may sound unbelievable, as though I am exaggerating. I wish this were the case. I wish I were exaggerating. Unfortunately, this is the reality of activist and academic circles in Canada and elsewhere.
Speaking of academia, in 2016 I was publicly accused online of being an oppressive “SWERF” and “TERF” by a former employee of the Centre for Gender Advocacy at Concordia University, where I am a student. This is the first time I am speaking publicly about this incident, as I have been too afraid to do so since it happened. Although this individual is no longer employed by the Centre for Gender Advocacy, going on instead to become the president of the Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ), this issue has not been resolved. In the public post, I was accused of oppressing sex workers and being “transphobic,” funders and the university were tagged, a quote was attributed to me that I never said, and individuals went on a hunt to dig up evidence of my supposed bigotry. One person attempted to publicly engage in discussion about these allegations against me, which I’m grateful for, but they were not heard. Some faculty members were concerned that a staff person at a student support organization was making these types of public allegations about a student and alerted some in positions of power at the University, but got little, if any, response. The manager of the Centre for Gender Advocacy was made aware of the situation, and I am not aware of anything that was or is being done to resolve and rectify the situation. No one has reached out to me to apologize for the online bullying I had experienced, or to speak about concerns or questions they had about my politics, leading me to believe this type of hostility is directed at me not only by one staff member, but the Centre for Gender Advocacy as an organization. I explored different options myself, but was unable to find a way to formally hold the individual and Centre to account. I attempted to find support at the University, but those I approached refused to speak out against the behaviour of the individual and the Centre.
Regardless of your politics, this behaviour is unacceptable. It is not ok to tell lies about people or subject them to political persecution over disagreements. It’s important to note that the Centre houses Missing Justice, an Indigenous solidarity group that hosts the march for murdered and disappeared Indigenous women and girls every year in Montreal. As an Indigenous woman who works on these issues, I was already alienated from Missing Justice when, a number of years ago, non-Indigenous organizers told me to stop speaking and attempted to literally grab a megaphone out of my hand when I was invited to make a statement at their gathering by another Indigenous speaker. My crime was a decolonizing and feminist critical analysis of prostitution and speaking out against men buying sexual access to Indigenous women and girls. In other words, my crime was having a political opinion that differed from the organizers. Rather than attempting to silence an Indigenous woman at an event supposedly held for Indigenous women, a better way forward would have been to publicly acknowledge at the event that my statement does not reflect the organizer’s politics and to encourage those in attendance to learn more about the issue.
Although this incident happened many years ago and the online bullying at Concordia happened two years ago, it continues to severely impact my life as a student in different ways. The message I received from the inaction by the University and the Centre for Gender Advocacy is that it is entirely acceptable to attempt to silence those who are critical of prostitution. I still hear this message today. I feel fear about publicizing these experiences. The very fact that I feel intensely afraid to speak about my own experiences speaks volumes about the climate of activism and academia today.
These incidents are bigger than Yuly Chan and bigger than myself. They have and continue to happen against women with a radical feminist analysis of prostitution and gender. Campaigns are launched against us to silence us, destroy our reputations, paint us as violent, hateful, and oppressive fascists. A 61-year-old woman was even physically assaulted by a young trans-identified male for daring to show up to attend a panel discussing gender and legislation in England.
Regardless of your perspective on prostitution or gender, you have a right to be heard. This means that I may not agree with you and I may challenge your ideas, and you may not agree with me and challenge my ideas, but you have a right to your political analysis and to share that publicly, as do I. Threatening women (for example, tweeting that “TERFS” should be raped or killed), destroying women’s reputations, and compromising women’s incomes is completely unacceptable behaviour. This is not how we build and maintain relationships. Relationships with political allies are incredibly important, but so too are the relationships between political adversaries. These relationships are much more difficult and challenging to navigate, but maintaining good relations means being respectful even to those we may disagree with or dislike. Being respectful can mean you passionately disagree, that you challenge ideas and behaviour — even that you express frustration or anger — but always recognizing the humanity of the person you disagree with. “SWERF” and “TERF” are made up categories of women — they are not accurate descriptors of anyone’s politics, certainly not the politics of feminists. These terms take away the ability of women to name ourselves and describe our own political positions – a situation all too familiar for Indigenous women.
Disagreement is not violence, and I worry about the impacts of the term “violence” being redefined to mean almost anything, rendering it meaningless. Causing offense is not the same as committing violence. Words are not violence. Words can call for violence, yes, but being critical of prostitution and gender is not calling for any type of violence. Rather, this is a legitimate critical analysis of systems that impact us all. Words and images can contribute to a culture that devalues some, and for many reasons, encourage, normalize, or passively accept acts of violence, but to say that making a statement others find offensive or that challenges their political analysis equates to literal violence right then and there is inaccurate, and is a means to silence those of us who hold critical feminist opinions. This new definition of “violence” also impacts women who doexperience male violence, such as rape, physical assault, murder, or emotional abuse, to name just a few examples.
The name of the conference, “Crossroads,” speaks to our current culture, which silences women deemed dangerous. We are at a crossroads: we can choose to open up dialogue and encourage respectful disagreement and really work to hear from as many as we can who are impacted by an issue — even if the political position is unpopular — or we can choose to let only a few individuals decide that radical political opinions are dangerous, and allow them to dictate the terms of their and other people’s public engagement with those ideas; then silence, threaten, intimidate, and attempt to harm anyone who does not agree with their politics.
Doing nothing is no longer an option — staying silent only gives more power to those who wish to silence women with politics that differ from their own.
I stand with Yuly Chan, the Chinatown Action Group, and all women who have dared to speak up and share their critical perspectives on prostitution and gender. I’m proud to be considered a dangerous woman, as I try to be as dangerous to the patriarchy as possible. As women, we are trained to tolerate, accept, and accommodate patriarchy, racism, capitalism, and colonization.
Too often, activists and academics who claim to be working for justice choose to side with individuals who use bully tactics to shut women that they don’t agree with up. There is nothing new or progressive or inclusive or diverse about telling feminist women to shut up. A strategy grounded in recognizing another’s humanity would include engaging, debating, and disagreeing passionately and respectfully at public events or holding an event to highlight one’s own particular political analysis and engaging in public discussion and advocacy around the issue at hand. Silencing women considered dangerous for having thoughts and sharing them is not how we treat each other when we recognize each other as equals.
I encourage all dangerous women and allies to speak out against the no-platforming and assault on women who express radical feminist opinions or critical ideas about prostitution and gender.
Cherry Smiley is a Nlaka’pamux and Diné feminist who refuses to be silent.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 2, 2018 | Male Violence
Featured image: San Francisco Public Library exhibit featuring blood stained t-shirts encouraging patrons to attack feminists, and deadly weapons—baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire, axes, and more—designed by men to kill feminist women. Credit: GenderTrender. Threats of violence against women branded as “TERFs” are increasing—will liberals and progressives speak out before it’s too late?
by Meghan Murphy / Feminist Current
In January, a woman was photographed holding a sign at the Vancouver Women’s March that included the words, “Trans ideology is misogyny.” This might be viewed as a hyperbolic message for those who consider themselves good, liberal people and who care about a group they have been informed are in extreme danger, and particularly marginalized. And perhaps, if you were unfamiliar with the way women and feminists are addressed by trans activists, you might wonder what statements like this are rooted in. A few years ago, I might have questioned this as well, thinking, “well that’s a bit much, isn’t it.” But as trans activism has gained ground and as I myself—as well as many other women—have begun questioning and speaking out about the aims, ideology, and policies supported in the name of “trans rights,” it has become impossible to deny what is being supported through trans activism: violence against women.
San Fransisco Public Library exhibit
Last week, photographs of an exhibit currently on display at the San Fransisco Public Library emerged online, depicting bloody shirts with the words, “I punch TERFs,” alongside baseball bats and axes, painted pink and blue to reference the gender ideology being touted, some covered in barbed wire, in order to amplify the grotesqueness of the threatened beating. The exhibit was set up by “Scout Tran,” a trans-identified male and founding member of the Degenderettes, a group that now has chapters throughout the United States. The group attends queer and feminist events, including the Dyke March, the Pride parade, and the Women’s March, carrying these weapons, which they claim as defensible activism, but is undeniably a visible threat and incitement to violence against women.
The threats attached to slogans like “I punch TERFs” are not theoretical. Earlier this month, a trans-identified male who goes by the name “Tara Wolf” was convicted of assault after beating 60-year-old Maria MacLauchlan, who had gathered with other women in Hyde Park to attend a meeting discussing gender identity ideology and legislation. Wolf had posted on Facebook about his desire to attend this gathering in order to “fuck up some TERFs.” In what other circumstance would anyone—self-identified progressives, in particular—defend viable threats of violence against women? Sadly, lots.
Liberals and the left have broadly defended violence against women as “art” or “sex,” though perhaps in a less overt way than they have outright threats of violence to feminists who wish to question or discuss the notion of gender identity. Pornography, for example, is one area where violence and abuse is consistently defended on account of it being “sex,” “fantasy,” or “free speech.” The ability of men and their allies to avoid viewing a woman being choked, hit, or gang-raped as “real violence” because it is connected to men’s desire and masturbation is without bounds. Similarly, the notion that a man offering a women financial compensation in exchange for permission to abuse her is framed time and time again as “consent,” regardless of the impact on that woman and the broader message this practice sends to all men and women, everywhere.
What is unique about the approach we’ve seen in the trans movement is that it doesn’t attempt to disguise the incitements to violence against women with rhetoric around “consent” and “empowerment.” The claim is not that this is not “literal” violence, because women like it, or because they consented to it, or because it’s “just fantasy.” Rather the violence advocated for by trans activists is said to be justified on account of opinions, associations, language, or the sharing of articles or links determined to be “wrong”—all of which is dishonestly framed as “violence” (ironic considering where the literal threats and violence are evidenced to be coming from).
The threats of violence against women, on account of having been branded “TERFs,” are frightening not only because we must fear for our physical safety or because of the way these threats act as a silencing mechanism, but because this violence is not being condemned, by and large, by most. Being forced to defend ourselves, alone, with few resources, media platforms, or influential public allies, due to the blacklisting that has occurred en masse in relation to this debate, is challenging, because our voices, interests, and well-being have already been dismissed as we are the baddies who deserve to die.
And indeed, this is where the connection between liberals’ and the left’s treatment of pornography, prostitution, and trans activism coalesce. The way that “TERF” has served to dehumanize women (Bad Women—women who speak unsayable truths and ask questions one is not meant to ask) in order to justify the gruesome violence they are threatened with operates in the same way women are dehumanized in pornography in order to pretend as though they aren’t truly being hurt or abused and, of course, in the same way women were branded witches in order to claim their torture was deserved, on account of their being wicked and dangerous.
Disagreement is not violence. This should not have to be said, yet apparently we must. Violence is violence. And when a group of people are actively advocating for and defending violence against another group of people—particularly an oppressed group of people, like women—there is no defense. At this point, those who accommodate this movement, as it is currently operating, are culpable of something very dangerous indeed.
While the San Fransisco Public Library removed the bloody shirt, they did not remove the exhibit entirely, nor do we know why anyone imagined such a display would be appropriate in the first place. One wonders if they would display bloody shirts with the words, “Kill bitches” or “I beat Muslims” next to a display of baseball bats and axes.
Will liberals and progressives stand up before this gets worse? I fear not.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 1, 2018 | Male Violence
Featured image: Display case of weapons at San Francisco Library
by GenderTrender
If you thought the age of scold’s bridles and dunking pools designed to torture and kill disobedient women were a thing of the past, you would be wrong. The San Francisco Public Library unveiled an exhibit this week featuring blood stained t-shirts encouraging patrons to “punch” feminists, along with several installations of deadly weapons painted pink: baseball bats covered in barbed wire, axes, among others, all designed by men to kill feminist women.
More weapons to be used against women who harbor what the designers call “oppressive belief-sets” against males, defined in the accompanying literature as lesbians.
The male creators of the exhibit also included a helpful manifesto, blaming lesbians, feminists and other uppity women for causing more deaths (by “harassing” men with their dastardly opinions!) than all the actual real murders committed by violent men.
The display, launched mere days after the mass murder of women in Toronto by “incel” terrorist Alek Minassian and echoing his philosophy, was funded by the non-profit Friends of The San Francisco Public Library and created by The Degenderettes, led by Scout Tran Caffee, founder of Trans Dykes: the anti-lesbian Antifa. The group specifically targets lesbians as “oppressors” of men -because they exclude males from their dating pools. The men in the group identify as transgender and consider themselves to be male lesbians.
Materials include riot shields inscribed with the slogan “Die Cis Scum.” Cis is a transgender community term, generally used as a slur, for non-transgender people.
From the exhibit manifesto:
“The Degenderettes are a humble and practical club, fighting for gender rights within human reach rather than with legislation and slogans. Their agit-prop artwork has come to permeate internet trans culture, national television, and headlines as far as Germany.” (From the San Francisco Public Library website.)
Posted at the exhibition, MRA/incel complaints of “reverse sexism”: The fact that violence against feminists and lesbians is considered more likely to be perpetrated by males (as evidenced by all crime statistics worldwide throughout human history) is a conclusion that discriminates against men. Hmm. Never seen that one before. (sarcasm). Explicitly states that acknowledging male violence against women is “anti-transgender.”
Followed by bizarre claims that feminists “induce suicides” of men and threaten to kill them.
Posted at the exhibit. Part one.
Part two.
The largely heterosexual “heteroqueer” group’s claim that they created the slogan “Your Apathy Is Killing Us” in the wake of the Pulse Nightclub shooting is incorrect. It was created by gay male Reagan era AIDS activists who were fighting for their literal lives demanding medical treatment for a deadly epidemic.
The Degenderettes slogan “Die Cis Scum” was popularized in 2012 by transgender White Nationalist “Char The Butcher”.
Char The Butcher (Clinton James Crawford) 2012
The San Francisco Public Library has scheduled a panel discussion for the “artists” to discuss their exhibit on Saturday May 12, from 2:00-4:00pm at the LGBTQIA Center, Main Library, 100 Larkin St.
Panel participants:
Mya “I Punch TERFS” Byrne (Jeremiah Birnbaum)
Gender-conforming “NonBinary” and heterosexual but “queer identified” Wedding Photographer Tristan Crane
“Male butch dyke” Uriah Ezri Sayres Cantrell
“Consent culture” activist married to an alleged sexual predator Kitty Stryker
Scout Tran Caffee
with moderation by Mason Smith.
…
Following complaints and negative feedback on social media, on April 25th the San Francisco Public Library removed the T-shirt that called on patrons to punch feminists:
“Due to concerns raised by library patrons, we are altering the degenderettes antifa art exhibit at the Main Library to remove a shirt, a piece of artwork that could be interpreted as promoting violence, which is incompatible with our exhibitions policy.”
At the time this report was published, the weapons as well as the anti-feminist and homophobic materials remain.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 17, 2018 | Gender
“Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability” aims to clarify, but succeeds only in highlighting the lack of clarity which dominates transgender theory.
“Let me define the terms, and I’ll win any debate,” a friend told me years ago, an insight I’ve seen confirmed many times in intellectual and political arenas.
But after reading Jack Halberstam’s new book, Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability, I would amend that observation: Debates also can be won by making sure a term is never clearly defined. The transgender movement has yet to offer coherent explanations of the concepts on which its policy proposals are based, yet support is nearly universal in left/liberal circles. Whether or not it was the author’s intention, Trans* feels like an attempt at an outline of such explanation, but I’m sorry to report that the book offers neither clarity nor coherence.
I say sorry, because I came to the book hoping to gain greater understanding of the claims of the transgender movement, which I have not found elsewhere. Halberstam — a professor in Department of English and Comparative Literature and the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University — has been writing about this subject for more than two decades and is one of the most prominent U.S. trans* intellectuals. The table of contents looked promising, but the book only deepened my belief that a radical feminist and ecological critique of the transgender movement’s ideology is necessary.
Rather than be defensive about the ambiguity of the transgender argument, Halberstam celebrates the lack of definition as a strength of the movement, an indication that trans* offers deep insights for everyone. If we shift our focus from “the housing of the body” and embrace “perpetual transition” then “we can commit to a horizon of possibility where the future is not male or female but transgender,” he writes. Instead of “male-ish” and “female-ish” bodies we can realize “the body is always under construction” and “consider whether the foundational binary of male-female may possibly have run its course.”
The very act of naming and categorizing imposes limits that constrain the imagination, according to Halberstam, hence the use of the asterisk:
“I have selected the term ‘trans*’ for this book precisely to open the term up to unfolding categories of being organized around but not confined to forms of gender variance. As we will see, the asterisk modifies the meaning of transitivity by refusing to situate transition in relation to a destination, a final form, a specific shape, or an established configuration of desire and identity. The asterisk holds off the certainty of diagnosis; it keeps at bay any sense of knowing in advance what the meaning of this or that gender variant form may be, and perhaps most importantly, it makes trans* people the authors of their own categorizations. As this book will show, trans* can be a name for expansive forms of difference, haptic [relating to the sense of touch] relations to knowing, uncertain modes of being, and the disaggregation of identity politics predicated upon the separating out of many kinds of experience that actually blend together, intersect, and mix. This terminology, trans*, stands at odds with the history of gender variance, which has been collapsed into concise definitions, sure medical pronouncements, and fierce exclusions.”
I quote at length to demonstrate that in using shorter excerpts from the book I am not cherry-picking a few particularly abstruse phrases to poke fun at a certain form of postmodern academic writing. My concern is not stylistic but about the arguments being presented. After reading that passage a couple of times, I think I can figure out what Halberstam’s trying to say. The problem is that it doesn’t say anything very helpful.
To be fair, Halberstam is correct in pointing out that the instinct to categorize all the world’s life, human and otherwise — “the mania for the godlike function of naming” — went hand in hand with colonialism, part of the overreach of a certain mix of politics and science in attempting to control the world. But like it or not, humans make sense of the world by naming, which need not go forward with claims of imperial domination or divine insight. We define the terms we use in trying to explain the world so that we can meaningfully communicate about that world; when a term means nothing specific, or means everything, or means nothing and everything at the same time, it is of no value unless one wants to obfuscate.
But, if Halberstam is to be believed, this criticism is irrelevant, because transgenderism “has never been simply a new identity among many others competing for space under the rainbow umbrella. Rather, it constitutes radically new knowledge about the experience of being in a body and can be the basis for very different ways of seeing the world.” So, if I don’t get it, the problem apparently is the limits of my imagination — I don’t grasp the radically new knowledge — not because the explanation is lacking.
After reading the book, I continue to believe that the intellectual project of the transgender movement isn’t so much wrong as it is incoherent, and the political project is not liberatory but regressive. What this book “keeps at bay” is a reasonable, honest request: What does any of this mean?
In other writing — here in 2014 and again in 2016, along with a chapter in my 2017 book The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men — I’ve asked how we should understand transgenderism if the movement’s claim is that a male human can actually be female (or vice versa) in biological terms. If transgender signals a dissatisfaction with the culturally constructed gender norms of patriarchy — which are rigid, repressive, and reactionary — I’ve suggested it would be more effective to embrace the longstanding radical feminist critique of patriarchy.
Rather than repeat those arguments here, I want to try another approach, stating simply that I have good reason to believe I’m real, that the human species of which I am a member is real, and that the ecosphere of which we are a part is real. That is, there is a material reality to the world within which I, and all other carbon-based life forms, operate. I cannot know everything there is to know about that material world, of course, but I can trust that it is real.
The cultural/political/economic systems that shape human societies make living in the real world complex and confusing, and the ways those systems distribute wealth and power are often morally unacceptable. But to challenge that injustice, it’s necessary to understand that real world and communicate my understanding to others in clear fashion.
In left/liberal circles, especially on college campuses, “trans*” increasingly is where the action is for those concerned with social justice. It offers — for everyone, whether transgender-identified or not — the appearance of serious intellectual work and progressive politics. Endorsing the transgender project is a way to signal one is on the cutting edge, and work like Halberstam’s is embraced in these circles, where support for the transgender movement is required to be truly intersectional.
My challenge to those whose goal is liberation is simple: How does this help us understand the real world we are trying to change? How does it help us understand patriarchy, the system of institutionalized male dominance out of which so much injustice emerges?
Halberstam likely would put me in the category of “transphobic feminism” for “refusing to seriously engage” with transfeminism, but I am not transphobic (if, by that term, we mean one who is afraid of, or hateful toward, people who identify as transgender). Nor do I refuse to seriously engage other views (unless we describe a critique of another intellectual position as de facto evidence of a lack of serious engagement). I am rooted in radical feminism, one of those “versions of feminism that still insist on the centrality of female-bodied women,” according to Halberstam.
On that point, Halberstam is accurate: radical feminists argue that patriarchy is rooted in men’s claim to own or control women’s reproductive power and sexuality. Radical feminists distinguish between sex (male XY and female XX, a matter of biology) and gender (masculinity and femininity, a matter of culture and power), which means that there is no way to understand the rigid gender norms of patriarchy without recognizing the relevance of the category of “female-bodied women.” It’s hard to imagine how the binary of male-female could “run its course” given the reality of sexual reproduction.
This is where an ecological perspective, alongside and consistent with a radical feminist critique, reminds us that the world is real and we are living beings, not machines. In discussing his own top surgery (the removal of breasts), Halberstam speaks of working with the doctor:
“Together we were building something in flesh, changing the architecture of my body forever. The procedure was not about building maleness into my body; it was about editing some part of the femaleness that currently defined me. I did not think I would awake as a new self, only that some of my bodily contours would shift in ways that gave me a different bodily abode.”
We all have a right to understand ourselves as we please, and so here’s my response: My body is not a house that was constructed by an architect but rather — like all other life on the planet — is a product of evolution. I resist the suggestion I can “build” myself and recognize that a sustainable human presence on the planet is more likely if we accept that we are part of a larger living world, which has been profoundly damaged when humans treat it as our property to dominate and control.
This is the irony of Halberstam’s book and the transgender project more generally. After labeling the project of categorizing/defining as imperialist and critiquing the “mania for the godlike function of naming,” he has no problem endorsing the “godlike function” of reshaping bodies as if they were construction materials. There’s a deepening ecological sensibility in progressive politics, an awareness of what happens when humans convince ourselves that we can remake the world and ignore the biophysical limits of the ecosphere. While compassionately recognizing the reasons people who identify as transgender may seek surgery and hormone/drug treatments, we shouldn’t suppress concerns about the movement’s embrace of extreme high-tech intervention into the body, including the surgical destruction of healthy tissue and long-term health issues due to cross-sex hormones and hormone-like drugs.
I have long tried to observe what in rhetoric is sometimes called “the principle of charity,” a commitment in debate to formulating an opponent’s argument in the strongest possible version so that one’s critique is on firm footing. I have tried to do that in this review, though I concede that I’m not always sure what Halberstam is arguing, and so I may not be doing his arguments justice. But that is one of my central points: When I read this book — and many other arguments from transgender people and their allies — I routinely find myself confused, unable to understand just what is being proposed. So, again, I’ll quote at length in the hopes of being fair in my assessment, this time the book’s closing paragraph:
“Trans* bodies, in their fragmented, unfinished, broken-beyond-repair forms, remind all of us that the body is always under construction. Whether trans* bodies are policed in bathrooms or seen as killers and loners, as thwarted, lonely, violent, or tormented, they are also a site for invention, imagination, fabulous projection. Trans* bodies represent the art of becoming, the necessity of imagining, and the fleshy insistence of transitivity.”
Once again, after reading that passage a couple of times, I think I understand, sort of, the point. But, once again, I don’t see how it advances our understanding of sex and gender, of patriarchy and power. I am not alone in this assessment; people I know, including some who are sympathetic to the transgender movement’s political project, have shared similar concerns, though they often mute themselves in public to avoid being labeled transphobic.
I’m not asking of the transgender movement some grand theory to explain all the complexity of sex and gender. I just need a clear and coherent place to start. Asking questions is not transphobic, nor is observing that such clarity and coherence are lacking.
Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability was published in January 2018 by University of California Press.
Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men. He can be reached atrjensen@austin.utexas.edu.
