-
The transgender revolution involves two vulnerable groups
I found this article in the English on line magazine GQ.
Written by Matthew d’Ancona it explains quite simply why the fight for Transgender Rights is so divisive.The transgender debate is the most complex and – sometimes – high-tempered debate in identity politics today. If you seek to engage it, be clear on the arguments and cautious how you use them
Read the full article here:Quote:I’m sometimes asked to identify the most contentious issue facing a political pundit in our troubling and turbulent times. The Trump presidency? Brexit? The Middle East? Islamophobia?Nope. All those subjects, it is true, can trigger a cyber showdown on Twitter if you write anything remotely controversial – which is to say, anything at all. But the social-media storms they generate are paltry in comparison to the fire and fury spawned by one issue in particular: transgenderism.
I’m not kidding. No matter what you write on the question of gender identity, you will get attacked from one side of the argument, or, more likely, both.
Trans activists react with seething anger to any suggestion that the rights they demand should not be met immediately – and in full. Even to propose compromise is to invite the charge of homicidal transphobia.
Meanwhile, their opponents – so-called trans-exclusionary radical feminists (“terfs”) – rage with no less feeling against what they regard as a potential violation of hard-won women’s rights. “Cis” men (that is, men who are not transitioning) are sternly advised to “stay in their lane”, while cis women and the trans lobby duke it out.
……
Quote:Some believe that gender identity should be fully “demedicalised” – removed from the hands of doctors – and delegated entirely to each individual.Under this system of “self-declaration”, a person would decide his or her gender category with complete autonomy, essentially ticking a box on a form without having to clear any pesky hurdles.
There is much that is refreshing and emancipatory in this. If a man believes himself to have been born into the wrong body – “assigned the wrong gender at birth” to use the jargon – who are the rest of us to stop him identifying as her? If Bruce decides to become Caitlyn or Caitlyn to become Bruce, what right does anyone have to stand in their way?
The transgender revolution is different, because it involves two vulnerable groups. Trans people face awful bigotry, stigma and (as a result) mental health issues. But natal or cis women have anxieties that cannot – or at least should not – simply be dismissed as “transphobic”.
In particular, the likelihood that the process of transitioning will become dramatically easier raises serious questions about single-sex public spaces: loos, changing rooms, refuges for the victims of domestic violence, rape crisis centres. To put it crudely: should a self-declared “trans woman” who still has male genitalia have the right to strip off in a female changing room or use the ladies’ bathroom in a restaurant? Are the Girl Guides right to allow boys who identify as female to shower and share accommodation with natal girls?
Rarely have I witnessed a process of change that has been so hastily undertaken, with so little genuine negotiation and discussion.
In August, when a Merseyside group of women’s rights activists circulated stickers with the slogan “Women Don’t Have Penises” – still, let’s be frank, the general assumption – they were denounced by Liverpool’s mayor, Joe Anderson, and investigated by police.
And that’s not all: some trans activists claim that for a heterosexual male or a lesbian woman not to be attracted to a trans woman is inherently transphobic (check out the YouTube videos of Riley J Dennis for more on this).
Others go further still: Nicholas Matte, a lecturer at the University Of Toronto, claims, “It’s not correct that there is such a thing as biological sex.” Yes, you read that correctly.
Why has this issue become so fissile? Partly because the aggression of some trans women has often been pretty, well, masculine, encouraging many feminists to interpret the transgender agenda as just another variation of patriarchy: a project by men to colonise womanhood.
More broadly, the question of gender transition stands as a proxy for the huge issue of identity in a century of unprecedented change. Are we simply whatever we believe ourselves to be? In which case, what stops a white middle-aged man from saying that he is 25 years old and Afro-Caribbean? At what point do feelings have to compromise with facts? And who gets to decide?
When it comes down to it, who the hell are we? It doesn’t get much more political than that.
-
1 Reply
-
I can’t actually add anything to what you have already posted Adrian. The post says it all, and it’s not a pretty picture with polarisation rearing its ugly head, yet again. If one reads the posts of some trans people on social media, it’s easy to see why some feminists would conclude that, yes, patriarchal views are being expressed through transgender personas (per-sona: literally ‘through the mouth’). On the other hand, when I hear feminists say these things, I wince, because I have some appreciation of the pain they cause in trans people who have never used their identity to make odious comparisons with cis women
Veronica
