(no subject)
Nov. 2nd, 2008 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rozkI posted a response to Julie Bindel's statement here
It is hard to know where to begin. I did consider going through Julie Bindel's statement point by point, but I don't think that would be an especially productive use of our time and attention. However, some obvious points do arise.
1. Julie Bindel seems to be under the impression that her own oppression by homophobes and racists trumps the right of other people, themselves often the victims of violence, abuse, vilification and rape, to defend themselves against her. We might have hoped that Julie Bindel's own experience of oppression might have made it easier to understand the feelings of those who have also been oppressed, but such appears not to be the case.
2. She does not understand why many of us are angry with her, angry to the point of sometimes saying silly and abusive things. Let us be clear - this is a world in which you do not get to tell an entire community of people that they are living lives which are, in their entirety, a lie based on a delusion and have them like you for it.
The abusive language that she used in 2004 is one of the sources of that anger, it is true, and the fact that, under pressure, she has back-tracked from that abusive language is almost irrelevant to that anger. She has never really dealt with the issue of why she used such language in the first place. Defenders of human rights do not normally slip into the language of bar-room bigots, and, when they do, it is important that they sit down and understand how and why they did this.
Hurtful as that language is, it is not the major reason for the righteous anger of much of the trans community both with Bindel herself and with Stonewall for honouring her. That anger comes from the utter disrespect with which Julie Bindel feels it appropriate to discuss our lives; it also comes from the fact that she is advocating talking therapies for trans people in a way that almost entirely parallels the advocacy of talking therapies by the Christian right as a way of extirpating all LGBT people. If she does not understand that, as a lesbian, she is a turkey advocating Christmas for turkeys in an adjacent bit of the farmyard, then she is being obtuse; what she is doing is betraying not only the trans community but the entire LGBT community, and it is wrong to honour her for her other work when there is this colossal stain on her career.
3. It is disingenuous of Julie Bindel to argue that (factually incorrect and hurtful) discussion of whether she was a political lesbian was entirely out of order. Historically, much of the abuse of trans people has come from a particular school of radical feminism which also regarded a lesbianism based on political self-identification as being superior to a lesbianism based on innate personal drives. That discussion here was inappropriate, but there are reasons why some people were drawn to it.
4. One of those reasons is that Julie Bindel has taken from that school an entirely crude, and inconsistently thought through, dichotomy between innate biological drives and socially constructed mentalities. There are a number of problems with that set of ideas, one of them being the simple point that, since everything human beings do is a product of their evolved biology, social interactions included, you cannot draw a simple line between the biological and the social. Aspects of brain/mind architecture like the construction of the narrative self over time are simultaneously biological (in that they happen in the wet-ware of the brain, and socially constructed in that different cultures appear to construe the self in somewhat different ways.
There is a good case that in some real sense both gender identification and sexual object choice are regularly occurring human variations - both appear across societies and cultures, and cultures develop mechanisms for allowing or repressing both. No society has ever managed to abolish either by social engineering, even when the favoured model of social engineering is torture and death. Many of us do not regard our identities as in any sense pathological or malfunctions, merely as human variations like red hair or left-handedness which our particular society happens to have a problem with.
Even were it the case, though, that variations of gender identification were solely and wholly the product of nurture and had no pre-existing biological cause, people would still have to live with them, just as they would have to were non-standard sexual preferences soley and wholly the product of nurture. Decades of experience show that, for most gender-variant people, having access to surgeries and hormone treatment and social acceptance of what people feel is their authentic identity is the way to go.
Julie Bindel's objections to that idea have primarily to do with the problems it poses for other areas of her thought about feminism, problems which are only problems IF you adopt the simplistic and un-nuanced model of biology and life in society which she advocates. We are supposed to suffer emotional misery in order to patch the holes in her reasoning.
Julie Bindel has, ironically, accused us of making her our whipping girl for society's affronts; if so, we are responding to her attempts to make us pawns.
5. She constantly brings up a couple of cases of individuals with regrets - and regards those cases as intrinsically more important than every one who has no regrets. Again, Right-Wing Christians are fond of trotting out former gays and relapsed lesbians as proof that their perception of homosexuality as a sickness is correct; does Julie Bindel not see that what she is doing is precisely parallel.
6. Julie Bindel constantly maintains that trans women and trans men all without serious exceptions lead lives of fierce conformity with percieved societal stereotypical norms, and yet even her own attacks on us refute that perception. If that were the case, none of us would want to say, work in rape crisis centres or be relaxed about gender-neutral toilets, and she would not have to tell us we shouldn't.
A significant proportion of trans people identify as queer in terms of their cultural positioning and homosexual in terms of their sexual attractions. This was always the case but for a while we tended to keep quiet about it in deference to the feelings of those people in the community who identify as straight and felt that we let the side down. Things change - and this is one of the reasons why we are so furious with Stonewall and so unprepared to continue to honour what ever deals were made by the straight-identified trans establishment and Stonewall back in the mists of the 90s.
If Julie Bindel were, as she claims, doing proper research on trans people, then she would be aware of this range of identification. If she is not so aware - or is aware and not mentioning it - then her research, and her journalistic ethics, are worthless.
7. In what universe is a community that with very few exceptions - I being in some small sense one - has no clout and no access to the media trying to censor Julie Bindel's right to free expression? The anti-trans sentiments espoused by her - and a number of other Guardian journalists down the years - have far more public play than considered arguments in our defense - I try to be out in my critical journalism when and as appropriate but have never been asked to provide a countering view.
And yet, without having the kind of access that Julie Bindel and Germaine Greer, say, have always had, we have nonetheless largely won the argument. In the 1980s, when I came out as lesbian, my sexual partners were vilified and I was often barred from clubs at the door - this does not happen so much any more. The common sense of people - and especially of people in the LGBT community - has prevailed in the face of the sorts of remarks of which Julie Bindel was guilty in 2004 - at least by 2004 she felt she had to apologize, however inadequately.
8. On a personal note, may I say that I take exception to Julie Bindel's assumption that she, and only she, is a human rights campaigner. I was first beaten up by fascists on a demonstration against the white supremacists in what was then Rhodesia and is now - hurrah! - Zimbabwe in 1966. I have been involved in feminism and gay rights since my student days - second wave feminist critiques of trans stuff were one of the reasons why I did not transition until my late 20s. My credentials include advising Virago as a reader, working on major feminist reference books like the Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English and spending several years as Deputy Chair of Liberty. I take no especial credit for any of this - some of it was also careerism and much of it was my simple duty - but how dare Julie Bindel assume that no trans person has any history as a progressive?
I should also have thought of adding the point that it is a strange model of censoring her views which has allowed her constantly to troll and post in a forum dedicated to opposing her.
It is hard to know where to begin. I did consider going through Julie Bindel's statement point by point, but I don't think that would be an especially productive use of our time and attention. However, some obvious points do arise.
1. Julie Bindel seems to be under the impression that her own oppression by homophobes and racists trumps the right of other people, themselves often the victims of violence, abuse, vilification and rape, to defend themselves against her. We might have hoped that Julie Bindel's own experience of oppression might have made it easier to understand the feelings of those who have also been oppressed, but such appears not to be the case.
2. She does not understand why many of us are angry with her, angry to the point of sometimes saying silly and abusive things. Let us be clear - this is a world in which you do not get to tell an entire community of people that they are living lives which are, in their entirety, a lie based on a delusion and have them like you for it.
The abusive language that she used in 2004 is one of the sources of that anger, it is true, and the fact that, under pressure, she has back-tracked from that abusive language is almost irrelevant to that anger. She has never really dealt with the issue of why she used such language in the first place. Defenders of human rights do not normally slip into the language of bar-room bigots, and, when they do, it is important that they sit down and understand how and why they did this.
Hurtful as that language is, it is not the major reason for the righteous anger of much of the trans community both with Bindel herself and with Stonewall for honouring her. That anger comes from the utter disrespect with which Julie Bindel feels it appropriate to discuss our lives; it also comes from the fact that she is advocating talking therapies for trans people in a way that almost entirely parallels the advocacy of talking therapies by the Christian right as a way of extirpating all LGBT people. If she does not understand that, as a lesbian, she is a turkey advocating Christmas for turkeys in an adjacent bit of the farmyard, then she is being obtuse; what she is doing is betraying not only the trans community but the entire LGBT community, and it is wrong to honour her for her other work when there is this colossal stain on her career.
3. It is disingenuous of Julie Bindel to argue that (factually incorrect and hurtful) discussion of whether she was a political lesbian was entirely out of order. Historically, much of the abuse of trans people has come from a particular school of radical feminism which also regarded a lesbianism based on political self-identification as being superior to a lesbianism based on innate personal drives. That discussion here was inappropriate, but there are reasons why some people were drawn to it.
4. One of those reasons is that Julie Bindel has taken from that school an entirely crude, and inconsistently thought through, dichotomy between innate biological drives and socially constructed mentalities. There are a number of problems with that set of ideas, one of them being the simple point that, since everything human beings do is a product of their evolved biology, social interactions included, you cannot draw a simple line between the biological and the social. Aspects of brain/mind architecture like the construction of the narrative self over time are simultaneously biological (in that they happen in the wet-ware of the brain, and socially constructed in that different cultures appear to construe the self in somewhat different ways.
There is a good case that in some real sense both gender identification and sexual object choice are regularly occurring human variations - both appear across societies and cultures, and cultures develop mechanisms for allowing or repressing both. No society has ever managed to abolish either by social engineering, even when the favoured model of social engineering is torture and death. Many of us do not regard our identities as in any sense pathological or malfunctions, merely as human variations like red hair or left-handedness which our particular society happens to have a problem with.
Even were it the case, though, that variations of gender identification were solely and wholly the product of nurture and had no pre-existing biological cause, people would still have to live with them, just as they would have to were non-standard sexual preferences soley and wholly the product of nurture. Decades of experience show that, for most gender-variant people, having access to surgeries and hormone treatment and social acceptance of what people feel is their authentic identity is the way to go.
Julie Bindel's objections to that idea have primarily to do with the problems it poses for other areas of her thought about feminism, problems which are only problems IF you adopt the simplistic and un-nuanced model of biology and life in society which she advocates. We are supposed to suffer emotional misery in order to patch the holes in her reasoning.
Julie Bindel has, ironically, accused us of making her our whipping girl for society's affronts; if so, we are responding to her attempts to make us pawns.
5. She constantly brings up a couple of cases of individuals with regrets - and regards those cases as intrinsically more important than every one who has no regrets. Again, Right-Wing Christians are fond of trotting out former gays and relapsed lesbians as proof that their perception of homosexuality as a sickness is correct; does Julie Bindel not see that what she is doing is precisely parallel.
6. Julie Bindel constantly maintains that trans women and trans men all without serious exceptions lead lives of fierce conformity with percieved societal stereotypical norms, and yet even her own attacks on us refute that perception. If that were the case, none of us would want to say, work in rape crisis centres or be relaxed about gender-neutral toilets, and she would not have to tell us we shouldn't.
A significant proportion of trans people identify as queer in terms of their cultural positioning and homosexual in terms of their sexual attractions. This was always the case but for a while we tended to keep quiet about it in deference to the feelings of those people in the community who identify as straight and felt that we let the side down. Things change - and this is one of the reasons why we are so furious with Stonewall and so unprepared to continue to honour what ever deals were made by the straight-identified trans establishment and Stonewall back in the mists of the 90s.
If Julie Bindel were, as she claims, doing proper research on trans people, then she would be aware of this range of identification. If she is not so aware - or is aware and not mentioning it - then her research, and her journalistic ethics, are worthless.
7. In what universe is a community that with very few exceptions - I being in some small sense one - has no clout and no access to the media trying to censor Julie Bindel's right to free expression? The anti-trans sentiments espoused by her - and a number of other Guardian journalists down the years - have far more public play than considered arguments in our defense - I try to be out in my critical journalism when and as appropriate but have never been asked to provide a countering view.
And yet, without having the kind of access that Julie Bindel and Germaine Greer, say, have always had, we have nonetheless largely won the argument. In the 1980s, when I came out as lesbian, my sexual partners were vilified and I was often barred from clubs at the door - this does not happen so much any more. The common sense of people - and especially of people in the LGBT community - has prevailed in the face of the sorts of remarks of which Julie Bindel was guilty in 2004 - at least by 2004 she felt she had to apologize, however inadequately.
8. On a personal note, may I say that I take exception to Julie Bindel's assumption that she, and only she, is a human rights campaigner. I was first beaten up by fascists on a demonstration against the white supremacists in what was then Rhodesia and is now - hurrah! - Zimbabwe in 1966. I have been involved in feminism and gay rights since my student days - second wave feminist critiques of trans stuff were one of the reasons why I did not transition until my late 20s. My credentials include advising Virago as a reader, working on major feminist reference books like the Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English and spending several years as Deputy Chair of Liberty. I take no especial credit for any of this - some of it was also careerism and much of it was my simple duty - but how dare Julie Bindel assume that no trans person has any history as a progressive?
I should also have thought of adding the point that it is a strange model of censoring her views which has allowed her constantly to troll and post in a forum dedicated to opposing her.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-02 03:06 pm (UTC)I had this discussion with someone else on another post recently, but what kind of apology is it if you don't recognise the rights of the people to whom you're apologising not to accept that apology? You can't simultaneously accept that you've committed a hurt and believe that saying, "Sorry I hurt you" cancels it out. An apology is only the outward sign of the internal recognition that you hurt someone, not a magic word that makes something cease to hurt.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-02 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-02 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-02 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-02 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 03:28 pm (UTC)Wow – that is complex stuff! Thanks. Do you have links to the things that Julie has said / positions she holds? I’d be really interested to see them – and to know what a ‘good outcome’ from all this would look like - what would Julie have to do / say for the trans community to feel differently? I really have very little knowledge of Julie and she has clearly caused deep offence, but I am always a little wary of just building up barriers rather than finding a way to further understanding and dialogue.
Thanks for involving me – I am genuinely interested – not least because as a member of the LGBT network steering group I am keen to have a broad understanding of the range of issues out there for all our members.
I'd be grateful for your advice on where to send her for further information.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-02 04:42 pm (UTC)This is the part I have to remember. Trying to eliminate either transsexuality or homosexuality by force is exactly like trying to eliminate left-handedness by force. Good parallel.
Despite the unquestionable necessity and superiority of replacing the government that called itself Rhodesia with the nation called Zimbabwe, I find it hard to juxtapose the latter's name with the word "hurrah!" at the present time.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-02 04:52 pm (UTC)Formadable
Date: 2008-11-02 05:25 pm (UTC)The Irish are claimed to be the only people who grow more logical and succienct as they get angrier.
The only point I think I'm entitled to comment on is that Bindel is silly and (if the word had not been exaughsted by overuse) infantile in being SURPRISED that the people she talks about get angry ;I am a straight Dawkinist;I think that religion (organised religion) is evil-if I could snap mys fingers and abolish it .... . I don't get SURPRISED when devout people get angry when I say this, I am worse than pissing pouring acid on that which gives stability to their world ,meaning as well of course they get angry.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-02 06:09 pm (UTC)What a steaming load of crap. It makes me want to fly all fifteen hours and brave LHR just to demonstrate.
Edit: Just visited the Stonewall UK site. It says "Equality and Justice for Lesbians, Gay Men and Bisexuals." The Stonewall Scotland site, on the other hand, does include Transgender people. Interesting.
Helen says
Date: 2008-11-02 06:41 pm (UTC)Although I imagine the post-protest booze ups will become eventually enter legend.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-02 07:07 pm (UTC)I'd be there if I had the airfare, though. The Pride org here in LA is really heavy on the G and L, a little light on the B and T, but to exclude one group from deserving equality and justice on the front page is something just mindblowing to me.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-02 10:13 pm (UTC)Whether Stonewall should cover T issues is another question. Personally, I* am dubious about this. In my experience, Stonewall is very LG with a very small b tacked on the end. I think to genuinely represent trans issues would require a cultural change in Stonewall and commitment to understanding trans issues, rather than just tagging another letter onto the website headers.
*I'm a cisgendered bisexual woman who's working on being a trans ally.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-02 10:16 pm (UTC)Things change.
Stonewall needs to renew itself and become a more open organization and yes, a cultural change is called for.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-02 10:19 pm (UTC)I completely agree. I am just not sure Stonewall is the organisation to do it.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-02 10:20 pm (UTC)Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-02 11:27 pm (UTC)I think that to purposely exclude the T is to take a great big piss on the origins of the Pride movement itself. Yes, there are other organizations for Transpeople, but that is because of transphobia in the LG community. I agree that addressing the trans issues will take more than letters on a website, but the exclusion of those letters tell me that hell may freeze before they do it. The culture of organizations telegraphs itself in the smallest of gestures, after all.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-03 09:51 pm (UTC)How dare they call themselves "Stonewall," then? It seems to be the case that many of the actual people in the actual riot at the actual bar of that name were uneasily gendered.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-07 10:19 pm (UTC)Personally I don't believe that there was simply some carve-up of areas years ago. I think that ignores the situation in England for gay groups in the late '80s, when Stonewall was founded (some while before PFC).
Please recall that most lesbians departed the early Gay Lib for the new Women's Liberation Movement. That the lesbian separatists in the women's movement had been active in London from the early 1970s. Activism in Yorkshire around the Sutcliffe murders produced a very hard-line core that moved to London at about the same time as Raymond's poisonous anti-transsexual writings reached here and gave them a cause which they used as the core of a drive to purge the Women's Liberation Movement there of all who associated with "men", which, for their purposes included M2F transsexual women, and boy children. The movement was decimated. It was also those who didn't like the methods, or the hatred, that departed - including many lesbians.
Then along came the Greater London Council with funding for any groups that might oppose the prevailing Tory attitudes, but with equalities requirements.
Attempts were made to launch inclusive organisations that might take advantage of this. And the gay men found that what lesbian groups remained had a most difficult attitude to "equality". Either the gay men followed the lesbian separatist line or they would boycott. But that line was profoundly discriminatory and would prevent GLC funding. Several attempts crashed.
Then, as the GLC was being abolished and groups grown used to its funding collapsed, the Thatcher government proposed Section 28 and it was too much for certain quite successful gay men. They decided to launch a group initially with private funding - Stonewall. They considered it essential to have lesbian participation, at almost any price. And that still seems how it is.
PFC came along later, to an extent following some of Stonewall's model in that it doesn't have a membership so isn't accountable, and sells out many who think it represents them.
Stonewall's happy acceptance of the Civil Partnerships legislation that will probably forestall any equal marriage, for example. Then there's appalling Gender Recognition Act.
People just haven't noticed Stonewall's hostility to T* because PFC held out promise for T* people, and the Raymondites/Bindelites, although very active, kept out of the headlines. But PFC has turned out to have huge failings, and Bindel got a Guardian slot and other media exposure, which enthused her associates to flex their muscles with Stonewall. And Stonewall has to dance.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-07 11:48 pm (UTC)Over the following few years, they did some stupid over-reaching like the physical assault on SM women at the Chain Reaction disco which discredited them in a lot of women's eyes - I don't think that gay men noticed it - and there were some interesting defections from the central group - Linda Bellos started concentrating even more than previously on AfroCarribean/BlackBritish political issues and gradually changed her views. Sheila Jeffreys, who had been the guru of the group for years, moved her poison-spreading to Australia. They put a lot of energy into the Campaign Against Pornography and failed in the legislative issues attached to that group - Feminists Against Censorship defeated them.
The women most associated with Stonewall were never part of that axis - Angela Mason is the partner of Elizabeth Wilson, who was part of FAC and the more general socialist feminist axis. I am not an especial fan of Angela's conduct at Stonewall - we had words several times and I stopped being friends with her and Elizabeth - but I think the issue was more that trans issues were messy and got in the way than that she was in any way phobic. I think I would have noticed on the occasions -prior to our rows about Stonewall - when I had dinner at her house.
As someone who was on the Parliamentary Forum over the GRA, I have to say that it could have been a lot worse and, had we not fought hard, there would have been provisions in it that would have been a real betrayal of the trans community. Some Ministers wanted sterilization to be a condition of certificates, for example, and we saw off that proposal. At the same time, I got quite vexed with some of the PfC people simply because as individuals theywere only ultimately interested in the rights of straight-identified trans people and hardly at all in anyone queer, lesbian or gender queer. Critical as I am of Christine Burns and Stephen Whittle over some issues, I really do not mean them, let us be clear.
The transphobic views of some feminists are something we need to oppose and we need to carve out a space in which the rights of LGB transfolk are respected - the only reason why Stonewall and Pride are resisting this is that they are idiotic...
I really don't think that the irritating obstinacy of Paul Birrell of Pride has anything to do with pandering to Bindelesque transphobia, or even to old style Gay Liberationist distaste for trans, so much as with his general dislike of any minority that gets uppity with him. He has been equally hostile to BME critics of the last Pride.
I think that the Stonewall officers are similarly resentful of our lack of deference, and imaginative pursuit of them.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-08 06:51 am (UTC)With all due credit for beautiful successes against the RadFems, they were in areas Stonewall had no intention of working, and it doesn't overshadow the fact that they were still decimating the Women's Movement, including sections with just as prominent people as Stonewall (except female), and had shown they would use any means, including the most vicious lies, and direct violence. Obviously the (few) women in Stonewall would not be lesbian separatists, but the necessity was to have agreement that Stonewall or women who were members would not be attacked.
I read Stonewall's employees as pushing set policy and defending their jobs.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-08 08:09 am (UTC)I don't think either Angela Mason or Ben Summerskill was ever 'just' an employee - from my experience with Liberty, I'd say that the paid employee you call a director or general secretary is always the most influential person in an organization.
Which documentary was that? It's a lovely picture.
I think you hugely overestimate the power and influence of modern radfems - in the old days, they could get people fired and I have not seen or heard any of that in recent years. I don't think Stonewall are in any way answerable to them, so much as living in a world where on some issues radfems managed to impose an unexamined agenda.
I'd go further - I see Stonewall employees not just as pushing set policy and defending their own jobs, but also as people with a particular style living in a social world where certain things are assumed. It would help to break those assumptions a little.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-08 05:27 pm (UTC)The documentary was Lefties: Angry Wimmin.
I don't think I've really said, here, much on the present day "power and influence" of modern RadFems. I've been talking about their influence at a crucial formative stage of Stonewall, in the late '80s.
It is, I fear, a problem that that we do not know what influence they presently have. Their hate stuff keeps popping up[1] enough to know there's an undercurrent, but we don't know how big, or how powerful.
It is Bindel has a Guardian column and not you, Roz. Her hate gets read by The Guardian's readership of students, journalists, teachers, social workers, civil servants and politicians. It was Bindel who was a Home Office adviser; taught police and immigration personnel. Her colleagues have drafted international treaties on trafficking that exclude T* people, even though we certainly get trafficked. It is they who work in refuges and on violence issues, and get to define us as unwelcome, even harmful.
How much input did they have on Batty's articles on RR that were so widely used against us, not least in parliament?
Who knows just where one might encounter one of them, or just how much blind hatred might suddenly be unleashed? What lies suddenly circulated? But there are religious nutjobs around too, and other dangers. One just has to be prepared. On top of all the other issues we can face.
[1] For example, the director of UK Women in Philosophy, who heads a unit studying victims, presented a RadFem paper last May at this conference. Here is the abstract:
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-08 06:14 pm (UTC)One of the reasons why JB has a Guardian column and not me is that I am too busy with other bits of my writing to try and get one - my byline does get around, but it is mostly as a cultural critic and reviewer of books, film and television. But I do take the point.
I have been worried for some time about trafficked trans people - it is one of those things which I've suspected was going to happen sooner or later. Do you have any actual current evidence about it, because it is something we should be campaigning about?
I've always regarded the GRA as a stepping stone to something better - something better we really were not going to get at the time. SW gave a very good speech at the Trans With Pride conference in 2007 which outlined room for improvement, pretty much along lines I'd agree with (and which parallel the policy I wrote for Liberty and the line I took in my Reclaiming Genders piece.
What I would say, in defense of the Forum, is that sometimes politics really is the art of the possible.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-09 11:59 am (UTC)Shockingly the paper is by the head of a research unit to help "victims". And she writes a paper casting us - so often victims (bullying, sexual abuse, hate crime, medical mistreatment, trafficking, legal discrimination, denial of identity or privacy, etc.) - as perpetrators of harm upon all women!
One would have to suspect that the philosophy department, at least at Durham, is not a safe place for T* students or faculty.
Worse yet, remember that medical ethics - a relatively new field that could offer much help to us - is part of philosophy. So this provides shocking context for ethicist Simona Giordano, who presented her outstanding paper[1] on how children are handled unethically in the UK most powerfully at Richard Green's conference in September.
There is no formal evidence of trafficking of T* people that I can find. But a vital plank of the treaties and guidelines has been to watch for it, compile evidence, and use that to stop the traffic internationally, and T* people (except if subsumed as children) are excluded from that. Anecdotally there are many cases known. A drug-enslaved UK M2F found in a raid on an LA brothel, seized originally in a gay pub. A Vietnamese M2F found by a roadside in the UK, disposed of from a brothel after becoming HIV+. A friend of mine who, some years ago, fled a brothel in NYC at 15 after overhearing negotiations for ownership of her between the owner, who had given the self-transitioned teen shelter, and Japanese Yakuza, who had just been pressing her to do unspeakable acts.
T* people should be recognised as potential victims of trafficking, as their gender of identity, and covered as such by the treaties and conventions. But we'd have the very well-placed Janice Raymond to contend with.
Was there any undertaking given, when the compromises were being made on the GerBil, that the legislation would be revisited some time? The need for the government to supposedly comply with the Goodwin judgment was perhaps a never-to-be-repeated access to parliamentary time. I simply cannot see Britain sweeping away all the awful (and permanent) breaches of privacy and insults to our identities, not least the requirement for a mental disorder diagnosis, the GRA created.
What specifically did SW call for to be changed in that address?
Politics doesn't have to be secretive and underhand, nor work against human rights in the name of doing the opposite.
[1] Giordano, S. Gender atypical organisation in children and adolescents: Ethico-legal issues and a proposal for new guidelines. The International Journal of Children's Rights 15, 365-390 (2007).
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-10 10:59 am (UTC)Christine Burns addresses the question of where to go next on the GerBil in the thread on Facebook on where the movement should go next generally. I don't have a record of SW's speech but I assume there is a summary in the conference's proceedings.
Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-08 10:35 am (UTC)Re: Helen says
Date: 2008-11-08 10:32 am (UTC)It like's to grab transgender and wrap itself in the colours but about as trans inclusionary as stonewall is about bisexuals
no subject
Date: 2008-11-07 09:00 pm (UTC)Not apparently to the many who have ignored that discrepancy for years. Including the members of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) who have happily seen considerable funding from the Scottish Executive to the single pot of a national group that very clearly excludes T* in England and Wales. Look at Stonewall's list of income from "trusts and foundations" (which turns out to be mostly government departments) and see it all pooled.
It was infuriating, a few of weeks ago on BBC Parliament, to see one such MSP interview Simon Callow, as a founder member of Stonewall, about Stonewall, in the parliamentary chamber, in an event from this summer's Edinburgh Festival of Politics. She mentioned several times that Stonewall spoke for "transgender" people, didn't say it was only in Scotland, and Callow did not correct her. Then she asked him what there was left for Stonewall to achieve, and, despite the many ways in which T* people suffer still, he first elaborated on how wonderful it was to now be able to attend civil partnership ceremonies in swank places, then conceded just that a little work was needed on things in schools. Nothing else.
Stonewall's V&A event was of course to raise money for their campaign against homophobia in schools (no mention of transphobia).
no subject
Date: 2008-11-07 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-08 06:03 am (UTC)Without very clear understandings with the real powers at Stonewall it would be a huge, huge mistake to ask the group to take on T* issues. They have already shown they are fully prepared to simply play the "add a T" game in Scotland, their "Diversity Champions" and schools campaigns invisiblise T*, there are large numbers of fourattist gay men amongst their "friends" (ie non-member subscribers), they are evidentially open to the Bindellists, and they are non-accountable.
Then there are the dreadful lessons from lGb groups in other countries, where they often drown out informed T* communities with misinformation thanks to their established access and preconceptions. Often it rapidly becomes believed that all T* are just a variety of L&G - almost exactly the Blanchard/Bailey and Fouratt lines. The needs and identities of those who don't fit that are then lost.
One has seen huge US groups completely invisibilise the need for SRS or other bodily change, smear "stealth" as "closet", ignore heterosexual T* people, slur their partners as homosexual, or totally not care about usage of titles, pronouns, or even names. Years and years on from starting to claim to represent T*.
We'd need a strong and competent group of our own to truly guard those interests before giving Stonewall, or any other such group here a green light. PFC, GT, PF and TGEU (to only mention four) are not that.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-08 08:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-08 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-09 06:07 am (UTC)There is so little reporting or openness (as opposed to opinion, which almost everyone seems to publish) on important T* matters. I'm at loss to know, now that we don't need there to be publications to distribute information, if it is laziness, thoughtlessness, or secrecy for factional purposes.
It mean there is so much ignorance, but even people anxious to know don't get to hear.
So much about the GerBil was done in secret, and subsequent legislative matters too. Even the passage of the extension of the Sex Discrimination Act to give us protection in provision of goods and services (if we are prepared to sacrifice privacy) has gone almost unpublicised!
PFC reports hardly any thing they involve themselves in these days, nor GT. The Department of Health T* medical care committees, the RCP SOC committee meetings. We never get reports of WPATH or TGEU meetings. There were all those people seen entering the "conference" at the the Royal Society of Medecine, pushing the Gender Identity Development Centre line, with Zucker speaking, and there seems to have been not a single report.
One might almost think people attended just for self-promotion or careerist reasons, and yet what is said might well affect all of us.
Helen : Outraged and gobsmacked
Date: 2008-11-02 07:29 pm (UTC)I cannot help but think that, yet again, politically naive elements in the TG community have attempted to bargain with the unmoving and created a opportunity for her to devalue the protest.
Re: Helen : Outraged and gobsmacked
Date: 2008-11-02 07:39 pm (UTC)I am rather disturbed by this person's actions. Not so much because we might have gained some support from an unlikely figure, but the continued 'behind closed doors' approach, and their branding of everyone else as doing "personal attacks".
no subject
Date: 2008-11-08 07:57 pm (UTC)Anyway! All that is to say that I don't identify as transgender, but I try hard to be an ally, and I'm always looking to learn and examine gender and sexuality issues more fully and complexly. And this post was AWESOME! Though it was a response to a specific person and situation, it's so densely packed with history and complexity, and yet so clear and straightforward. I'm bookmarking it to my del.icio.us account because I would love to be able to point people to it when trans issues in feminism come up for discussion. Are you okay with that??
Again, thanks so much--for this post, for your clarity and perspective, and for all your years of fighting the good fight on these issues. I really appreciated reading your insights and analysis.