Unfortunately I had this post completely written and, when I hit the post button, it logged me off and erased it. And that was an incredible pain in the ass. So here it is.
Again.So I stumbled across
this article from Counterpunch, an online publication I usually enjoy, entitled "The Emperor's New Penis" and written by folks at an organization called Deep Green Resistance. Apparently they were threatened and attacked (as they tell it) at an event called the "Law and Disorder Conference" at Portland, OR.
Here is part of what they alleged transpired:
At the “Law and Disorder Conference” in Portland, OR, on May 11-12, two women were peacefully tabling, handing out literature, and selling books from our organization, Deep Green Resistance. A group of five queer activists came up to the table and one of the men began shouting at the women, using aggressive language and threatening gestures. He grabbed and defaced table materials. When one of the women went to protect the materials, he marked her arm and hand as well.
This conference states it has a policy of safer spaces, but “safer spaces” evidently doesn’t apply to women, because although most people in the room had no choice but to hear the shouting, no one, including the organizers, intervened to stop this man and his aggressive behavior.
A half an hour later, a male DGR member tried to engage in respectful conversation with these queer activists. They began insulting him, and escalated to throwing trash and food at his head. Apparently the “safer space” policy doesn’t apply to men, either.
Which is bad and, frankly, never should have happened if that is indeed how it occurred. And what was the reason for this confrontation?
He accused DGR of “transphobia.” This is absurd. The book and other materials never even mention the words “transgender” or “queer,” let alone include calls to dehumanize or harm anyone.
Go on.
They do, however, contain a feminist critique of gender. The disagreement is that queer/trans activists believe gender is a binary, and we believe it’s a hierarchy.
And there's where the disagreement comes in. But before I discuss the trans issue further I should point out that the authors of the article do say things that I agree with:
Deep Green Resistance is an environmental organization, based on the eponymous book that we co-authored. DGR is also a feminist organization. Between us, we have spent six decades fighting sexual violence and writing about the patriarchal culture that creates rape and, through it, the class of “people called women.” Our analysis is informed by a century and a half of feminist theory and activism. Our views are in no way unique. We believe that a social system of male domination starts with human beings who are biologically male or female and creates two social classes of people: men and women. Socialization to either group can be a brutal process.
Men are made by socialization to masculinity. Being a man requires a psychology based on emotional numbness and a dichotomy of self and other. This is also the psychology required by soldiers, which is why we don’t think you can be a peace activist without being a feminist.
Female socialization is a process of psychologically constraining and breaking girls—otherwise known as “grooming”—to create a class of compliant victims. Femininity is a set of behaviors that are, in essence, ritualized submission.
We see nothing in the creation of gender to celebrate or embrace. As feminists, we are abolitionists. Patriarchy is a corrupt and brutal arrangement of power, and we want to see it dismantled so that the category of gender no longer exists. This is also our position on race and class. The categories are not natural: they only exist because hierarchical systems of power create them (see, for instance, Audrey Smedley’s book Race in North America). We want a world of justice and equality, where the material conditions that currently create race, class, and gender have been forever overcome.
Which is completely fine. But where they lose me is the discussion of trans issues:
There are, of course, people who disagree with feminism. In their view, men and women display domination and submission, respectively, not because of social conditions, but because we have different brains. Gendered behavior is natural, they say, a function of our biology. Boys are naturally aggressive and active, while girls are naturally emotional and passive. The claim is often that prenatal hormones create these propensities, and that the “wrong” hormones can produce the “wrong” brain. Hence it is possible to have a man’s body with a woman’s brain (which adherents like to call a “lady brain”). Cursory research will reveal the variations and disagreements amongst the genderists. Some, for instance, believe that gender is a matter of costuming—what they call “presentation.” Their problem with gender isn’t gender per se, but that there are social constraints on what men can wear. On the other extreme are people who argue that their genitals are a “birth defect” that require surgical removal. Some people believe that their children’s genitals are a birth defect. And yes, we hope that readers will find that chilling.
[...]
The strangest part of this whole debate is that feminists are being called biological essentialists. The genderists baldly state their belief in “brain sex” and the immortal, even cosmic, nature of femininity . White supremacists are the only people who believe in the “Negro brain.” But talk of “lady brains” is completely accepted across progressive communities if it comes from genderists. Feminists, in contrast, start with Simone DeBeauvior: “One is made, not born a woman.” It’s that making that we intend to stop. It can be stopped because gender is a social process. It’s the genderists who claim it’s biological, immutable. Yet we get called essentialist?
And it’s the genderists who conform. For all their talk of gender-bending, their goal is cosmetics, costumes, and surgery to match their bodies to gender caricatures. They are permanently altering their bodies—removing healthy organs and in some cases the ability to ever experience sexual pleasure again—to better fit a corrupt and brutal arrangement of power. This is now being done to children and some of the children already regret it. Please read that sentence again. Please.
The children should be an alarm call but no one is listening. There are historical precedents from which left-leaning people should have learned. Much of the Progressive movement embraced eugenics, until the optimistic, shiny promise of science produced punctual trains to crematoriums. Similarly, in the 1950s many liberals believed that chemical castration was the compassionate approach to homosexuality. We look back in bewildered horror but refuse to see that it’s happening now. The unfit are being chemically sterilized once again. People are being surgically mutilated in the service of social conformity. Children as young as eighteen months are being “diagnosed” as transgender. What does that even mean in someone who has yet to speak her first word? She preferred the blue pacifier to the pink? The real question: so what if she did? Girls can’t like blue, play rough and tumble, take up space, run for President? Apparently not. Free to Be, You and Me, through Surgery. The prison of gender is locking down ever tighter.
[...]
The most heartbreaking element of the transgender narrative is their hatred of their bodies. In the war between culture and nature, gender and body, the body loses. And that defeat is turned into an identity. The only parallel claim is made by the anorexics’ Pro-Anas, who insist their wrenching disjuncture of self and body is a legitimate identity. We have no doubt that people hate their bodies: willful starvation and surgical mutilation speak with a stark, eloquent evidence. The question is why.
[...]
Defend the human animal, the integrity of body and brain, flesh and fat. There is nothing wrong with it. Especially there is nothing wrong with anyone’s genitals: not ever.
I'm not going to pretend that I know all the science behind what we call "gender dysphoria," but there's a world of difference between chemical castration being forced upon homosexuals and voluntary surgery. And regardless of what you think of children with gender dysphoria, I don't think anyone (or hardly anyone) believes that being gender non-conforming is the same as being transsexual. If I preferred pink to blue I wouldn't rush out and start hormone treatment. And naturally there are going to be some people who regret the surgery--sexuality and gender and self-image are very complex subjects. But there are plenty of people who undergo SRS and who are perfectly content until the day they die. And that's a perspective being ignored here. Moreover, I feel that if they really want to eliminate gender, wouldn't it make more sense to allow people to undergo SRS if they deemed it necessary? Isn't it propping up a rigid gender heirarchy to set up lines that people may not cross? Anyway, that's my two cents.
