“Women’s Issues”
The New Craze in Transphobic Discourse
Between the Trump administration’s new offensive against civil rights and my partner’s cancer surgery, I am rather exhausted and emotionally drained. So when I come onto Facebook and observe what the peanut gallery is doing, it only exacerbates problems further.
What am I talking about?
Well for starters, I found this little gem on the Wobblies’ Facebook group. Here we have a reactionary masking his bigotry in leftist rhetoric and posting an image of some random person making a random and unverified claim.
What bigots like to do is hide behind popular movements and ideas in order to disguise their sexism and racism as legitimate concern and critique. The unsophisticated among them will not be able to keep up the pretense and quickly give-in, throwing out childish and hateful remarks when the ruse fails.
When transphobes bring up the matter of “women’s issues” and “women’s rights,” they do this to one, direct the conversation away from arguments and comments which humanize trans people and two, to make it appear like trans folk and their allies are in opposition to women as a whole. They ignore the fact that trans women of color experience an awful lot of sexism, racism, and assault. This is most likely due to the fact they judge trans women to be “mentally ill deserving of ‘treatment’” (Extra quotes around the word “treatment” are absolutely necessary, because one has to wonder what qualifies as “treatment” to these keyboard warriors since the medical world has pretty much given up treating trans identities as an illness).
While we are on the subject of treatment, what sort of treatment do you think the trans community’s families, friends, and colleagues are receiving? Are the allies of trans folk deserving of empathy, understanding, and legal protection? Some of these people are also supportive women who understand that trans folk, trans women in particular, pose no threat to them. They are human, but more than that, they are also friends, lovers, and family to so many others. Do they meet the standards of “women’s issues” trolls, or have they betrayed milquetoast feminists everywhere by joining trans folk in their fight against a new wave of sexism and racism?
Let us take a look at this Wobbly wannabe. As you can plainly see, she took a more subtle approach to bigotry. First, she opened up with the usual unverified claim that inviting trans women into women’s shelters will somehow expose other women to “male attributes,” still couching blatant transphobia as concern for “women’s issues.” No citation at all as to what she was referencing. It was just a fear reaction to Truthout’s article mentioning discrimination when trans folk make attempts to enter homeless shelters. She talks about “losses” when it comes to the individual but will not indicate what those “losses” are. She thinks passing laws to protect the marginalized with a more comprehensive definition of gender as an “over-simplified” solution. Cis-women are harmed by gender norms, too, you know! Imagine having more variety in how we view the human condition as an over-simplification of the problem! Notice how she leaves what to do with trans folk as a perpetual open question. That is the whole point of injecting this pseudo-feminist bunk into the discussion. It is quite humorous reading she wants a “truthful debate” with this level of insincerity. If her comment was not such a nonsensical jumble, it might have deserved more than a dismissive reply.
There are plenty of cis-women with “male attributes.” So I guess they are just S.O.L in this Facebook user’s estimation. Only “real women” deserve empathy and understanding. Women with body-hair issues…? Sorry. Better luck next time. What about women with a masculine appearance…? Well, the gender police will have to make all the necessary arrangements to give them a nice TSA experience. What about women with ambiguous genitalia…? This is turning into quite the Pandora’s box already. A simple DuckDuckGo search will show what fruits this level of thinking will bear. One such search result is the story of a cis-woman who was mistaken for a trans woman and subsequently harassed at a Wal-Mart by another customer.
Then there are women who cannot request the surgery they need from their insurance to bring their genitals up to snuff due to the past actions of a single Catholic reactionary, that crusader of “women’s issues” who set trans rights back thirty years, Janice Raymond.
A while back, I remember watching some talk show when people were still questioning the TSA and their dubious methods. This “debate” was on the issue of TSA personally screening and humiliating trans folk, particularly trans women. A trans woman talked about personally being groped and dehumanized by a TSA agent. A middling suburban, white cis-woman piped up, “I’m sorry if this hurts your little feelings, but I deserve to feel safe. My safety is worth more than yours.” She said this condescendingly with callous resolve. After all these years, that was the one thing that stayed with me. Well, how did this line of reasoning fair? Are women actually any safer? If news headlines are anything to go by, then that is a resounding no. The TSA, as of 2017, failed most of their tests administrated by undercover agents. If anything, people fear the TSA, including little girls. I know I certainly do. They traumatized a little girl with spinal bifida. A quick Google search of “TSA grandmother” reveals a shocking list of TSA agents molesting crippled, elderly women.
I have yet to find anyone who would explicitly state all these female sacrifices were necessary for the “greater good,” that being the expulsion of trans women from women’s issues forever. If any happen to come before me, I would state quite plainly and emphatically that that person is morally bankrupt.
Quite dismaying that Wobbly wannabe’s comment will be the best you will ever find from “women’s issues” and “women’s safety” trolls. They are not a very bright lot; they are faddists. All they ever seem to do is parrot each other, share memes, and generally create a nuisance. What is it with people who follow Internet fads? Do they not receive enough attention from their offline life? I can hardly wait for this “truthful” debate the trolls keep yammering on about. I have no doubt the producers of such debates will fail, once again, to include actual trans individuals who make it their business to understand these sorts of issues but will, instead, include a litany of fake, well-off progressives and feminists, mostly white, mostly reactionary, probably either traditionalists or essentialists who are either disgraced academics, activists, and/or e-celebrities.
I do get around. Trust me… you are not missing anything. It is mostly a spite-filled fad composed of slacktivists, gamers, and right-wing focus groups. You can safely mock and/or ignore these people. In another five years, they will still be raving on and on about “social justice warriors” and “cultural Marxists” with the same flash and no substance. Most are casual users with no links to major political organizations or social groups. All they care about is themselves and how trans issues fit into their myopic worldview. By constantly debating the existence of trans folk and all the imagined ways they make life inconvenient for a small uncomfortable minority, the real question of trans rights and full gender emancipation itself will always be left to some yet-to-be determined date.
This is great news for the moderately apathetic, who claim to care by saying, “Hey, look. You can be a woman, man, or non-binary if you want. It’s no skin off my nose.” How wonderful it must be for them to occupy a middle ground, where they can straddle the fence indefinitely on the issues without feeling a bit of compunction.
Philosophy Tube explains this behaviour quite well in a video on transphobia.
No matter what side of the “debate” you are on, constant debating drains energy away from recognizing the humanity of a select group of people who have done nothing to deserve this level of discrimination, and it is a form of discrimination. There is no getting around it.
Look at what happened when fascism became just another concept like any other worthy of debate and not a dangerous, garbage ideology the entire world fought against.
I think what upsets me more than these types of comments are the ways absolute nobodies appoint themselves as spokespeople for political groups. They have the audacity to claim ownership of these groups without putting in any work, and people vocally and uncritically believe them. None of these people I mentioned from Facebook left any indication on their Facebook profile that they were active members of any civil rights organization, protest, or activist group. It was mostly memes, selfies, and video games.
Update:
I have a real doozy for you this time.
Let me be extremely blunt. This dense Facebook user defended reactionary comments because they included those magic words, “Women’s Safety.” One of the reactionaries in question was accosted by other members for subverting the Wobblies’ message of solidarity for trans folk. And how did said reactionary respond to said criticism? He called them “cunts,” of course. What a champion of women’s rights.
This post particularly hurt because she actually seemed politically active and aware on her Facebook page.
I sometimes have to wonder if well-meaning “progressives” would actively defend antisemitic racists connecting the “trans lobby” to a global Jewish conspiracy, i.e. George Soros, if they also managed to shoehorn “women’s issues” and “women’s safety” into their theories. I have already witnessed self-proclaimed “moderates” and “classical liberals” being open to the “Jewish Question” and pedophilia for the sake of including “both sides.” Some befriend open fascists, and their eagerness to “debate” more of them on national and international forums risks lending dangerous far-right insurgents credibility and celebrity. It is not like this was never tried before, where the end result was a global war to stop the fascism’s advance. I have seen “progressive” liberals throw shade on racist, sexist bigots for couching their bigotry in progressive, feminist terminology and for dumping all their racism and sexism on marginal groups, such as the entire trans community. So I have zero tolerance when I find such people who respond to such vile conduct as just-another-debate. Quislings are beneath contempt, full stop.
I get it. Fear-mongering can be effective, and specious arguments can sound very reasonable, especially when our appetite for imagining horror is practically bottomless.
We are going to have to engage that fleshy muscle between our ears and think critically about the information put in front of us instead of letting the fear-mongering and the language of identity politics short-circuit our humanist efforts, and please, do not take this as an affront to identity politics itself. There are some real selfish, shortsighted people out there co-opting leftist and progressive terminology to empower themselves and their little cadre at the expense of everyone else.
If you absolutely … positively have to respond to them on social media despite my warnings, it is not that hard to do so. A good start would be to ask questions. Look at their social media footprint. Who do the follow? Are they even politically involved? Ask them where they received their information. Are their opinions their own, or are they parroting some other entity? How did their views evolve over time? Ask them about their motivations for posting. Do something! Don’t just act like a bobble-head and go with the flow! Use some skepticism and challenge their claims. Challenge yourself. Remember, this is not for them. This is for you and what you represent to your community and those you may yet inspire. Try to save as many as you can, … if you must. You will most likely fail, and it will not be due to so much as a lack of skill, per se. It will be due to a lack of faith and trust in the goodwill of others. However, you, I, and everyone else must persevere. It is all we can do.
