@Silmarien, it's not at all clear that patriarchy as we understand it is universal across time. It may be that it was something that was part of the agricultural revolution as power was centralized within human settlements. In which case, oppression of women, at least of the sort that feminists in our culture object to the most strongly, wouldn't be intrinsic to their biology, but a byproduct of particular arrangements of human society that are culturally conditioned.
No, I don't think that Patriarchy as we understand it is universal, but it is very common throughout almost any civilization. Less so with more nomadic groups, but even there, things can be pretty varied and you can find groups that have more specific gender roles. This happens far too often to be written off as some sort of historical accident, and seems to have kicked off in a more institutionalized fashion during the Agricultural Revolution.
Historical prejudices and oppressive power structures don't just disappear in the blick of an eye. I know you would like to believe that an oppressor can turn into a victim over night, but it really doesn't happen. What frustrates me is the way that oppression based on biological sex has been subordinated to every other form of oppression--if an Islamic refugee commits rape, it gets ignored, because Islamophobia is viewed as more important than women's justice. This is an issue we have dealt with for years, and now I am seeing the same thing happening again: if a person who identifies as transgender commits sexual assault, it gets ignored. Only conservatives will report on it, because they are the only ones whose narrative this sort of abuse fits. Everyone else will write it off as anecdotal, or better yet, accuse the reporters or even the victims of lying. It even happened in this thread.
The problem is that this is not new. We have known at the very least since the mania over Islamophobia that we have no allies. All we have are allies of convenience--progressives will support us if white men in positions of power attack us; conservatives will support us if anyone who isn't a white man in a position of power attacks us. Both will turn around and call us liars if their favored narrative is violated.
This is one of the underlying problems for me: the current situation is so ideological wrought that if trans-women are put in women's prisons and women's shelters, and if they do commit sexual assault, the entire left will close ranks around them. The victim will be lying, or will have consented--this is what already happened in the one prison rape case that I'm familiar with, and in retrospect, it doesn't really surprise me. Women are always perceived as being liars when their stories conflict with whatever the preferred narrative is. Does this mean that transgender people are more likely than anyone else to be violent? Of course not, but it does mean that the privilege they have over "cis"-gender women within progressive institutions is noticeable.
I will of course be written off as hysterical, or worrying too much about things that are unrealistic (never mind that they are actually happening), because that is the way misogyny works amongst progressives. The fact that people think that they are more egalitarian than they actually are is what makes this so dangerous. The oppression of women is such a subtle, difficult thing, and we think we have solved it, even though we haven't. We think it is only something that happens with social conservatives, when sometimes it's liberals who are even worse.
This is another reason I don't like the "transwomen are women" mantra, because it is in part aimed at creating the intersectional impression that transwomen face the exact same form of oppression that "cis"-women do, and then more. But is this true? If someone is passing extremely well, it admittedly could be, but as far as I can tell, usually what they face has more in common with a particularly virulent form of homophobia than misogyny. In radical feminist circles, the root is probably misandry. The fact that people who are transphobic will not view them as women, however, means that what they're facing in these situations is very different than misogyny. If someone's experiences are different than that of a "cis"-woman, if the type of oppression that they face is different, and so forth on so on, I don't know how to say that they are women in the same way that "cis"-women are. This doesn't mean that I don't think their gender identity is sincere and legitimate, or that I wouldn't be happy to welcome them, but I'm being asked to accept a number of very controversial theories of gender that I think are false. I see it as a social construct rather than just a subjective performance--if your experiences are going to be somewhat different because society views you differently, I don't think that can be erased. Where have we come to if assent to very specific, very controversial theories of gender identity are required to not be considered a bigot?
It makes sense when Christian ideology is the main fuel in our culture for transphobia. I have already pointed out how Buddhists, for instance, are not necessarily hostile to transsexualism, that this is something that is mostly confined to western culture's construction of gender.
I'm not hostile towards transsexuality. I'm hostile towards both self-identification and the idea that there is no difference whatsoever between people with wildly different experiences.
I'm also not happy with the way the preferred theory means that anyone else's self-understanding has to be subordinated to a trans-person's self-understanding. If I were to date a trans-man, for example, and he were pre-op and not on hormones, I would probably start identifying as bisexual, since from my perspective, there wouldn't be much difference between that and dating a butch lesbian, even if from his, there was. But it would be bigotry for me to be in a relationship like that and not have a strong conviction that the relationship were heterosexual? Some of what is being roped into the idea of inclusiveness here is seriously problematic.
I'm just saying traditional, uncritically reformed Christianity is not really your friend here, since Christians typically will say that motherhood is natural and things like President Obama saying that women are potentially "punished" by pregnancy is deplorable and sub-Christian.
I used to be strongly pro-choice, and the horror at the idea of ever being pregnant was pretty damaging. I wouldn't quite consider myself in the pro-life camp now, since my legal views are more nuanced, but I really like not viewing pregnancy as a sort of alien takeover that I wouldn't be strong enough to deal with. That doesn't mean that I feel like it is some sort of womanly duty, though.
Don't assume that you know who is and isn't my friend on issues that I've been involved in on both sides and you will only ever have an outside view on.
I think you misunderstand, I'm not the one arguing for gender essentialism. If I don't believe in gender essentialism, how could I believe I can define "the essence of womanhood"?
FWIW, I am a philosophical nominalist (as are Buddhists in general, but so is most modern philosophy) and I don't believe that concepts are anything but conventions.
I don't know. You're the one talking about "essence of womanhood." If the position here was that "womanhood" was just an empty concept and both "cis"-gender and transgender women were really just people in the same way, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But that's not what I'm hearing.
There are no shortages of people who claim to be activists but are in fact maladjusted people with narcissistic or even sociopathic tendencies out to manipulate others for their own benefit. But most large LGBT and feminists organizations don't engender that sort of thing, and it's specifically that sort of advocacy I am speaking from, against the blanket assertions by social conservatives, rooted in a conservative Christian ethos, that crude biological reductionism should define ones gender and be enshrined into law.
I'm by no means championing the conservative view here. I have no problem with people identifying in whatever way they choose, though I am nervous about those maladjusted people with narcissistic or sociopathic tendencies who are out to manipulate others for their own benefit. The problem is that self-identification means that there's no way to distinguish between that and sincere transgender folk who are just trying to go about their business, and we're being called hysterical or outright bigoted for being worried about legally conflating the two groups.
You see it as ugly, I see it as defensiveness in a world that too often dismisses transpeople as mad or bad. Feminists that play to toxic and hurtful stereotypes of transpeople deserve to be severely criticized, as that kind of indignity is really a betrayal of principles that are fundamental to human dignity.
There's a difference between criticism and threatening someone with sexual violence, or at least there should be. If you don't see some of the attacks on women as ugly, the best case scenario is that you haven't seen them at all. People shouldn't resort to misogynistic language every time a woman says something they don't like.
If it's not possible, why talk about it, then? Obviously words can communicate experiences in a mediated way. People in widely disparate cultures have recognized profound value in communication and friendship precisely because it leads to a deeper sharing of experiences.
I don't know why talk about it. I'm not the one insisting that my experience of being a woman is identical to everyone else's.
Are biological females really the most oppressed group that is possible to conceive? And isn't this race to create a hierarchy of oppression with women at the bottom just a way to avoid the obvious reality of intersectionality, that merely because one is a female doesn't mean one can't also be an oppressor in some way?
We are at the bottom right now specifically because intersectionality has created a hierarchy of oppression according to which only powerful white men cannot oppress us with impunity. Thank you, intersectionality.
It depends on what congregation you belong to. The Church has no official stance on the issue as to whether congregations have to recognize somebody's gender transition through a rite. They certainly permit people to believe alot of offensive stuff and call it Christian, and many have very traditional views on gender and even sexuality.
If I were at a conservative parish, I think I'd know it.
Noted. I just think you are taking a bit too much offense at things that are really more internet phenomena than reflecting real-world politics in the US. Trans people in general in the US are fighting for their lives, sometimes quite literally (especially in communities of color), they are not generally fighting to be gatekeepers of gender orthodoxy. They just want institutions to have policies that don't denigrate or exclude them.
I'm okay with that, but I'm done being an ally to people who are not interested in returning the favor. If women are concerned about threats of violence and rape coming out of the virulent online transgender community, and almost nobody cares to speak out against this sort of thing, then the problem here isn't on my side. I'm done being supportive of movements that I can expect to call me a liar and say I consented if one of their members commits sexual assault.
I'm not presenting myself as just another male authority figure. I'm somebody with a personal stake in the issue, and I was appealing to your sense of compassion, but it seems you want to turn this into some kind of discussion about abstractions and political ideologies that frighten you, and I have no dog in that race.
You were appealing to my sense of compassion by educating me on what feminists actually thought? It's not particularly compassionate of you to assume that I have no idea how to search the internet for real information and cannot help but naively falling prey to social conservatives.
