The poor Guardian has been having a hard time since they published Suzanne Moore's article at the beginning of last week. In that shocking piece, if you remember, Moore offered her view that women were women. The transphobic shock-waves reverberated round the Guardian office, as one poor trans worker claimed she was too terrified now to come in. A large number of Guardian and Observer employees - 338 to be exact - were so horrified that they wrote a letter to Guardian editor Kath Viner, deploring what they saw as the paper’s “pattern of publishing transphobic content”. Alex Massie wrote about it in the Spectator, and wondered, quite reasonably, what on earth these people were doing working for a newspaper - and a famous liberal newspaper at that - if they believed that such an unexceptional and cogently argued piece as Moore's should never have been published. "Many of them", he noted, "appear shocked by the discovery they have inadvertently wandered into a workplace in which they may discover a range of views."
So, the Guardian needed to restore its trans-friendly image. Step forward Zoe Williams - Feminist solidarity empowers everyone. The movement must be trans-inclusive:
I have written nothing on trans issues for seven years. A now-familiar row had broken out in the feminist movement back then, and I assumed that feminism would soon re-orient itself away from which body parts define a woman and whether or not the word “womxn” signified an assault on our sense of selves, and towards what I thought was obviously the more fundamental question of the movement: who has it worse? Feminism, in my life’s experience of it, takes the side of the oppressed. That is our raison d’etre.
Well no, it isn't. The raison d’etre of feminism is to take the side of women. The clue's in the name. The oppressed can form their own movements...the unemployed, the homeless, the disabled, the blind, the deaf, the too large or too small or too dark or too fat or too skinny. Good luck to them. Feminism is, explicitly, for women. If you want a movement that's all-inclusive and on the side of all the oppressed you could call it maybe nice-ism, or help-everyone-ism, but the term feminism is already taken.
Indeed there's something a little uncomfortable with the idea that feminism should be on the side of all the oppressed. Why should it? Because women are naturally nurturing and loving and open and just all-round nice? Isn't that maternal stereotype, perhaps, part of the problem? And then along come these men who claim that they're women and they're saying - shouting, actually - hey, you think you're oppressed, look at us transwomen! We're a lot more oppressed than you. And the women are supposed to roll over and say, oh you poor dears! Where's it hurting? Let me kiss it better. And yes please, come and join our movement.
Williams takes on the arguments - or thinks she does:
It is astonishing that the idea of the “women-only space” is being touted as a fundamental pillar of the movement, yet is completely stripped of the historical context of that. Women-only space was a realm protected from our Harvey Weinsteins, where we could talk about our Harvey Weinsteins; it was not a hallowed place where we communicated through our ovaries. It was where we came together in unity against people who hated us. I can’t imagine the mindset that would exclude a trans sister from that.
That suggests a certain....well, naivete you could call it, or just plain stupidity. Rapists and sexual predators don't all look like Harvey Weinstein. They don't have "rapist" or "sexual predator" tattooed on their foreheads. What about Karen White, for instance: the then 52-year old woman with a penis who was placed in a women’s prison despite having previous convictions for indecent assault, indecent exposure and gross indecency involving children. She subsequently sexually assaulted a female inmate and then, later, admitted to having raped two women before she was sent to prison. Is she - was she - a trans sister?
The point is, of course - how do you tell? It's a depressing feature of history that through the ages men have used all kinds of excuses and stratagems to take sexual advantage of women. And they don't come clearly identified, these nasty men. That's why women's only spaces are needed. No doubt the number of Karen Whites among transwomen is tiny, but how do you know? And any sympathy one might have for the arguments for inclusivity surely evaporate in situations like that encountered by the Vancouver Rape Shelter, which exists to protect abused women and give them a safe space to heal from violence and sexual assault. Because they refused to allow access to any man who claimed to be a woman, they were subjected to the most horrendous abuse from trans activists. There are your "trans sisters".
Nope, it's not a good piece. But maybe some of those Guardian employees will now feel brave enough to come out from under their desks.
"nice-ism, or help-everyone-ism"
nah!
NotStaleMaleOrPale-ism
Posted by: TDK | March 13, 2020 at 10:41 AM