It feels perverse to invest a normatively sexed body with this much importance, particularly for a feminist, but here we are.
To her point, bigots always assume a marginalised group's rights conflict with theirs. To this day, gay people are accused of wanting "special rights."
To her point, bigots always assume a marginalised group's rights conflict with theirs. To this day, gay people are accused of wanting "special rights."
It's a debate that rages still with every discussion of the Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling. Yes, homophobic het people perceive gay rights as an imposition on their rights, religious or otherwise. They also use the same threat-rhetoric.
i.e. all the rhetoric about gays and lesbians "indoctrinating" children, sexualising safe spaces, and, of course, the shameful endurance of the "gay pedo" stereotype. This still results in material inequities, like that SCOTUS ruling or the ban on gay male blood donations.
The point is this: the analogy being made by the woman Stock is arguing with is a good one. Bigots experience the expansion of their targets' rights as a rights conflict with the dominant group. That's been true of cis gays and it's true for trans folk.
And it remains weird to see TERFs, nominally feminist, bend over backwards to locate the entirety of womanly existence and meaning in the vagina. Even certain historical radical feminists, like Catharine MacKinnon, resisted this manifest un-reason.
Trans people do not denude "man" and "woman" of their meanings. That's made clear enough by the fact that trans women experience misogynistic abuse, harassment, and discrimination. Society sees and treats us as women. And when we're perceived as trans? As second class women.
All we do is point to the larger nebula of signs and symbols that connote gender in our society. Something other and more than genitals. The truth is that all people, regardless of how conservative or sexist, perceive gender through that constellation of symbols.
The TERF conjures an image of an abusive cisgender man, say, Mike Huckabee, suddenly and spontaneously declaring himself female in order to access a changing room or washroom. This is many things; it's not transness. vox.com/2015/6/2/87110…
This, in no way, resembles the empirical reality of trans life. And there is not a scrap of evidence to suggest that granting trans equality leads to an increase in, say, sexual assault in washrooms. None.
Also, if you'll allow me a bit of vulgarity re: Stocks' point. "womanhood and its associated protections and benefits"...? What kind of MRA bullshit is this? In what universe is this a feminist argument?
