Thread by @janeclarejones

So, here we go, 'Rainbow Pens of Doom Meet Catharine MacKinnon.'

This is loooong, and I seriously lose the will to live halfway through, so, let's see how we go....

signsjournal.org/exploring-tran…

Is the problem feminists opposing trans people's existence as trans, or claiming that trans women are not women?

This distinction might matter.

This is the first indication she doesn't understand the original gender critical feminist critique.

We're not sliding from female sex through feminine gender to woman. We are specifically claiming that feminine gender should have nothing to do with the legal definition of woman.

Here we get the great big clanger that many people commented on when it was released.

Women are not oppressed BY their bodies. Patriarchy has applied a system of subordination *to* women *on the basis of their sex.*

The mistake here is occasioned by the fact that because male power has used women's bodies or women's nature as an alibi and excuse for oppression, then we have to deny that there is any relationship between bodies and the system of power.

As MacKinnon says at the end of this piece, the relationship between sex and gender will be understood as 'arbitrary.'

This is people thinking the only options to explain the relationship between sex, and the system of gendered oppression, is either 'determined' or 'arbitary.'

However gender is a system of power which developed historically, and is applied by male people to female people, on the basis of sex, in order to turn women into a sexual and reproductive (and also reproductive labour) resource.

That system is not, therefore, randomly or arbitrarily related to women's bodies. It is not, however, biologically determined either.

The relationship of sex to gender is historically contingent. But not random.

When MacKinnon notes that the problem with Butler is that she took feminism's analysis of gender and 'sucked the reality' out of it she is close.

The reality that was sucked out was the relationship of the system of gendered power to the material exploitation of female bodies.

MacKinnon basically writes a couple of fairly decent standard pages on 'why gender is bad'... and then just starts going on about 'affirming gender.'

Then we get the claim that sexuality is the 'linchpin' of the subordination of women....

This is not explanatory.

It is true that the mechanisms of domination and submission as they are enacted through patriarchal heterosexuality are one of the core sites through which the gendered mechanism plays out.

But just saying 'male sexual dominance is the linchpin of male dominance' doesn't actually answer the question of why??

I'm assuming MacKinnon doesn't want to give a 'because male sexuality is naturally like that' answer.

So, why is sex so central to male dominance?

If you don't think it is natural, why has sexuality been constructed in this way???

And does that sexuality really have nothing to do with bodies at all? At least insofar as men have particular vulnerabilities around their sexual and reproductive needs for women??

I agree with MacKinnon here that sex based gender hierarchies merge with racialised and class ones. And I agree with her that feminism should not be single axis (neither should it empty out sex as one of the three main axes)

Here MacKinnon is going to start talking about how eroticisation of power hierarchies is central to the mechanisms of gendered power...

And all I am going to say is 'Go and actually read 'Females' then maybe think about what on earth you are on about'????

The gendered hierarchy in sexuality is *not where the oppression of women begins.*

It is one of the primary sites, and exemplifications, of the mechanism. Because sexual contact is a signature site of dependency across the axis of sex.

But you are still going to need to explain why a site of mutual vulnerability and dependency is converted into a site of exploitation and hierarchy and control.

And you won't be able to do that while pretending bodies are irrelevant.

Okay, that's enough for now...

Pens going for a rest...

So, 'Rainbow Pens Meet MacKinnon' Part the Second...

At this point it all gets a little rambling and wibble wobble, and it's hard to parse exactly what point MacKinnon thinks she is making.....

We have 'propositions' which are consistent with MacKinnon's analysis, and which, she seems to think, are rebuttals to GC critiques of the trans position.

The problem here, is that MacKinnon doesn't actually seem to know what the GC feminist position, or the trans ideology

position are...so she critiques the idea that GI is immutable, innate etc... presumably, b/c she thinks this is the GC position, whereas, as we know, it is the trans ideology position.

So, yes Catharine, we agree, GI is not "original, natural, inborn, innate, unchosen."

What seems clear here is that MacKinnon has not listened to all the 'I knew I was a girl not a boy because I wanted to play with dolls' type trans narratives that are regularly circulated in the press.

Catharine, the ideology you are defending has spent the best part of the last decade running around claiming that 'being trans' is some transhistorical essence that has always existed because two-spirit people and transing dead lesbians and gay men on the basis of them being GNC!

That is one of the reasons we are objecting to it.

Because *we agree with you.* Gender is *not an essence.*

Then we get some stuff on how sexual orientation is not innate, presumably to back up her claim about gender not being innate. None of this deals with the fact that one of the main ways trans ideology has gained popular traction is by analogy to the innateness of homosexuality.

Then we get the claim that anti-trans feminism is based on an opposition between 'real women' and 'fake women/imposters/deceptive surfaces.'

This is a very value laden way of presenting the claim that women are female, and male people are therefore, not women.

Notably, this claim is immediately followed by segueing into the issue of violence against trans people.

This is a standard form of emotional manipulation - not argument - we are very familiar with.

i.e. You must believe our identity claim b/c violence against us.

Then we get a bunch of weakly argued and evidenced refutations that the material issues we are concerned about - males in women's space, in sports etc - are actually happening or are actually any kind of problem.

Then we get to the issue of trans identification in girls.

MacKinnon recognises that this may be a lot to do with women wanting to escape their objectification and various other pressures of their gender role.

She can't, however, honestly follow through on what this tells us about the way trans ideology reinforces gendered norms, creating a structure by which women try to 'opt out' of them by changing their bodies, with negative impacts on their health, fertility and sexual function.

Anyway, apparently this is probably lesbian feminists fault for not doing a better job of telling young lesbians that they are absolutely fine as they are!!!!

THEY HAVE BEEN SHOUTING THEIR HEADS OFF FOR DECADES CATHARINE!!!!!

Now we get to the bit which does my head in... where she argues that being female is a sufficient condition for being a woman, but not a necessary condition.

The argument is:

There are a bunch of women who count as women who do not in any way identify with being a woman, or the political interests of women... in their case, being female is a sufficient condition for being a woman. Well yes Catharine, because woman is a

sex designation, and identification has actually got nothing to do with it.

However, being female is not a necessary condition, because there are male people who identify as women who should count as women - and then some stuff about how they should count as women because they

are more 'woman-identified' than a lot of female people.

This is then basically the familiar claim that there are two ways of being a woman: a) being female and b) identifying as a woman.

It is notable that given MacKinnon has spent a good part of this piece telling us about

how bad gender is, and that it's in no way natural, she then has no questions about what male people 'embracing womanhood consciously' might be about.

If patriarchal womanhood is a male projection, is it possible men embracing womanhood are identifying with that projection?

She seems rather to be of the opinion that what it is about is identifying with the political interests of women.

I think those of us who have been in this conflict for a while would have some serious questions about that in many cases

Here I feel like suggesting she tries saying 'no' to those she thinks are identified with women's political interests, and see how that goes. B/c what comes back is often a lot like patriarchal male entitlement, and not much like 'identifying with women's political interests.'

Now we get the claim that those who claim to be critical of gender are not really critical of gender, "observably." [Receipts please] And that we never criticise gender in other contexts [Receipts please].

As we all know, there are many people who are critical of trans ideology

who are not critical of gender... and who oppose it from the ground of 'woman should be feminine and men should be masculine and this is a derangement of the natural order of things.'

That's not the basis of the feminist critique, and it is dishonest to represent it as if it is.

I think we should at least be grateful we don't get the 'weaponising trauma' accusation here... at least Catharine is still more of a feminist than Judy.

Nonetheless, this still rests on a very weak appeal to her personal experience that trans women are more identified with

women's political interests than mere female people. And the suggestion that if we care about trans identified males' experience of sexual violence - which many of us do - that somehow means we should accept the redefinition of women - which doesn't follow.

There are lots of men who are subject to male sexual violence, often because they are GNC.

That doesn't make them women. Women are not 'the class of people who get raped by men.' This is the kind of conclusion you get to when you think men and women are defined entirely by

their position in the patriarchal sexual dyad.

It is true that, within the structure of patriarchal gender, women are positioned as 'the rapeable class.' But I am damn well not going to be defined as 'member of the rapeable class' in law.

And what the fuck is this "I have a list of people I'd like to exclude from the category woman" bullshit.

Women are a material class of people, who are oppressed by a system of power which exploits their bodies and labour.

You know very well we don't get to include or exclude anyone from the category of woman, on the basis of whether they are 'woman-identified' or share feminist politics.

Sometimes that's a pain in the arse, because a lot of women aren't feminists.

But the category of woman is no more "the class of people who share feminist politics" than it is "the class of people who are rapeable."

Then stuff about how it's all very odd that the problem is males in women's space and politics and not female in men's space and politics.

Apparently, this could only be a problem because of biological determinism, and not because, say, we are still in a system of male power.

Okay, the we start on the legal stuff about discrimination against trans people as sex-based discrimination.

In which Catharine notes that the US doesn't have sex based rights, and the threat to women's single sex spaces comes from legal codes of gender neutrality.

O/c, this glosses over the fact that the UK has exemptions which allow us to lawfully discriminate on the basis of sex, to preserve single sex spaces... and it's not the rest of the world's fault that the US never sorted out its sex based protections for women properly.

Something something, we don't have proper equality laws, the law is sexist, something something, sex based rights don't exist, something..

Here is where I start to lose the will to live...

There are three ways we can theorise trans rights as sex equality rights.

1. If anyone who is more familiar with Bostock than me and has the will to unpack this, please, *stabs self in eyes*

2. Anti-stereotyping i.e. trans people are discriminated against as GNC people

Interestingly, here MacKinnon recognises that this type of analysis doesn't actually do anything to protect those who are oppressed by conforming to their gender role - i.e. gender conforming women,

whose gender role is actually designed to make them susceptible to being exploited. This is why the trans rights effort to collapse the concept of sex based oppression into gender based oppression doesn't work.

However, MacKinnon ends up concluding this approach is good, because

it highlights gender's arbitrariness. I think it's a good idea for us to have protections based on being GNC - and this is one way of protecting trans people - with the proviso that *this doesn't replace protections based entirely on sex notwithstanding gender performance.*

3. Power relations - i.e. trans women end up occupying the same position in the gender structure as women, and experience the same sexualised misogyny.

They may experience some impacts of the gender hierarchy as it is applied to GNC males. But gay men are not women either.

The we get the stuff on how if we understand the structure through the lens of sexualised misogyny, we can bring the trans rights position and the anti-sex-work position together.

This seems to come down to, basically, women are the sexually exploited/rapeable class, therefore

this accounts for why trans women are women, and why prostitution is bad, and why trans women, as members of the sexually exploited class, often end up in prostitution.

UGH.

This doesn't deal with the extent to which SWIW has been consistently tied to TWAW, and the liberal capitalist framework that has pushed that.

It involves a weird wibble in which MacKinnon insists that even though trans people claim their identity is natural and not chosen

it is in fact, not natural and chosen, "no matter how predetermined their gender may feel inside." Which looks a lot like shoehorning trans identification into what you think it should look like to be consistent with a feminist critique of gender.

And then GC feminists get indicted from noting the relationship between SWIW and TWAW, and it is claimed that we somehow are responsible for the way these two slogans which fit inside a liberal capitalist project of self-commodification have come together.

MacKinnon won't use 'cis' for precisely the same reasons that we won't. But won't recognise that we agree with her here, or what that might tell her about what we actually believe.

She also, fucking annoyingly, doesn't seem to have a clue what happens to women when they publicly refuse to use 'cis' for exactly the same reasons, and doesn't realise she will probably be protected from that treatment because she is too valuable a name to have onside.

"I won't use TERF not b/c it is a tool of sex based subordination and bullying of non-compliant women but b/c gender critical feminists aren't radicals even though I apparently don't actually understand their arguments at all or that they agree with me about a bunch of things."

"I don't get the gender critical position and conflate it with gender conservatism, trans ppl don't need to contribute to progressivism but despite everything trans ideology says about the innateness of gender identity I will decide it shows us that gender is arbitrary THE END."

JFC.

Compete failure to actually grasp either the position you are critiquing or the position you are defending, and interpreting each as their opposite to reach desired conclusion.

FUCKING CARCRASH.

I am going to have a lie down.

Lastly, the way in which MacKinnon conflates the standard gender critical feminist position with a gender conservative position to make her argument is pretty exemplary of the kind of moves consistently made within academic feminism and the wider left against GC feminists.

This is one of the reasons why some of us have considered it important to keep the feminist position distinct from the gender conservative position within our activism.

If your principle concerns in this fight don't involve trying to wrestle with what is happening to institutional feminism, or trying to convince the progressive identified people that run our public services that they've made a terrible mistake, then there is no reason why

you should GAF about who Catharine MacKinnon is and what she says.

I want a future where everyone in this society understands what a fuck up this was, and we remember what feminism actually is.

I think it's the only way it ever truly finishes.