Piers Morgan - Transphobe

[Diable Rouge]

delicatemoth, you have taught me that I have actually been making an error when I teach about Jazz Jennings, Sam Smith and others who have realized that their gender is not that which our society assigned to them at birth. I have indeed used "identifies as" on the basis that I always precede it my saying I "identify with" the gender I was assigned at birth, and that all gender identities are equal, as such. I now realize that using that qualifier does not de-stigmatize "identifies as" and that I must now throw that out immediately. I should have noticed it earlier but as I am gender conforming, I hadn't thought it through correctly.

Many thanks for the correction.

I thought Sam Smith was simply "gender-fluid", and that he still primarily identifies as male? Apparently non-binary since last month.

[Satchmo Distel]

He's declared himself non-binary 18 months ago:

https://www.thisisinsider.com/sam-sm...orming-2017-10

[delicatemoth]

*They

[Satchmo Distel]

Again I fuck up on this too, although I think Smith has not objected to the 'he' pronoun.

[Billy Casper]

I don't really have anything to add, other than thank you to everyone who has contributed to this thread - delicatemoth in particular.

Just as a side note, my middle son is in Year Nine at school. He has sat with the same group of friends at lunch time for the past couple of years and this has become a slight topic of conversation between us. (He once told me that not only do they all sit together every day, they also sit in the exact same seats. He sits at the end next to Amelia, Lewis sits opposite, Mason next to Lewis etc. He also told me that Paige has a spare seat next to her for when she has a boyfriend so he can sit with them.) Anyway, about a month ago I asked him how school had been and what lessons he'd had - all the normal stuff, then I asked if Paige had a boyfriend at the moment. He replied that Paige had been living as a boy for the past couple of weeks, and was now named Tyler. He just hadn't thought it interesting enough to tell me about it earlier. Him and all his friends still sit together, and while they had noticed a few people from other tables looking at them for a couple of days, they soon stopped.

This is in Barnsley. And yes, I did tell him he's got himself some good friends. (Sorry if I've got any terminology wrong, I didn't mean to.)

[delicatemoth]

Again I fuck up on this too, although I think Smith has not objected to the 'he' pronoun.

OK, about misgendering. I can't speak for others but I'm pretty sure I can tell if people are trying to be arses or just making a slip. And if it's the latter, it's really no big deal, just hold your hand up and/or say sorry, correct yourself and move on. What's hurtful is when people get really defensive and start accuse you of being over-sensitive. Again, I've had people I've known for over 30 years do this and that is upsetting. Think of it as being like accidentally stepping on someone's foot - if they say ouch, you wouldn't turn round and start having a go at them for being snowflakes or whatever (at least I hope not). But there is a standing joke among trans people that cis folk will get upset at being corrected, then get more upset if their pets are misgendered.

As you can probably imagine, this quite often occurs on the phone, which is why I really hate the common requirement for call centre staff (and, sometimes, retail shop assistants) to say 'sir' or 'madam' in their scripts. How many people, cis or trans, actually like being called 'sir' or 'madam', anyway?

I can't speak for NB people at all, but I think Jack Monroe is also relaxed about pronouns. My guess is that NB folk (at least older ones) know this is a new concept for many people and have made sure they won't take things to heart, especially if they have a pre-existing public profile as Sam and Jack both do.

But correcting people is important, because the idea that we are deceptive, not who we say we are, is a driver of hate. It's explicit in the offensive term for trans women, 'trap'. You may remember that men who assault and murder LG people sometimes use the 'panic defence' to try and get off, or get reduced charges/sentence - https://lgbtbar.org/programs/advocac...panic-defense/ (content warning for graphic descriptions of hate murders).

[delicatemoth]

Come to think of it, a superb book I recommend to anyone is by an NB author - CN Lester's 'Trans Like Me' - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trans-Like-...s&sr=1-1-spell

[Antepli Ejderha]

*They

I much prefer this to it which I've seen used by people.

I also prefer using the third person plural in a singular form instead of the clumsy he or she. I think it's just nicer and less likely to cause offense.

What do you think? I'm happy to be corrected as that's the only way to learn.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Just watching RTE there, and they were advertising that tomorrow night the makeover show is going to feature a transwoman called Adrienne who has just transitioned and is looking to update her look. Please god let this be nice, and not turn into something horrible. I'd expect the show itself to be very sympathetic. It's not some channel 4 exploitation bollocks, and it's not exactly the sort of show where you're going to hear much in the way of lgbtqia bashing.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

I don't really have anything to add, other than thank you to everyone who has contributed to this thread - delicatemoth in particular.

Just as a side note, my middle son is in Year Nine at school. He has sat with the same group of friends at lunch time for the past couple of years and this has become a slight topic of conversation between us. (He once told me that not only do they all sit together every day, they also sit in the exact same seats. He sits at the end next to Amelia, Lewis sits opposite, Mason next to Lewis etc. He also told me that Paige has a spare seat next to her for when she has a boyfriend so he can sit with them.) Anyway, about a month ago I asked him how school had been and what lessons he'd had - all the normal stuff, then I asked if Paige had a boyfriend at the moment. He replied that Paige had been living as a boy for the past couple of weeks, and was now named Tyler. He just hadn't thought it interesting enough to tell me about it earlier. Him and all his friends still sit together, and while they had noticed a few people from other tables looking at them for a couple of days, they soon stopped.

This is in Barnsley. And yes, I did tell him he's got himself some good friends. (Sorry if I've got any terminology wrong, I didn't mean to.)

Always seems pretty astonishing any of us who grew up under Section 28 that kids are not necessarily naturally bigots.

[delicatemoth]

Ooh, please avoid 'it' unless you know it's what someone prefers. It's used as a hate term, as instanced in one of the murders described in that link I posted. I use 'they' singular as a default until told otherwise if I know someone is NB. It's not hard imo to form your sentence in a way that makes it clear you don't mean plural.

I hope that TV show is good, but think about how many shows about all kinds of people who are marginalised in some way reproduce tedious tropes, like Benefits Street or whatever it is. I think TV has a 'gawp at this' factor that is intrinsically othering. But that's just me.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Always seems pretty astonishing any of us who grew up under Section 28 that kids are not necessarily naturally bigots.

A friend of mine, and occasional former OTFer in the long distant past, is living in london and has three kids. the eldest one is quite shy and a little reserved, the middle one is the sort of reckless unhinged small child, whose first instinct on seeing one of those ball pools is to dive in face first, and damn the consequences, (a trait he gets from his father) and the third one, I think is basically the same. Anyway, the middle maniac when he was two, like most two year olds fell completely in love with frozen. This started with getting toys, until one day he asked for a blue dress like elsa (?) which he from that day forward only took off for bed and washing. He's now starting primary school and dresses only in girls clothing. I don't think the issue of gender has even occurred to him yet (And as such will refer to him as 'him' until informed otherwise) but talking to his dad he was saying that at that age, kids in his class simply don't care. They think that this is perfectly normal, because they don't know any different, and they won't until someone tells them otherwise.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I hope that TV show is good, but think about how many shows about all kinds of people who are marginalised in some way reproduce tedious tropes, like Benefits Street or whatever it is. I think TV has a 'gawp at this' factor that is intrinsically othering. But that's just me.

God you'd have to be worried about any show like this, but I've seen this show in passing, and this is more likely to be a straight up act of inclusion, and normalization. (which doesn't mean that they won't put their foot in it left right and centre) I'd be less worried about the show, than the perennial problem of cunts on twitter, looking to be trolls. Though in fairness, there will be a torch wielding mob waiting for them.

[delicatemoth]

Really glad you posted that Berba, it's great. Of course, in the Victorian era all children routinely wore dresses until they were 7 or 8. Gender norms change all the time.

(And as such will refer to him as 'him' until informed otherwise)

And that is absolutely spot on. 'Gendercrits' are really hammering the idea that children who say they're not the gender they were assigned are actually just non-conforming and being pushed into saying they're trans, and I mean to go into that in another post. Because they want trans kids cut off from support. Like rightwing evangelicals do with gay kids. It's no surprise there are so many links between the religious right and transphobes.

What we want is to reach a point where a child (or adult) can say in so many words "You know you thought I was a boy/girl? Actually I'm not". Like Charlize Theron's daughter - https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/04/1...-jackson-girl/

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Aside from the dresses (which hung on here for much longer for younger boys) Pink was more associated with boys than girls into the 1930's, and at some point it changed.

'Gendercrits' are really hammering the idea that children who say they're not the gender they were assigned are actually just non-conforming and being pushed into saying they're trans,

Well maybe they should try and explain that to a two year old, who isn't going to leave the house under any circumstances, unless he has his favourite item of clothing, and see how far they get.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The Show was really lovely. I never really imagined that a makeover show would be like a big hug. Even Toyah Wilcox came out of it looking like a really nice person, and I found that a bit unusual given that I had spent the previous four hours listening to chart music. It's a very good idea for a show, and the presenter (whose idea it was) really makes it work. He's a disabled rights activist, who came to national prominence, when he was the big star of the first series of first dates. He became a huge favourite of the mammies of ireland when he was just chatting away about the difficulties of finding a fella when you have cerebral palsy. Anyway the show is based on the premise of finding people with various challenges, who need help in developing their own style. The show works on the premise that they are ordinary people in an unusual situation which poses particular difficulties. there wasn't much there for people looking for a voyeuristic freak show, other than valuable lessons.

The Three people on this episode were a trans woman, a plus sized woman and a stay at home father who couldn't really get out much because of stents. The show is very compressed, but they got to tell their stories, and you got to meet their families. Adrianne outlined her story, and the difficulties she had with clothes after she transitioned. She didn't even know where to begin because she hadn't learned all the various rules and bits and pieces you pick up when you are raised as a girl. it was difficult to experiment and establish a style for herself because of the difficulty of finding clothes when you still have the underlying physique of quite a big man, and then she talked about her terror the first time she left the house, and the sense of people always staring at her and how that was so hard. Primarily it seemed as though she just wanted them to help her blend in because of the constant fear that when someone came up to her, she didn't know how they were going to respond, and to what degree. Then when asked for someone whose style she liked when she was growing up, the example she gave was toyah, so it probably wasn't a massive surprise when the first muted outfit they got for her (What she asked for) was a disappointment, but the second, considerably brighter patterned dress nearly made her die of happiness. I suspect that the whole thing exceeded her expectations by an absurd degree. Next week one of the three people is a trans man. There appears to have been no social media trolling other than of a waistcoat, rejected by one of the participants. (the waistcoat had it coming tbf)

[Lang Spoon]

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politi...bill-1-4913919

These fuckers had nothing to say during the entire consultation process, now they try and derail the Gender recognition Bill at the last. Suspect the announcement just before SNP conference is internal shenanigans, especially as Cherry, McNeill etc are on the Salmond apologist wing of the party and would probably love to see Sturgeon enfeebled. Horrible bastards.

[laverte]

There's a lot i want to reply to on this fascinating thread and it's going to come out hotchpotch so i will write two posts, one i hope will engage more closely with the topics of the thread, the seoncd may be more of a (controlled?) explosion of thoughts and feelings.

But first:

I really appreciate the supportive posts from laverte (I always appreciate the posts from laverte, you're a fucking champion), SB and LS

Naturally, i welled up at that. i get much more than my share of appreciative comments on this forum, and i always neglect to show my gratitude or to reply in kind. But i won't let this opportunity pass. i would proudly wear that delicatemoth t-shirt pictured upthread. To church. Even in yellow, a colour that makes me look as though i have jaundice and think favourably of FC Nantes. It's lovely to hear your stories in a voice so generous and resilient. Thank you.

Having got that out of the way, now i'm going to take issue with you! (Mildly.)

This, btw, is why I absolutely loathe 'identifies as' language. It's a subtly coded way of saying we're not really who we think we are.

i understand your argument, i really do. Of course 'identifies as' has been transferred somewhat lazily from other contexts where it does the opposite. For instance, there's no particular behaviour or presentation that 'is' queer; it's purely an identifier, a term that signifies one's belonging to a camp (a shamelessly camp camp). In some circles in the 1990s it took courage and perseverance to identify as queer rather than (purely) lesbian or bisexual, to define yourself by something other than (more than) your sexual behaviour. Perhaps it's outmoded and unnecessary now, but for myself i'm still clinging to it as an expression that once had value, and i wonder if genderqueer or non-binary people whose gender identity is an identity rather than a gender might find something of value in it.

That said, i'm all in agreement that when a person says they don't like an expression, a label, a pronoun, or whatever, it shouldn't be used to describe them. So i'm going to identify you as someone who doesn't like to be identified as.

Onto a less enjoyable subject: terfs.

Surely TERF was coined to specifically refer to the radfems who weren't trans inclusive?

Yes. But we never hear about TIRFs. Radfem has become inseparable from trans-exclsuive. i want to challenge that, if only to provide a theoretical space for radical feminism to move away from terfery.

But my understanding was that large parts of "revolutionary feminism" were, from their very origins, intensely transphobic (obviously as society as a whole was/is) - rather than, as you seem to be implying - that it became more evident later on as the movement was fractured? Obviously that's not to dispute that it wasn't very important in terms of its practical organising and contribution to theory, but to merely state that hostility to trans people was baked into parts of it from the very beginning.

I think you could perhaps argue that the mainstreaming of transphobia/anti-sex-work feminism as the dominant rhetoric of some of the holdouts from the second wave revolutionary feminism reflects the marginalisation of their ideas from mainstream feminist organising and theory

i think both of these points are valuable and illuminating, and probably correct. if they are i wonder whether my earlier argument holds much water at all. Maybe we could just blame mumsnet and Germaine Greer. i'm not quite sure about the timeline here; what do we mean by 'transphobia' in the 1960s when i suspect that trans people had not established a vocabulary to describe their individual or collective trans-ness? i get the impression that early radical feminism largely ignored the possibility of trans women, until high-profile folk like Renee Richards and Sandy Stone forced them to come up with a theory, which was, inevitably, horrible. But i don't know much about that era, and i agree with you that transphobia would have been ingrained in any theory that took the category of 'woman' for granted.

The interesting thing about the contemporary transphobic movement is how divorced it all seems to be from wider feminist struggle. The activities of the members of my local TERF group are relatively limited: they harass, and direct their online followers to harass trans inclusive refuges, anti-period poverty campaigns, prison abolitionists, and an author of a body positive books for girls …and share articles from alt-right websites (and the Times, itself pretty much an alt-right website, these days)

i think this is spot on and really important. It's similar where i live. The obsession with harassing trans women and the feminist movements that welcome them is incomprehensible to me. And how many comment pieces from the Spectator do you have to share before you start to wonder whether you can still describe yourself as feminist or of the left?

it does generally seem to be people who have decided their position without any interest or empathy or anything much really. Just some hate. Ach.

So true, so neatly put, and another reason i don't much like 'terf'. Most of these militants are now not just trans-exclusive but actively trans-hostile. Trans-hateful, indeed. Viz:

All those women thanking GL for "defending women" and their rights. I called him a bossy prick on a thread last week, when he suggested that women "with a sense of their own dignity" reject the term CiS, and I was called a misogynist who doesn't care about women.

What a patronising arse. (i refer to Linehan, not MsD, of course.)

i hope i don't have a sense of my own dignity, and i'm thankful i don't. Also thankful to MsD for doing this ally work, which is presumably no fun.

Dignity is a revealing word isn't it? However it is that Linehan justifies not recognising the existence of trans men, I'm sure it doesn't focus on the threat to his dignity as a cis-not-cis dude.

There's a good article somewhere on the internet at the mo about how white people become most defensive when they're racialised, ie when their whiteness is observed and pointed out to them. It seems that cis-ification can provoke a similar reaction. i guess that's the problem with the empty or neutral marker of dominant identity: there are ways to perform and to ritualise masculinity and heterosexuality, but it's hard to 'be white' or 'do cis'.

I had never even considered that LGB folk might shun those who were transitioning, which of course was naive and stupid of me.

Not at all. But vital as the quiltbag has been, it is of course an umbrella, and a hierarchy in which G has marginalised L, both of them dubious about B, all of them wondering what they have in common with T, or feeling abandoned by T. In my next post i hope to emphasise some ties that bind without steamrollering the distinctions. But before i do, i have a confession:

I'm hoping you've noticed something by now. It's to do with time scales, and how they affect human bodies, which are at the centre of the issue here, and there are clues scattered throughout my two lengthy posts. I'm going to break to make tea before continuing. I'm hoping that some interested people are reading this, and if they think they have noticed what I'd like them to notice then I'd like them to post.

i'm afraid i'm missing whatever it is. It sounds really interesting so i hope you'll pick it up if you haven't already. And i hope your tea was delicious.

[Lang Spoon]

Another beautiful post laverte.


this thread from Laura Waddell is good on the SNP civil war.

[URL]https://twitter.com/lauraewaddell/status/1120827157863964674[/URL]

[laverte]

i'm anxious about decentring delicatemoth's delightful posts upthread but they connected with me and set me off thinking and musing and wanting to reach out, and probably i could probably do with talking about some stuff anyhows, so please feel free to regard this post as a kind of footnote or a conversation on the side.

Let me start with the bus trip:

I really like children. My natural impulse would be to smile at her, make a funny face, maybe bob up and down to make her laugh etc. But there's this moral panic whipped up about how people like me are a threat to children.

It's underplayed in your telling, but this is a most appalling thing, isn't it? What has it come to when you can't smile back at a child? Fucking hell. And to think that this interdiction emanates from people like Rod Liddle and Julie Burchill who genuinely are noxious. If we started to think of cis privilege as extending to something as banal as the right to make eye contact with an infant travelling with their gran on a bus, surely it would be impossible to dismiss.

i spend time on buses and they fascinate me as a social arena, the people who talk to you, those who don't and those you overhear. It's neither as intimate (and dangerous) a space as a cab nor as impersonal (and dangerous) as an underground train, so that the feeling of insecurity, which can be intense, has its source in something else, often in being observed, in being sized up and singled out. i think your bus story could only have happened on a bus, and i love it all the more for that.

This emboldened her to ask me "Are you a boy or a girl?"

This used to happen to me in my slenderer and more androgynous days. It's a curious feeling, enjoying this question (from children), seeing it as a kind of vindication when once it was a terrorising accusation. i wonder if you felt that pleasure. i hope you did.

This is an indirect way of saying that i've started to think differently about my own struggles with gender identity, and in particular i'm wondering if my reflexive anxiety about trans people is tied up with those struggles.

To me, my sex seems like something that was imposed on me by my body and by the ways that my body was understood by other people; it has never made any sense to me. And yet there it is. It's a label from which i have probably managed to dissociate myself viscerally (ie, unlike Shania i don't feel like a woman, because 'woman' is not something i can imagine to be feelable), but one from which i don't think i can escape descriptively. i 'perform' womanhood in lots of mundane and typical ways, but emptily, robotically, as a rote or sometimes even a chore. (Or so it seems to me.)

i think some of the more reflective GCFs start from a premise like this. We are women with little investment in our owmanhood, which we consider a kind of disability. Our feelings about our sexed body are not dysphoric, but they're not at all phoric either. So where do we fit? We're not trans, but does that mean we must be cis?

i can see how to be called a cis woman with cis-woman privilege could seem wrong, unjust, given how i feel i'm perceived in terms of a womanness to which i've never managed to reconcile myself. (At least not until i fully appreciated that there are some women who don't have the right to smile at toddlers.) And i wonder if this sensation of being a woman who is not one, of being saturated with this identity that feels totally empty, is what leads us to lash out at that minority which has found a label that sort of fits them, a language to talk about their struggles with gender identity, which are clearly distinct from ours (but are they separate?). A language that enables them to move forward.

We are stuck. So we are envious. i think i've felt a pressure to say to myself, 'Well if you're not comfortable as a woman perhaps you're trans or non-binary', because for now that's the only language i have to describe my dis-ease. That or radical feminist theory.

It's only when i'm reminded of what many trans people have to go through before they get to that point, when i see phrases like “90% suicidal”, that i relativise. So i'm ok with being cis. i may lose all of my dignity, but it won't kill me.

Btw, I get on really fucking well with my mum now, she has absolutely done the work cos she is one cool woman. Still haven't seen her since my previous life though

Potentialy a rude question which you should feel free to disregard but i'm curious to know what's stopping you. Asking for a friend (ie, me).

i wanted to write something about my mother but i'm not sure this is the place and i've run out of energy. Suffice to say, she is not so cool and we haven't seen each other in a few years. Recently a speck of light has appeared and i feel just about strong enough to want to investigate it. But i want to know what 'work' she has done before i make an investment. And i'm not really in a position to get that information. So there's mistrust on both sides, which i don't know how to overcome without exposing myself to a lot of hurt.

Your mum sounds ace.

[Satchmo Distel]

" For instance, there's no particular behaviour or presentation that 'is' queer"

But transmen and transwomen do have behaviours and presentations that are believed by themselves to be physically real rather than purely identities, because they are experienced in the body and all 5 senses, not just in the mind, so we cannot just take an 'idealist' position but must also incorporate the corporeal.so a transman or transwoman may feel their gender is more real than a self-identified 'queer'. OTOH 'queer' could also be experienced as corporeal, thus having a material reality rather just an idealist one.

[Tactical Genius]

Really glad you posted that Berba, it's great. Of course, in the Victorian era all children routinely wore dresses until they were 7 or 8. Gender norms change all the time.



And that is absolutely spot on. 'Gendercrits' are really hammering the idea that children who say they're not the gender they were assigned are actually just non-conforming and being pushed into saying they're trans, and I mean to go into that in another post. Because they want trans kids cut off from support. Like rightwing evangelicals do with gay kids. It's no surprise there are so many links between the religious right and transphobes.

What we want is to reach a point where a child (or adult) can say in so many words "You know you thought I was a boy/girl? Actually I'm not". Like Charlize Theron's daughter - https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/04/1...-jackson-girl/

Charlize Theron's "daughter" was actually three. do you seriously think a three year old can really make that kind of decision, my experience says no.
At that age kids are usually busy copying or trying to gain approval from their parents.

If my three year old son told me he wanted to wear a dress, I would laugh and tell him to put his trousers on. If he was 16 or 18, I would take him more seriously.

[Lang Spoon]

thread Vietnam so

[Janik]

i can see how to be called a cis woman with cis-woman privilege could seem wrong, unjust, given how i feel i'm perceived in terms of a womanness to which i've never managed to reconcile myself. (At least not until i fully appreciated that there are some women who don't have the right to smile at toddlers.) And i wonder if this sensation of being a woman who is not one, of being saturated with this identity that feels totally empty, is what leads us to lash out at that minority which has found a label that sort of fits them, a language to talk about their struggles with gender identity, which are clearly distinct from ours (but are they separate?). A language that enables them to move forward.

But is also something of a pigeon hole for trans-women, for whom there is a distinct pressure to be all Woman all the time to 'prove' their seriousness about their need to transition (a weird viewpoint, because as if people would embark on this as a whim). Indeed, doing otherwise can compromise access to medical treatment... Not my thoughts, but from this Woman.

[Tactical Genius]

thread Vietnam so

No, this is actually a serious question. I don't profess to know much in this area, I am approaching this from a standpoint where I am disturbed at the sexualisation of kids. Kids identifying as heterosexual, homosexual, or trans is not something most kids concern themselves with at such a young age unless there are external influences at play.

I am happy to be corrected, I never saw any of my four children concerned about their sexuality or gender identification at a young age.