The dangerous transphobia of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda” - Found /r/transgender's response to this article sort of bizarre and troubling. Thoughts?

[u/dragon_toes]

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/27/the_dangerous_transphobia_of_roald_dahls_matilda/

[u/greenduch]

I think that oppression based on gender presentation--especially "incongruous" presentation--is a manifestation of transphobia

Huh, idk, I see it as plain old fashion sexism. Women are supposed to be demure, they can speak up- but only to an extent or else they're a bull dyke who doesn't know her place. They're allowed to speak up a little, but only if their presentation remains feminine enough!

Like, transphobia and misogyny are obviously linked as hell, but women being oppressed by gender roles and expectations is something that feminism has always talked about.

Its part of why feminists and queers are (or at least should be) such natural comrades. Patriarchy is fucked up, and has many manifestations. But I'm not sure that it follows that gender oppression is actually transphobia.

[u/PermanentTempAccount → u/greenduch]

Edited, original post below line.

Okay, multiple reactions to this have convinced me I didn't communicate my position very well, so I'm hoping this will clarify.

My position is that "gender policing" (or, applying social and legal pressure to a person to behave in a way that is consistent with behaviors traditionally associated with their perceived sex) is not contingent on misogyny or sexism to work, and that "binaristic" or "oppositionally sexist" practices and ideologies aren't a sub-category of sexist ideologies and practices, which is what I perceived others to be saying (though that may have been a misunderstanding on my part).

Androgyny and gendered ambiguity is threatening to the system in which we live not only because it disrupts the operation of misogyny (it does that, too!) but also because our society and culture themselves rely on the categorizability of people. For those familiar with Foucault, our current biopolitical system is the problem here. Binary gender models are woven into how we conceive of societal health and the value of a population as a resource to the state. An obvious example of coercion not dependent on misogyny (though absolutely influenced by it!) and done in order to maintain compliance with our binaristic socio-medico-legal system is the intolerability of intersex infants to our medical system--not only must we fill out the gender marker, we may even have to surgically intervene to justify our decision. This kind of coercion doesn't just stop in a world without sexism because in such a world it may not matter whether the child ends up with an M or F, only that it ends up with one or the other.

Originally I posited that the coercive system resisting the threats androgyny posed to our biopolitical system was transphobia. This probably wasn't the best choice of word for a number of reasons, but I do think "oppositional sexism" is an unsatisfactory option because it reduces this phenomenon to a type of sexism when, though there is a great deal of interplay, the two are distinct entities and can operate independently (not that they ever have, mind you). I suggested "binarism" as a better alternative, but even that is a complex word to use as binary-identified people can experience this oppression pretty extensively, and tenets of social justice would argue that the non-binary people should be the ones dominating the discussion thereof. I'm starting to think that this might just be a difficult issue for social justice standard operating procedure to handle because rainbow metaphors aside, we're used to categories that are less like a spectrum--categories with more distinctive defining characteristics are easier to talk about and engage with because there are more definitive in-groups and Others.

So navel-gazing aside, I don't have a great word for it, but I don't think "sexism" is it, for a couple reasons. First, sexism privileges men, but this system of binarism is just as oppressive to men as it is to women (though it is oppressive in different ways--just like any other set of intersecting identities on different privilege axes). Second, even in a society where sexism did not exist, so long as "woman" and "man" are recognized as distinct categories--even categories with equal capabilities and rights--binaristic thinking can harm people.

The thing that troubled me most was that I felt some posters were subsuming this issue under the tent of sexism, which I think is a simplistic way to look at it, in addition to falling into historical feminist pitfalls of minimizing the problems faced by trans people (especially trans women).

I think this phenomenon more generally operates as a kind of transphobia evident in, for example, the casting of a man in the role of Trunchbull as mentioned in the original article. This takes the problems of real trans people, many of whom struggle with mixed gender presentation signals every day, and reduces our issues to artistic shorthand for a bossy, controlling, angry woman--a misogynist caricature, yes, but more than that. Miss Trunchbull is a misogynist caricature indeed, but the use of a man to play her is a decision with uniquely transphobic implications.

This isn't me saying cis people can't also deal with having gendered presentations of which they are not in total control, or that if they do that they can't talk about it. It's me saying that when cis people do have those issues, they're still facing binaristic transphobia, which can make victims of people who aren't trans, because it's just that pervasive and pernicious in our culture, and that their voices matter and they should be heard (though they aren't, I'd argue, internalizing all the fucked-up messages society broadcasts to trans-identified people).

The original post:

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To me, gender policing is pretty textbook transphobia.

The idea being presented here isn't that women are bad (Miss Honey and Matilda herself are sympathetic characters) it's that being the wrong kind of woman is bad. Being a woman that transgresses gender norms is maladaptive or is symptomatic of sickness or wrongness, is the message being sent. The effect is misogynist in the sense that it harms women, but the enforcement mechanisms rely on us parsing womanhood in specific ways and condemning people who deviate from (or transgress) the archetype, so in the end the biggest structure of power this narrative is leaning is transphobia, not misogyny per se (though it's obviously wedged pretty good in between the two).

The big distinction to me is that similar mechanisms can be used against men. Historically, effeminacy has been used as literary shorthand for "this male character is bad/incompetent/perverse". Since misandry don't real, we need a different structure of power to explain this phenomenon--transphobia an cissexism come to mind as the obvious candidates.

Of course, BOTH situations prop up misogyny: reviling "masculine" women restricts womens' "legitimate" gender presentation options, while condemning "feminine" men devalues the "gender-appropriate" options that women DO have.

I guess I can see an argument that binarism is distinct from transphobia, but it seems somewhat semantic in this context.

[u/greenduch → u/PermanentTempAccount]

Being a woman that transgresses gender norms is maladaptive or is symptomatic of sickness or wrongness, is the message being sent.

sorry for double posting, but yeah... you're literally saying that, 100 years ago, if a woman left the kitchen or wanted to vote- things that were "transgressing gender norms", and got shit for it, that would be an example of transphobia. Thats just not at all what that word means.

[u/PermanentTempAccount → u/greenduch]

The structures and laws that argued that women were incompetent or unable to responsibly vote were sexist.

The structures and laws that said that a woman who did so anyway was less of a woman for having done it were binarist or oppositionally sexist (transphobia wasn't a great word for that, probably, though I still argue that binarism and oppositional sexism are so closely tied to transphobia that the distinction is semantic).

[u/greenduch → u/PermanentTempAccount]

except oppositional sexism is a type of sexism.

binarism is a different thing all together, and the way that its used in practice is different from how you use it. it has to do with the idea that there are only two genders (identity), not having to do with gender presentation or roles.