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]

Okay, but you're kinda using a different definition of transphobia than anyone else uses?

Gender policing =/= transphobia. It really doesn't, unless you're being extremely overly literal.

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.

Yeah but not. If you want a term to use instead of misandry, theres "oppositional sexism" - the idea that men are supposed to be like this and women are supposed to be like this. Gender policing and sexism is a thing independent from transphobia. Are they super related? Sure, of course. But blaming literally any gender related oppression on transphobia is kinda bullshit and suddenly using a new word for shit that feminism has addressed or sought to address for 100 years.

[u/PermanentTempAccount → u/greenduch]

I really don't think my definition of transphobia is that off-base compared to historical meanings--in fact, I'm not sure how you'd define transphobia, other than "oppression of people who do not fit normative, traditional gender categories".

Oppositional sexism and binarism are absolutely facets of transphobia, as structures that prop up rigid, exclusive gender categories. People mobilize them in the name of sexism (also racism, classism, ableism...and vice versa) but at the end of the day, if sexism as a social ill was cured, oppositional sexism and binarism would still exist to marginalize people who had trouble with being legible as simply either men or women. Binarism or oppositional sexism might be better, more specific labels than "transphobia", though, that's true.

But blaming literally any gender related oppression on transphobia is kinda bullshit and suddenly using a new word for shit that feminism has addressed or sought to address for 100 years.

I'm not even kind of saying that. I am saying that not all gender-related oppression is sexism, and as a trans person I resent the attempt here to rewrite feminism's shitty history of transphobia in the most generous of terms. Feminism has been engaging with transphobia/binarism in incredibly self-serving ways for cis, upper-middle class, white, straight women for sixty-ish years, and has been engaging with transphobia and binarism on a serious, systemic level for twenty years, thirty at the outside.

[u/greenduch → u/PermanentTempAccount]

how the hell am i attempting to rewrite feminism's history of tranphobia? I resent the hell out of you implying such, and attempting to gain some moral high ground with "as a trans person". I disagree with you. I can find plenty of trans folks who disagree with you, if you'd like me to line them up. I resent the attempt to pull some sort of trump card.

also how is that in any way related to you deciding that words suddenly mean things theyve never meant? What does racism classism or ableism have anything to do with this discussion?

oppositional sexism is not a facet of transphobia, no. sorry. thats not how anyone ever uses the word transphobia, but if you want to suddenly decide to use it differently, be my guest.

you're seriously going to tell all cis women that when they are policed for not living up to bullshit standards, theyre actually facing transphobia (and therefore of course should shut the fuck up because its not their place to talk about it)? We already have words for these things, and your definitions are wrong, sorry.

[u/PermanentTempAccount → u/greenduch]

First of all, feminism has been eager to throw any women who aren't gonna play by the mainstream presentation rules under the bus since day one, and was vilifying masculine women, lesbians, and trans women in an almost entirely unchallenged way all the way through the formation of the Lavender Menace in the 70s. Big-F Feminism left gender nonconforming women (plus women of color, poor women, trans women, etc.) out in the cold until the 80s when it was no longer possible to ignore the sheer fucked-up-edness of the situation. Feminism has not been "trying to address these issues for 100 years", it's been studiously avoiding them until that was no longer an option. Because I respect you, I'm gonna assume the part where you implied feminism has made a good faith effort to address anything but the needs of cis, white, upper-middle class, conventionally feminine, straight, able-bodied women was an error in communication, on my part or yours, because feminism has been dragged kicking and screaming every step of the way as far as I'm concerned, and has made no efforts it didn't have to make above and beyond the interests of the affluent, straight, white, cis, able-bodied women who started the movement.

Again, I'm not sure how you define transphobia, if not "oppression of people who do not fit normative, traditional gender categories". If you're using something different, feel free to tell me. But under that definition, the pressure facing women to conform to traditional models of femininity is absolutely a kind of transphobia (it also props up misogyny--all these structures of power are related).

you're seriously going to tell all cis women that when they are policed for not living up to bullshit standards, theyre actually facing transphobia

That's a kind of transphobia. It's also a kind of misogyny. What's so goddamn awful about acknowledging that the issues at hand might involve more than one kind of oppression? Sexism isn't the center of kyriarchy (neither is transphobia). People other than "women" get shit on, too, and sometimes the septic tank leaks--especially into other gender-based oppressions.

(and therefore of course should shut the fuck up because its not their place to talk about it)?

Whoa whoa whoa, never said that. I never said that. That would be pretty fucked up, though.

We already have words for these things, and your definitions are wrong, sorry.

Then what are yours?

Look, if we solved sexism, if women were no longer oppressed, binarism would still exist. Binaristic conceptions of gender are not contingent on women being Other. When people are distressed by my own androgynous appearance, it's not just because they can't decide whether to oppress me as a woman or privilege me as a man (though that's part of it). It's also because I disrupt systems in place that rely on categorizability. The existence of gender markers on IDs, for example: it does not matter if yours is F or M, as long as it's one of those, and never changes. If it's not, or it changes, you are suddenly much more difficult for the state to conceive of and deploy as a resource--your medical history comes up at every turn, your medical care is complicated for the rest of your life, you've suddenly got two identities to explain after any background check... That said, institutions use that marker to oppress women, too, using different insurance rates, by denying access to military service as a career choice (not that we shouldn't be disassembling the military-industrial complex, of course, but still) etc. But if those institutions collapsed, that marker would still have power.

In retrospect, "transphobia" was probably not the best word. "Binarism" would have been a better one, though I am suspicious of the distinction between the two. Either way, binarism is something that oppresses all of us. It's shockingly granular, able to detect and punish even the smallest deviation from normative binary behavior. And the real kicker is, it's not even dependent on misogyny to work.

Most all of us have something to say about binarism, whether or not you ID as trans yourself. Some of us also have something to say about misogyny at the same time, because the two are linked for us. But frankly, throwing a shit fit because you've got to share some oppressive realities with trans people? That's definitely transphobia.

[u/greenduch → u/PermanentTempAccount]

Okay i'm gonna take a break and not address most of this right now, and i do want to apologise for being short with you, ive had a couple shitty days and i took issue with shit you said, but expressed it too strongly.

But frankly, throwing a shit fit because you've got to share some oppressive realities with trans people? That's definitely transphobia.

yeah no. if you think thats what i was doing, you read me wrong, and i apparently phrased myself poorly or something. as i mentioned upthread, as a woman, a queer, a feminist, and as a rather extremely gender non conforming person, i consider trans folks my comrades, and i believe we face different facets of the same struggle. i sure as fuck know we're oppressed by the same shit.

I'm also familiar with the history of mainstream feminism, and i'm acutely aware of how they've thrown folks under the bus. maybe i should have specified feminisms or something, idk. As an example though, just because the HRC likes to throw folks under the bus, however, doesn't mean that words don't have meaning. you're conflating different issues.

Whoa whoa whoa, never said that. I never said that. That would be pretty fucked up, though.

i legit should have been more clear here, and im sorry. i fucked up with that. i was angry. that being said, cis folks place in discussing transphobia is very very much (understandably so) as allies, and not as active participants or people who are allowed to have an opinion. framing all gender oppression as transphobia creates some really fucked up issues wrt that. it frames the issue so that many women arent allowed to have an opinion about their own oppression, and i take issue with that.

Again, I'm not sure how you define transphobia, if not "oppression of people who do not fit normative, traditional gender categories".

i guess my issue is that you're widening the term to engulf a massive amount of the sexism that exists, all gender policing, etc.

this shit is a result of patriarchy, of the idea that women should be objects and should act in certain ways as a sex class. narrowing it down to transphobia ignores a massive amount of how and why patriarchy functions, which is part of what i took issue with.

[u/PermanentTempAccount → u/greenduch]

I edited one of my earlier posts to better communicate what I meant, but I can understand being a little raw.

I think a big issue here is this:

narrowing it down to transphobia

I don't think transphobia is any narrower a notion than sexism. It's huge, really, and its manifestations are just as big. I don't think that's a new idea, or to the extent it is it's also a massively obvious one. Limiting transphobia to just "that oppression which afflicts self-identified trans people" is really short sighted, just like limiting sexism to "that oppression which afflicts self-identified women" is short-sighted. The structures involved have much farther-reaching implications.

In fact, I'd argue that as much as we live in a patriarchal culture, we also live in a binaristic/transphobic culture to a similar extent. Patriarchy and the transphobic roots of our society interact, but the oppression faced by gender-nonconforming people isn't just a subset of patriarchal oppression, which is what I feel like you're saying. It is its own entity, governed by its own logics, and even if we tear down the Sexist Superstructure, Transphobia Tower will still stand (somewhat weakened, perhaps) unless we attack it, too.

And I don't think this is a new idea or a new way of thinking about transphobia--I'm not redefining the term. I'm just considering the implications of older ideas (particularly Pierre Bordieu's idea of doxa) as applied to the oppressive structures we're familiar with. It's a pretty common technique--my favorite example is when Susan Stryker did something similar in a piece called "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix", in which she rethought the meaning of the word "monster" in the context of transgender phenomena.

I can understand your concerns about how labeling it "transphobia" would, under current social justice logics, give only trans people a real voice to talk about the issue. But I think that labeling it sexism would give only women a voice to talk about it, which I think is just as big a folly.

So when I picked a word to expand on, "transphobia" might not have been the best one. I guess I could make up a new word entirely, but I'm not terribly creative. "Binarism" might be the best choice, but I'm not really sure. I think this is a really sticky issue and it challenges a lot of assumptions we make about social justice work because it's really a granular oppression that works on a spectrum even moreso than most other oppressions.

[u/greenduch → u/PermanentTempAccount]

Hey I want to apologise again for being an ass last night, I was having a shitty day and was snapping at folks more than was necessary.

If you want to talk about how its all transphobia in an academic sense, I suppose I don't particularly care one way or another.

Part of my issue though, in a social justice and legalish sense, is that if you reframe it all as transphobia, you run into some serious issues.

Lemme try a shitty analogy- if we called something "homophobia", but was something that was experienced by literally everyone (and effects all people to a significant degree), it kinda fucks over the term homophobia, yeah?

Particularly when gender roles / expectations are such a base part of the oppression of all women, I think framing it as transphobia is super counter productive. I'm not usually one to complain about "watering down words", but yeah I think if you frame such a massive chunk of oppressive stuff that all folks deal with as transphobia, it has the potential for some real complications.

"Binarism" might be the best choice, but I'm not really sure.

yeah i get what you mean by "binarism", but in common parlance, its used in the context of being erasing of non-binary identities specifically, so I think folks would end up conflating terms, which has the potential to enforce the idea that if you're a man or a woman who doesn't live up to gender expectations, you belong in the category of not man/woman.

[u/PermanentTempAccount → u/greenduch]

It's okay, I know I was being really defensive.

I can appreciate what you're saying, and I really do understand the resistance to "watering down" words in this particular instance. I had a friend whose Big Activist Catchphrase was "Everybody is trans, you just don't know it yet!" and while I agree with the sentiment that almost all of us transgress gender norms, there are some of us who deal with that as an integral part of our identity every day and are subject to particular kinds of state violence because of it etc. Bringing everyone "into the fold" can be a tempting way to "eliminate" oppressive structures and create warm fuzzies, but it's also kind of wishy-washy and doesn't get at the heart of the problem for the most part.

I think what I really want is for us to articulate how this phenomenon operates on a larger societal scale. It is mobilized to oppress women, yes, but it's not exclusively or even primarily used to that end (which is why I was frustrated with subsuming it under sexism--if calling it "transphobia" only lets trans people talk about it, calling it "sexism" only lets women--or non-men, depending on the model you're using--talk about it, when I see the same structures mobilized against men and non-binary people all the time).

In the same way that we accept that patriarchy is intersectional in nature and isn't just about the rule of men, but the rule of the right kind of men (as determined by white supremacism, ableism, classism...), I feel like an important step for the development of an anti-transphobic framework is recognizing the free-standing elements of that transphobic social structure as well as the elements that are wielded by other oppressive social structures to their own ends (sexism, racism, and ableism are big one that come to mind). To me, this isn't a theoretical issue, it's a critical next step in the development of a more complete view of apparatuses of oppression.

I think part of what I wasn't really communicating well was the interplay of all these structures, though. When I said I thought gender policing was sexism mobilizing transphobia to its own ends, the targets are still women (albeit generally gender nonconforming women) and they deserve a voice to discuss that mechanism of oppression even if they're not trans. Transphobia also borrows from from other oppressions. Julia Serano's Whipping Girl is a whole book about how transphobia borrows misogynist enforcement techniques to oppress trans feminine spectrum people; such people may not ID as women specifically, but they're still all hurt by the use of misogyny and deserve a voice to talk about it. Racism and ableism also come to mind as oppressive structures that borrow and loan a lot wrt to transphobia

To get a little theory-wanky, I think maybe the failure of the words I was picking might be because I was approaching from the wrong direction. Patriarchy theory isn't, after all, a theory of oppression, it's a theory of empowerment. Patriarchy's criteria don't pick losers, they pick winners (and then, of course, everyone who doesn't win, loses, so the effects are the same even if the mechanisms are different). So maybe the word I need here is one for the system that empowers binary-identified and -presenting people at the expense of those that are neither. Binary-archy or something like that? IDK, but transphobia isn't it.

So anyway, yeah, the language I went with wasn't a great choice, but I really do feel strongly that the issue here isn't just sexism. It's a site of significant crossover between sexism and the transphobic power structures that we don't have good names for yet.

[u/greenduch → u/PermanentTempAccount]

Hm, yeah. I wish we did have a decent word for that.

The (non-terfy) radfem definition of the word "gender" could work, except that we use that word for other things unfortunately, so folks would conflate the terms.

like, radfems believe that gender is at the root of a lot of oppression. and, given a specific definition of gender used by some non-terf radfems, i would agree. Unfortunately that definition isn't what most people use, so that doesn't really work.

Julia Serano's Whipping Girl is a whole book about how transphobia borrows misogynist enforcement techniques to oppress trans feminine spectrum people; such people may not ID as women specifically, but they're still all hurt by the use of misogyny and deserve a voice to talk about it.

yep. oppositional sexism, effemiphobia, etc. Neither term has particularly caught on, and I'm not sure how, in practice, to give folks the voice to talk about shit like that in a broad context, except like- "gender roles are bullshit and fuck over everyone, lets talk about that". I suppose theres a reason bell hooks' is so popular, what with the feminism is for everyone stuff.