diff --git a/20200809222035-is_cis_a_slur.org b/20200809222035-is_cis_a_slur.org index dd3fe6f..cbcb5d0 100644 --- a/20200809222035-is_cis_a_slur.org +++ b/20200809222035-is_cis_a_slur.org @@ -7,3 +7,7 @@ they think a trans person feels or ought to feel / behave, in which case that intent is quite warranted. Other times it's a means of expressing exhaustion at folks who simply don't "get it", and don't particularly need to. That is to say, cisgenderedness is a form of [[file:20200809222134-privilege.org][Privilege]]. + +Gender-criticals or TERFs tend to avoid the adjective "cis", preferring to other +transgender men and women as "transmen" and "transwomen", separate from the +(assumed cis) categories "men" and "women" ([[file:RuthPearceSonjaErikainen1978.org::*Terminology][Terf wars: an introduction]]). diff --git a/20200810123502-post_truth_era.org b/20200810123502-post_truth_era.org new file mode 100644 index 0000000..845de78 --- /dev/null +++ b/20200810123502-post_truth_era.org @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +#+title: Post-truth era + +Fake news, alternative facts, etc. + +- [[file:RuthPearceSonjaErikainen1978.org::*‘Gender critical’ feminism in the post-truth era][Terf wars: an introduction]] diff --git a/RuthPearceSonjaErikainen1978.org b/RuthPearceSonjaErikainen1978.org new file mode 100644 index 0000000..306e692 --- /dev/null +++ b/RuthPearceSonjaErikainen1978.org @@ -0,0 +1,102 @@ +#+TITLE: Terf wars: an introduction +#+ROAM_KEY: cite:RuthPearceSonjaErikainen1978 + +* Race and Gender + +#+begin_quote +These discourses have racist undertones, as the implicit whiteness of the women +who are the subject of protection means that racialised and especially Black +women and nonbinary people are more likely to be considered dangerously +masculine (Patel, 2017). This is due to the enduring colonial legacies that have +long defined racialised women as the unfeminine or ‘masculine’ contrast to white +women’s presumed ‘natural’ femininity (see e.g. McClintock, 2013). Racialised +women (cis and trans alike), non-binary and intersex people are especially +likely to be rendered ‘gender suspect’ due to discourses that position bodies of +colour as gender deviant in relation to white body norms (Gill-Peterson,2018; +Snorton, 2017). +#+end_quote + +#+begin_quote +It is disproportionately cis people (both women and men) who are dangerous to, +and perpetrators of violence against, trans women, not the other way around +(Bachman & Gooch, 2018; Hasenbush et al., 2019). In this way, trans-exclusionary +feminist politics can work to erase forms of gendered and racialised violence. +#+end_quote + +* TERF / Gender-Critical +#+begin_quote +Notably, while many (but not all) trans people and allies describe +trans-exclusionary feminist campaigners as ‘TERFs’, the campaigners themselves +generally object to this acronym. In recent years, many have preferred to call +themselves ‘gender critical’ – a term that denotes, less a critical approach to +gender, and more an emphasis on claiming ‘biologically defined’ notions of +femaleness and womanhood over gender identity and social concepts of gender. In +addition to attacking trans people’s right to access public toilets in line with +their sex/gender presentation, ‘gender critical’ feminists have criticised +social developments such as LGBTIQ-inclusive school education and positive media +representations of trans people. Increasingly, they argue that such developments +result from what they call ‘gender ideology’ (see e.g. 4thWaveNow, 2019). +#+end_quote + +* Terminology +#+begin_quote +In understanding the current landscape of trans-exclusionary feminist politics, +the terminology used by different parties in the debates is central, and +constitutes a challenge for analysing trans-exclusionary discourses. This is +because language is being deliberately used to include, exclude, and/or denote +power relations: for example, trans-inclusive feminist writers tend to prefer +the term ‘trans women’, because this implies that a trans woman is a kind of +woman (like ‘gay woman’). ‘Gender critical’ writers, however, generally use +‘transwomen’ and avoid using ‘cis’, which can (implicitly or explicitly) exclude +trans women from the general category ‘women’, by conflating ‘women’ with ‘cis +women’. +#+end_quote + +#+begin_quote +Cisgender (or cis) is a descriptive term indicating people who are not trans +and/or whose experience of gender corresponds with their assignment at birth. In +use since as early as 1992, the term has come to replace terms such as +‘not-trans’, ‘born-women/men’, ‘biological women/men’ or ‘natural women/men’, +ultimately serving a neutralising function. In resistance to this, many ‘gender +critical’ activists claim that cis (like TERF) is a slur. Recognition of the +limitations of a trans/cis binary have been academically articulated (e.g. Enke, +2013). +#+end_quote + +#+begin_quote +Certainly, TERF (like ‘cis’) is often used in angry commentaries online by both +cis and trans feminists, either as an accusation (e.g. ‘you’re a TERF’) or an +insult (e.g. ‘fuck off TERF’). Yet, it is important to understand and account +for the power dynamic at play here. In examples such as those above, members of +a marginalised group and their allies seek to identify, and express anger or +frustration at, a harmful ideology that is promoted primarily by and in the +interests of those who are systemically privileged as cis (men as well as +women.) +#+end_quote +* ‘Gender critical’ feminism in the post-truth era +#+begin_quote +It is increasingly argued that we are living in a ‘post-truth’ era, where + conventional notions of expertise and the epistemic status of facts are + fragmenting, exemplified by the proliferation of so-called fake news especially + in digital spaces (Marres, 2018). As an unprecedented number of people have + access to the internet and social media where they can read and circulate + information of all kinds, numerous differently positioned knowledge claims now + coexist digitally. Indeed, it has been argued that many people are abandoning + conventional criteria of evidence in favour of alternative knowledges and + beliefs (Lewandowsky et al., 2017). +#+end_quote +* Appeals to science +#+begin_quote +By appealing to ‘biology’, authorities lay claim to the ‘neutrality’ and +‘objectivity’ of science – a claim that has public appeal even if it has been +contested in social scientific and humanities scholarship for decades (e.g. +Haraway, 1988; Spanier, 1995). Yet, the authority of ‘science’ allows +‘biological truths’ about sex difference to be presented as incontestable +realities trumping (merely ‘social’) gender. +#+end_quote + +#+begin_quote +‘Gender critical’ feminists are constructing and mobilising very particular, +contested versions of biological ‘facts’ that are also lending support to the +politics of anti-feminist organisations. +#+end_quote