notes

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]]).

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]]

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