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5.5 KiB
Org Mode
105 lines
5.5 KiB
Org Mode
:PROPERTIES:
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:ID: af44dd54-fa7a-4ced-bba9-85b5a295715e
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:ROAM_REFS: cite:RuthPearceSonjaErikainen1978
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:END:
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#+TITLE: Terf wars: an introduction
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* Race and Gender
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#+begin_quote
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These discourses have racist undertones, as the implicit whiteness of the women
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who are the subject of protection means that racialised and especially Black
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women and nonbinary people are more likely to be considered dangerously
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masculine (Patel, 2017). This is due to the enduring colonial legacies that have
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long defined racialised women as the unfeminine or ‘masculine’ contrast to white
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women’s presumed ‘natural’ femininity (see e.g. McClintock, 2013). Racialised
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women (cis and trans alike), non-binary and intersex people are especially
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likely to be rendered ‘gender suspect’ due to discourses that position bodies of
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colour as gender deviant in relation to white body norms (Gill-Peterson,2018;
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Snorton, 2017).
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#+end_quote
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#+begin_quote
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It is disproportionately cis people (both women and men) who are dangerous to,
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and perpetrators of violence against, trans women, not the other way around
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(Bachman & Gooch, 2018; Hasenbush et al., 2019). In this way, trans-exclusionary
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feminist politics can work to erase forms of gendered and racialised violence.
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#+end_quote
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* TERF / Gender-Critical
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#+begin_quote
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Notably, while many (but not all) trans people and allies describe
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trans-exclusionary feminist campaigners as ‘[[id:b08fb6b0-aedf-4066-ba3c-ca03aa323d33][TERFs]]’, the campaigners themselves
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generally object to this acronym. In recent years, many have preferred to call
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themselves ‘gender critical’ – a term that denotes, less a critical approach to
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gender, and more an emphasis on claiming ‘biologically defined’ notions of
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femaleness and womanhood over gender identity and social concepts of gender. In
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addition to attacking trans people’s right to access public toilets in line with
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their sex/gender presentation, ‘gender critical’ feminists have criticised
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social developments such as LGBTIQ-inclusive school education and positive media
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representations of trans people. Increasingly, they argue that such developments
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result from what they call ‘gender ideology’ (see e.g. 4thWaveNow, 2019).
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#+end_quote
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* Terminology
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#+begin_quote
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In understanding the current landscape of trans-exclusionary feminist politics,
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the terminology used by different parties in the debates is central, and
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constitutes a challenge for analysing trans-exclusionary discourses. This is
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because language is being deliberately used to include, exclude, and/or denote
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power relations: for example, trans-inclusive feminist writers tend to prefer
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the term ‘trans women’, because this implies that a trans woman is a kind of
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woman (like ‘gay woman’). ‘Gender critical’ writers, however, generally use
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‘transwomen’ and avoid using ‘cis’, which can (implicitly or explicitly) exclude
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trans women from the general category ‘women’, by conflating ‘women’ with ‘cis
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women’.
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#+end_quote
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#+begin_quote
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Cisgender (or cis) is a descriptive term indicating people who are not trans
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and/or whose experience of gender corresponds with their assignment at birth. In
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use since as early as 1992, the term has come to replace terms such as
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‘not-trans’, ‘born-women/men’, ‘biological women/men’ or ‘natural women/men’,
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ultimately serving a neutralising function. In resistance to this, many ‘gender
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critical’ activists claim that cis (like TERF) is a slur. Recognition of the
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limitations of a trans/cis binary have been academically articulated (e.g. Enke,
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2013).
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#+end_quote
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#+begin_quote
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Certainly, TERF (like ‘cis’) is often used in angry commentaries online by both
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cis and trans feminists, either as an accusation (e.g. ‘you’re a TERF’) or an
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insult (e.g. ‘fuck off TERF’). Yet, it is important to understand and account
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for the power dynamic at play here. In examples such as those above, members of
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a marginalised group and their allies seek to identify, and express anger or
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frustration at, a harmful ideology that is promoted primarily by and in the
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interests of those who are systemically privileged as cis (men as well as
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women.)
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#+end_quote
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* ‘Gender critical’ feminism in the post-truth era
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#+begin_quote
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It is increasingly argued that we are living in a ‘post-truth’ era, where
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conventional notions of expertise and the epistemic status of facts are
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fragmenting, exemplified by the proliferation of so-called fake news especially
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in digital spaces (Marres, 2018). As an unprecedented number of people have
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access to the internet and social media where they can read and circulate
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information of all kinds, numerous differently positioned knowledge claims now
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coexist digitally. Indeed, it has been argued that many people are abandoning
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conventional criteria of evidence in favour of alternative knowledges and
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beliefs (Lewandowsky et al., 2017).
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#+end_quote
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* Appeals to science
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#+begin_quote
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By appealing to ‘biology’, authorities lay claim to the ‘neutrality’ and
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‘objectivity’ of science – a claim that has public appeal even if it has been
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contested in social scientific and humanities scholarship for decades (e.g.
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Haraway, 1988; Spanier, 1995). Yet, the authority of ‘science’ allows
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‘biological truths’ about sex difference to be presented as incontestable
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realities trumping (merely ‘social’) gender.
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#+end_quote
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#+begin_quote
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‘Gender critical’ feminists are constructing and mobilising very particular,
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contested versions of biological ‘facts’ that are also lending support to the
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politics of anti-feminist organisations.
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#+end_quote
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