Thanks for the ask and the consideration! Often what is missing is that very consideration, awareness that detrans women are whole people who are worth treating with basic respect. The problems I see really often stem from treating us like symbols. Those projected symbolic meanings can be dehumanizing whether they are intended to be positive or not. We’re not weird martyrs, we’re not broken or ruined, we’re not tragic catastrophes, we don’t enjoy being compared to mass transit wrecks or cautionary tales; we live in our bodies as they are and typically already have a lot of social stigma to resist about our appearance (in ways that are not easily shared with most other women, who have a different bag of rocks in that regard); we don’t welcome your pity or ridicule–no one would.
We are women who have a particular experience in common, and while it may not be a very typical one, we are not some separate exotic species you cannot fathom. Some women have experienced rape; all women have experienced rape culture. Some women were raped as girls/by family members and that is its own unique, specific experience. You might, as a woman who has experienced rape culture in a more general sense, be capable of digging deep to make connections and grow your empathy with that specific experience, but you wouldn’t then say “well, all women have been incested.” Likewise, some women have experienced gender troubles serious enough that we’ve transitioned to an extent; all women have traumatic experiences with imposed gender roles, limitations/expectations (1). Dig deep, make connections, grow both your empathy and your political framework from that empathetic connection-building. But realize how dismissive it sounds to say “well, all women have gender dysphoria.”
Also, I appreciate your drive toward solidarity with detrans women but I hope it also extends further, to those who have “incorrect” identity paradigms in your social circle. Often the same people who dis us also make a habit of mocking transmen or genderqueer/nb-identified female human beings for sport. There is a genre of person who who does both of these things all while self identifying as “radfem” (and if I may throw their own words back at them: identifying as something doesn’t make it so). Being a radical feminist means aiming for the liberation of women as a sex class, regardless of their individually-held identity politics or how they name themselves. It also, in my experience, involves treating other women with respect. When that is missing, there is something else going on under the name of feminism, and it’s always good to ask–what cultural work is this behavior actually doing? And who interests is this serving?
If your interest is in women’s liberation, how does it serve that purpose to identify an “acceptable female target” (2) to scapegoat for your frustrations about patriarchy? Even if that identified target is acting as a “token torturer” (3) in a given situation, how would the way forward (from any kind of feminist perspective, let alone a radical one) involve a practice of creating group cohesion by belittling and mocking her as a representative of a group of women you’ve deemed bad/impure/fallen/crazy/damaged goods/pitiable –with a particular focus on mocking their bodies? Or treating living women as an Exhibit A to be exploited for the sake of your own political opinions, with no thought that the woman herself has a richly informed opinion of her own, and perhaps it is worth a listen?
The “ally” language makes me nervous because of what it has so often come to mean. You do not have to agree with every detrans woman’s takes–this isn’t about toeing some line or taking dictation, and that would be impossible, as we don’t agree with each other and hold multiple conflicting and mutually exclusive opinions. But if “allyship” matters to you, then the best thing to do is hear us out–including the ones you disagree with–and see if you can get to a place where our ideas are at least comprehensible. Where you understand where it comes from and can see the sense in it, get the internal logic from within her particular context. Be willing to bridge and translate–make that effort.
And you don’t have to be particularly “informed” to interrupt group-bonding-via-disrespect. You can always say, “This doesn’t feel right to me,” or ask, “Whose interests is this serving?” But I will warn you that I’ve gotten precisely nowhere with interrupting this kind of thing in people whose sole purpose for being on the internet seems to be exactly this: trashing acceptable female targets for sport while pretending there’s some political virtue in doing so and calling it “feminism.” They aren’t going to stop. I gave up on them many years ago. I focus instead on the women who are doing something I believe in.
I guess I’ve been focusing on the way of “getting it wrong” that involves bad internet behavior, but I also think it’s egregious to make us a symbolic “cause” and cast yourself as the hero by doing activism that my entire cohort of detrans women, at least, see as extremely damaging–here I’m thinking of women who have taken it upon themselves to harass patients at gender clinics, allegedly in solidarity with women like me. Nobody I know among detrans women would want that. We did not ask for that. We would never! It is a horrific proposition, modeled after anti-abortion tactics, and represents yet more of the damaging consequences of right wing infiltration into some feminist groups. I’m sure that none of the people doing that are aware that years ago, a detrans woman did some amazing direct action involving her former clinic. First she tried meeting with them about her experience. When they wouldn’t listen to her, she made artwork confronting her former “care providers” and telling her truths. She wheatpasted that art all around the clinic. It was extremely badass. She didn’t harass the current patients, for fuck’s sake! But some people just need to be the big hero in their own minds, and get lauded by their internet buddies, they can’t be bothered to understand why it might be important to…you know…have meaningful connections/input from the people they think they are “saving.”
Some self-identified GCs/radfems seem into creating dismissive, thought-stopping cliches about detrans women/transmen/etc. For example, dismissing us as “denying biological reality.” In fact, most detrans women I know were doing the furthest thing from that when we transitioned. We were painfully and acutely aware of our biological reality the entire time–this was part of what pushed many of us into transition in the first place. For another example, anytime I would say something that wasn’t extremely in lockstep with the rhetoric du jour in some internet so-called “radfem” circles, I would routinely get accused of “still being trans” in some way. This was bizarre, as I had detransitioned 10+ years before these interactions and in no way had a self-concept as anything but a woman. But that was an easy thing to say to get people to dismiss me. I’ve found the lens of “sex, not gender” that I saw articulated by radical feminists to be very valuable and because I take it seriously, I don’t think we should be dismissing anyone female in a conversation about patriarchy/women’s liberation. So it never made sense to me that this kind of accusation worked that way, resulted in being dismissed, in groups that supposedly shared that lens.
I’ve also noticed a lot of arrogance coming at detrans women whenever we might attempt to correct a misconception–really often we’ll get told we just don’t understand ourselves or we are in denial. Pretty patronizing. And it only happens when we try to add any nuance to a conversation or deviate from the “script” of thought-stopping cliches. As long as we’re being mouthpieces of the cliches, these kinds of accusations are notably absent…so, that is transparent as hell and it sure is not respect.
There’s also the tendency among some self-identifying “gcs/radfems” to claim they can always tell who is male or female and bizarre ideas about what constitutes “male traits.” Like. You’re going to be more accurate if you are looking for sexed traits, not gender markers, but some people really are ambiguous, and especially now that we’re bio-hacking sexed traits–you just cannot always tell sex based on appearance. Some of us pass successfully. Yes, really. I am confident that I have a way higher accuracy in reading ambiguous people’s sex than average, but I cannot “always tell” either. So I know these clearly clueless people definitely can’t.
Now that I’m listing peeves, it’d be nice if people would stop acting like “therapy” is some magical solution we were all cruelly deprived of, that would absolutely have “saved” us if only we’d had access–rather than realizing that the DSM and its priests have always been part of the pathologizing/normalizing context that created our conditions in the first place. Like, I also think there is a problem with hormone dispensaries having zero standards of care in practice, and I’m not denying the usefulness of therapy to some people under some circumstances and for some purposes–but the assumption that it is The Answer to trans/detrans issues and represents our “salvation” is way, way off the mark. Social/cultural/economic/political problems are not solved in the psyche of the stigmatized person.
All this kind of stuff has leaked offline at this point, but a whole lot of these issues are created or made worse by an online context–I’d strongly encourage you to build offline radical feminist community and organizing bodies. Refuse any right wing connections–keep it absolutely autonomous and female-focused. Not just what you resist, but what you stand FOR. Probably the single most important thing you can do is to resist right wing infiltration/co-optation and try to help repair the damage it has caused. And don’t contribute to the weird, fundamentalist behavior I described, the trollish targeting of groups of women, replete with thought terminating cliches and zealotry–which made fertile ground for that kind of infiltration in the first place.
I hope this helps. I appreciate your question.
Notes:
1. The limitations and expectations framing comes from Nedra Johnson’s lyrics in her song August Moon.
2. “Acceptable female targets”-my thinking on this phenomenon was deeply informed by the writing of former tumblrer lavenderjanestrikesback.
3. “Token torturer”-this concept comes from Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology.
