There is a very peculiar row here. Suzanne Moore is a journalist, and she is known for her feminist stance and for the fact that she has a background in the working class and as a single parent. She has made no secret of that. She is one of very few such women who have a platform, and is no stranger to controversy. But this one raises odd and difficult issues, and I have been struggling to understand what is going on
The article which sparked the fight was a contribution to a book, originally: and it was reprinted in the New Statesmen, which is a left wing publication here (well as left wing as we get). It is here:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/...er-female-angerAs you see, this is an article about the worsening position of women and about the anger she feels and perceives to be shared by a great many women. It is not particularly original nor particularly controversial, from my perspective. It covers quite a lot of ground, because it is not focussed on the economic consequences of austerity, alone: it rather attempts to point up a lot of inter-related things which work together to reverse some of the progress which women thought they had secured in the pursuit of equity/equality. I agree with much of it; though there are many women who do not, and there is ongoing debate about whether what is sometimes called "body fascism" exists, or whether the freedom to dress in any way you wish is a liberation (see slut marches for some indication of the complexities of that issue). That demand for female conformity in terms of appearance is but one of the issues she addresses, but it is the one which has sparked the anger
Moore has been attacked for one line in this article:
QUOTE
We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual.
That has been attacked as "transphobic". There has been an angry exchange on twitter, with objections to the use of the word "transsexual" as indicative of a prejudice against those who have made the transition from male to female or vice versa.
It is obviously true that people will tend to notice and focus on things which impact on them directly, and it is equally true that such a stance is not particularly productive in some ways. I am a feminist. I learned long ago that one cannot pick up on every sexist reference or assumption you meet, because you would talk about nothing else. That makes you into a bore, but more importantly it means that you can be dismissed as a monomaniac. I do not defend that, nor do I suggest that it is not a problem: it is merely an observation of how the world wags.
I am entering territory I am not familiar with, here. If the word "transsexual" is offensive in the same way as "nigger" or "queer" I was not aware of that and it is my failing. I do not know what word is preferred, but I can see an argument for this in terms of othering: perhaps it is because it suggests that someone who has made the transition is not truly of the gender they have adopted: and I can see that would be offensive. A woman who started out as a man is no less a woman, on this thinking, and therefore there is no need for a label to distinguish them as different. As I understand it there are problems: for example it was impossible for such people to marry, for a long time, because they were not allowed to alter their birth certificate to reflect their current gender. That is to change, according to this article in the Daily Mail but it has not changed yet, apparently
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15...age-rights.htmlIt is incoherent to accept transition, yet withhold rights as if that transition had not happened; and so I welcome that decision. But it is predicated on a particular theory of gender, and that does pose problems for me. As I understand it those who choose transition do so because their sex and their gender (that is the biological fact and the sense of identity) are misaligned: it is sometimes shorthanded as being "born in the wrong body". At a philosophical level that is quite a claim. It is one I struggle to accept, to be honest. There is an "essentialism" which underpins it, and I am not comfortable with that. I am apt to wonder if surgery etc would be necessary if we did not live in such a gendered society, but rather accepted that people are enormously diverse and did not impose so much on the basis of a sexual dichotomy. We cannot know, sadly. So we are left with the position that whether this is truly innate or whether it is a consequence of much wider social constructs, there are people who are convinced they are essentially one gender and it is not the same as the biological body they are born into. And so they switch. That is entirely a matter for the individual, IMO, and I cannot see it does anyone else any harm. I regret the necessity because major surgery is to be avoided where possible: but, for whatever reason, it is essential to the happiness of such people. Opposition to it is irrational, and I think it is strong because gender is the central fact of our lives in so many ways: people appear to be uncomfortable with the idea that it is complex and not fixed. That is not sufficient to impose our perceptions on those who think otherwise, regardless of our views on the nature of gender, I think.
But those who accuse Moore of transphobia seem to me to be missing the point. I say that because I googled the phrase "Brazilian transsexual" and clicked "images". Try it. It is instructive. It may be insensitive to use such shorthand when discussing transition, but there is no doubt that this is a stereotype current in our media. She might have avoided this fight if she had used the phrase "page three girl" or "supermodel" or any of a number of phrases which conjure up similar images. The fact there are so many of them speaks to the type of demands made on women. It is, of course, possible that a different group would have been outraged, because there is a strong thread of opinion which maintains that we are all free to make whatever choices we like wrt to our physical presentation: as Moore also says in the article, talking about breast implants
QUOTE
Every woman who has it done claims they are doing it for themselves
and she goes on to dismiss that idea, which is a natural consequence of her perspective: a perspective I happen to share. I do not admit that these decisions are purely personal, because we are social animals and the social context matters. Again I do not think that means it should be banned, any more than transition should. The fact remains that I do not have to accept the claims of the underlying theory: for those, to me, are based on denial of the impact of social pressure in shaping those decisions. Therein lies another complexity. At least some of those who would accept that breast implants (or high heeled shoes) are socially conditioned would argue that transition is different: it is of a different order because gender identity is not a choice, where those things are. And once again we are back to philosophy.
I think that this issue warrants a far more subtle exploration than the fury it has engendered. I am sad that this arose from an article which was not really about transition, though I quite see that one must take the opportunity to raise the profile of a problem when one can. The idea of labeling it as mere transphobia is not helpful, though: and the demand for a retraction and apology is not reasonable where there are real differences of view which need to be sorted out
