Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Donald Trump: misogyny and predation in US positions of power

image is from here

Two of the highest ranking outed perps, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and POTUS Donald Trump, may be welcoming another predatory man into their rank ranks, reinforcing and shaping the US's laws and policies. Structurally, privately, and professionally, they all support woman-hating predation.

The potential disaster and disgrace of confirming Kavanaugh and the horror of the predicted re-election of Trump means half the US Senate and half of the US population are reinforcing patriarchal norms in the face of recent challenges to rape and porn culture.

image is from here

In other words, straight male supremacist business as usual. A seismic shift occurred over the last half century and in a more media-approved way bravely over the past year starting with Tarana Burke's #MeToo effort, #SayHerName, and #TimesUp. Before these latest efforts an incredibly brave Anita Hill spoke truth to power and was rebuked.

From Vox:

It feels like 1991 all over again.

That year, Clarence Thomas was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to the Supreme Court, and Anita Hill testified that he had sexually harassed her when they worked together several years prior. Sen. Joe Biden, then the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, failed to call additional witnesses whose testimony could have supported Hill’s account. Thomas has now served on the Supreme Court for nearly 30 years.

Today, the details are different but the basic outline is eerily similar. In July, a woman reported to Democrats in Congress that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to sexually assault her when they were both in high school. He has denied the allegation.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, knew about the allegation but declined to share it with the other Democrats on the committee, according to Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer at the New Yorker. So it didn’t come up during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.

Hill addressed the allegations against Kavanaugh on Friday, saying through a spokesperson that “the reluctance of someone to come forward demonstrates that even in the #MeToo era, it remains incredibly difficult to report harassment, abuse or assault by people in power.” She added that “the Senate Judiciary Committee should put in place a process that enables anyone with a complaint of this nature to be heard.”

Persistent activism is needed to radically alter the structures that make Kavanaugh's confirmation possible. Misogyny is always part of a giant system, perpetually a category 5 storm.

image of 2017's Hurricane Maria is from here

Follow-up to the post: Why do some white folks ask what we should do, to be an ally, when a Black woman is being abused in public by a Black man?

Hello readers.

I received a comment recently that has been published and responded to at the prior post *here*. You can click on the "comments" link at the bottom of the post to see the rest of the conversation to date.

Below is that most recent comment and my critique of it, revised for this new post. (A post-script has been added at the bottom, on 6 January 2014.)

On Thursday, December 26, 2013, enchantedghosts said...

It's been a few months, but I am interested in this question. With a background in psychology, my first reaction to the question of why no one stood up for the panelist is The Bystander Effect. With so many people in the audience, there is a general diffusion of responsibility. Everyone was just waiting for everyone else to take a stand. It's also interesting to note that the moderator (a position that comes with some sense of authority) was the only one who made any real verbal attempt to mediate the situation.  

I also think that this particular situation, where a Black man is threatening a Black woman, is one where many White people feel uncomfortable intervening, for fear of "not doing it right." I think the fear of looking like someone who is trying to play the White Hero overshadows the feeling of responsibility to help out a fellow human being.  

I will admit that I feel terribly out of place to offer any critique of feminism. So take this as an outsider's non-academic opinion, please. But it seems as though at least part of the problem is that people are so afraid of saying the wrong thing or making the wrong move. There is a fear of being labeled as racist or sexist-- so in defense of one's ego and sense of their own moral goodness-- people choose to not act at all.  

This seems to stem from a very closed, angry and unforgiving conversation about these topics. A lot of judgement is thrown around, with very few people willing to extend any understanding towards the fellow people they are supposed to be engaged with. Instead of conversation and dialogue, there is an attempt to prove oneself right at the expense of shaming someone else.  

I don't know how much of this is simply because the internet is a forum which tends to bring out the worst in people's ability to engage in dialogue. Again, this is not my academic field and I am more familiar with what is available via the internet, while acknowledging that this is in no way a forum which speaks for the entire discipline. However, I do believe that if real, social change is something that people want to see happen then there needs to be space for people to make mistakes.  

I don't mean that people engaging in White Hero behavior (or any sexist/racist behavior) should be ignored or encouraged, but that gentle critiques may be better than constant shaming and anger in certain situations. Human beings can only take so much. 

Hello enchantedghosts.

Your response reminds me of how privilege in some ways constructs not only our views and experiences but also what we believe the terms ought to be when engaging with one another.

I'll try and clarify this using portions of your comment, below.

With a background in psychology, my first reaction to the question of why no one stood up for the panelist is The Bystander Effect. With so many people in the audience, there is a general diffusion of responsibility. Everyone was just waiting for everyone else to take a stand.

I agree that The Bystander Effect is one layer of explanation. This layer would likely be operative regardless of race, at least in a country like the U.S. I'm not sure The Bystander Effect is a phenomenon across cultures, however. It's not clear to me whether being a person in an oppressor class fearing judgment from oppressed people is in any way universal and I suspect it's rare rather than routine.

There'd have to be a solid level of privilege-backed liberalism in place, I think. Because if this were a more flagrantly white supremacist context, whites in the audience would be cheering the abuse on, or shouting racist epithets at a Black man abusing a Black woman, and racist misogynist epithets at her. What is unowned if not also repressed, is whites desire to witness such violence occur, as it helps protect rather than interrupt white male supremacy.

But your point is well taken in the context in which this incident happened. And I think there's much more going on that is more controversial to speak about among 'good' whites and 'good' men.

It's also interesting to note that the moderator (a position that comes with some sense of authority) was the only one who made any real verbal attempt to mediate the situation.

One would hope anyone so positionally empowered would be quick to do so.

I also think that this particular situation, where a Black man is threatening a Black woman, is one where many White people feel uncomfortable intervening, for fear of "not doing it right." I think the fear of looking like someone who is trying to play the White Hero overshadows the feeling of responsibility to help out a fellow human being.

While I agree with you, I'm reluctant to let that point of analysis go without deeper examination.

Let's take the context of Nazi Germany, and non-Jewish white German, French, and many other nations' citizens not doing much to intervene on Jews being forcibly removed from neighborhoods, cities, and countries (after increasingly anti-Semitic propaganda and violence prior to removal and mass murder).

What some non-Jewish Germans have said is either, "I didn't know what was going on", or "If I'd tried to intervene, I'd have been shot on the spot."

In schools where bullying is a problem, the Bystander Effect often amounts to someone not wanting the stigma of the abused being attached to someone standing up for the bullied person. 

In situations where gang rape is horrifically occurring, some men on the sidelines might argue that they feared being seen as "not a man" if they verbally or violently intervened against the sexual terrorists/thugs/normal guys. And some of those not-so-innocent bystanders might also join in and become gang-rapists themselves to prove alliance with their more enthusiastically vicious peers.

Taken together, we see that The [Privileged] Bystander Effect has several functions: to allow someone to believe they alone have no particular responsibility to stop unjust violence is one. To allow someone the freedom to not be stigmatised and/or mistreated by the abuser/oppressor. To avoid death, including to the point of becoming one of the abusers/oppressors.

What also must be exposed is what oppressor-class people have to gain by not intervening. It's easy enough for us to think, "The whites did nothing because they didn't want to be misperceived as The White Hero", which sort of sounds like the position is rooted in an egocentric desire to always been seen as good and moral. The key there is "seen as". Because their actions are not good and are not moral, of course. And whites and men wanting to be seen as morally good people within a virulently white male supremacist society serves whom, exactly?

Do oppressor-class people REALLY give a shit what oppressed-class people think of them/us? Maybe that's the case for the few who are judged by other liberal oppressor-class people. The situation linked to in the post here demonstrates to me whites want to be seen as not-racist by other whites. And to the extent they don't want to be seen as not-racist by people of color, it is only to maintain a false appearance in order to maintain white power and position. Whites who did, really, intervene against white violence against people of color, and men who have, really, intervened against male violence against women, do face the real prospect of having that violence turned on them and, at least, losing status among those whites and men around them.

What we see is that whites will excuse each other not intervening. They will be very understanding and quick to defend such inaction. And that's white supremacy in action. Men will excuse each other not intervening. That's male supremacy at work. I offer all that as a foundation for the following challenges to what you offer by way of explanation.

... But it seems as though at least part of the problem is that people are so afraid of saying the wrong thing or making the wrong move.

What constitutes "the wrong thing" or "the wrong move"? As I already described, this is not universal. It is not even regionally or locally predictable.

The wrong thing/the wrong move is usually and overwhelmingly to allow oppressive violence to continue uninterrupted. That's our status quo. It's also status quo for whites and men to deny the violence is happening at all--or is far more rare than the oppressed claim it is. It is also status quo for whites and men to encourage it to happen and to commit it.

It's rare for whites/males to give a shit about what happens to Black people/women, historically and presently. What happens to Black women is especially disregarded by white men, or is consumed as entertainment. The pornography industry is one callous arena offering evidence of callous enjoyment. If we really cared, we'd work collectively to eradicate white male supremacy and the economic and social manifestations of it. We don't. Instead a small minority of us egocentrically care what others think about us when we don't do what we assume others think we should do, as described here:

There is a fear of being labeled as racist or sexist-- so in defense of one's ego and sense of their own moral goodness-- people choose to not act at all.

That's white/male supremacy at work, not just egocentric (im)moral action. Where you go from here is, for me, increasingly problematic and victim-blaming.

This seems to stem from a very closed, angry and unforgiving conversation about these topics.

Who is being "very closed, angry, and unforgiving"? Other whites or people of color?

A lot of judgement is thrown around, with very few people willing to extend any understanding towards the fellow people they are supposed to be engaged with.

Who is throwing judgment? Who is not willing to extend understanding? And who can afford to see their oppressors as "fellow people they are supposed to be engaged with"?

Those who have been systematically and chronically sexually or racially discriminated against, harassed, ignored, and terrorised? The people with severe PTSD developed over years from enduring daily racism and misogyny?

As I read it, you're speaking of people of color being too angry, too unforgiving, too closed, too judgmental, too shaming, and too stingy with understanding and compassion.

Instead of conversation and dialogue, there is an attempt to prove oneself right at the expense of shaming someone else.

Among men and among whites, I've seen this occur. Many times. Whites wanting to demonstrate who is the better ally to POC; men fighting over who is the better feminist. And so on. But we're talking about minority populations of whites and men, of course. The places I've observed this are very few and far between. Very few men interrupt misogynist violence; very few non-Jewish Germans interrupted anti-Semitic Nazi violence in the 1930s and '40s; most whites were privately disdainful of Martin Luther King, Jr., or were publicly hostile when discussing his efforts through the '50s and '60s. Many privately or publicly were relieved when he was assassinated, as they were when Malcolm X was murdered. Consciously or not, whites felt: "Whew! Thank God that attempt to challenge my white power is now without its most public leader." 

Most whites are still hostile to or disdainful of any efforts to weaken white power. And most whites in the U.S. reluctantly endure "Martin Luther King, Jr. Day". Just YESTERDAY--no joke--I heard two whites being irritated that he has "a Day" at all. These two people also agreed Abraham Lincoln was far greater for freeing the slaves, which shows how whites rewrite history to rewrite and rewhite his/story. Lincoln's role in freeing slaves was far less arduous and brave than was Harriet Tubman's. Or the other hundreds of slaves who resisted and fought for freedom.

I don't know how much of this is simply because the internet is a forum which tends to bring out the worst in people's ability to engage in dialogue.

The anonymity factor is likely operating on the internet, but that, too, is a very partial explanation, and misses the politics of what is going down in favor of a psychological perspective. I say this to you as in order to recommend that you offer such a critique to your Psych professors. 

People's ability to engage in dialogue about racism and sexism is far more impaired by racism and sexism among whites and men than it is by anything else. Our reluctance and resistance is evident ubiquitously, in white families, majority-white places of worship, in the white-ruled educational system, and among white psychotherapists, to name but a few spheres of white power-protection. 

When I see conversations between whites and POC online, what I see time and again is whites wanting always to be seen as earnestly intending to be good, and becoming defensive or hostile when they are called out--appropriately--for being racist. I've seen how some POC will far too calmly and patiently attempt to get some white person to see things from their point of view, identifying some interaction or statement by the white person as racist, only to have the white person claim the person of color is wrongfully judging them, as if the white person's character was ever the issue. The same with men. Having their behavior called "sexist" or "misogynistic" becomes something they pretend is a personal attack. A grievous "attack". And they don't see their own defensiveness and/or hostility as any form of attack at all. 

...I am more familiar with what is available via the internet, while acknowledging that this is in no way a forum which speaks for the entire discipline. However, I do believe that if real, social change is something that people want to see happen then there needs to be space for people to make mistakes.

Systematic oppression and flagrant, violent resistance to change, to accountability, to responsibility, ought not be termed "people making mistakes". Whites don't make mistakes, nor do men. What whites and men do is protect our power, privileges, entitlements, and status. There's no mistake about it. When you narrow the lens down to a few internet interactions, it may be too easy to lose sight of the larger political picture, the broader social context for those few interactions.

I don't mean that people engaging in White Hero behavior (or any sexist/racist behavior) should be ignored or encouraged, but that gentle critiques may be better than constant shaming and anger in certain situations. Human beings can only take so much.

White/Male Hero and White/Male Abuser behavior is both ignored (passively allowed) and encouraged (actively allowed) by whites and men. So we have to start there. "Gentle critiques" as defined by whom? Probably only by whites and men, right? "Constant shaming" as defined by whom? Probably only by whites and men, right? This request for the oppressed to offer only "gentle critiques" is, in and of itself, a form of oppressive white/male supremacist behavior. As is someone privileged being calling out by those he oppresses being called "constant shaming". The only constant shaming I'm aware of is the institutional shaming done to oppressed people, actively and passively supported by whites and men. 

Oppressors are always trying to control the behavior of those we oppress, including by telling them how we might best be able to learn from them--if they'd only speak the way we demand they do. But however gentle it is to our ears, we don't hear it because we don't want to or don't have to; so what usually happens is the behavior becomes a tad less gentle. But the behavior I'm talking about isn't that of the oppressed; it's that of the oppressor, who is behaving violently all along but is denying it at every turn. Telling someone you're oppressing to challenge you in a more gentle way is a verbal version of a batterer telling the person being battered to resist in a less aggressive way. Making the oppressed person's allegedly ceaselessly shaming behavior or apparent aggression appear to be "the problem", as you do at times, is a form of violence never called violent by those who do it.

6 January 2014 post-script:
I am thinking now of how any interruption in collective silence may serve to empower others to speak out as well. In the auditorium in which the abuse happened (in the story linked to initially in the last post), just one white man speaking out in any way, even in problematic ways, would likely serve, at the very least, to make space for others to speak out, perhaps more responsibly.

Breaking silence when abuse is happening in front of us, in other words, is often useful in and of itself. That may be so even if it isn't done using the most appropriate or useful language. This is to say, "too little" might be just enough for more to happen. Any individual's action opposing and interrupting abuse in a social space can at least open that space to more challenges of that violence. I think part of the 'white/male hero' phenomenon has to do with the alleged hero wanting all the credit for rescuing the abused person, ignoring how historically and inherently collectivist anti-oppression and anti-abuse work is. There's never a lone hero in such work and any attempts to narratively manufacture or highlight one is usually done to mis- and over-represent the work of one or a few whites and men.


 

Why do some white folks ask what we should do, to be an ally, when a Black woman is being abused in public by a Black man?

image is from here

This post is in response to a discussion over to Crunk Feminist Collective. You can read that post and the comments there first if you want, but it's not necessary. But to do so, click on the title of that post just below:

On Black Men Showing Up for Black Women at the Scene of the Crime

The reason it's not necessary is because white folks are asking questions there what white folks ask far too often in the wrong spaces: What should I do to be a good ally to people of color? Usually this assumes people of color exist to educate whites about how to be anti-racist/anti-sexist. And usually in contexts where people of color are not there to teach whites anything. (I mean, like not in a classroom with bell hooks as the professor teaching a course to people of color and whites on how to support one another across various political struggles.)

Too often, in PoC spaces or in conversations led by people of color about something awful that happened to someone, white comments become a white-centered distraction from the main issues.

But related to the post above, I wonder to what extent the Brecht Center is a white-majority or white-run space, an academic space. I wonder how that contributed to the lack of response from the audience to Crunktastic being intimidated, threatened, and assaulted at a progressive political panel discussion, by a well-known Black male activist, Kazembe Balagun. My experience of white and class-privileged academic spaces is that there is an expectation that audiences remain passive witnesses to what's going on (or down) onstage. That to do otherwise is to break the unwritten cultural rules of (non)engagement. I wonder if that's part of this story.

But there are always plenty of explanations for why folks don't intervene on violence against women, including racist misogyny (rarely identified as such). It shows up in male-bonding rituals. It shows up in the refusal of the public to see the harassment, disrespect, disregard, harassment, violation, and abuse of women of color as violence. Other dynamics are described later on in this post.

At issue is our collective response-ability to co-create anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal spaces in which to organise and, well, just live with dignity and relative safety. I've seen response-ability shut down by anti-activist liberal white and male self-reflection. "What can I do that won't be seen as racist or sexist?" is a question in service to white male supremacy. Because "how privileged folks are perceived" already presumes the issue is the image of the oppressors, not the harm done to the oppressed.

I'm making space here, at a white person's blog, for some of that discussion. A white woman at CFC left a comment, which I'm excerpting just below. The reason I'm copying and pasting it here is because she acknowledges this is a conversation that maybe shouldn't happen there and then, at CFC. And I agree. Other whites on that comments page appear to me to be making this about liberal white guilt and the matter of whether we should do anything, rather than about what we must do to intervene when we witness violence occurring right before us in social spaces.

I can’t pretend that the dynamics of my interactions with black women aren’t colored by our different races. I do not want to presume to act or speak for a black woman who is perfectly capable of acting or speaking for herself. Nor do I want to appear to be attempting to exert authority over a space for black people based on my white skin. It can be difficult at times to decide whether my intervention in a tense situation would be seen as welcome support or as hijacking. In this situation, I think the answer is clear (both from my own judgment and from the message of the post), but it’s not always.

Obviously, how a white woman would have felt/what she should have done should not be the center of the discussion here. What happened should be. But there seems to be a substantial discussion going on around that, and thus probably room for a thread or two on this point: that is, how SHOULD an ally best respond in this situation? There may actually be a different answer for other black men, for white women, for white men, etc.

Should whites respond differently to violence happening when the aggressor is a Black man and the person harmed is a Black woman? Are the responsibilities of a white ally to a Black woman facing male supremacist hostility from a Black man (or from a white man, or a man of color who isn't Black) different than the responsibilities of an ally to a white woman facing male supremacist hostility--from a white or Black man, or another man of color?

Beyond, "Don't do something racist", I don't think so. 

But it is, unfortunately, the case that we whites can be confused about what it is to be racist.

One way racism shows up is whites thinking that intervening when a Black woman is being abused by a Black man is in and of itself racist. When, in fact, not intervening is the act of racism, and sexism.

This was going to be my reply at CFC but I've decided to put it here instead and link to this post over there.
 

Dynamics are raced, yes. Always. And gendered. Whatever I did there, if I were there, would have been the actions of a white male. But our race and gender doesn't mean we're not capable of responding to other humans as human beings. 
 

I read another comment, in response to the one quoted above, stating clearly that the woman assaulted is a human being and ought to be responded to as the human being that she is. 
 

I thought about how whites use our whiteness as a way (and too often an excuse) to not do something we'd do if it were happening to someone white. We don't tend to ask ourselves, when in an all-white forum or social space, "How might my whiteness be a problem here, in possibly intervening when a white man is harming a white woman?" I'm just as white in all-white spaces too. That whole way of responding or not and acting or not is white supremacist to me. 

Black, Brown, white, female, trans, male: if I'm a person in the room, and I see someone being assaulted, I intervene, if I care and if I can. I do what I can do, given my own limitations, strengths, privileges, and experiences of trauma and resistance.  
 

One thing I've seen play out far too often is that whites assume a Black woman (a particular Black woman, any Black woman, or all Black women) is strong enough to handle things on her own. While whites often want someone (of color) to have our back, it is assumed by whites that a Black woman has her own back and doesn't need anything more. The misogynist-racist Super-woman stereotype. There's the issue of Black woman-as-mammy whose only role is to take care of whites. In such a racist imagination, how could she possibly need whites to emotionally or physically take care of her? In reality, in what spaces would whites do so at all without expecting public or private props?
 

I've seen how Black women's womanness is erased and how Black women's Blackness is eraced. Each of which contributes to how Black women's humanity is made invisible socially by white and male supremacy.
 

When women's liberation is discussed in white spaces, the talk often assumes an alleged common denominator of white experience. So Black women, and other women of color, are assumed to be part of that struggle--to be "women"--only to the extent that they share the experiences, analysis, and agendas of whites. Usually unasked and unanswered in such spaces is this question: how could white experience be a common denominator for all women, most of whom are not white?) In my experience, when women of color assert their womanness not in white or colonial terms, or outside a white frame of experience, whites often claim they are being divisive, disruptive, or collaborators with patriarchy. (In truth, whites invisibilising whiteness is always in service to colonial patriarchy.)

  

When Black liberation is discussed in Black spaces, the talk often assumes a common denominator of Black men's experience. So Black women, again, are assumed to be part of the struggle only to the extent that their lives and struggles match up with men's. When Black women assert their own experiences as distinct from men's, the men often rebuke, retaliate, and revolt against the women, proving the point far too predictably.

What gets lost, obviously, is the humanity of Black women as Black, as women, and as Black Women whose lives, however personally complex and culturally dissimilar, do not and cannot only mirror the struggles Black men and white women face, in part because Black women are oppressed by both groups and by white men too.
 

I open the post to comments and conversation.

In The Name of Feminism, Antifeminism?

image is from here

I just found a post online about a radical lesbian feminist. (I'm not linking to it.) The allegedly radical and lesbian and white feminist author of the post calls for the public humiliation of a radical lesbian feminist activist; she endorses all sorts of unnamed forms of retaliation against that activist because the two women disagree on the politics of food.

Wow.

Is this what radicalism and feminism currently means on the internet--on blogs especially? That we can all call for the public harassment and humiliation and physical violation of women?

I sure hope not.

Critique of someone's values and behavior is one thing. Calling for violence to be done to them is something else entirely, and the last time I checked it was called the "patriarchal abuse of women".

We all experience disappointment and betrayal. Sometimes we feel it when it hasn't happened; sometimes it has happened and we don't feel anything at the time. How our feelings get acted out publicly is and ought to be a concern for all radicals.

In the last five years especially, I've seen all manner of hurtfulness, insult, and verbal violence against women being passed off as "feminist" and "radical". From women being called "the b word", to some radical feminist women being structurally silenced, to invasions against Lesbians, to calls for some women to be publicly assaulted, I won't support any of that happening or be silent in the face of it.

"The Disposable Woman" by Anna Holmes. The disposable woman is "she" who Charlie Sheen and Piers Morgan most likely will never see as fully human--as human as Charlie and Piers are to one another

image of Piers Morgan and Charlie Sheen is from here

“You’re entitled to behave however the hell you like as long as you don’t scare the horses and the children.”  -- Piers Morgan to Charlie Sheen

"I Like Crazy People Who Don't Give a F**k." -- Robert Pattinson, about Charlie Sheen

Who don't give a fuck about women, I'd add.

A huge hug and grand thanks to Anna Holmes for writing this piece!!!! THANKS, ANNA!!!!!! I saw the same program Anna did, and was nauseated by it. I've written a bit about it last week, I think, soon after it aired--well, probably in the hours immediately after it aired. I believe Piers, Mel Gibson, and Charlie Sheen represent--and are--a very particular kind of man. A super-privileged man--super-privileged by fame or fortune or popularity or celebrity or things more mundane, like class and appearance of race/ethnicity privilege, or actual race/ethnicity privilege in the case of Mel and Piers. Even teen heart-throb Robert Pattinson have come out strongly in support of Charlie's anti-social, anti-woman antics. Nice to know where you stand, Robert. If also disappointing.

These men are either flagrant serial abusers and/or exploiters of women, or they're vehement defenders of such male abusers and exploiters of women. These men seem to go out of their way to make sure we all know they support one another--that the Misogynist Brotherhood is alive and well. These men also tend to have egos the size of a rather large and supremely unfathomable god.

They also seem to be in need of protecting themselves a lot--these men who abuse or exploit others with a casualness or callousness more typically found in non-human (or human) animals with no evident conscience. It's not to say that Piers, specifically, is a sociopath. I think the jury is out on Mel Gibson, however. And I'd put Charlie between the two. To me, Piers is a willful exploiter of women, who could care less about attending to the matter of being responsible and humane with his enormous privileges and media power, tepid though it may be.

I don't expect Mr. Morgan's show to last more than one or possibly two seasons, honestly. It's so fucking uninteresting most of the time. Oh, and so pro-bro and pro-sexism. He's so hung up on talking with his fellow het dudes about their uses of women, including of women in pornography, as he did with Brett Michaels. Piers, if you're watching, do you really think men who grossly, and perhaps compulsively, sexually exploit women for fun are going to be enough of an audience to keep your show on the air? These are not men who, typically, watch chat shows, after all. And these are men, who, during those hours that your show typically airs, are too busy hunting down women to fuck, or have their faces plastered to computer monitors with dick-in-hand. I've avoided watching most of your episodes, thus far, and don't see that changing any time soon. I watched Larry King far more often and his ratings weren't good enough for CNN execs, were they?

Now, Charlie Sheen has told Piers he's never hit a woman--not even once, not even accidentally, apparently. I'll just say "Charlie, given how damned out of it on drugs you've been, how would you know?" Does throwing Brittany Ashland to the floor not count? Does shoving Denise Richards count? Does a tight grip around a woman's throat not count? Do you consider either of those acts to be demonstrating this glorious regard and respect for womankind you seem to be extolling as one of your virtues? (See more details, reader, in Anna's report below.)

Charlie appears to be saying that all women should be treated as goddesses, which I'll assume he doesn't use as a synonym for "prostitutes who exist to please men"--or does he? On Piers Morgan's show, C. Sheen declared himself innocent of EVER having hit a woman with an earnestness that, to me, overflowed with insincerity. Does he not believe the women who have spoken out about how, exactly, he has frightened, terrified, or abused them? Are they not real to him? Do their voices not count as "the voices of goddesses"? If a woman speaks out against him, must she hand back her "goddess" membership card, and join the ranks of the mere wh*re?

To Charlie: Is Capri Anderson a goddess who only deserves to be treated with respect and regard by all men on Earth? You seem to only acknowledge two categories of women: goddesses and wh*res. And maybe mothers as a third category, as long as they aren't trying to protect their children from your excesses and abuses. You've heard of the madonna/wh*re complex, haven't you, Charlie? It was a psychoanalytic evaluation of a way of thinking about and treating women that men in very misogynistic, patriarchal societies seem to keep accomplishing with little to no social or civil intervention.

Charlie Sheen is not so much a pop cultural folk-hero as he is a male supremacist fuck-hero for men who believe abusing and otherwise fucking over women ought to be men's right and entitlement. In the article that follows, terms for women are used that I don't generally use here without interrupting them with at least one asterisk, as they are very triggering for many women who have heard them before being battered or while being incested and raped.

Please click on the article's title to link back to the source website.

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR 

The Disposable Woman

By ANNA HOLMES 

Published: March 3, 2011 

FORTY-THREE minutes into his “special live edition” with Charlie Sheen on Monday night, Piers Morgan finally got around to asking his guest a real question. Before that, Mr. Morgan and Mr. Sheen had mostly traded chuckles and anecdotes about multiday benders, inflated network salaries and meet-ups in Aspen, Colo. But then, after three commercial breaks, Mr. Morgan inquired, “Have you ever hit a woman?” 

Ruth Gwily 

Two minutes later, with Mr. Morgan apparently satisfied with the actor’s answer that no, women should be “hugged and caressed,” that line of questioning was over. 

That Mr. Morgan didn’t press the issue of domestic violence shouldn’t have come as any surprise. CBS executives, not to mention the millions of viewers of his “family” sitcom “Two and a Half Men,” have consistently turned a blind eye toward Mr. Sheen’s history of abusing women. Part of this, of course, is about money. The actor’s F-18 of an id — to borrow a metaphor from Mr. Sheen himself — had long provided the show a steady stream of free publicity. It also helped make Mr. Sheen the highest-paid actor on television, at $1.2 million an episode.   

[Julian's note: closer to $2 million per episode, according to Charlie. And he feels profoundly underpaid. Poor dear. Poor impoverished dear. Considering he makes more in one week than who nations of people earn in one year--or is that ten years?--I'm going to say he's a tad out of touch with reality. He'll only return to the show if he's paid $3 million an episode, for all the emotional wear and tear his producers have, allegedly, put him through.]

But it’s also about apathy. Even now — after Mr. Sheen began carpet-bombing his bosses in radio rants, prompting CBS to shut down production on the show — observers still seem more entertained than outraged, tuning in to see him appear on every talk show on the planet and coming up with creative Internet memes based on his most colorful statements. And while his self-abuses are endlessly discussed, his abuse of women is barely broached. 

Our inertia is not for lack of evidence. In 1990, he accidentally shot his fiancée at the time, the actress Kelly Preston, in the arm. (The engagement ended soon after.) In 1994 he was sued by a college student who alleged that he struck her in the head after she declined to have sex with him. (The case was settled out of court.) Two years later, a sex film actress, Brittany Ashland, said she had been thrown to the floor of Mr. Sheen’s Los Angeles house during a fight. (He pleaded no contest and paid a fine.) 

In 2006, his wife at the time, the actress Denise Richards, filed a restraining order against him, saying Mr. Sheen had shoved and threatened to kill her. In December 2009, Mr. Sheen’s third wife, Brooke Mueller, a real-estate executive, called 911 after Mr. Sheen held a knife to her throat. (He pleaded guilty and was placed on probation.) Last October, another actress in sex films, Capri Anderson, locked herself in a Plaza Hotel bathroom after Mr. Sheen went on a rampage. (Ms. Anderson filed a criminal complaint but no arrest was made.) And on Tuesday, Ms. Mueller requested a temporary restraining orderagainst her former husband, alleging that he had threatened to cut her head off, “put it in a box and send it to your mom.” (The order was granted, and the couple’s twin sons were quickly removed from his home.) “Lies,” Mr. Sheen told People magazine. 

The privilege afforded wealthy white [Julian's note: his ethnic heritage is also Latino] men like Charlie Sheen may not be a particularly new point, but it’s an important one nonetheless. Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears are endlessly derided for their extracurricular meltdowns and lack of professionalism on set; the R&B star Chris Brown was made a veritable pariah after beating up his equally, if not more, famous girlfriend, the singer Rihanna. Their careers have all suffered, and understandably so. 

This hasn’t been the case with Mr. Sheen, whose behavior has been repeatedly and affectionately dismissed as the antics of a “bad boy” (see: any news article in the past 20 years), a “rock star” (see: Piers Morgan, again) and a “rebel” (see: Andrea Canning’s “20/20” interview on Tuesday). He has in essence, achieved a sort of folk-hero status; on Wednesday, his just-created Twitter account hit a million followers, setting a Guinness World Record. 

But there’s something else at work here: the seeming imperfection of Mr. Sheen’s numerous accusers. The women are of a type, which is to say, highly unsympathetic. Some are sex workers — pornographic film stars and escorts — whose compliance with churlish conduct is assumed to be part of the deal. (For the record: It is not.) 

Others, namely Ms. Richards and Ms. Mueller, are less-famous starlets or former “nobodies” whose relationships with Mr. Sheen have been disparaged as purely sexual and transactional. The women reside on a continuum in which injuries are assumed and insults are expected.

“Gold diggers,” “prostitutes” and “sluts” are just some of the epithets lobbed at the women Mr. Sheen has chosen to spend his time with. Andy Cohen, a senior executive at Bravo and a TV star in his own right, referred to the actor’s current companions, Natalie Kenly and Bree Olson, as “whores” on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on Tuesday. Arianna Huffington sarcastically tweeted that Mr. Sheen’s girlfriends “symbolize modesty, loyalty and good taste.” Mr. Sheen’s own nickname for Ms. Kenly and Ms. Olson — “the goddesses” — is in its own way indicative of their perceived interchangeability and disposability. 

It’s these sorts of explicit and implicit value judgments that underscore our contempt for women who are assumed to be trading on their sexuality. [Julian's note: Let's be clear. Charlie is doing little else other than trading on his sexuality and his fame, which is largely currently due to him trading on his sexuality.] A woman’s active embrace of the fame monster or participation in the sex industry, we seem to say, means that she compromises her right not to be assaulted, let alone humiliated, insulted or degraded; it’s part of the deal. The promise of a modern Cinderella ending — attention, fame, the love and savings account of a rich man — is always the assumed goal. 

Objectification and abuse, it follows, is not only an accepted occupational hazard for certain women, but something that men like Mr. Sheen have earned the right to indulge in. (Mr. Sheen reportedly once said that he didn’t pay prostitutes for the sex; he paid them “to leave.”) One can’t help but think that his handlers might have moved more quickly to rein in their prized sitcom stallion if his victims’ motivations weren’t assumed to be purely mercenary. (Or if they enjoyed parity and respect with regards to their age, influence and earning power.) 

These assumptions — about women, about powerful men, about bad behavior — have roots that go way back but find endorsement in today’s unscripted TV culture. Indeed, it’s difficult for many to discern any difference between Mr. Sheen’s real-life, round-the-clock, recorded outbursts and the sexist narratives devised by reality television producers, in which women are routinely portrayed as backstabbing floozies, and dreadful behavior by males is explained away as a side effect of unbridled passion or too much pilsner. 

As Jennifer Pozner points out in her recent book “Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty-Pleasure TV,” misogyny is embedded within the DNA of the reality genre. One of the very first millennial shows, in fact, “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire,” was notable in that it auctioned off what producers called the “biggest prize of all”: a supposedly wealthy B-movie writer named Rick Rockwell — who was later revealed to have had a restraining order filed against him by a woman he’d threatened to kill. According to Ms. Pozner, the reaction of one of the producers of “Multimillionaire” was, “Great! More publicity!” 

On reality television, gratuitous violence and explicit sexuality are not only entertainment but a means to an end. These enthusiastically documented humiliations are positioned as necessities in the service of some final prize or larger benefit — a marriage proposal, a modeling contract, $1 million. But they also make assault and abasement seem commonplace, acceptable behavior, tolerated by women and encouraged in men. 

Which brings us back to Mr. Morgan, who, like many of Mr. Sheen’s past and present press enablers, showed little to no urgency in addressing the question of violence against women. “You’re entitled to behave however the hell you like as long as you don’t scare the horses and the children,” Mr. Morgan said at one point. Scaring women, it seems, was just fine. 

During the interview, a series of images played on a continuous loop. One of them was a defiant and confident-looking Charlie Sheen, in a mug shot taken after his 2009 domestic violence arrest. 

Anna Holmes is a writer and the creator of the Web site Jezebel.

Toward An Ethic and Practice of Responsible Trans Identities and Radical Trans Politics. Featuring Dean Spade on Vimeo

Dean Spade: Trickle-Up Social Justice from BCRW Videos on Vimeo.


A lot of us who are trans are feeling and being silenced in trans community and beyond it for our views about what it means to be trans and for proposing political agendas that aren't centered on promoting the rights only of the most privileged members of our communities.

Some trans people are not allowed to have a voice online or offline (well, unless we have our own blogs or forums); or when we speak our voices are silenced or conversation is shut down immediately; or when our voices are not silenced they are simply written off as "transphobic" as if we aren't trans and don't know when we're promoting responsible and ethical behavior in our own community. The charge that too many of the most vocal trans voices and perspectives (which are not necessarily representative of trans people generally) are misogynistic and antifeminist seems to have about as much clout and impact as when feminists tell men they are being sexist.

See, for more:

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/12/transgender-politics-of-shaming-women.html

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2011/01/questioning-m2f-entitlements-that.html

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2011/02/who-gets-to-define-women-only-space.html

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2011/01/questions-and-challenges-to-my-gay.html

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2011/01/response-to-transphobic-and-racially.html

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/12/red-without-blue-since-when-did-lgbt.html

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/12/trying-not-to-hit-below-belt-tricky.html

I'd argue there's a lot of transphobia, racism, and misogyny in the voices and positions promoted by our most elite and privileged trans spokespeople. Far too many trans people who do have a voice online are afraid to call out the privilege and the bigotry for fear of being rejected by the community as transphobes, or whatever other terms are useful in silencing people with radical points of view. What that means, of course, is that those people who are most negatively effected and oppressed by such views--namely, trans people of color across gender, and women across race--are put, yet again, in the position to speak up against this institutionalised oppressive bigotry. The burden for speaking out will usually fall to those who are most harmed and whose energy is often needed to survive day to day, finding ways and means for such survival.

I'd argue one appropriate use of privilege is to speak out in support of and in alliance with the most marginalised, oppressed people in any given community. White conservative to liberal class-privileged, education-privileged, profession-privileged, region-privileged M2F and F2M trans spokespeople are not in any alliance with any radical activists, feminist or otherwise. Nor do they appear to believe in being fully accountable to radical feminists. They appear to hold great disdain for radical feminists, in fact. in this contempt, they are very much like patriarchal men with a glaring exemption: patriarchal het men will beat the shit out of any visibly trans or queer person, and any woman, if they have the opportunity to do so and the reasonable assurance they won't be arrested for it.

I ought not have to warn you to sit down before reading what comes next: het communities, queer communities, and trans communities are usually and generally very racist, misogynistic places. They are not more or less racist and misogynistic than any other community. They also tend to be very conservative to liberal places, politically. Not more or less conservative or liberal than any other places, with the possible exception of places that pride themselves on being ultra-conservative, such as militantly conservative and extremist, terroristic, and fascistic corporate Christian communities.

For the purposes of this post's clarity, and to save my fingers from typing terms like "women raised as girls", I'm going to use the spellings "womyn" and "wimmin" to refer to radical women of color, lesbian women of color, and radical feminist women of any color who are not transgender or transsexual. (Womyn is singular. Wimmin is plural.) These terms are used here also to mean "politically aware women", "women who are conscious of patriarchy and white supremacy as forces of misogynist destruction and oppression"; and women who are not trans. For examples of this usage, please see here (and see the film too, if you haven't yet!! It's awesome):

http://www.blackwomynfilm.com/Home.html

and

http://www.michfest.com/

On this blog, I generally use the term "trans" to mean either someone who is transsexual, transgender, or intergender, and also for anyone who does not identify as a man or as a woman. It ought not be assumed that when I use the term trans it means only the following: F2M post-op transsexuals; M2F post-op transsexuals; or F2M and M2F-identified people. It should go without say, but does not go without saying it over and over again, that most trans people are none of the above. Most of us are not "post-op" for one thing. Most of us are non-op and regardless of what our wishes are for surgeries, and what our values are regarding the medical industrial complex, we do not have access to that particularly racist, misogynistic, and anti-trans institution's practices. An institution which promotes "us" as only M2F and F2M is oppressive to us. A corporate media empire that does the same is also deeply oppressive to us.

Some conservative to liberal trans people and their supporters have tried to make a case that I do not believe trans people are oppressed at all, or that we are not discriminated against. I think we are, but not in the ways spoken of by the most elite and privileged spokespeople in our community. I think, as I've noted elsewhere on this blog, that many trans people are oppressed for the same reasons wimmin are oppressed: because they are not men, and because womanhood is socially despised and denigrated, and also assaulted and dominated by men. As Cerien has made clear in an upcoming post, "cisgender" is a very problematic (erroneous, unethical, and oppressive) term, as it assumes most trans people are identifiable as such, and have chosen to have surgery. Again, most of us have not.

I'll focus on four trans people I know of, for the moment. These people are not all white, are not predominantly middle class or wealthier, and are not F2M or M2F post-op transsexuals. We are, however, all of us, transgender/intergender. We support radical social change, not organised around the viewpoints and perspectives of the most privileged people in any community. We are activists. We do not support conservative and liberal agendas for making room in racist, capitalist patriarchies for "us". We support the dismantling and radical transformation of all institutions and industries that harm people globally, not just "us". We do this with careful attention to the needs of our people. We do this without promoting bigotry against our people. And, we recognise that most of "our people" are completely indistinguishable from "non-trans people".

Most trans people are visually and otherwise indistinguishable from non-trans people. What that means for a term like "cisgender" is that most trans people ARE cisgender. And many "cisgender" people do not have "cisgender privileges". Just ask genderqueer people, butch women, femme men, and many other people who are assumed to be "doing it wrong" when it comes to "being a gendered person".

This is one white elephant in our room that once named, seems to cause the most conservative and liberal trans spokespeople to start running away or verbally throwing stones at those who name it. Speaking now for myself, but with awareness that I am far from alone, I do not support transsexual M2F people publicly and politically identifying as women-with-rights-and-privileges that wimmin don't have. For anyone out there quoting me, make sure you get that sentence exactly right. Because you're likely to assume it is saying a lot that it isn't. If you're not sure what it is and isn't saying, please ask.

As for F2M people, I encourage that population to be fully accountable to all radical wimmin, including, especially, radical lesbian feminist wimmin. That most non-trans men will not accept you doesn't mean that you have a right to expect wimmin to do so.

The call for "acceptance" and "inclusion" and "accommodation" by trans people ought not be aimed disproportionately at wimmin, or be directed at wimmin at all; to place this expectation and demand on wimmin is to practice a very conservative form of patriarchal politics and ethics.

In trans community, offline and online, in the West, I've seen little to no recognition of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy as forces used to destroy women. I've seen little to no recognition of these ideologies-in-practice, in society, posing as "what society naturally is". One exceptional person well worth noting: Dean Space, whose excellent radical analysis is available to be both seen and heard on Vimeo, *here*. 

Something missing in trans community, as far as I can tell, is an open discussion about our responsibilities to wimmin. Yes, to wimmin. Because our oppression, like gay men's, like lesbian wimmin's, like many people of color across gender, is rooted in patriarchal misogyny. That's not the only root, but it is surely one of the thicker ones. And to advocate for it, acquiesce to it, or pretend it isn't a problem for us, is just plain unethical, wrong, and dangerous.

I'd like to put forth the position that "women" are not an oppressor class vis a vis trans people. Men are. And those few trans activists, mostly M2F people with male privileges--not at all representative of trans community, not *at all* representative of pro-feminist trans activists (see Dean Spade on Vimeo), or, well, my blog--are not speaking for me or any trans people I know, ALL of whom are feminist/profeminist and not insistent or demanding that trans people should ***have the right of access*** to womyn/wimmin-only spaces.

I am calling out the classist, racist, and very patriarchal male privileges of some M2F trans people thinking that those very few privileged trans people's views should trump, be statused and esteemed, above wimmin's views and experiences of womanhood AND trans politics. If wimmin find our political projects to be misogynistic, we owe it to wimmin to listen carefully and respectfully, not jump to some conclusion that their very objection makes them transphobic. This is what is currently done, generally, and it is anti-trans and anti-womyn both. It means we create a very privileged wall around ourselves wherein we decide what Truth is, we decide what is misogyny, we decide what is transphobia, as if we don't, each of us, struggle with all those things quite often, if not all the time. How it is we think a few very privileged people would be the wisest among us to name what is oppressive in our community is a feat of mental magic that is as remarkable as it is disturbing.

A topic for us to discuss is "responsible identity in trans community". I think there are a lot of us who choose, basically, to identify as "transgender" or "intergender" and who leave it at that, never claiming "to be a man" or "to be a woman". That's what Dean Spade does; born female-assigned-at-birth, he presents as trans, dressing in more stereotypically "men's" clothes, for comfort--emotional and otherwise. I find that a far more ethically pro-womyn and pro-feminist position than simply reinforcing the binary/hierarchy with notions that people can ONLY be one or the other, and so, then, it would follow that ALL trans people ARE one or the other. Many trans people I know (for political reasons or for other reasons) reject that imperative from the elitist spokespeople who grapped the mic and won't let us speak about our own experiences and ways of understanding ourselves.

This politic of promoting the existence of only men or women, fitting trans people into one or the other group, is utterly oppressive to intersex people and intergender people. Also oppressive to intersex people is a politic that promotes surgery and body modification as a solution to our structural problems. Eradicating the gender binary/hierarchy ought to be our aim; not simply fitting ourselves into an oppressive gender regime. I accept that almost all people, het or not, queer or not, trans or not, intersex or not, will necessarily accommodate the dominant system in some ways. We have few options for rejecting those values and demands entirely. But that form of survival-accommodation need not comprise the core of our political will and movement.

Trans experience is very diverse. On this blog I have called out some women and men for promoting ideas that being "trans" means being M2F post-op and misogynistic, for example.  But given who controls the stage of trans discourse, who handles the mic, it is no wonder that so many wimmin do come to the conclusion that "trans" means only that. It is also many wimmin's experience that some trans people--the ones identifiable as such--are misogynists and anti-feminist. As are, of course, most people generally. I don't assume that trans people will be or even should be less misogynistic than, say, people who aren't trans. I would like to think that gay and lesbian people are less homophobic and lesbophobic that het people, but that's not an assumption that tends to match up well with reality. So it goes for trans folks. And anyone else who is socially despised or grossly misunderstood.

This is all partly to say that, yes, of course trans people, when socially identifiable as such, are discriminated against and oppressed. But the question is this: what are we oppressed FOR and AS? We are oppressed FOR not being enough of what white het male supremacist people and their values and institutions tell us we should be, and we are discriminated against if and when we appear to be trans, gay, lesbian, or, often enough, too feminine or a womyn. We're not discriminated against or oppressed for other reasons, AS trans people, if we're identifiable socially as trans people. And, another point I've made on this blog is that most trans people who ARE visibly trans, are not read as "trans" as much as we're read as genderqueer or as women, or as men who are trying to pretend to be women. Gay men in drag are beaten not for being gay, exactly, but for being men who are appearing to be a woman. The beating and harassment is directed at men who appear to value looking like what stereotypical "women" look like. Most men's drag (whether the men are het, bi, or gay) is about as accurate a depiction of what wimmin look like a white minstrel show performers' depictions and impersonations of Black people. Drag is a profoundly racist, classist, misogynistic practice.  But don't tell that to gay men who value it or you'll be called homophobic. Never mind that it's grossly racist and misogynistic. White boys will do what white boys want to do, whatever age they are.

So it goes with the white, elitist, privileged, academic pseudo-spokespeople for the trans community. They not only don't give a shit about supporting radical feminism, lesbian feminism, or any other progressive to radical social change movements and practices. They actively oppose feminism, anti-racism, and anti-capitalist efforts and campaigns. They are socially conservative, appearing at times to be liberal. This only demonstrates that the line between patriarchal white conservatism and patriarchal white liberalism is far thinner than either group wants to admit.

Being trans doesn't usually mean we dress in any kind of non-traditional drag. It doesn't usually mean we seek out hormones or surgery. It doesn't have to mean we support the gender hierarchy posing as a binary. It ought not mean we support CRAP. And I welcome effective organisation of our voices of radical dissent, into books, into videos, and into the dominant media and medical establishment, if possible. It's well past time to take the mic out of the hands of the most conservative and liberal members of our community; they do not speak for all of us. And their virulent misogyny and anti-feminism needs to be called out, not from the audience but from the stage.

Some Truth about Woman-hating: A Perspective. On trans realities, pro-feminist politics, and the necessity of digging out the root problem

image is from here

When does a lie morph into a truth? When privileged people call the lie a truth. One example: How did it come to pass that so many misogynist men think Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon both said "all heterosexual sex is rape"? (Neither activist ever has.) It happened because the voices that called out the lie as a lie didn't have weight against the voices perpetuating  the lie (men, and the women who defend men's right to be misogynistic). For the history, see *here*. The lie exists for a specific  reason--to denigrate and marginalise the perspectives of two white radical feminists who speak truth to male power. Here's another example:

There was a conversation in a facebook group prior to me being invited into it. There, a person named Elyse wrote whatever is copied and pasted below in quotation marks, some of which appears to me to misrepresent what my political positions are on various topics related to trans existence. I am responding. My responses, here, are in bold. Better to clear this up now, before some anti-radical/anti-feminist queer folks (or non-queer folks) get hold of it and promote it as an example of Julian's transphobia. (Cough.) What I am making a case for, here, is choosing language to describe how oppressed that is gender-based is rooted in the patriarchally protected violence sometimes called "woman-hating" and "male dominance" by some of us.

Elyse wrote: "Kit, with all due respect (and you know I have a great deal of respect for you), it is not your place or anyone else's to assign a gender identity to your friend or any other human being."

I do support non-trans women naming male privileged people where and when they are present, especially if their male privilege is demonstrated by denying they have any.

"Transpeople can be trans without having had surgery ...- their actual genitalia is irrelevant."

Elyse, I'm in that category. I'm trans/intergender.

"Frankly, I am shocked that both you and 'Julian' have implied (or said outright, in Julian's case) that discrimination and oppression against transpeople is invalid and is not a serious problem."

Please quote where I say that. I don't believe I've ever made that statement on my blog or anywhere else and I really don't appreciate you misrepresenting what I've said or written. My work is available to be copied and pasted, so please quote the part where I say there's no such thing as discrimination against trans people. I know there is discrimination against trans people. And, just curious, why did you put my name in quotes? I realise there are two Julians here: hey Julian/Juline!!

"I'm also confused by the assertion that people who are concerned about the oppression of transpeople are not concerned with misogyny and sexism in general. In my experience, this is not the case at all."

Again, Elyse, I welcome you to quote me directly rather than summarising points. If you're only speaking to something Kit said, please make that clear.

"The truth is, male people pretty much give up their male privilege the moment they start 'acting like a woman' or presenting themselves as female. In many male circles, this is considered far worse than just being born female in the first place, and makes the transperson an easy target for persecution."

The trans people I know disagree with that statement. For one thing, male privilege is not just based on what we look like. Nothing demonstrates male privilege more in gay circles than gay men thinking they have a right to dress in a form of drag and call that "looking and acting like a woman". It's misogyny and it's male privilege, even if some men in "women's" drag never dress like men. The same with trans folks raised with male privilege. The same with folks raised not-poor. The class privilege doesn't go away just because someone becomes poor who was raised middle class, for example. I do get that anyone who "appears to be a woman" will likely be treated the way women are mistreated. Do you honestly think males who choose to appear to be women are treated worse by men than are women who have never, ever been male?

Appearing to be a woman, if you're male, doesn't amount to giving up all male privileges. Some of those privileges are embedded behaviorally, and in attitudes, and in practices used to put down women, more than they are handed over socially and then taken away by non-trans men. And no trans person I know is so callous as to claim that the rape of a trans person is "considered far worse" than the rape of a non-trans woman. And I'd like to know who, exactly, is going around "in many circles" making such a grossly misogynist claim. What "circles" are you talking about, exactly?

And your "pretty much" statement needs to be called out for what it is: misogynistic as hell.  Any woman raised as a girl has never had the male privileges that M2F trans people who choose to appear as women still retain to various degrees. Also, most people who are trans are not visibly transgender. Do you get that? Who are you speaking for and about, anyway? How do you come to the conclusions you state, that most transgender people (many of whom are neither M2F or F2M and who are not identifiable as "transgender" or "transsexual") are "an easy target for persecution" when girls and women, readily identified as such by men, from birth to death, are always targeted for persecution?

"Perhaps this is just because I'm a younger, 3rd/4th-wave feminist who has a lot of experience with trans issues (and a number of people in her social sphere who are trans and genderqueer), but although I agree with certain things he says (the quote about liberalism is great), I had to stop reading the post about halfway through because I found it so absurd and offensive."

Which passages were you offended by, Elyse?

"'Non-academic transpeople' may not know how to define or label the oppression they experience, but that doesn't mean it's not there."

Are you assuming I don't know people who are trans? I'm in a trans group. I have known trans people for years. And the trans people I know know other trans people who do lots of street-level social justice work, social service work, and anti-bigotry work. And the word from all of us is this: these terms some academics and uber-privileged bloggers are using only exist in those elite places. They have no meaning outside of those places. That's an observation. There's a trans person I know of who translates letters from one language to another for trans folks in prison, many of whom are raped there. He's never heard of the term "cisgender" in his life. So that tells me that some of these terms are elitist and not coming from the ground-level/front-line activists. That's my point. I welcome your response.

My perspective, to be clear, is this: transsexuality and transgender people exist. If they are identified as such, or mistaken for being gay or lesbian, or mistaken for being a woman who isn't lesbian, you can bet there will be plenty of het non-trans men at the ready to harass and assault them/us. This doesn't mean that what happens to non-trans women is less or more grievous and unjust than what happens to trans people when what happens is discrimination, harassment, and rape. In fact, the only population of people I know who, for four decades, have taken prison rape seriously as a crime against humanity are radical feminists. Not queer people. Not "progressive" men. Not "radical" men. And the liberal men I know joke about it all the damn time. And the conservative men, and many conservative women too, are all for the expansion of a prison industrial complex which allows police forces and the criminal justice system to routinely and systematically arrest and jail Black, Brown, Indigenous women and men, poor women and men, trans and non-trans people in systems of prostitution, and trans people, the structurally most vulnerable and disenfranchised of whom are poor and of color. And female.

What women experience that is oppressive and dehumanising ought not be seen as being better off than what trans people of any gender experience by way of marginalisation, discrimination, and violence. To do so is fucked up, imo. And misogynistic too. Being raised as a girl and then as a woman isn't a structural location "above" trans people. Trans people experience much of what we do because of misogyny--the misogyny that targets girls and women all the time. So too do gay men experience forms of that misogyny. So too do lesbian women. Misogyny is the root of all of it. So creating new categories of misogyny only obfuscates the issue and makes the political project seem far more complex than it is: uproot and end misogyny and male supremacy. Where there is white supremacy and racism, end that too, because that's also misogyny, and it's also inhumane. Where genocide is happening, challenge the perpetrators and end that too, because it is also gynocide, and it is inhumane. After that, let's meet and discuss what gender means and who is more oppressed.

Oppressed people suffer more than their oppressors, structurally and systemically speaking. The pimps, slavers, rapists, batterers, and corporate CEOs don't suffer more than prostitutes, slaves, the raped, the battered, and workers who aren't paid a living wage. That's my experience and that's my truth. I came to that conclusion based on watching class-privileged whites and men register objections about their conditions while completely ignoring the conditions of girls and women of color locally, regionally, and worldwide.

Elyse, what girls and women of all colors endure at the hands of men is unspeakably cruel and sadistically callous. The stories I carry in my heart would chill ice. I will not pretend, in any way, that what white women, Asian women, Brown women, Indigenous women, and Black women experience is "less horrific" than anything else on Earth that is horrid and inhumane. What men do to girls and women across the globe is, for me, an atrocity incomparable in scope and depth; it is the most vile, disgusting, far-too-tolerated, well-protected mass crime known to man-unkind that is not only centuries old, but old as recorded history. To try and minimise that monumental on-going atrocity by making some case that some people with some male privileges are hurt worse only tells me you must be in denial about, or simply do not know, what many millions of girls and women around the world experience that is so horrific that most people who don't experience it directly can't even believe it happens--regularly, daily, normally, unremarkably. Even the perpetrators don't understand the effect, the harm, the horror. It happens, every minute of every day, to females who are girls and women. Please stop trying to make it seem as if some people with some male privileges are treated worse than that.

I have received a response, from a man named Norman. I don't know Norman. What I find true about him is his responses seem to lack reactivity. I suspect this is because he is distant enough from experiencing misogyny against his body and overall being that he is not so triggered as many of us are when we encounter it. Nonetheless, I appreciate his way of engaging and say so below. What follows is from the facebook discussion.

• Norman Lewis ‎"Please quote where I say that."
  
  I think this could be construed in that light:
  
  "I'd also like to note that terms like cis-sexism, trans-misogyny, and cisgender privilege are constructions of Academic writers and elitist bloggers."
  
  Although I admit that I could be reading it incorrectly.
  

  5 hours ago
• 
  

  Norman Lewis ‎"I do get that anyone who "appears to be a woman" will likely be treated the way women are mistreated. But that doesn't amount to giving up all male privileges. Some of them are behavioral more than they are handed over socially."
  
  Well said.
  

  5 hours ago 
• 
  

  Norman Lewis If words like cissexism and cisgender have no meaning outside of academic elite, then what words *are* used to construct the framework that relates all of the individual acts of violence and discrimination against trans people? This might be where the confusion lies; your blog post seemed to dismiss the only words some of us have heard of that delineate the social structures that descriminate/oppress trans people, without seeming to replace them with alternatives.
  

  5 hours ago
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  Julian Real ‎@Norman - First, I truly appreciate the care and thoughtfulness of your replies. I wish more people online showed this level of respectful engagement. Second, I fill out my response in my blog post, so please check that out and feel free to comment there. I welcome your contributions to my blog! Third, the quote posted above in your first comment to me is not stating that I believe trans people who are visible socially as "not what women are supposed to look like, and not what men are supposed to look like"--according to oppressor-dudes, don't experience discrimination. It is a critique of elitist language that is liberal, not radical: that attends to branches of a problem and not the root. Similarly, I don't think an important term is "anti-radical feminism" or "anti-radical profeminism". I don't think it is critical that the term "heterosexism" exists. More next comment.
  

  about a minute ago · 
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  Julian Real No one in my family has ever heard the term and would have little to no idea what such a term means. What's important that they understand is the way they make me feel like being a gay male is less human or less "natural" than their delusions about what being "straight" is. And what heterosexuality is for: for men to control and dominate women intimately. And how when one female member of my family says "Does this hairstyle make me look d*key?", it is grossly misogynistic, not just to lesbians but to *herself* as well. She is expressing self-hatred that is projected outward on some "other" group of women she believes she is not part of. The point is that lesbians and she are women, and men hate and subordinate women as a class. I think what the English-language terms describe that are at issue here, that are used by some race-, class-privileged people, are manifestations of misogyny--colloquially, in English: woman-hating. The systematised, institutionalised disrespect of women by men in the form of social/sexual subordination, and the denigration and degradation of all experiences considered "womanly, feminine, effeminate, girly" is the issue here.
  

  about a minute ago
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  Julian Real Catharine A. MacKinnon once wrote that most women who do radical feminist activism don't and won't ever call themselves radical feminists. They also won't even identify something some academics and privileged activists call "heteronormativity" or "heteropatriarchy". I hear you stating that there is a need for terms that specifically describe discrimination against trans people. I'm calling it this: disrespect and contempt for women directed against trans people if they are identified as trans; if you want a short-hand way of saying that, you are, of course, entitled to create and use one, or perpetuate the use of those terms that some region-, education-, race-, class-, and in some cases also gender-privileged people have already created. We--trans people--are discriminated against because patriarchal men want oppressive order; want gender to be a political hierarchy primarily; want women to be women and men to be men, as patriarchal men define and ruthlessly enforce those terms-in-reality. I'm calling it "male domination" directed at trans people. In this way, we keep the focus on the core issue, and stop pretending that the group "women" are "the oppressor" in the gender war that is men's against women and all people "womanly, feminine, effeminate, and girly". Trans people who present socially as men, when visibly targetable as "not men", are oppressed by men because they aren't seen as men. Those trans people socially perceived as women by men are oppressed by men because that group of trans people are perceived to be women. That's a truth I claim as socially honest and radically relevant.
  

  about a minute ago

 To be continued.