Re: [minor patch] Amend CoC

[Tissevert]

Hi,

Can't help but chiming in because this conversation is great and I'm really
glad we're having it as a community. Taylan, please don't be embarrassed you
started it, the number of replies is witness to the interest it sparked. It
didn't blow up, it bloomed : )

I find it all the more interesting to read in the same message you quoting de
Beauvoir and summon "female anatomy". Though de Beauvoir's feminism is very
much first wave, she wrote important things that still have an echo in today's
understanding of sex and gender, because she early understood that her female
condition had little to do with the shape of her organs, as also appears in the
first part of her biography, "Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée".

I totally understand your confusion about being called transphobic for trying
to separate gender and sex, and really I think this is not about distributing
awards for feminism or punishment for transphobia. I'm pretty sure at some
point transgender activism had to argue in the direction you remember, I'd have
said longer ago but the specifics aren't that important: the reasons I see for
that is that of course our common understanding of concepts evolves as time
passes, but also that in term of communication some messages are more or less
easy to get out into the wider social awareness depending on the era. I do
remember, too, reading about "gender" as a form of "soft, rewritable sex",
something additional that goes on top of sex, which would be a sort of "natural
built-in" but I no longer think this is accurate or useful.

If you read other authors from the third wave such as Judith Butler, one of the
major result they've discovered is that if gender is a social construct, it's
not something artificial that would go above a physical reality that would be
sex: on the contrary, sex too is a social construct, built to erase the natural
diversity which would contradict the social construct that gender is. Which is
why though transgender people have always faced so much friction to get control
of their bodies, intersex people are forced surgeries much too early to even be
able to form an opinion, let alone give any consent, or why cisgender teenagers
are almost stuffed with hormones each time their body slightly deviates from
what is considered the "natural" characteristics of their "sex" (each time a
girl gets her mensies too late, or too much hair, or if a boy has breast
developing during his adolescence), while people actively organize to make sure
transgender teens never get access to something that might relieve their
dysphoria.

Gender does indeed differ from sex. But it's not something additional, it is a
generalization of sex, it's the framework used by society to justify sex as a
natural evidence, and it's striking I think to see how consistent with de
Beauvoir's writing that result is, almost half a century afterwards. Now gender
identity is already covered in the CoC, so it would be redundant to add "sex" in
my opinion.

You seem to claim that some "natural true woman" (again, this is a caricature
but it's not an attack against you, it's merely to get the cat out of the bag)
would still be excluded by mentioning only gender and not sex in the CoC.
Beyond the fact that we see again at play the asymetry that plagues this
discussion (why do trans woman attract so much interest ? why not worry that
poor cisgender males are going to feel unprotected by this CoC, if only trans
men are protected by this "fake gender" thing ? can I harass a man within this
community as soon as I'm sure he's cisgender ?), we see again the dichotomy
between inclusion and personal liberty, which has been invoked in some other
replies to this thread. I happen to be a lesbian. An acronym to refer to all
gay people has been in the past "LGBT". What if something says that it welcomes
not only "us gays" but also generally queer people, intersex and others by
means of the "LGBTQI+" acronym ?  If I, as a lesbian, decided that by welcoming
"those people" who aren't like me, I'm being excluded because I'm "not like
them", and because I, as a lesbian, suffer a specific oppression that other
queer people don't face, that'd be my problem (and also queer- or
intersexphobic, but that's not the point). Now if a code of conduct was
modified to accomodate my hatred, and recognized that, okay, we like them, but
they're not you know "really" gay like I am (again, I'm sorry for writing so
many bigoted things, I hope I'm not hurting anyone's feeling because I don't
believe a single word of it, this is just for the sake of the argument), now
that would be a very hurtful and violent CoC. Likewise I know some cisgender
people don't understand or like the "cisgender" adjective, but you can't remove
it without implying "you, know, truly of the gender they claim, not like those
transgender people". And that I think is not acceptable in our community.

I hope to have clarified why the current formulation is already as inclusive as
can be and to have reassured you that there is no middle between two
incompatible sides where to meet.

Kind regards,

Tissevert


Le Sun, 20 Feb 2022 23:45:04 +0100,
Taylan Kammer <taylan.kammer@gmail.com> a écrit :

> On 20.02.2022 22:02, Liliana Marie Prikler wrote:
> > 
> > "Sex is distinct from gender" is a common transphobic talking
> > point. 
> 
> Like I said I don't actually want to argue, but I really feel the need
> to point out that what you seem to consider a transphobic talking
> point is seen as a fundamental principle of feminism by many others,
> and that long predates the contemporary transgender movement.
> 
>   "One is not born, but rather becomes, woman. No biological, psychic,
>   or economic destiny defines the figure that the human female takes
> on in society; it is civilization as a whole that elaborates this
>   intermediary product between the male and the eunuch that is called
>   feminine."
>     -- Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949), 2010 translation
> 
> This is one of the most iconic passages from the book (especially the
> first sentence on its own), and the book is considered to be pretty
> much one of the most important works in feminist history.
> 
> Given that, I find it somewhat baffling that distinguishing between
> sex and gender is now apparently considered transphobic.  (This isn't
> the first time I'm hearing that claim, but I was under the impression
> that it's a very fringe position.)
> 
> Actually, I could swear that only about 5 years ago, "sex and gender
> are *not* the same" was a very common thing transgender activists
> would say. I might actually have learned that principle from trans
> activists before reading up on feminist literature.
> 
> Anyhow, all that is only tangential to the topic at hand.  In context
> of this topic, I want to mainly highlight one thing, which is that
> regardless of what one thinks about gender as a social construct,
> gender identity and expression, transgender identities, and so on,
> there is undeniably a number of ways in which people born with female
> anatomy have been and continue to be mistreated throughout history
> and around the planet.  To acknowledge that has very little to do with
> transgender identities, and at no point did I or will I argue that the
> CoC should for instance exclude "gender identity" from the list.
> 
> Is it possible that we would meet in the middle on this topic and
> acknowledge both perspectives?
>