Misogynist trans-hating: Neither radical nor feminist.

Some people want us to stop using the term “TERF” (“Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist”). I think there are indeed good options for replacing “TERF.” I suggest perhaps we should go with “Misogynist Trans-Hating Person” which we could shorten to “MTraHP” if we need to say it out loud. This solves a core problem in “TERF,” which is the idea that trans-hating is either radical or feminist.

I’ve been arguing with people who hate and distrust trans women for longer than the term “TERF” has existed. Many of those arguments were during the decade in which I was heavily involved with community radio, because I programmed women’s music shows and was part of a feminist radio collective that did interviews and news. That decade happened to coincide with some of the conflicts around whether the Michigan Women’s Music Festival should exclude trans women. If you cared about music, culture, and gender oppression, there was not a way to be present in those scenes and not participating in those conversations.

I came into feminism through radical feminism as it was articulated by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, and there are still so many things I value about my foremothers’ insights. First, I value the understanding that people experience harm because we are socially organized into groups, or classes, in ways that have real material consequences; women are oppressed as a class, and men as a class benefit from gender oppression. Second, the insight that there is no such thing as an innate gender remains really vital to me – women are not more nurturing, delicate, kind, or whatever because of some internal or biological command. Third, I will always love and find inspiration in the insight that we can fundamentally transform social relations, that the world does not have to be this way.

I moved away from the kind of feminism espoused by MacKinnon beginning from learning more about her role in the anti-pornography case R. v. Butler, and its effects on lesbian and queer erotica. I spent a lot of time thinking about the definition there of pornography and its results, and then reflecting more deeply on the question of how sex and sexuality play out if we define masculinity as violating women and eroticizing it and femininity as being violable. The debates about excluding trans women from women’s spaces were clarifying, and I began to worry about the ways that people calling themselves feminists allied themselves with conservatives and the religious right. Directly allying with people who wanted to control women’s bodies and movement seemed to contradict the political force of what I understood as radical feminism. Now I have criticisms of the ways that those early feminist texts were extremely racist, and the ways that the politics have aligned to materially harm sex workers. Those are longer and more complex stories, though they’re connected.

The current manifestation of trans-hating billing itself as “radically feminist” is both evil and internally incoherent. It is internally incoherent because it simultaneously argues that there is no inherent femininity or masculinity and that the roots of male supremacy lay in biological sex. It argues that gender is imposed on us as a social relation with material realities and that biology determines our place in those social relations in ways that we can never transform. It argues that gender relations can and must change and that no one ever assigned “male” can be part of liberation. It is evil because hurts people as a necessary outgrowth of its view.

And this is how current manifestations of trans-hating are neither radical nor feminist. The notion of “radical” names the possibility that we can fundamentally transform the deepest structures and the most ordinary manifestations of oppression – we can go to the root. It’s not radical to drivel away about patriarchy, dominant ideologies, and systemic class oppression and then to pivot to examining my genitalia as a way to determine my reproductive capacity. That’s exactly what sexist conservative patriarchs do! And it’s not feminist to say that gender oppression is immutable and comes down to what genitals we have and how the people around us when we were little kids treated us. Indeed, that’s one beautiful thing about feminism. Feminism allows us to understand that no matter what people who hate us told us we could be, we can be so much more than they can ever imagine.

So, yeah. I’m totally happy to take back the “radical” and the “feminist” from people who ally themselves with conservative bathroom bill writers who were happy to prevent lesbian fiction crossing the Canadian border in the 90s. Maybe we can just call them what they are – misogynist trans-hating people. So much less confusing.

***I have edited this post to connect only Catharine MacKinnon to the Butler decision, after hearing a clarification about that from Andrea Dworkin’s life partner, John Stoltenberg. He also shared with me three articles which I found illuminating, in part because they show that anti-trans currents cannot legitimately claim that radical feminism implies being against trans women. I’m sharing them here.

These are a memoir-style reflection, “Andrea Was Not Transphobic,” and an essay opposing biological essentialism: “Biological Essentialism: Radical Feminism’s Most Diversionary and Counterrevolutionary Idea.”

And this is an interview with MacKinnon in which she clearly supports trans people. (This interview is, per MacKinnon’s view, strongly negative about sex work, so heads up on that content included in it.)

Advice for grad students writing SSHRC and OGS grant applications

Here are the notes and links to the recordings of an informal workshop on doing the initial writing for the SSHRC or OGS programs of study. It is specific to the Canadian context but may have something useful for folks elsewhere. Other caveat: This recording was made from Zoom for the participants beaming in remotely, so it’s a weird camera angle etc.

Audio versions are available through this link

Video versions:
1/3: https://youtu.be/RvxZJ9NtAA4
2/3: https://youtu.be/QqNllpaZLnE
3/3: (the video of version of the final section won’t upload for some reason, but the audio file should work, linked above)

Credit to Karen Kelsky, whose “Foolproof Grant Template” has been very useful to my thinking. I diverge from her in recommending that people do not think about things in terms of “a gap in the literature,” instead framing their work in terms of what we lose if this research is not done, what we gain if it can be accomplished. As I mention in the workshop, I had a dreadful experience working with Dr. Kelsky on one of my grant applications and thus never recommend her one-on-one, but heartily recommend her writing in many areas.

The anatomy of a SSHRC or OGS Program of Study

 Title:

 Context, Objectives, and Research Question:

  1. Statement that positions the reader with you, perceiving the widest possible relevance of the issue/problem you’re attending to.
  2. At least two and no more than three academic spaces in which this topic has been addressed.
  3. However, there has not been sufficient attention to/no one has yet examined/studied/etc … [what happens when we bring these together, attend to a specific area of the big context, etc]
  4. Why does is matter that this has not been addressed, or addressed in the way that you will do it? What bad thing happens? What good thing happens when we do address it? “Without x, we are left with inadequate Y to make important policy decisions…”
  5. I am applying for this grant to address this problem/contribute to the conversation in this way.
  6. “In my graduate work, I will examine X in order to …” “My dissertation asks, …”
  7. Specifics: more about what you will do, ask, investigate
  8. Disciplinary context – what is the conversation you’re participating in?

 Methodology:

  1. “In order to investigate [the question] I will…”; what do you need to do an how do you need to do it to answer your questions?
  2. Data analysis and processing
  3. How is this an excellent approach for your research?
  4. How is it reasonable and possible?
  5. How you’ll address any ethical concerns

 (your) Academic Background and present context: (How awesome are you! why is Carleton such a great place for you to do this work?)

Project Timeline:

Contributions/summing up:

 

Advice on planning to finish your dissertation this year

Here are the recordings, and below are the notes, from a workshop on planning to finish a dissertation in the next year. There are many things specific to Carleton, and I’m making these available especially for the folks who were not able to attend in person, but perhaps they will be useful. Other caveat: This recording was made from Zoom for the participants beaming in remotely, so it’s a weird camera angle etc.

The audio recordings of this workshop are available through this link.

And the video versions are here:
1/4: https://youtu.be/wLkH9kISiEE
2/4: https://youtu.be/SgOULmeZKiQ
3/4: https://youtu.be/RCw_xjbGbCg
4/4: https://youtu.be/baUXYSPCDgE

  1. Orienting yourself, your close ones, your supervisor and committee
    1. Yourself: what do you know about how you actually work? How are you doing? When are things reasonably possible, when are they very hard? Making the internal shift definitively.
    2. Close ones: recognize that “I will be a good parent/partner/friend/lover/etc after I’m done with this dissertation” is not a workable plan. What do the people supporting you need for basic care? How can giving them that also support your process?
    3. Supervisors and committee: how do yours actually work? What do you need to do to convince them that you’re finishing this year and they should sit up and take notice? Assessing how much they believe you about what you’re doing.
  2. Where are you at?
    1. Back-outlining what the dissertation is
    2. The title question
    3. Formatting
    4. Mapping the continuum from the “aspirational dissertation” to the “hang-my head dissertation”

 

  1. Getting a real view of the timelines

DD -6 months: Confirm with your supervisor and committee that you are planning to finish the dissertation within six months, and get a clear sense of what they think will be required to meet that plan

DD -3 months: Submit full draft of dissertation to committee (they may take as much as a month to return comments)

DD -10-12 weeks: Discuss with supervisor who to invite as the External and Internal External (they will approach these people to invite them to serve in these roles)

DD -8 weeks: Submit Submission of PhD Thesis for Defense form

DD -6 weeks: Upload final defense copy to Carleton Central (no further revisions possible)

Defense date

  1. The doing part: Planning activity rather than outcome, but checking on outcomes. Determine your metrics (words? Time? Anything other than “tired must stop”). Scheduling writing. Assuming that the worst happens, and the good-enough dissertation. If-then loops. Limiting work. Committing to breaks and play.
  2. At the end: “managing-up” the administrative apparatus gatekeeping finishing