Exclusionary feminists don’t like facts
The old truism about never letting facts get in the way of a good argument appears to be holding good and true with exclusionary feminists. Quote a fact, get emotion, quote another fact and they accuse you of being a misogynist. Quote more facts and you get blocked or banned or shouted out with capital letters. Evidence is complicated, messy, and can be time consuming to reader through, emotive soundbites from the right wing are easy to digest. Facts very much get in the way of pushing the point.
Feminism as a movement has always had it splits, ranging from those who advocate respectability politics to punk anarchists seeking to literally smash the patriarchy. Exclusionary feminists have wedded themselves to the notion that all the ills of the patriarchy could be solved if only those darned men in ill fitting dresses and swinging dicks got out of women’s spaces, that would show them. That, and welded themselves with far right media platforms whose primary goal is to role back all women’s rights, starting with trans ones. Facts exited stage left many scenes ago.
As with all emotive movements exclusionary feminism relies on gut feeling, distaste, and absorbing media that portrays a minority group as the cause of all ills. This is not new, and certainly not a recent development. Minorities have always been on the receiving end of disgusting diatribes going all the way back to Babylonia; one only has to look at how the Jews have been treated post-72AD to see how slander and murderous intent have seared its way through their media portrayals. Much the same tactics are being used against the trans community, calling us groomers, saying we are mutilating children, and that we are violating women.
Much the same was said about black folk in the post-Civil War US, and there are many parallels between the demonisation of black men and trans women. The Southern Miss strategy of treating women as precious flowers in need of constant protection and vigilance plays out in real time across the media. Trans men are women too silly to understand they are wasting their precious bodies, trans women are sexual predators waiting to happen. Why on earth would a man ever want to be this lesser thing call woman when he has all the patriarchal power? This is the emotive arguments they keep repeating when they state biological men over and over again.
Facts do not matter because facts are cold, hard, and never give straight forward answers. All data has a narrative behind it, and it takes time to read beyond the headlines. Exclusionary feminists look at trans women as see predators not allies in the cause. They forget that all gender is an ideological construct of the economic systems we live in, and that the stereotypes they accuse trans women of falling into are often the only ones open to trans women if they want to assimilate into society. The fact that trans women have double the chance of being murdered or sexually abused has no impact on them. Facts are never enough.
When minorities are targeted there is usually an underlying societal pressure, be it demographic, economic, or fear of change. Trans folk have always been part of all cultures and all societies, often hounded out or forced to conform. Since 1869 they have come under intense scrutiny by scientists, psychiatrists, doctors, lawyers, and politicians in the vain hope of either forcing them to conform to their assigned birth sex or to push them into a pitiable state that everyone can point and laugh at. When all things are going to pot just point at the trans woman in the corner and call her a dick in a frock.
Bad faith arguments against trans folk, and trans women especially, are set up other and denigrate. They are intended to put us in our place, ghettoise us, and make us into lesser things only worthy of scorn. Black men were, and still are, see as apex sexual predators in search of white women’s virtue; trans women in locker rooms are treated the same way. Predator myths are a step towards lynching, as Jews and black men found out to their cost. Trans women are slain because men fear their bodies, fear being seen as anything other than heteronormative. Men are pilloried for dating trans women, we are their dirty little secrets. All this flows from the historic demonisation of trans women and the attempts to make us something other.
When exclusionary feminists point to biology they do the same a Galton and all the other race theorists. Biology is only the foundations to our existence, it is not some magical manifest destiny cast in flesh and bone. Science is not some rigid thing stuck in aspic, it is constantly changing and discovering new ideas. That we reject Galton’s racism and the reductive nature of 1950s trans medicine escapes the attention of people who cling to CGSE and 9th grade biology lessons as life rafts.
Yet, in all of this the emotive quality of simplicity draws people in because it is easier to digest that the complexities that trans lives represent. Trans women are women, yet each trans woman has her own journey to get there. There is not way to be trans, one simple story we can show. The facts are messy and complicated, as are the trans lives we lead. The media and exclusionary feminists reduce trans folk down to the worst aspects of being trans without seeing the richness that is all of us in our totality. They let emotion get in the way, and trans folk then have to spent acres of digital newsprint to work through those errors. Pass the coffee, its going to be a long night.
