Feminism - more of it

[TerraPrime]

Tough questions, Zabz.

I recall reading excerpts of studies on how some children do perofrm better (caveat: for a narrow definition of "perform" and "better" in the context of the studies) in unisex environment.

On one hand, we agree that being raised by a single parent is not going to lead to any sort of deficit in gender role models. On the other hand, unisex schools still give us some hestiations. I can't really explain it very well, either.

I think the important part is less about unisex or co-ed, but more about the pro-active steps that the schools take to make sure that students, male or female, do not suffer disadvantages due to their sex. I think schools with programs like that are better than schools who do not address those issues. It is possible that the newer generation of unisex schools are more conscientious about their pedagogical assumptions and so, will address these issues better or with more readiness, than regular co-ed schools. But I think the benefit is indirect correlation and not causative.

[brook]

Castel,

I found some criticism of that article as being too favorable toward pro-Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. I'll link to it:

Scott, I thought this was also a good response

http://www.autostraddle.com/the-new-yorkers-skewed-history-of-trans-exclusionary-radical-feminism-ignores-actual-trans-women-247642/

[Galactus]

To be fair, I never got the impression that she was covering the "conflict" but rahter that she was covering the TERF's, basically profiling them as a group.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Brook, Galactus,

What is interesting to me, philosophically, is how "TERF v. Trans" almost perfectly mirrors "Nature v. Nurture". Additionally, the TERF position that because "Gender" is a socially constructed concept but sex is biologically based while Trans advocates point out that Gender is the world in which we live while Sex is perfectly arbitrary puts the two camps at almost polar opposites with regards to what should be focused upon as a driver in society.

I find the dichotomy between the two philosophical viewpoints really interesting.

[TerraPrime]

Scot:

I understand that this is intellectually interesting to you, and that's wonderful.

But, just as a friendly reminder, there are people posting here whose quality of life is indeed adversely affected by people in the TERF camp. So, lest you be seen as uncaring and insensitive, it'd be best to be cognizant of the context of this issue.

[brook]

Scott,

I'm functioning on very little sleep at the moment and probably not in the best condition to go into this properly (hopefully Em will be around soon, she's usually better at this stuff than me) but I would argue that what we think of as 'sex' is just as socially constructed and variable as gender.

Additionally the TERF position is not really consistent on nature v nurture either. On the one hand they make a very big deal about 'male socialisation' and the benefit that supposedly brings to trans women (I'm not denying ftr that that there are some benefits in that for some trans women, but also a great many negatives that ride along with that) but they take an essentialist line when it comes to children who transition very young and are socialised as females.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TP, Brook,

I understand and appreciate that these positions are being advocated by real people with very real lives who suffer very real impacts from the positions people take as a result. I'm expressing my interest in them with that recognition in mind. If I am coming off as disconnected it is because I am attempting to understand the nuances of both sides not because I don't care.

[Shryke]

Thoughts on modern single sex education and how it fits with feminist principles?

Wiki links to a few government studies on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-sex_education#Effects_of_single-sex_education

From what I remember from looking at this years ago, there at least seems to be no downsides in educational outcomes.

[karaddin]

Scot:

I understand that this is intellectually interesting to you, and that's wonderful.

But, just as a friendly reminder, there are people posting here whose quality of life is indeed adversely affected by people in the TERF camp. So, lest you be seen as uncaring and insensitive, it'd be best to be cognizant of the context of this issue.

Thanks Terra.

Brook, Galactus,

What is interesting to me, philosophically, is how "TERF v. Trans" almost perfectly mirrors "Nature v. Nurture". Additionally, the TERF position that because "Gender" is a socially constructed concept but sex is biologically based while Trans advocates point out that Gender is the world in which we live while Sex is perfectly arbitrary puts the two camps at almost polar opposites with regards to what should be focused upon as a driver in society.

I find the dichotomy between the two philosophical viewpoints really interesting.

TP, Brook,

I understand and appreciate that these positions are being advocated by real people with very real lives who suffer very real impacts from the positions people take as a result. I'm expressing my interest in them with that recognition in mind. If I am coming off as disconnected it is because I am attempting to understand the nuances of both sides not because I don't care.

First off Scot - part of the problem with this is that you are framing it as both sides having nuance, when to me it's a question of one side is trying to assert their basic rights to live, work, receive necessary medical care as the person they are while the other side is trying to deny them these basic rights. It's not remotely an equal argument and it can't be divorced from the real world context to analyse the arguments from an academic perspective - the arguments are our lived experience and any argument against that is denying our reality.

TERFs are not driven by some stunning insight, they are driven into misguided and misapplied hate. They have sided with MRAs and right wing anti LGBT groups to attack trans women, because they see this tiny group of around 0.1% of the population with chronic poverty, unemployment, massively elevated suicide rate etc as somehow a larger threat than the patriarchal power structures they were supposed to be fighting. They have outed and attempted to harass a teenage trans girl into suicide, contacted doctors to try get trans women denied medical care they are already receiving, contacted employers to try get trans women fired, engage in harassment campaigns online, trawl through OKCupid for trans womens profiles and out them and ridicule them on a site as pretend lesbians "pretendbians", they have used their position as prominent feminists in the past to have access to medical care wound back and I believe the coverage is still worse today in the US than it was in 1980 because of it.

One of the influential works in the history of the movement is "The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male" - would you take a work that was called "The Black Empire: The Making of the N*****" seriously? How about "Gay Inc: The Rise of the F******"? Because that's a slur in exactly the same category as those. It's a slur that was on the front fucking page of an Australian newspaper following the murder of a trans woman out here in particularly grotesque fashion and I've had to put up with hearing it in my local cafe.

As for cis privilege, it absolutely exists. It's existence is part of my daily life, and I'm hyper aware of it. I'm a trans woman who is lucky enough to - using a term that is awfully problematic in itself - pass, I don't get read as trans out in public. What this really means is that out and about I'm granted conditional cis privilege - people don't realise I'm not cis and I get treated as though I am, however there is an edge to this, the knowledge that at any point someones attitude to me could dramatically change were they to realise. It's less of an issue in Sydney than it would be in many places, but you better believe I was hyper aware of it. When I see my family I get the joy of being misgendered and called the wrong name by two of my brothers who are likely to be cut out of my life soon, and while my mother is dying of a brain tumour I get guilt tripped by the wife of one of those telling me that real women are there for their families and care for them because she felt I'm not doing enough for my Dad and wanted to twist that knife more. Other less regular instances of it - the middle east isn't exactly renowned for being friendly to LGBTQ people, however as it's a cheaper air route most airlines flying from Aus to Europe go through there now including our national carrier. If I were just a lesbian then I can just suppress my sexuality for the brief stop over in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, however as a trans woman? If security gives me a pat down they are going to realise I'm trans and I'm open to a range of bad to very bad outcomes, so I have a whole slab of airlines ruled out for international travel.

Of course that last one is only even an issue for me due to my class privilege that lets me afford international travel to Europe, it's all intersectional!

[karaddin]

Zabzie - I have any hard data on coed vs single sex schools, however I do have reasonably strong opinions. I feel like there can be too much of a focus on purely academic performance that comes in when analysing the performance difference of these schools, and that there really should be more to schooling than just the academic outcomes. Granted this gets into my feelings that school should be attempting to provide all of the life skills that we can't trust parents to impart their children with, and this runs to places that I understand many in the US disagree very strongly with (relationships are a huge part of life for almost everyone, parents typically teach nothing beyond what they teach via showing with their own relationships and schools teach absolutely nothing for example). I feel that single sex schools miss an incredibly important part of social education which is interacting with the opposite sex, both in an every day social environment, but also in an educational or professional environment - when you get to College or work you are going to have to deal with douchebag guys belittling you, talking over you etc and learning to deal with that from an early age might help dealing with it later. This is one area that I *think* I heard something about there actually being some data on - that the academic advantage girls have from girls only schools disappears once they hit College and have to deal with being in the same environment as boys.

Disclaimer - I am biased on this, as someone raised a boy I think I'm pretty positive I would not have survived school had I been at an all boys school. At minimum I would have been a fuck of a lot more scarred by the experience and more stunted in ability to realise my actual identity when I got here. We may be a tiny percentage of the population, but I think it's worth avoiding single sex schools just on the off chance of kids being someone like me.

[brook]

I went to a single sex school and I saw the sort of thing kara is talking about over and over again. Intelligent, confident girls who simply had no idea how to deal with boys in a social context and absolutely not when we were in a mixed-sex gathering and the boys were trying to dominate the discussion.

I believe you can guard against that if you are careful with how you approach their out of school life but it is something to keep in mind.

The other potential issue I have may be less of an issue in the US I'm not sure but even when schools don't intend to restrict to what girls 'should' do they may find themselves restricting what is offered just based on what the majority wants to do. I'm thinking here that in my state there is a subject offered in high school called design and technology which offers a huge range of potential things that can be taught within its framework. When it came time to choose what we wanted to do for our elective segment (settled by class vote) it didn't matter very much that I and I couple of others really wanted the chance to learn to use the new woodworking equipment we had just fundraised to buy - the majority of the class wanted sewing so that's what we learned (or didn't learn in my case). There were similar issues when it came to sports offered etc. They weren't restricting us intentionally but providing what would cater to the majority and in many cases that did restrict the choices to much more typical gendered offerings.

[jet199]

Single sex schools do wonders for educational outcomes but are quite bad for social skills. Eventually kids are going to have to deal with members of the opposite sex so keeping them in a false social dynamic for years is going to be damaging. Frankly I think that people who think that school is solely about exam results are very short sighted. There are hundreds of child geniuses out there who get left behind once they leave school because they don't have the skills to either network or promote themselves.

We didn't really have a problem with everyone wanting to do sewing at my school because it was selective so everyone was a bit ambitious and super serious. In fact we often got popular subjects, which were considered feminine, scrapped. A lot of the girls wanted to do secretarial skill because they figured learning to touch type and to do short hand would be very useful but the school got rid of it as it wasn't considered academic and distracted people from their proper exams. Cooking lessons went out in favour of technologies.

Someone I know is planning to put their two sons into an all boy school from the age of 5 up to 18. Everyone on our side of the family thinks it is a bad idea (my dad specifically, although he didn't go to a single sex school he only had 3 girls in his village so it amounted to the same thing and he still sees that as a cause of his troubles with communicating with women) but they are only really concern about future job prospects for their children. The idea is that the boys will become part of an elite class and make contacts in infants school which will make them ultra businessmen in 20 years time. It sounds crazy to me but I guess that is what they value in life. My main worry is that if the boys don't follow the path their parents have laid out for them then they are not going to have the life skills to find a path of their own.

There is a school near me which separates kids during some lessons but they mix at lunch and breaks. They still have some of the same problems which fully mixed schools have, such as girls acting dumb to attract boys, boys picking on girls they fancy, relationship breakdowns and fights due to jealousy but I think they still do pretty well academically. The main thing is to make sure you don't have kids thinking they are being separated because they are two different species but because, basically, sex distracts. I can't see many British teachers saying that out straight to a morning assembly though.

[Galactus]

We didn't really have a problem with everyone wanting to do sewing at my school because it was selective so everyone was a bit ambitious and super serious.

Which is probably another confounding factor: The people who got to sex-segregated schools are not likely to be representative.

[protar]

I'm not too keen on the idea of one gender schools. In my opinion the academic portion of primary and high school is somewhat secondary to learning social interactions. And if your kid goes to a school where they never learn how to interact with 50% of the population, their development there will be very stunted (although obviously their life outside school is going to be an influence as well). And just from a gender equality stance I dislike the idea of any sort of segregation like that. The benefits of sending one's daughters to an all girl school (i.e there being no coded rules for how girls should be - as Zabzie puts it) can and should be integrated into mixed gender schools.

[emberling]

Brook, Galactus,

What is interesting to me, philosophically, is how "TERF v. Trans" almost perfectly mirrors "Nature v. Nurture". Additionally, the TERF position that because "Gender" is a socially constructed concept but sex is biologically based while Trans advocates point out that Gender is the world in which we live while Sex is perfectly arbitrary puts the two camps at almost polar opposites with regards to what should be focused upon as a driver in society.

I find the dichotomy between the two philosophical viewpoints really interesting.

I do think that this is a fascinating philosophical subject, but the very first thing that needs to be acknowledged is that it is our real lives at stake. Not in some wishywashy everyone is affected way but that the impact of this question falls almost solely on us.

Serano is a great reference to the post NvN stance of transfeminism. Complex traits have complex sources and NvN is reductionist - tbh it should be painfully obvious that most/all things are N+N+more.

Main aspect of trans exclusionary philosophy is ignorance or rejection of social construction present in concept of 'sex'. Frames binary as biotruth. Actual medical science has five traits that characterize maleness or femaleness in humans. Iirc these are

-external genital structure

-gonads/internal structures/nature of reproductive ability

-hormones/endocrinology

-secondary characteristics

-genetics - xy or xx

Male has all one way, female all another - and that makes it obvious that intersex and many trans individuals do not fit into those boxes, and even a few cis nonintersex people. Thus strict binary doesn't match 'science'. But we can go even further:

When talking about Science!, what a lot of people miss is the distinction between -empirically supported data & observation- and -existing premises and assumptions- in the frameworks used to discuss and comprehend the data. And what happens a lot is that science needs to draw a distinction somewhere so they pick a spot. Not to say there's not logic behind it - the vast majority fit into a binary conception of those traits. But that is population scale useful for generalities. Trans exclusion attempts to take it (or rather, an even simpler version) and jam each individual into it.

But the point here is that these lines are pretty much arbitrary. They are mere interpretations of a statistical trend. (Serano also has some good discussion of how bimodal trends become binaries and how crucial the difference is.) We can redraw these lines as needed justlike any other social construction.

And let's go even further:

Trans exclusionists looove the sexed pronoun. It's one of their most favored weapons. But it is entirely and rather obviously against their stated goal of ending gender. Let's not forget 'gender' has its origin in language - in pronouns and declension. Separation by pronoun is probably the most ubiquitous and insidious ways that the gender system is reinforced. Had a class today where a poem was discussed by an Iraqi poet with an unfamiliar first name. Nothing in the poem related to gender or sex - it was about war - but the first guy to discuss it had to ask if the author was a man or a woman -just to be able to refer to her coherently with pronouns-. In that way gender or sex is constantly reinforced as the most important, most central, most determinative aspect of our being when there is no particular reason to exalt it and plenty of reason to question its exaltation.

Hofstadter demonstrated this excellently: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html

It's old and problematic or outdated in parts - it's from the debate around the introduction of Ms. - but it's very illuminating.

Side note: CIS is computer and information science or systems. Cis- is a latinate prefix comparable and definitionally opposite to trans-. I have actually heard an older trans woman pronounce it 'uh, see-eye-ess' and I had to try really hard not to embed my palm in my forehead.

[emberling]

On cis privilege specifically: I've never seen a remotely coherent argument against it. Exclusionists generally deny it by denying intersectionality and claiming it's invalid because it attempts to ascribe privilege to women, and these people tend to reject any claim that they might have privilege.

Closest thing to a cogent argument I've seen is essentially quibbling over the boundaries of cis and trans, which are lexically obscure (since cis and trans conflates cissexual/transsexual dichotomy with cisgender/transgender). Exclusionists like to seize on those people who have well-meaningly attempted to define cis in a positive way rather than as the inverse of trans: e.g. 'Cisgender refers to a person who feels harmony between body and gender identity' - problem here is that gender identity here refers to a concept that most cis people and even some trans people (myself) can't really locate or distinguish, so easy for critics to reject having one.

But none of that matters because privilege often doesn't come from what you are but from how you're seen. Cis people with unusual body traits or presentations for their sex can lose some cis privileges while remaining cis. Trans people can have conditional cis privilege from "passing." and so on. The core privilege is fixed - cis people have the confidence of being able to "prove" their gender beyond any doubt while trans people always know that their gender involves truths which will be viewed by some people as fake. But other than that it's situational, which is fairly normal for the concept of intersectional privilege.

[Eponine]

A mundane question: If you're a woman, do you feel like it's important to stay quiet and not say anything that might be perceived as critical in an attempt at solidarity, when other feminist women say or post things that over-generalize shared female experience?

For example, usually I don't say anything because usually I feel like the solidarity is more important than differentiating my individual experience and because usually whatever it is is really minor. However, when a friend posted this article: https://medium.com/matter/the-women-i-pretend-to-be-ef0a5ce97277 I really felt the desire to say (and did) - hey this isn't my experience and I can't really get behind something that implies that my persona in a predominantly male work group in a predominantly male field must be a mask for who I really am. (I felt there was a tone of - women who say they like these male things are probably faking). It seems so petty, there are so many of these pseudo-feminist woman-power articles floating around, if this is someone's experience I don't want them to feel like I'm shooting their experience down. OTOH, I feel more and more with this kind of mundane stuff that women are trying to speak for each other. Instead of saying - this is happening to a lot of women and it's a problem - it's become - if you're a woman, you've experienced this.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Thanks for all of the input on single sex schools. It is interesting. Most of these schools are being really, really thoughtful about the intangible stuff Terra was mentioning. They seem really excited about educating young women to be leaders and the language at least sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. I'm more focused, actually, on the social stuff, rather than the academics, per se, in a way. I remember myself at 13/14/15. I sort of fell off a cliff and bought into some of the gendered stereotypes that are out there. Now, I'm a naturally good student, so I still did very well, but despite a real interest in science, I really stepped back from science (and actually did no science in college - the trade off was more math and foreign language). I am not a naturally quiet person, but I became quiet for a while to "follow the rules." I don't think that happens to girls in an all-girls school. Kar - I completely acknowledge what you are saying, and I think if that were my situation, I'd have to listen to my child and make a different decision with that child's input at that point. I've been less impressed with the coed schools. They aren't focused on girls and educating girls and don't seem as sensitive to the issues that I'm focused on. One of my daughters will be cool either way. I am more concerned about the other girl. I don't think they will have a lack of interaction with boys - most of these schools have interaction with the boys schools (in clubs, etc.) so that it's not a convent. BUT, I do think part of who I am is figuring out at 16/17/18 how to mix it up with the boys and find my voice. Would I have been less successful in college if I hadn't figured it out sooner? I don't know, but it's food for thought.

[karaddin]

Zabz - For clarity, my part about people like me was actually more specific than just trans in this case - it was trans and unaware of it till after teen years. You can't ask for help with something you don't know is a problem, it just makes you utterly miserable. When I came out mum was looking back through my life and recriminating over things she might have twigged to and I had to say the same to her... If I couldn't figure it out I can hardly expect you to.

I suspect growing up in a world with better trans awareness will make this less common though.

If your choice is really good single sex vs mediocre coed I'm not sure where to go with that, my niece is at a really good girls only school in the area I grew up (although I'd describe the school I went to as decent not mediocre) and she is thriving there. Quality may need to trump the other considerations.

[Galactus]

Trans exclusionists looove the sexed pronoun. It's one of their most favored weapons. But it is entirely and rather obviously against their stated goal of ending gender. Let's not forget 'gender' has its origin in language - in pronouns and declension. Separation by pronoun is probably the most ubiquitous and insidious ways that the gender system is reinforced. Had a class today where a poem was discussed by an Iraqi poet with an unfamiliar first name. Nothing in the poem related to gender or sex - it was about war - but the first guy to discuss it had to ask if the author was a man or a woman -just to be able to refer to her coherently with pronouns-. In that way gender or sex is constantly reinforced as the most important, most central, most determinative aspect of our being when there is no particular reason to exalt it and plenty of reason to question its exaltation.

I should point out that there are languages that do not use pronouns this way. (some that doesen't period, and some only do so in certain registers)

If your choice is really good single sex vs mediocre coed

I alt-tabbed and came back and forgot in what thread I was, and read this sentence ENTIRELY wrong therefor a second.