Sex Educations: Gendering and Regendering Women

Summary

Radical feminism holds that what is currently known as ‘gender’ is not a condition which naturally arises either from an individual’s sex or from any other innate source, instead being an ideology of ‘sex roles’ which support and are constructed by the patriarchy.

While the way in which gender is produced is often described as “socialisation” or “conditioning”, this article suggests modelling it as a lifelong process of sex role education, covering more than just the sex role an individual is expected to play.

This model allows us to explore in some detail the experience of transsexual people under patriarchy and to question some binaries around the political features of transsexual identities.

With these considerations in mind we revisit the political category of ‘woman’ – as used to understand structured sexism – from the point of view of transsexual women’s inclusion.

Trigger and Content Warnings

Trigger Warnings: This article contains mentions of emotional, physical and sexual violence against women and children. It contains one historical account of mistreatment in captivity.

Content Warnings (idea borrowed from Kwerey): This article contains discussion of feminine socialisation and a direct account of the positions of women and men in society. It goes into considerable detail regarding medical establishment gatekeeping of treatment for transsexual women.

Under Duress: Agency, Power and Consent, Part Two: “Yes”

This article is a follow-up to Under Duress, Part One: “No”, which discussed “no means no”, ambiguous sexual requests, implicit refusals and drunken consent.

Trigger Warnings

This article contains discussions of rape, rape apologism and narrative examples of the ways in which multiple systems of domination can be used to put pressure on sexual consent. It contains a fictional account of retraumatisation after abuse.

If, after reading this, you feel like you would like to talk to somebody about personal experiences of non-consent:

• Readers in England and Wales can visit the Rape Crisis England and Wales website, which also has info on the national freephone helpline, 0808 802 9999
• Scottish readers and trans* people anywhere in the UK may prefer to visit the website of Edinburgh Women’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, phone number 0131 556 9437, which has a good track record of trans*-inclusivity
• Irish readers could go to Rape Crisis Network Ireland which offers, among other things, information on finding your nearest crisis centre
• Readers in the USA could visit RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, which offers a hotline, an online hotline and information on local counselling centres
• RAINN also has a page on international resources which may be useful for readers in other countries.

Summary

When rape apologists are using our models of consent to defend rape and to deflect feminist analyses, it’s at least worth considering the limitations of the models. This article is part two in a two-part series of articles examining the issues.

Part One: “No”: Understanding consent as a binary is powerful because it allows us to say that “no means no”, a statement which has had and still has incredible power to change attitudes about rape for the better. However, it can make it more difficult for us to conceive of what else might mean “no”, as well as to distinguish between different kinds of “yes” given in different contexts. It can be used to victim-blame. It doesn’t always accommodate some of the complexities of communication (although we should beware, because “miscommunication” is a shield rapists often like to hide behind). And admitting “no always means no” seems to mean that we must also admit “yes always means yes”; this can conflict with the subtleties of a fully radical feminist analysis of rape culture.

Part Two: “Yes”: Modern feminist views on consent have often been in conflict. One way to resolve that conflict may be to look for unified models of consent which takes into account ideas from multiple feminisms. Here I suggest a non-binary power model of consent, which looks at systems of domination such as patriarchy, and the pressure they enable people to place on consent. In this model, “no” still means “no” but “yes” should be understood as a statement meaning, “I choose to say ‘yes’, understanding the consequences of saying ‘no’”. A focus on systems of domination – plural – allows us to consider other dynamics of rape beyond men raping women without moving away from fifty years of feminist work on rape and consent.

Under Duress: Agency, Power and Consent, Part One: “No”

Trigger Warnings

This article contains discussions of rape, rape apologism and victim blaming. One survivor who previewed this article said they found a definition of rape used here “particularly triggering”.

Summary

When rape apologists are using our models of consent to defend rape and to deflect feminist analyses, it’s at least worth considering the limitations of the models. This article is part one in a two-part series of articles examining the issues.

Part One: “No”: Understanding consent as a binary is powerful because it allows us to say that “no means no”, a statement which has had and still has incredible power to change attitudes about rape for the better. However, it can make it more difficult for us to conceive of what else might mean “no”, as well as to distinguish between different kinds of “yes” given in different contexts. It can be used to victim-blame. It doesn’t always accommodate some of the complexities of communication (although we should beware, because “miscommunication” is a shield rapists often like to hide behind). And admitting “no always means no” seems to mean that we must also admit “yes always means yes”; this can conflict with the subtleties of a fully radical feminist analysis of rape culture.

Radtransfem on Tumblr

As I work on the next post for this blog, which is a monster post on consent (probably something that will be split into two parts), I’m making smaller and more frequent updates on the tumblr associated with this blog. Go there for links, brief thoughts, quotes and more!

radtransfem.tumblr.com

PSA: Accessibility for this blog

I’ve been going through a blog accessibility checklist in the effort to ensure this blog is as accessible as possible, for example, to people using screenreaders.

One issue brought up in comments is that the light-on-dark scheme is hard to read. I actually find light text on dark background easier to read, because the way my dyslexia works means that dark-on-light dances around and it’s hard to keep my place. But I’m aware that light-on-dark can be an issue, so here are some options for viewing the blog in a different contrast scheme:

• If you’ve got access to an RSS reader like Google Reader, then you can read the full posts on there via the RSS feed for the blog
• In some versions of Firefox you can click View, Page Style, No Style and you’ll view the basic page text
• In some versions of Internet Explorer, it’s View, Style, No Style
• There’s a thing that you can bookmark and then click from your bookmark bar to change the colours on a site (thanks, Barry Deutsch)

Any other suggestions for accessibility?

Links: Public Groping / Sexual Assault

I’m going through some of my old links and found this set of articles from back in 2010 on the subject of public groping / sexual assault, largely based on experiences of assault on public transport. I thought I’d repost them to keep them grouped together.

Trigger warnings for graphic descriptions of sexual assault, emotional reactions to it, dismissal of assault, secondary traumatisation from taking an assault through the legal system. One friend says that these are very “consciousness raising” and maybe less useful to those who already have lots of experience of groping / sexual assault.

Weirdly, this post is by far the most common way – by a factor of something like 20 – that readers find this blog via search engines. So hi, reader. I guess you found this by typing “public groping” or something similar. If you’re someone who’s experienced this, I’m really sorry. Hopefully these links will let you know that you’re not alone.

Here’s a list to some resources which you might find helpful.

(If you’ve found this article because you find the subject titillating and you’re looking for stories or images about it, perhaps you’ll read these and disgust yourself, creep.)

• How it happens
• Some reasons why some people stay silent
• When people who gropers have assaulted talk back
• Accounts of revenge fantasies
• One woman who reported that a groper assaulted her

Significant Othering: Responses and Links

I’ve been overwhelmed and delighted by the reaction to Significant Othering: Attraction Down The Privilege Gradient. It seems to have gotten most of its attention on Facebook, with over 200 shares, which makes me happy because it means that people are engaging with it on an individual level.

Now that it’s a few weeks on, I’d like to come back to the subject with a roundup of responses. One of the downsides of conversations taking place on Facebook is that they’re taking place in isolation, so part of the idea is to bring some of the threads back together with this post.