Is Jenni Murray right?

[Nearly Sane]

I get the impression that Jenni Murray's argument stems from a strong reaction to one particular trans-gender priest she interviewed. If what JM reports is true, then the priest in question did seem to have a rather petty attittude to what being a priest or woman really entailed. But the petty attitudes of one individual do not constitute the basis of an argument to dismiss the problems of gender dysphoria.

I think we have to be careful here. The article covers two individuals who Murray cites, one of whom was happy to support a clothes policy of explicit sexism being enforced. Further I am not sure that her position amounts in any way to dismissing 'the problems of gender dysphoria'.

[Rhiannon]

Wtf is a 'real woman'?

I don't even know what a 'conventional' woman is; I have a couple of piercings and I prefer biker jackets to cashmere twinsets, but I use deodorant and shave my legs (ever tried wearing tights with unshaved legs?) so where do I fall? Yet I do feel frustration at post trans women who in interviews talk about the frocks and the make-up like that is where womanhood begins and ends.

Womanhood isn't about the frocks and the slap - they are forms of self expression, just as is rejecting them. And ok so lippy is supposed to represent wet labia but I'm not altogether sure any woman find that a consideration when at the No7 counter in Boot's - pretty much anything can be fetishised.

So what is being a woman? I could characterise my experience through all the things that have happened to me, the expectations, getting boobs, groping, bleeding, not wanting to get pregnant, sex I didn't want, marriage, getting pregnant, birth, failing to breastfeed, divorce... but those aren't who I am and I refuse to either be a victim to my womanhood or feel that there is any superiority in it. These things have shaped my life, yes, but they aren't me.

I'm at home in myself as a woman and I guess that is what all of us aim for, being at home in our identity. I don't have the language to express what that means beyond that though.

[Samuel]

Exactly Rhiannon. If women's experiences are so diverse then I'd argue that experience is no starting point to make a value judgement on what being a woman means.

I appreciate the frustration about the frocks a slap stuff but surely that is a (possibly) naive expression of identity by people who have had to deny that identity, often for years. In short I think we should give those people a break.

Also there are plenty of examples of feminists choosing to use those very tools to define their womanhood and gain power in them.

And Nearly, I know what you mean about the language. It is blunt.

[wigginhall]

There seems to be a spectrum of views about man/woman.   At one end, you have the biological determinists, who argue that a man has a penis and a woman a vagina, and that's that.   This is often used to attack trans people. 

At the other end, there is the whole argument about social construction, which used to be said about gender but is now also said about sex.    The most extreme here, I suppose, argue that 'woman' and 'man' are fictions, also the idea that gender is a masquerade.   

Somewhere in the middle there is a kind of 'social self-representation' idea, that men and women present themselves in certain ways, e.g. clothes, hair, make-up, and so on.

There is also the issue of personal history, i.e. experiences that we have gone through as men and women.

As NS said a while ago, we don't have a language really to describe trans people, but we don't really have a language to describe sex/gender.   It's striking that 'gender' itself is now used to describe sex identity, which maybe shows how it is all changing fast, and categories melting.

[Nearly Sane]

Exactly Rhiannon. If women's experiences are so diverse then I'd argue that experience is no starting point to make a value judgement on what being a woman means.

I appreciate the frustration about the frocks a slap stuff but surely that is a (possibly) naive expression of identity by people who have had to deny that identity, often for years. In short I think we should give those people a break.

Also there are plenty of examples of feminists choosing to use those very tools to define their womanhood and gain power in them.

And Nearly, I know what you mean about the language. It is blunt.

Again I think we need to be careful. I read Murray as saying that support for a patriarchal attitude as to how women should dress is wrong. I think she is wrong to caricaterise that as how all trans women think/act. As already pointed put by Rhiannon, it just isn't the case.

[Rhiannon]

My feeling, rightly or wrongly, is that when trans women put the emphasis on the dresses and the make-up and the personal grooming they are putting what it is to be a woman in a box. It shrinks femaleness down to a love of frippery. I guess for them it is something that they want to celebrate, but I find it quite small and sad. And maybe when this kind of attitude is expressed it plays to the stereotype not just of femaleness but of transgender (which Murray seems to be reinforcing in her article) and I think it diminishes that too, although I've not gone through it, so maybe I don't have the right to comment on that.

[Samuel]

Quite right nearly. I suppose that is what object to.

I thing you and wiggs are also right that we simply don't have the language for this. I have a vague memory of a story of a Native American tribe that treated homosexuals and people with gender dysphorea with great respect, assigning them a special role in their communities. Something along the lines of them having rare insight into the perspectives of both men and women. In our case the strict binary man/woman is problematic. Perhaps if there was a better defined and established place for trans people they wouldn't feel compelled to be trans at all. They wouldn't feel required to fit one or the other.

[Samuel]

My feeling, rightly or wrongly, is that when trans women put the emphasis on the dresses and the make-up and the personal grooming they are putting what it is to be a woman in a box. It shrinks femaleness down to a love of frippery. I guess for them it is something that they want to celebrate, but I find it quite small and sad. And maybe when this kind of attitude is expressed it plays to the stereotype not just of femaleness but of transgender (which Murray seems to be reinforcing in her article) and I think it diminishes that too, although I've not gone through it, so maybe I don't have the right to comment on that.

I think that is allowed Rhiannon. All the more reason for the feminist community to welcome trans women and be willing to show them all the things about living as a woman that they missed whilst trapped in the wrong bilological construct.

[Samuel]

Sorry... 'allowed' sounds horrible! I meant it to be understandable/reasonable 

[Rhiannon]

I think that is allowed Rhiannon. All the more reason for the feminist community to welcome trans women and be willing to show them all the things about living as a woman that they missed whilst trapped in the wrong bilological construct.

But I don't even know what those things are, Sam.

And no, allowed is fine. 

[Samuel]

Just as aside, it's worth considering that Jenni Murray is saying these things from her position as a privileged white woman. That doesn't invalidate her argument but it is perhaps a reason for her words being given so much attention... that and her role with woman's hour 🤔

[Rhiannon]

Just as aside, it's worth considering that Jenni Murray is saying these things from her position as a privileged white woman. That doesn't invalidate her argument but it is perhaps a reason for her words being given so much attention... that and her role with woman's hour 🤔

I think she is perceived to speak 'for women', both through her role on WH and also as a writer on women's issues - I know she's written on the menopause for example.

And as she presents WH does she therefore speak wholeheartedly for trans women? It would seem not. The BBC have apparently given her a warning.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/06/bbc-faces-calls-veteran-broadcaster-dame-jenni-murray-disciplined/

[Samuel]

Just read the response by stonewall. Seems pretty fair to me

[Rhiannon]

I agree.

If I'm talking to other women the only things I know we will kind of have in common are our experiences related to our reproductive systems -possibly including periods, disorders, conception, pregnancy, the menopause - and not all women experience those things, but remain women having female experiences.

[wigginhall]

The shortened version of new approaches to gender, is that it's identity not biology.   And identity is partly socialized, and partly one's own inner world.   (Although you can argue that that is also socialized).