[jancsika]

> It was an oddity, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now.

That's a wonderful wish, but I don't think it holds up to the evidence.

Off the top of my head:

1. If you watch HBO's Lady and the Dale, you'll see that in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael was really a man who was dressed as a woman. (If someone told me that Eugene Levy's character from Splash was based on this reporter, I'd believe them. :)

That documentary had later commentary from the same reporter (in the 80s/90s, I think)-- still proud that he outed a trans person.

2. Check out Gloria Steinem's mid 70s musings on transgenderism. Her thoughts in a 1977 essay on the subject would be right at home today on the alt-right podcasting space, and there are probably also many HN'ers lurking here who agree whole-heartedly with her anti-trans surgery statements.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to the relevant article ATM, but I'm pretty sure this quote was written in the context of the same anti-trans-surgery chapter-- "If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?"

The point is-- we're talking about Gloria fucking Steinem! And her non-apology apology to the trans community didn't appear until 2014 or so[1].

The fact that Amazon sells trinkets with the "shoe doesn't fit" phrase tells me that there's probably a lot more anti-trans history that's been swept completely down the memory hole.

[thewebcount]

> in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael was really a man who was dressed as a woman.

That local reporter was Tucker Carlson's father, Dick Carlson.[0] Let's just say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Carlson

[jancsika]

OMG that is amazing!

Did they mention that in the documentary? If so, I can't believe I missed it.

[thewebcount]

I don't recall if I heard it in the documentary or during an interview with the filmmaker.

[jacquesm]

Like father, like son, apparently.

[mallvinegar]

Here's an excerpt of what Steinem wrote:

"In a way, transsexuals themselves are also making a positive contribution by proving that chromosomes aren't everything. By ignoring this internal structure they cannot change, and focusing on external body appearances and socialization, they are demonstrating that both biological women and men may have within them the qualities of the opposite gender and thus the full range of human possibilities. Unfortunately, this point isn't made in the popular press. On the contrary, transsexualism is used mostly as a testimony to the importance of sex roles as dictated by a society obsessed with body image, genitals, and 'masculine' or 'feminine' behavior. But the main question is whether some individuals are being forced into self-mutilation by the biases around them, and whether their self-mutilation is then used and publicized to prove that those biases are true.

"Feminists are right to feel uncomfortable about the need for and the uses of transsexualism. Even while we protect the right of an informed individual to make that decision, and to be identified as he or she wishes, we have to make clear that this is not a long-term feminist goal. The point is to transform society so that a female can 'go out for basketball' and a male doesn't have to be 'the strong one'. Better to turn anger outward toward changing the world than inward toward mutilating our bodies into conformity. In the meantime, we shouldn't be surprised at the amount of publicity and commercial exploitation conferred on a handful of transsexuals. Sex-role traditionalists know a political tribute when they see one.

"But the question remains: If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?"

This point of view doesn't seem typical of your average alt-right enthusiast to me, she's considering transsexualism within the context of radical feminism, specifically the abolition of gender.

[howinteresting]

I'm trans myself, and my general belief is that Steinem's position is far more defensible if we didn't have our personal lived experiences with gender dysphoria, or the evidence for things like regret rates for gender-affirming surgeries being very low. Second-wave feminism on trans issues was largely incorrect and harmful, but that is mostly a contingent fact rather than a necessary one.

This is as opposed to second-wave feminism on, for example, sex work issues, which is necessarily bad because it is more interested in moralizing than in caring about freedom or materiality.

Of course, anyone spreading the same propaganda now will not be part of the global struggle against fascism, as Judith Butler put it.

[jancsika]

> Second-wave feminism on trans issues was largely incorrect and harmful, but that is mostly a contingent fact rather than a necessary one.

Not sure I understand what that means.

Just to clarify: I don't have the research in front of me, but I'd be willing to bet that by 1977 there were at least two or three decades of research on trans issues relevant to Steinem's words about trans people. E.g., more than enough to persuade any good faith writer on the topic (or even a writer who knew and talked to a friend in that field of research) that the "shoe doesn't fit" quote is at best wildly misleading.

In other words, I'm claiming Steinem was wrong by 2022 standards, wrong by 1977 standards, and non-apologetic by any standard.

> Of course, anyone spreading the same propaganda now will not be part of the global struggle against fascism, as Judith Butler put it.

I agree.

For some reason, Steinem's words on this topic irk me, it's my day off, and I want to keep writing this post. :)

I get that Steinem was writing a political essay. And I can even imagine a line of thinking that says, hey, good for trans people, but that's a medical intervention for a specific condition (that turns out to apply to both sexes, btw), and I think it's a distraction from the specific feminist battle against oppression I'm trying to describe.

Then all she would have had to do in 2014 is say, "Sorry trans people, your battle should have been part of my battle all along. Accept my apology, and let's work together!"

But nooooo, she had to concoct her own artisanal justification to exclude trans people, using only wit and first principles, and add a little zinger for book sales. Then, when called out, shift the conversation away from her previous lack of knowledge, and claim a lack of understanding on the part of her opposition.

She's like the original HN troll account.

[howinteresting]

Well, the issue is that a lot of the trans research that had been conducted by then got burned by the Nazis. The modern idea of gender identity which is now widely recognized as the best possible explanation for the empirical outcomes we see was just being formed, and the dominant players in the field were still "sexologists" who decided whether someone was trans based on how attracted they personally were to their patient.

(John Money, who created the idea of gender identity in the 50s, was wildly off base about the specifics, which resulted in the tragic human rights violation of David Reimer, a cisgender man forced to live as a girl with crippling gender dysphoria. He also lied about the success of his forced gender reassignments, which resulted in routine intersex genital mutilation -- the one procedure that every single right-wing US bill banning gender-affirming healthcare for minors carefully excludes!)

Or at least that's my read of the situation! I could be wrong.

[jancsika]

You have a bibliography on the subject?

I know Robert Sapolsky did a talk on essentially this subject, but it looks like he's on sabbatical writing a book atm.

[renewedrebecca]

I actually had an endocrinologist who interned with John Money and was horrified by his actions.

Money's main failure was his belief that gender is more or less exclusively a social constuct. Gender roles certainly are, but one's innate sense of their own gender is not.

Anyway, it's pretty easy to look him up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money

[jancsika]

Sorry, I mean a bibliography of research into SRS across the past 70 years.

I'm particularly interested in pre-1977 research that Steinem would have had access to.

In short I, want to use my annoyance at her non-apology apology to fuel my education in the history of trans research. :)

[howinteresting]

Sadly no, it's mostly synthesis from reading a lot of articles and twitter accounts like Christa Peterson's.

[mallvinegar]

> This is as opposed to second-wave feminism on, for example, sex work issues, which is necessarily bad because it is more interested in moralizing than in caring about freedom or materiality.

The radical feminist position on prostitution is about reducing harm to women as a class. That a minority choose to willingly engage in sex work doesn't negate the structural issues at play here. Most women in prostitution are from marginalized backgrounds and many are trafficked. Where is their freedom?

Fundamentally this is about men holding physical, sexual, and economic power over women, enforced by violence or the threat of it. Treating women as a product to be consumed and profited off, rather than co-equal individuals. What is so bad about wanting an end to this?

[somebody78978]

> Most women in prostitution are from marginalized backgrounds and many are trafficked. Where is their freedom?

The exact same problem applies to migrant farm workers, but nobody is proposing to solve it by making farming illegal.

[howinteresting]

I'm specifically talking about people like Andrea Dworkin, who said:

"Prostitution in and of itself is an abuse of a woman's body. [...] In prostitution, no woman stays whole. It is impossible to use a human body in the way women's bodies are used in prostitution and to have a whole human being at the end of it, or in the middle of it, or close to the beginning of it. It's impossible. And no woman gets whole again later, after"

This doesn't distinguish between survival sex work and people who are doing it more by choice, nor does it seek to improve the material conditions behind the lives of those forced into sex work, so that they have other choices and survival sex work can organically disappear. Nor does it connect survival sex work to other sorts of difficult jobs with great bodily risks.

Instead, politically, second-wave feminism has sought to orient the full weight of the carceral state against sex workers (i.e. the Nordic model), with all the expected consequences.

[simoncion]

> If anyone was sympathetic to the struggle, it was Dworkin. She just acknowledged that it was also harmful and contributing to oppression.

Lemmy read the quote again:

> "In prostitution, no woman stays whole. It is impossible to use a human body in the way women's bodies are used in prostitution and to have a whole human being at the end of it, or in the middle of it, or close to the beginning of it. It's impossible. And no woman gets whole again later, after"

That's a strident statement that leaves no room for interpretation. It's clear that it's the stated opinion of the author that no woman who was fully informed of the nature of the work beforehand but prostitutes herself, could ever do it by choice, ever enjoy it, or ever have it be a meaningful, beneficial part of her life.

That right there is my problem with Dworkin's statements and other statements like them. At best, they entirely ignore (and at worst, they seek to silence so as to make the discussion "focused and un-muddled") people who enjoy fucking, and also enjoy fucking for money.

[headhasthoughts]

Dworkin had to prostitute herself in order to survive in the 1970s. I think you're barking up the wrong tree. If anyone was sympathetic to the struggle, it was Dworkin. She just acknowledged that it was also harmful and contributing to oppression.

[kgwgk]

“In order to survive” may be a bit too dramatic: "I fucked for food and shelter and whatever cash I needed."

[jrochkind1]

That seems sensible too. What then do you make of Carlos' quote there from 1979? Maybe not even true for her as she was saying it? (why might she have said it then?) Or she somehow had very unusual experience? (for unclear reasons?) Other? Who knows, but you don't think it was an accurate or representative thing to say?

[jancsika]

Look back in the article at what she was sacrificing in order to avoid potential problems. She had Stevie Wonder and George Harrison in her house and couldn't make herself walk down the stairs to meet them. When she did meet face to face with people, she pasted on sideburns and dressed in a suit to appear as a man.

I mean, think about that last part for a moment. Gender dysphoria caused distress in Carlos. Transitioning eased that distress for her. Then she was dressing in drag to present publicly for her career-- dressing in the exact way which previously caused her so much distress that she decided to transition in the first place!

Those practices are almost certainly the "monstrous waste of years of my life" she's talking about.

Anyhow, both things are true. First, the public was vastly more tolerant/indifferent than what she was protecting herself against (and, therefore, the precautions she had taken turned out to have been too extreme). Second, transphobia was so common during the time that even well-known feminists could spew forth with literally no repercussions for decades (and even then, no discernible repercussions AFAICT).

In short, Stevie Wonder and George Harrison are pretty cool guys. :)

[jrochkind1]

Makes sense. Do you think a public musician today might have the experience of "“The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent", though?

It still seems to me that something has changed here, for the worse. That it's very unlikely that such a public figure today could discover that despite their fears"the public" was largely indifferent and unconcerned about it. sassyonsunday below, who I was replying to, seems to agree at least in part too. Which doesn't necessarily conflict with anything you said.

Anyway, either it is or not, we can have different takes, and we're not going to work out the answer here!

[jancsika]

> Which doesn't necessarily conflict with anything you said.

Yeah, I guess I don't see any conflict or disagreement here.