[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."