an article with a grating and incendiary title came to my attention today:
“Why Sexual Assault is not an Excuse for Transphobia: A Response to ‘Gender Critical Feminists’,“ by jennifer waring hansung, AKA ‘trans-gressions’ on medium.com.
of course, many friends and acquaintances of mine were quick to sharpen their claws on it; i proudly associate myself with many clever women who can smell bullshit from a mile away and descend upon it accordingly.
but one had mentioned that no one had written any kind of response to it - at least, as far as she’d seen. while i’m certain someone else has done it before, i figured i’d toss my hat into the ring anyway and write a takedown of my own.
this is going to be very, very long, and it’s going to touch on themes of sexual assault and abuse. if you’re sensitive to this content, skip this post.
(and please forgive me if i seem just a little unkind; this post sent flames up my chimney something fierce.)
typically, terrible articles worsen over the course of your reading, but props to jennifer waring hansung for leaping immediately into heartlessness by accusing women who’ve been sexually assaulted as having agendas for sharing their stories:
“My trans-partner and I both write on medium. We both get trolled by so called ‘Gender Critical Feminists,’ questioning my partner’s right to claim womanhood, bemoaning that trans-woman are somehow stripping ‘real-woman’ of rights, and worse, attempting to justify their arguments with claims of sexual assault.
I can understand how something as traumatic as sexual assault might cause someone to feel threatened, and therefore might raise questions. There is nothing wrong with this. However, if the questions are merely rhetorical vehicles to convey pre-conceived and transphobic answers then they are not really questions at all, but a form of discrimination and marginalisation falsely supported by sob stories.”
let’s play a game of Who Said It: soulless misogynist working for the likes of breitbart, or alleged feminist fighting the good fight? you’d be forgiven if you’d never have assumed the latter. sadly, this has become the face of modern feminist movements: women accusing other women of using sexual assault to further political biases.
this isn’t to say it’s never once happened; the story of emmett till is one we must always remember when understanding how politics and bigotry can influence these kinds of things. however, with that said, calling the experiences women have had with sexual assault sob stories is so shockingly unsympathetic, i’m surprised no one has called out hansung for being so clumsy and hurtful with her words.
it’s the kind of one-liner you’d expect from the big antagonist of a first-time writer’s novel: cruel, ignorant and over-the-top. but… i suppose eloquence isn’t everyone’s strong suit.
once you’ve taken a moment to recover from the whiplash received from such an overt display of insensitivity, we can continue.
after more introduction, hansung conveniently structures this article in the form of a list, making it all the easier to address each point and discuss it at length. in fact, making it easier for me to rip this article to shreds is likely the nicest thing hansung has done for other women.
i’ll be putting hansung’s original writing in italics, followed by my own commentary.
1. Why can’t I ask questions about whether trans women are real women?
“I don’t think it is wrong to ask questions about the differences between trans women and cis born women. I don’t think any trans woman would dispute there are differences- they are already more painfully aware of them than most cis gendered women will ever be. By itself, asking a question is not transphobic. However, assuming that the answer to this question is that having experienced male privilege/having a penis means one should automatically be excluded from the category of woman, and thus female only spaces is.
I don’t think someone should be called transphobic for asking questions. However, many people that have these types of questions already have pre-formed answers which are essentially prejudiced. Trans people are used to hearing these types of questions, so are likely to make the assumption—justified or not—that you already have a TERFesque, transphobic answer prepared.”
here, hansung displays an obnoxious attitude plaguing leftist spaces at the moment: you’re allowed to ask questions and understand the differences between the two human sexes, but if you do so, then you’re also an evil nasty hateful TERF who deserves to be choked out and tortured. also, how could you be asking questions when you could just google it? do you really feel so entitled to the emotional labor of other people? for shame!
the fact of the matter is, there is no winning. because you’re not permitted to ask questions and you’re also not permitted to come to your own conclusions. you are genuinely expected to take the opinions of other people at face value and adopt them as your own without a fuss. i’m sure some smug loser with an anime icon will reblog this post and say i’m being hysterical or i sound like a conservative, but i don’t care. i’ve spent time in radical queer spaces. i know what the lingo is like and what the expectations are.
also, it is patently false that transgender women universally accept that there are differences between male and female bodies. you’d have to purposefully ignore how many try to drill home the concept that a penis is nigh identical in structure to the vulva; or how many push the idea that SRS can genuinely craft the complex musculature and bacterial makeup of a biological vagina out of an inverted penis; or how many claim that artificially induced lactation is the same as the breast milk a pregnant mother develops… you catch my drift.
hansung denies the varied opinions of transgender women by stating flatly that they’re all completely okay with the acknowledgment that biological sex is a tangible difference. hansung, when was the last time you stepped foot on tumblr? i can think of a handful of users who would call you an idiot and a chaser for even making such a statement. don’t get comfortable with who you’re choosing to cozy up to.
2. When trans-woman complain of transphobia amongst ‘gender critical feminists,’ isn’t this just another way in which the patriarchy (which trans-woman arguably still, or at least did, belong to) is silencing cis woman?
“This question is based on a false a parallel between men and trans women. A feeling that they have some inherent similarities, and worse, more similarities than trans women and cis women, because of their physical body, especially their genitalia. Most trans women have also been oppressed by the patriarchy because of some of the same external feminine characteristics that cis women possess. They are not and have never been a part of the patriarchy in the way ‘gender critical feminists’ might imagine.”
hansung, what external feminine characteristics do a transgender woman and a natal woman share? if it’s breast tissue, then i’m sorry to say that everyone has breast tissue. it’s a common misconception that male people don’t have breast tissue, and one that can be quite damaging as male people can get breast cancer too. also? gynecomastia exists.
i’m going to be merciful and assume that hansung isn’t so daft as to imply that “feminine presentation” (a flimsy and inconsistent thing that varies between cultures) is the external feminine characteristic she means… so what could it be? surely it’s not soft skin, since everyone gets eczema, acne, callouses, psoriasis, etc.? or long hair, which has been a unisex trait in many cultures for a long time? is it delicate features, which are also found in both male and female people? what could hansung mean?
i wish she’d clarified on this point, because the idea that there’s a trait natal women and transgender women share that we’re both oppressed for is a hell of a claim. even talking about something as flimsy as occupying female social roles or whatever would’ve been better than leaving it vague. but maybe i’m stepping out of line by asking these questions out loud instead of just going to google.
before i address the next point, i’d also like to add that male people are part of the patriarchy no matter what other marginalizations they face, how they feel about their role in it, and no matter how badly you care for them. your personal feelings on the matter do not change how it functions. if women’s love of male people could save us from the patriarchy, we would be living in a utopia right now.
3. Isn’t all this focus on trans-women distracting from the fact that cis women are still being discriminated against and marginalised?
“No. Just because woman are still struggling with this, does it mean that the issues of trans woman should just be dismissed? This is analogous to saying that ‘black men are still oppressed so we don’t have time yet to think about black woman.’ Trans women don’t want to supersede cis women, they just want the right to stand alongside them, and for people to understand the ways in which they are similarly or differently oppressed.”
another untrue statement. i won’t argue that every transgender woman secretly has the agenda of ruining natal women’s lives, but that’s only because it’s a little too conspiratorial for me. what i believe happens is that many of them simply cannot and do not care about issues specific to natal women, and their desire to have conversations center them drowns out any ability for natal women to discuss our own lives.
the reason that i say that they cannot and do not care is because… when was the last time you actually saw transgender women fighting for things unique to natal women (or all female people, if you want to be broader)? where are they when we need to fight for abortion rights? where are they when we need to encourage pharmacies to trial run their drugs on women before sending them out onto the market? where are they when our bodies are being destroyed by products like essure, which was taken off the market in only 2018 after years and years of women’s suffering not being taken seriously?
we’re always expected to save them and share our hard-earned resources with them. when will they come to our rescue? will they ever? will we die waiting?
also, you can’t honestly say something like that when transgender women routinely bully natal women out of talking earnestly about the realities of their biology: periods, pregnancy, female puberty, etc. many will insist that women change the language of their healthcare pamphlets, their clubs, their shows (the vagina monologues comes to mind) and their own protests (pussy hats, anyone?) to say “people with vaginas” or “uterus bearers” or “period havers” or whatever orwellian nightmare-speak is popular at the moment. if transgender women are not trying to supersede natal women, then why won’t they let us have any kind of spaces to ourselves? why won’t they let us have our own language to describe ourselves?
why won’t they let us have anything?
why do they only ever take, take, and take?
4. As a victim of rape or sexual assault, don’t I have the right to reserve and feel comfortable in cis women only spaces?
“It is understandable, as a victim of sexual violence, to feel threatened by a penis, but it is important to recognise that in the case of trans women, it’s a false threat. The penis to a rape victim may no doubt be symbolic of sexual violence, but the real threat to female sexual safety is from toxic masculinity, not a biological member.
A person acknowledging that they have issues surrounding male perceived genitalia because of sexual assault is not transphobic. Acknowledging a fear of trans-women in cis only female spaces because of this is not transphobic. The assumption that this fear extends beyond genitalia to a transperson themselves is. I have yet to meet a trans woman who is toxically masculine. Most out trans woman— like cis woman— are victims of this trope, not reinforcers and in fact statistically more likely to be sexually assaulted than cis women.
The argument about having a right to space is similar to the one men make about male exclusionary spaces, or equal gender hiring policies. They are necessary because all spaces are cis white men spaces. Most structures automatically preference cis white men for jobs etc. More spaces are cis gendered female spaces than trans female spaces, which is why trans woman shouldn’t be excluded from spaces that could provide them with a similar level of support that cis women receive from them. Would you exclude a black woman from these spaces because the perpetrator of your sexual assault was black? This is conflating one physical aspect of a person with the negative actions of others that just happen to share that one characteristic.
Let me ask you, if a trans woman has had SRS would you then be ok with them in woman only spaces? Is it really the penis that is the problem?”
please, by all means, tell every person who’s been raped or sexually abused by a transgender woman that their fears are just a “false threat.”
i am personally acquainted with many women who’ve been harmed by transgender women, and while i was fortunate enough that my own abuse was nonsexual, to imply that being wary of transgender women is silly and unfounded is deeply insulting. don’t patronize me by saying that the real problem is toxic masculinity, because it’s a hollow phrase meant to absolve men of any guilt they may feel from being misogynistic.
and just because hansung hasn’t ever met transgender women who are toxically masculine doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. they are. you’re simply pretending that they aren’t there, which is kind of robbing transgender women of their right to be messy and complicated, isn’t it?
also, spare me the statistics. it’s been well-established by now that statistics relating to transgender people are often warped and over-dramatized, partly because most people are awful at math. clever and insightful tumblr user old-school-butch has covered statistics like this before, and the results are rarely quite so… intense. twisting our arms with statistics you’d find in a fun house mirror to guilt us into sympathy is just shady.
(especially because the actually accurate and grave statistics relate to transgender prostitutes in brazil. call me optimistic, but i feel like these statistics are hardly applicable to middle- to upper-class white transgender women working in tech industries or living with their parents in the midwest.)
another point i want to touch upon is that people simply must stop using black women as tools in their arguments. black women are real people who deserve respect and recognition outside of being constantly used to guilt white natal women into allowing (typically white) transgender women into female-only spaces. it’s shameful and honest to god racist to keep using black women as your go-to rhetorical device. black women are not equivalent to white transgender women, or black transgender women, or any person born male - they are women, full stop. if you need to use their existence to pressure people into buying into your stance, you’re a jackass and probably failed debate classes.
the final line of this paragraph is one i find to be the most fascinating, as it truly highlights how little hansung understands the argument at hand… yet oddly enough, she’s right: the penis isn’t the problem. it’s the fact that natal women are not being allowed to have spaces free of male people without pulling out their own guts and exposing their own traumas to be understood as something other than bigots.
natal women should not have to crucify ourselves to be permitted our own spaces. we should not have to lay each and every heartbreak upon a display table to be allowed to organize with one another exclusively. we should be allowed to have spaces in which we can discuss our lives without being constantly berated for not mentioning transgender women every five seconds.
but hansung, you’ve proven to me that even this is not enough. it is not enough for a woman to be abused, invaded and left derelict in the aftermath of violence. her pain is simply a sob story, and no matter what she goes through, she should never feel entitled to have a space without male presence in it. any attempts at reaching for the compassion of others is just manipulative, and women are always just so manipulative, aren’t we? tsk tsk!
oh, but you? you see through these ruses and have found the truth: women are just being fussy, bratty and entitled! you’re much cleverer than the rest of us. with this knowledge at hand, now you can harangue and harass women into being more accommodating by using political shame as a leverage.
hansung makes a good point. i’m sure our lives would be so much easier if we were all just more accommodating. why aren’t we nicer? why are we so feisty? maybe we wouldn’t get hurt if we just stopped struggling so much.
5. As a lesbian I don’t want to have sex that involves a penis. It’s just my sexual preference, why should this be considered transphobic?
“If the only reason a person doesn’t want to have sex with a trans woman is because they have a penis, and they have not previously had penis-related experiences to base their level of desire off, then that is transphobic and closed minded. The same way that not considering a same-sex relationship because you think you are not attracted to same-sex genitals without any actual experience is also closed-minded. Having had a negative penis related experience or not finding penises arousing are of course valid reasons to be hesitant, but there is a difference.
Again, if a trans woman has had SRS would you sleep with them? If the answer is no, then again it is not their penis that is the problem.”
interesting! this is typically an argument i see wielded exclusively at gay people; i rarely see heterosexual people pressured into sex they don’t want by activists, but i suppose hansung has decided no stone should be left unturned (and no person should be left feeling that they’re permitted something as ridiculous as sexual autonomy).
this is rape rhetoric. arguing at length that people should at least try to have sex with people they don’t want to have sex with is rape rhetoric. it doesn’t matter how elevated and superior the language you’ve couched it in is, it’s rape rhetoric. hansung, you should be ashamed of yourself for pushing forth this kind of mentality.
though i know you won’t be, because i’m sure you’ve surrounded yourself with like-minded nematodes who have similarly scant reservations about being controlling and demanding about other people’s personal business.
6. Why are ‘gender critical feminists,’ so severely criticised for just trying to discuss the distinctions between women and trans women?
“Gender critical feminists are not criticised for just having a simple discussion, but for saying that trans women aren’t women, because they haven’t been socialised as such. Critics such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Germaine Greer and Jenni Murray all argue this. Discriminating on social grounds is not better than discriminating on physical grounds, which is why they were, rightly, heavily criticised. If you are interested in reading a more nuanced breakdown of their arguments and why they are problematic, check out an article I wrote previously: Are You A Real Woman?”
if hansung’s comprehension skills were actually higher than what is required for medium.com writers, she would’ve understood that adichie did not advocate for discriminating against transgender women: she simply stated that she believed transgender women have different life experiences than natal women, which hansung herself said earlier in this very article - see question #1.
not sure how you could go backwards on this very argument in the same article, but hey, why should gymnasts feel like the only ones capable of doing backflips?
tragically, the levels of brain atrophy required to comprehend such cognitive dissonance and inconsistency is considered incompatible with life, so don’t feel bad if you just can’t wrap your head around all of this.
(also, if you think i’m going to read another article by hansung, then you expect too much of me…)
finally, we reach the last segment of the article.
7. I accept trans women as women, I just think they are different because they have different physical characteristics and have experienced male privilege. Why is acknowledging this transphobic?
“It’s not. The problem is when these ‘different physical characteristics’, and ‘male privilege’ are used to align trans women more closely to men than cis women. This is a different, more subtle form of transphobia, but it is still transphobia.
This article is just the tip of the gender-confused ice-berg. No one should be labelled a TERF or anti-feminist for asking a question, but I think that people jumping down each others throats in the name of political incorrectness is symptomatic of a wider issue with social media, and not exclusively the fault of trans women.
Nevertheless, critics such as Adichie and Murray went beyond asking questions. They gave answers that were based on inaccurate assumptions. Critiquing them is part of the process of academic dialogue. Their responses needs to be engaged with and broken down. In the same way that you would engage with male stereotypes and misunderstandings of women, trans women also have a right to point out ways in which they are also being both deliberately and inadvertently silenced by a group of cis women with whom they share more similarities with than differences than they will ever realise.”
is it transphobic to declare that transgender women are physically and socially different from natal women or not? make up your mind! saying yes/no/yes/no/yes/no only serves to perplex the very people you’re attempting to speak with. pick a stance and stick with it, hansung, for god’s sake!
i’m also not sure i completely understand what adichie, murray and greer have to do with an article about sexual assault and transphobia. hansung seems to have lost her train of thought. perhaps huffing the fumes of the future cancelled out a couple brain functions?
what was meant to be an article about the use of sexual assault experiences as a method of discriminating against transgender women (which is already a deeply dark and serious claim to make) has devolved into dragging intelligent and insightful women such as adichie for daring to not buy into western feminist stances.
(admit it: you’re probably just upset that adichie is a brilliant black woman who won’t fit nicely into your rhetorical toolbox no matter how many people try to brow-beat her into submission.)
overall i must say that this is a messy, poorly articulated and devastatingly thoughtless stinkpiece that showcases how putting horse blinders on to any argument deemed “TERFy” makes it so that you straight up don’t understand what the opposition is even arguing.
i know i’m really beating a dead horse by covering this part again, but it must be said once more: calling anyone’s experiences of sexual assault, abuse, rape or torment a “sob story” is breathtakingly cruel. you cannot possibly conceive of yourself as a compassionate, empathetic person and write out such a sentence so earnestly.
hansung’s article is an example of the ways that the modern feminist movement has devolved into mud-slinging between women for the sake of preserving the male ego. i believe in sisterhood, deep down in my heart, but we must acknowledge the wicked ways that women will sell one another out for the sake of the patriarchy, even if it’s ultimately cutting off your nose to spite your face.
i don’t have an immediate answer for approaching women like this. i’ll likely write about it again at some point, but for now, i think i’ve ingested enough garbage for one sitting.
which, given that it’s a holiday weekend, means it’s taking up space that could be occupied by mashed potatoes.
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