Hey all,
This week I will be focusing my blog post on the reading ‘Chapter 1 – Feminist Embattlement of the Field of Trans’ which was written by Patricia Elliot and is from the book ‘Debates in Transgender, Queer and Feminist Theory’. Throughout the reading, Elliot has focused on two main points, so I will outline these points in this blog post.
Firstly, Elliot explains that non-trans radical feminists feel as though transwomen are not female ‘enough’ and that they are a threat to feminism. As Elliot states, many radical feminists believe that transwomen are not ‘women’ because they were born as ‘male’ and justify their opinion by stating that transwomen cannot grasp the idea of how non-trans women feel, how non-trans women have been oppressed against through history, and that they have no interest on challenging womens oppression. Elliot then goes on to state that many radical feminists believe that transwomen are a dire threat to the existence of feminism as transwomen are really ‘men’ intent on taking over women’s bodies to steal their energy and to make women obsolete, because they apparently want to reproduce patriarchal life where women are subordinate to men.
Secondly, throughout the reading Elliot analyses the negative responses that Nixon received when she applied to work as a counsellor but was rejected from the position because of the prejudicial view that she was born a ‘male’ so she was not female ‘enough’ and because she was regarded to as a ‘man’. Elliot explains that there are two main reasons that the Vancouver Rape Relief Centre excluded Nixon from working as a counsellor for women that have experienced violence from men. The first reason, as Elliot explains, the VRRC (Vancouver Rape Relief Centre) denied Nixon the counselling position as there was a question of her gender identity as she did not fit in the VRRC’s criterion of the definition of a ‘woman’. This is due to the fact that she was born a ‘male’, has become a transwoman, and she has not lived and socialised solely as a woman, which meant that she didn’t fit the definition of a ‘woman’. The second reason, as Elliot explains, the VRRC also denied Nixon the job position because of the fact that it would mean (by their definition of a ‘woman’) that a ‘male’ worker would be working to counsel women that have experienced violence from men. It seems as though the VRRC decided not to give Nixon the position because of the fact that the women being counselled may have felt that someone who lived as a man for part of her life could not be supportive on the issue of male oppression and violence from men.
I picked to add this YouTube video to this blog entry, as I thought an animation would be nice to end the blog post, it really puts into practice the attitudes that are directed towards trans-gendered women from radical feminists and it relates heavily back to the reading. In depth, the video shows why a transgendered woman is being excluded from a women’s group (because of the fact that she was not born a woman), while the person that is excluding her talks heavily of why radical feminism feels that transgendered women preserve oppressive genders and why transgender women experience oppression due to patriarchy.
I think I could relate this reading back to my essay topic (essay topic number 4- referring to work) as it highlights how transgendered people are not always able to receive the same opportunities in the workplace in comparison to men and women, the practices that allow inequality towards transgendered people to be recreated, and how transgendered people are oppressed towards, bullied towards and discriminated against in a workplace.
Until next week,
Tom
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