Must we choose the least worst option?

The Tickle v Giggle case has finally been decided in the Federal Court of Australia. The gist of the case is that a TERF feminist, Sall Grover, founded a women's only networking app called Giggle. Transsexuals were excluded from the app via facial recognition. One of these transsexuals, Roxanne Tickle, challenged the ban in the courts and won. 

One interesting feature of all this is that because TERF feminists are no longer very welcome on the left, they are increasingly orienting to the right. People on the right are generally supportive of the idea that biological sex is real and that women should be allowed to have their own spaces. 

The Giggle app

But there's a catch. TERF feminists are the modern version of the most radical feminists of the 1970s. Is it really the case that social conservatives should embrace the politics of these women? 

Some undoubtedly will. They will look at aspects of what these women are saying and find reason to agree. This, for instance, is how Sall Grover began her presentation of her TERF feminist beliefs after losing her court case:

Most people on the right will be sympathetic to this. If this were it, then it would be very easy to form an alliance with TERF feminists. But consider what Sall Grover listed straight after this:

This is a very radical doctrine, with radical implications. The first thing I'd note is this. The TERF feminists often claim that to call a biological man a woman is a suppression of truth and reality. But is this not what Sall Grover is doing in making these claims? She is asking us to believe that there is no connection between the fact of biological sex and sex based character traits. 

This isn't credible. It is not credible that men and women would be so biologically dimorphous, with the female body clearly adapted for the bearing of children, whilst the male body is clearly more adapted for warfare and hunting, and for all of this to not be expressed in any way in our character traits. It's like someone asserting that genetics has no role in who we are. It is ignoring all the science of sex based hormones and of differences in the wiring of the brain. It ignores what parents observe time and again in their children. It ignores what we all observe in relationships with the opposite sex. It is a type of ideological suppression of reality - of thinking something is true because it serves our political values. It is an example of living within a hyperreality, in which the conditions of truth are not that something conforms to reality, but that it conforms to what people think is proper to believe in order to get ahead in society, or in order to advance the interests of a particular group or movement.  

There's a second problem. TERF feminists often talk about transsexualism being an erasure of women and girls. However, the logic of TERFism is in its own way an erasure of womanhood. It empties the category of meaning. All that is left is a difference in body shape and reproductive organs. Apart from that, men and women are considered to be the same. For TERFS there is nothing distinctly feminine about women - they consider the feminine to be merely "socially constructed and imposed". In fact, TERFs often have very little understanding of what the feminine might even mean. They usually talk about it as if it only referred to external physical adornment, like wearing lipstick. But, if this is so, if men and women are exactly the same except for our physical shape, then "womanhood" as a category is mostly meaningless. It doesn't signify much about a person. So why are TERFs so keen to uphold the category? Because it has become associated with what they call "sex based rights". They treat it as a political category in which you compete for special rights against other groups. But, as they have found, other groups can do the same thing even better, with transsexuals generally being thought to occupy higher ground in the intersectional hierarchy.

Finally, the TERF position is not so much a bulwark against transsexualism as it is a preparation for it. The ground for transsexualism was prepared when feminists decoupled sex and gender, so that it was thought that men and women could not only swap natures, but that it was progressive and liberating to do so. When Sall Grover declares that men and boys can be feminine and women and girls can be masculine, she is being semi-trans - strictly speaking, she is advocating for transgenderism rather than transsexualism. She wants it to be the case that we can declare ourselves to be the opposite "gender" (masculine or feminine) but not the opposite sex (biologically male or female). She wants to go 90% of the way toward transsexualism, but to stop just before we get to the point at which we might declare ourselves to be the opposite sex.

And this position has done damage. One of the problems with it is that it often rests on an assumption that the feminine is inferior and therefore women should try to be more masculine, as criticised in the following social media post:

I've known a lot of Gen X feminists. Some of them strove to present themselves as masculine. They adopted a masculine personal presentation and masculine hobbies (boxing, motorbikes etc.). But underneath it all they were heterosexual women and could never really pass as men. They occupied a no-man's land (excuse the pun), in which they were neither attractively feminine, nor believably masculine, just confused about what they should be. As they aged, they gradually dropped the pretence and mostly returned to a more feminine persona, which always made me wonder what the point of it was. I just don't think they ever gave themselves permission to be women.

In the 1970s, TERFism was recognised to be a radically left-wing politics. Today, there is something of a push for it to be accepted by social conservatives. If this happens, it will be because it is thought of as a better option than transsexualism. Faced with Tickle v Giggle, social conservatives will choose Giggle. 

But there is no need to do this. We should not allow ourselves to be pressed into choosing the least worst option. The TERFs need us a lot more than we need them. If they wish to garner support from us, then we should do so carefully and strategically, until that time that they are willing to abandon the more harmful aspects of their politics.

Postscript: Saw the following on social media and thought it relevant to the point I was trying to make about feminism preparing the ground for transsexualism:

Are Terfs really any better?

If you were to set out the basic traditionalist position on sex distinctions it would look something like this:

1. We are born male or female

2. If we are born male we are connected in our nature to the masculine; if female to the feminine

3. Masculine and feminine are real qualities. If we wish to fulfil our own created nature, we will seek to embody the better qualities of the masculine if we are men, and the feminine if we are women. In doing so, our self manifests a transcendent good that helps give meaning and purpose to our existence.

I got into a debate yesterday with a group of Terfs on this issue. These are "trans exclusionary radical feminists", i.e. feminists who do not believe that males can suddenly declare themselves to be women. They insist, just like traditionalists, that a woman is an adult human female. They would agree with traditionalists on the first proposition I set out above, namely that we are born male or female.

What struck me during the debate, however, was not the common ground but the vast gulf separating these Terfs from my own politics. I came away thinking that they had extraordinarily awful beliefs about men and women. I think it's useful to set out the reasons why I came to this conclusion.

a) Terfs still reduce the category of womanhood to a point that it becomes meaningless

Terfs might agree with traditionalists on the first proposition, but they entirely reject the next two. What this means is that they define a woman as someone who has female reproductive organs, but that is it. For them, a woman (or a man) can be absolutely anything else that they choose to be. Being a man or a woman has no further relevance to anyone's life, except for the fact of reproductive organs. So why then think it important? What is the point of the category itself if it is irrelevant to anything we might do or be?

In short, Terfs still hold very strongly to the distinction between sex and gender. They accept the fact of biological sex, but they think any sex based characteristics are merely "gender" that is socially constructed and oppressive. 

When I suggested that these Terfs were reducing the category of womanhood to something meaningless, these are the type of responses I got:

As you can see, the Terfs were very firm in asserting that being a woman has no meaning apart from the fact of being born female ("women just exist", "individuals with a female body", "just existing in a way they want to", "a matter of biology and nothing else", "being born female...the beginning and end of how to be a woman"). When I challenged them about whether this was a meaningful category, they gave the only answer that they logically could, namely that the biological facts of menstruation and pregnancy gave a point of distinction between men and women. This, it seems to me, reduces women, as women, to something like "walking wombs".

b) Terfs still pander to transsexuals

Despite the fierce animosity between Terfs and transsexuals, the Terfs are still willing to go to extraordinary lengths to remodel the world so that transsexuals might better fit in.

Their idea is as follows. Let's say you have someone who is male but who wants to be female. What the Terfs want is for our concept of "male" to fully embrace what is female. In this way, the transsexual would not need to transition. Being male would incorporate the desire to be female. 

They are serious about this. Look at the following tweet:

Similarly:

What do the Terfs think we need to do to make transsexuals feel more comfortable in their own bodies? The answer: completely sever any connection between our biological sex and our masculinity or femininity. We are just supposed to "exist with a male body" or "exist with a female body" and nothing more.

I would hope my traditionalist readers would understand by now why I think the Terf position is a complete non-starter for us.

c) The Terfs associate masculinity and femininity with negative life outcomes

The Terfs might argue along the lines of "be whatever you want" but when drawn out in debate they revert to the idea that masculinity and femininity are oppressive social constructs that lead to terrible life outcomes, such as domestic violence, rape and misogyny.

This, of course, raises the problem of what younger people are meant to do in response to these beliefs. Imagine you were a 14-year-old girl and you really believed that your own femininity and the masculinity of the boys around you were going to lead to violence and rape. Would it not potentially destabilise your psychological and emotional development? It seems to me to be a kind of mental trap that is difficult to escape from. If you cannot be feminine, and it is equally wrong to be masculine, and if there is no hope of ever having a happy relationship with the opposite sex (because masculinity is tarnished by its association with rape and violence), then along what lines is positive development into adulthood supposed to occur? Is it any wonder that so many young women are developing psychological issues?

Here is just a sample of what "Alliecat" had to say in relation to masculinity and femininity:

You can see that for this woman "gender" has been cast in the most negative terms. Given that it is such a core aspect of life, you can only imagine the detrimental psychological effects that such a worldview must have.

Something else occurs to me here also. For men to love women, they need to be able to form an idealised view of women as having admirable feminine character traits. Men don't need to believe that women are perfect, but they do need to uphold an image of women as being caring, sympathetic etc. But if young women are led to believe that such feminine traits are merely a path to oppression, then they won't be cultivated. Even worse, if young women are led to believe that womanhood is defined merely by reproductive organs, then this even further shifts the emphasis in relationships from love to sexuality. You then start to get the complaint from men that all women are offering is sex appeal.

d) In spite of all of the above, the Terfs are not neutral between men and women but promote radical female superiority

If all this wasn't enough, some of these Terfs are also committed to the idea of a matriarchal future, in which men have a very limited role in society.

This might seem odd, given all the complaints about patriarchy and misogyny and the like. You would think that the Terfs would envisage some form of sex-blind equality. Instead, you get self-descriptors in their Twitter bios that read "unironic Matriarchy proponent". What does this mean? Here is an example:

They are arguing that the family should be a female sphere over which men should exercise no influence, but should merely support financially. The children are hers alone, she should transmit her culture and values and not him, she should be the one to spend the money even if she does not earn it.

If these Terfs really want to live this way they could move to Japan. My understanding is that Japanese men are expected to work long hours, hand over their money to their wives, receive a small allowance and have little to do with the domestic sphere (Japanese men will often spend the hours after work socialising with other men rather than returning home).

Does the Japanese model work? I don't think so. Japan has falling birth rates (down to 1.36); very low marriage rates; a growing avoidance of romantic relationships; widespread prostitution; and a problem of young men withdrawing from society (hikikomori). Young men describe not wanting to get married because they see marriage simply as a burden. From a Guardian report:

Aoyama says the sexes, especially in Japan's giant cities, are "spiralling away from each other". Lacking long-term shared goals, many are turning to what she terms "Pot Noodle love" – easy or instant gratification, in the form of casual sex, short-term trysts and the usual technological suspects: online porn, virtual-reality "girlfriends", anime cartoons. Or else they're opting out altogether and replacing love and sex with other urban pastimes.

The Terfs are not thinking things through. If men have no respected role within the family, why would they bother committing to it? It will come to be thought irrational.

I'm sorry that I can't report more positively on my debate with the Terfs. I suppose that I can commend a few of them for being willing to debate and not just name call, but that's the only positive spin I can put on it. They are still peddling wildly destructive ideas, to the point that it's difficult to see them as any better politically than their transsexual opponents.

Can modern society define what a woman is?

Last year I had a debate with someone who insisted that the term "woman" could refer to anything that a person identifying as such wanted it to mean. My objection that if the term could mean anything at all that it became meaningless fell on deaf ears. 

This debate has now gone mainstream. Matt Walsh was invited onto the Dr Phil show and he had this argument with a trans activist (starting from about 7:20):

 

The discussion kicked off when Matt Walsh asked the trans activist (Addison) to define the term "woman". Addison replied: "Womanhood is something that I cannot define because I myself am not [a woman]. Matt Walsh interjected: "But you used the word, so what did you mean when you said transwomen are women if you don't know what it means?" Addison: "So here's the thing, so I do not define what a woman is because I do not identify as a woman. Womanhood is an umbrella term, it includes people who...." Matt Walsh interjecting: "That describes what?" Addison: "People who identify as a woman." Matt Walsh: "Identify as what?" Addison: "As a woman." Matt Walsh: "What is that?" Addison: "To each their own. Each woman, each man, each person is going to have a different relation with their own gender identity and define it differently." Matt Walsh: "You won't even tell me what the word means though".

In my post I suggested that this inability to define a term like "womanhood" could be traced back to the metaphysics of philosophers like Thomas Hobbes who rejected realism in favour of nominalism:

You can see here the logic of nominalism (that there are only individual instances of things) and a certain type of materialism (that we are just matter in motion) in undermining a "teleology" - a view that there are proper ends to human life that are discernible through reason.

  Sohrab Ahmari had a similar take on the Matt Walsh discussion:

And what of the feminists? One made this comment:

This doesn't really help much. Yes, it defines the term "woman" with clarity as "a person with a female body". But it deliberately stops there and refuses to give any meaning to the term "womanhood". Our terf feminist wants "womanhood" to be self-defined in a similar way that the trans activists want "woman" to be self-defined.

Terfs and trans are both running with the same principle, of claiming that our sex has no real content that might influence who we are or what we do. For that reason, championing the terf position prepares the ground for adopting the trans one - it becomes very difficult to hold the line once the general principle is accepted.

Nor is the terf position persuasive even in terms of biology. If it is clear that we are biologically distinct sexes, then it is unreasonable to suggest that these biological distinctions would have no effect on personality. If men evolved more muscular bodies fit for the purposes of hunting large game and for defending the tribe in warfare, and if women's bodies are designed for the bearing and nurture of infants, then how could you possibly claim that this would have no effect at all on who we are in our personhood? 

And why should people even care about manhood and womanhood under the terms suggested by terf feminism? If it is just a matter of different bodies, with no ramifications for the human person, then who would care if they were erased as coherent categories? The categories would be merely accidental to life if what the terfs say is true.

Nor are terf feminists consistent in severing sex and personality. They are not as laid back in claiming that each man can have any kind of personality. Instead, there is a categorising of some kinds of masculine personality as "toxic" and attempts to educate men into adopting more emotional expressions of personality. In other words, there are value judgements when it comes to expressions of manhood, rather than "each man can equally define for himself in any direction he chooses". 

It is better to acknowledge some positive content to manhood and womanhood, rather than making these terms wholly based on subjective, individual preference or practice. This does not have to be overdone, to the point that they are felt to be unnecessarily restrictive or limiting. But look at what happens when a society refuses to define at all and denies any objective meaning to terms like woman or womanhood. The categories are then effectively erased and become meaningless except, as Matt Walsh aptly put it in the video, as "costumes that can be worn".