I've posted this in my blog also, but my thoughts on teh debate:
The strangest thing for me was a flickering sense of kinship with Bindel - 'there but for the grace of Kate Bornstein, Ricki Wilchins, Sandy Stone, Roz Kaveny and everyone I met through bisexual groups go I'. So much of what she said - she wants to see an end to gender, she doesn't know what it felt like to 'be' a woman' - was exactly how I felt at about 21.
Fortunately, I started to listen to people who actually enjoy their gender, and now I take a more Pleasure-and-Danger, safe-sane-and-consensual attitude to the whole thing. And I met and read some very intelligent, articulate and splendid trans people.
So unlike Bindel, although I'd like to see the world improved, I'm not either blaming trans people for the state of gender or recommending they be the guinea pigs for my social experiments.
I thought the actual debate a bit of a shambles - as I suppose it must be, if pitched at a broad audience. Bindel hopped around all over the place - 1950s aversion therapy, counselling centres, 'I don't blame the people I blame the industry', the 'talking cure'. Others hopped to keep up.
I felt some obvious points failed to be made - there are many typed of transwomen, there are trans lesbians, there are transmen (which she never mentioned) who don't fit her paradigm either. I was a bit dissapointed nobody mentioned that. Peter Tatchell's final cry that epople were more important than ideologies was probably well-placed - after Bindell had demonstrably ignored a lot of testimony from trans people, and focussed her attention on the idea of sorting out systems, ignoring that this would involve massively damaging people. But it felt like a cop-out, a special pleading - 'We know that these people aren't living up to your ideology, but give them a break.' Why not say 'I have a better ideology than yours, which more accurately reflects what's going on, and hurts less people'? Not enough time to explain it? Presenting oneself as the sympathetic listener, rather than the ideologue? Pure frustration, possibly.
Most centrally, I hated the fact that nobody said - yes, every issue you have raised is also being discussed by trans people themselves. They are questioning the aptness of a medical diagnosis for Gender Identity Disorder. They can tell you about the interraction between their identity and the different bits of the medical profession (not least the insurers, in many countries) and how well, or badly, those bits fit together, and what submitting to a diganosis process feels like. They are talking about the necessity or redundancy of surgery (there was an article in The Second Coming on that, must have been ten years ago at least). They talk about the generic path, their personal path, and whether or not one can know what it feels like to 'be' a woman. And they don't all agree.
Bindel isn't bringing a light to lighten the gentiles, she's bringing a faulty torch to a beach bonfire, and I wish she'd look up and realise that her contribution is both pathetic and late.
Two more complaints:
- the trail before the news - 'an audience of doctors and transsexuals'. Made it seem absurdly gladiatorial and unbalanced, when in fact tickets were freely available. At the very least 'Doctors, transsexuals, and a bunch of Bindel supporters', for balance.
- Bindel was introduced as 'features writer for the Guardian' as though that gave her authority and kudos, when what she writes in the Guardian is ill-informed and frequently-protested nonsense. See Lady's links above. |
