Andie’s Place observations of gender dysphoria and beyond

It’s the cornerstone of feminism, and a simple enough question. How comes men seem to rule and dominate the world, how comes they always seem to have done so? For what reason? It’s the one item in Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens (do read it, it’s excellent for many reasons) that defies his analysis.

There really isn’t any single justification among all the superficial traditional arguments such as muscle strength, child-bearing etc., so if you are still stuck in these, do read the Sapiens chapter. The question remains as stuck itself, with continued inequality in treatment and reward between a strong binary of men and women. Why, in so many respects, is femininity seen to weaken a man and masculinity strengthen a woman?

And it is patriarchy that has sustained the silence and tacit moral support of the immoral that has been so clearly thrust into view by Harvey Weinstein. It is patriarchy that keeps a groping, abusive man in the US presidency.

A tsunami of #metoo may have shocked, but surely not surprised. Maybe the greater surprise has been the sudden collegial willingness of women to speak out. Their silence was surely because of the power relationships that exist, a patriarchal view that women are somehow the possessions of men, maybe not always individually, but certainly collectively. But #metoo names victims, not perpetrators. ‘It happened.’ No; it was done.

Men have responded online; the better have been to say ‘shut up and think; this is for us to work out’. (Example here, from Mike Morrell – it is a start, but will not, I think, spark a revolution.)

But ask: in what sense is it still business as usual? When will it not be time to call this out and change the way things are? Men will be men? No; there is responsibility here. Men are more than the passive subjects of a powerful hormone, and their sense of privilege and entitlement is learned.

Is there a trans perspective on this? I think there needs to be for several reasons.

First, trans women are viewed by too many commentators and self-opinionated people, and certainly by TERFs, as fundamentally men who like to wear different clothes and pretend. With simplistic narratives of biology and what a man/male and a woman/female are, they refuse to understand the nature of a trans woman. They underpin all their arguments with the safety of women’s spaces, predicated on the fallacy that men want to disguise themselves as women, give it a stamp of approval called transgender and do things that are already illegal.

In other words, women should always fear every man, because therein lies the seat of violence against women. Men have the power. Patriarchy sustains it. Don’t let the enemy in.

Second, trans women have uniquely experienced being among men who believe no women are present; they have heard it, unmoderated by apology. It isn’t just locker room talk, it’s any room talk. This is not just watching a hidden camera, but being invited into the conversation. They have also experienced being among women when no men are present, and know what men do that is not spoken about. In other words, we have seen the true nature of people from both points of view. Yes; we know what men really think, but more importantly what they say amongst themselves, which ratifies, encourages, condones, and gives them some shared permission.

What men really think about who has precedence, and whether they truly believe all women are of equal value as all men and due equal respect, may have improved in recent years. But I know, and they know, that women are still there to be imprinted upon. Even nice men mansplain, and talk over women and steal their ideas.

Third, trans people, male and female, know more than anyone else what it is to switch others’ perceptions of their gender. Trans men, after the effects of testosterone have masculinised them, see the world differently, and importantly, the world receives them very differently. Suddenly they have male privilege, passports to inclusion they have not had before. Trans women, conversely can be branded traitors to the male cause, and are diminished. They can be deemed to have lost their academic ability, skills and authority, simply for being women. Expectations of advancement or simply of qualified opinion are reduced: it doesn’t matter any more, you’re just a woman.

Male is the default, male is authority, men are in charge, men get the opportunities. That isn’t a resentful thought, just the experience that we have. It is there, maybe no absolutely, but it is there.

The trans perspective includes this understanding as well: that we confuse people who believe (and it really isn’t a simple biological analysis and conclusion) that there are only men and women and that we are all born incontrovertibly one or the other. And if we don’t confuse, we are inconvenient, because we intervene in the arguments of both feminists and patriarchists. The real problem with transgender issues is not trans people, but the invention of patriarchy that makes men a problem to women.

We therefore threaten patriarchy, and we thereby unsettle some forms of feminism that require men to be immutable. The main reason trans people and how they express their experience, are not understood, is because fixity in the binary is a necessary condition for propping up both male privilege and male threat. But can men in power (any kind) in sufficient numbers, change where we are? Or is patriarchy too structural?

If so, why isn’t it blindingly obvious that the patriarchy is a falsehood to be shattered by every woman standing up and saying ‘me too’? Or do we really not see it?

I do. And I don’ think many men do. It’s there in whose idea is best, who talks loudest, who has most entitlement (is it just confidence?), and who concludes the conversation. That men today can still joke about the casting couch, shows how normal it still is to think this has an element of inevitability and acceptability.

As a background to this, I am always reminded that four out of five of my teen/twenties girlfriends suffered abuse from men, and that since then I came to know just how many women around me suffered everything from rape, marital rape, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, domestic abuse and attempted murder. That is not true of the men I have known, on anything remotely like the same scale. This is still a fact of life – not in an overtly patriarchal society where women are covered, walk a distance behind men, cannot drive, be educated or socialise freely – but in 2017 European culture.

What sustains patriarchy

A friend asked me this morning why this has persisted, why patriarchy is so old and still has such an implicit grip today. I feel quite strongly that it lies with patriarchal religions, which have shaped cultures, and stained almost every civilisation for thousands of years. Once you have a supreme deity who is male, you can use that deity’s voice to justify the supposed order set in place by that deity. Yes, the argument is circular but no more than that of the bible saying that it is the inspired word of god. There is no other external reference for giving primacy to the male (or indeed to the female). Once you give a supposed deity authority to declare that its gender is to rule, you can then impose that authority as has been invested in you. Who dares argue with the deity, the natural order, the way things are?

Tell me I am wrong, by all means, but I see many women’s voices from religious and conservative bases supporting the patriarchy as divine order, and blaming only individual men for gendered abusive behaviour. How can women stand up within their patriarchal religions and declare the end to patriarchy? I don’t think they can, not without structural resistance.

And our post-religious cultures too are so often shaped by that past. Women have come to believe that they need to accept, respond and even be flattered by male attention in order to be wanted, approved of, or seen to be included – because of that natural order. There is nothing ‘natural’ about it. The delusion of male protection and chivalry is not derived from anything other than male behaviours, arrogance, violence and privilege, based on a false primacy, whether to be lord of the manor, cardinal or knight. Economy, religion and war are tightly intertwined in a tapestry of male order to act as they wish in order to shape the world the way of their god-given entitlement.

Maybe now we should require that this natural order be debunked in our religions and cultures, because the way patriarchy has always played out is so far from divine, so far from right, and we are staring it in the face.

Summary

Trans people suffer from patriarchy as much as anyone, but we see things non-trans people cannot in the same way. Patriarchy goes beyond sex and gender and is increasingly absurd in non-binary environments, as if we need the binary to keep it and to hate it.

Men are not all bad, and we have all been cultivated into a patriarchal society. But men being good is not the point.

Patriarchy has deep roots in places that may never revoke the concept, because it defines patriarchy as divine, or a natural order.

It’s simply time we all saw patriarchy for what it is, what it causes, and why it must end, whatever has to change in order to do so.