As a general rule I think that comparing the oppression that one minority group gets to that another minority group gets is a bad idea. I get very irritated by people who, when on the receiving end of prejudice, go on social media and complain, “that wouldn’t have happened if I was xxx”, because of course quite likely it would. However, in this particular case I think a comparison will help illuminate the issue. My apologies if anyone is offended by it.
Anyway, today’s fracas du jour on social media has been all about the vital importance of keeping those horrible trans women out of rape crisis centers, so that “real” women can feel safe in them. Here’s a little thought experiment for you.
Suppose you are running a rape crisis center. Two women have come in. Both have been raped, and both are deeply traumatized. One is white, and the other is black. The white woman says to you, “I don’t feel safe with that black woman here, black people scare me, please throw her out.” What do you do?
I don’t for a minute suggest that would not happen. Sadly there are parts of the world where I suspect it is all too plausible. However, hopefully you lot will all be as horrified by it as I am.
I’ve never been trained to run a rape crisis center, but this is the sort of thing I hope would happen. Firstly I have a deeply traumatized black woman whose day has just been made much worse by the behavior of the other woman, so I need to get her somewhere where she can be looked after without this unwanted drama. Hopefully I have more than one room I can use, and colleagues I can call on for help. Then there’s the white woman, who is behaving very badly, but is also deeply traumatized. She might be better when she’s calmed down a bit, and in any case it is our job to help women who have been raped, no matter how badly they behave. So we look after her as well. We try to make both women feel as safe, comfortable and supported as possible.
Now try this scenario. You are running a rape crisis center. Two women have come in. Both have been raped, and both are deeply traumatized. One is cis, and the other is trans. The cis woman says, “I don’t feel safe with that trans person here, he’s really a man and might attack me, please throw him out.” What do you do?
If your answer to that is, “throw the bastard out, how dare he come into a women-only space!” then I would be deeply worried about you. Nevertheless, you would have some support, both from prominent media feminists, and from the British Government.
Of course they never put the argument like that. It is always presented as the cis woman who has been raped, and the trans woman who might cause trouble by invading the women-only space. One woman is portrayed as the victim, the other is demonized. But really, why would the trans woman be coming to the rape crisis center if she hadn’t been raped too, and be equally in need of help and support?
As far as I can see, these “debates” have two main purposes. The first is to scare trans women by making it clear that if they were unlucky enough to be raped then there would be no help or support for them, they’d be on their own. The second is to reinforce the idea that trans women are dangerous sexual predators who are not safe to have around “real” women. I find both of these things despicable.
That is horrifying and despicable and I am super angry it is STILL happening.
Over here it was written into law, in an Act authored by a Labour government.
Having read the recent New Statesman article by Rachel Hewitt, my take on it very closely reflects yours. In an RCC context, the primary concern is to support all victims equally, within available resources. Phobias that may interfere with the process should be accommodated for, again within available resources; being irrational doesn’t change the fact that a phobia is entirely real for the person experiencing it, and an RCC is not the place for curing people of maladaptive traits. In an ideal world every victim would receive personal support in an environment free of such distractions. Heck, in an ideal world there wouldn’t be any need for RCCs to begin with! However, since we don’t live in one, it is always necessary to weigh issues carefully as to avoid letting one person’s privileges trump another person’s basic rights.
That said, there is one issue in your entry that made me somewhat uneasy, and that is the racial analogy. Having white privilege myself, in my own conversations I approach that particular device with extreme trepidation, and usually avoid it if at all possible because it’s so much easier for me to get it wrong than right. If I may suggest, there is an alternative analogy that would work even better while simultaneously avoiding any challenges of misappropriation, and that is class privilege. If a hypothetical upper class victim demanded that any persons not of their own social class should be denied entry because the victim is “bothered enough by seeing persons of lesser stature that it interferes with the healing process, and people who aren’t socialized in the same class as the victim wouldn’t understand the dire needs of the victim, anyway,” then everyone could immediately see that the hypothetical person is suffering from a severe case of affluenza.
Sorry for the long post, I’ll go back in lurking mode now. 🙂 And thanks for your thoughts, I have been following this blog with great interest.
Yeah, I was very uneasy about the race analogy myself. Thanks for suggesting something better. I’ll try to remember that for next time I need an analogy.
Any space that behaves like that is not ‘safe’. It’s run with an agenda that seeks to control female identity, and that latter is an artefact of patriarchy. Transwomen are women, and they deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and care.
Hmm… yes, utterly yes, but there is an issue.
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If I’ve been raped, I don’t want to share a crisis room with someone with a functioning penis. That includes doctors, police officers, cleaners, counsellors, anyone who is with me.
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I’m not presuming that any trans woman who is in the rape suite with me, is pre or post operation. It likely wouldn’t occur to me to be rational about it, if I’d noticed that I was next to a trans woman. (I probably wouldn’t notice. I would probably simply be making sure that a human being with a functioning penis, is no where near me whilst I was in that centre.)
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No where near me at all. I’d certainly not be seeing a fellow rape victim as an immediate threat anyhows. But I may be seeing everyone as a threat.
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When I was sexually attacked at a University campus, they sent male police officers to take my statement. My therapist sent them away and told them to send women. When I was interviewed at a rape suite, when I was reporting my childhood rape, I was interviewed solely by women.
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I would not want to be in such a vulnerable place after an attack that involved a penis, with someone with a functioning penis. That’s my problem, I guess, but I’d expect my request to be treated with kindness. Kindness that recognised my terror.
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It’s got nothing to do with trans. I would object to being in a prison cell, with a male police officer with a functioning penis.
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Yes, I’ve heard the argument that women attack sexually too. Being with a woman in a small room does not mean you are safe from sexual attack. Women on women sexual attacks happen all the time in same sex prisons. I get that. But rape by a penis is utterly different than rape by a hand or an object. If I was having therapy for being raped and the therapist had a functioning penis, I’d find it harder to confide. I’d need to do a lot more work before I could trust enough to say certain things.
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If I was in a rape crisis centre as I’d been raped, I wouldn’t want to be with ANYONE who had a functioning penis. (But I wouldn’t demand they leave the building, just that I had people without a penis around me too, as a buffer.)
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It’s not always possible to request no penis medical staff. Sometimes it has to be a doctor with a penis. I didn’t want a man anywhere near me when I gave birth, but there was no choice in the matter. But there are times I don’t want to have to deal with the threat of a penis. Even when the threat is entirely in my own head and working on memory, not the actual person in front of me.
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Indeed, when I found out I was pregnant with a boy I spent a few sleepless nights over the fact that I was growing a human being with a penis. What if he became a rapist? I was relieved to discover that I was not alone, amongst rape victims, to worry about this. It’s a common worry amongst pregnant woman who have experienced penile rape in their past.
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I would not, however, have the slightest problem with someone with a penis reporting rape. And being treated properly. Whether they were a trans-woman, or male. Or trans-male. Every flavour of human being gets raped, every person who has been deserves support. I’d not demand anyone who had been raped who had a penis was removed from the centre. We’re all victims. But I’d kinda question why two traumatised rape victims were in the same room anyhows.
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Because being raped can do that: it can make you extremely cautious/afraid/terrified of people with a penis. Would I be terrified to be in the same room as a trans-woman who had been raped? Nope. I’d be upset to be in a room with anyone else who had been raped whilst I was still dealing with my own rape.
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I wouldn’t object to a male rape victim being in the next cubicle. Just like I wouldn’t object to a trans-woman being in the next cubicle. But I’d want the space I was in to be penis free whilst I was there, if possible.
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I’m not advocating women only spaces that exclude trans-woman.
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But men have to deal with being seen as a sexual threat because of the number of rapes. That a pre-transition female sometimes has to deal with the same level of sexual threat that women would perceive in any guy in that circumstance, is sometimes about men, and rape, not about being trans. It’s about how often a penis attached to a human being does rape. Women are rightly more scared of human beings with a penis, than they are of those who do not have one.
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The solution, of course, is not to throw out the trans-woman who has been raped. That’s just silly. She’s been raped. She gets protected too. Rape centres are for those who’ve been raped, after all.
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I’ve a close friend who is currently undergoing transition to male. I feel different about how I see them in my own space now. Now they have a prosthetic penis. They’re on the way to being a a functioning penis threat. Like every other man. Threat until trust has been built up. Trust that they aren’t a rapist. It’s an interesting mind leap.
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I’ve not been following the social media on this, I’m going only on your post. So I’ve no idea what the TERFs have been saying.
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But you can’t wipe away female fear of a functioning penis when rape and assault are so high. I’m sorry if that means a pre-operative woman sometimes has to deal with the same level of women’s fear of a penis that men have to deal with. A penis used in anger is a threat to women – everyone – but mostly women. And many women who have felt that threat inside them, will not feel safe in some places unless they know there isn’t a penis in the room.
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Sometimes the elephant in the room is a penis. But that’s probably not allowed to be spoken, as we’ll suddenly go from #yesallwomen to #nonotallmen. (How dare I say all men are rapists! *eye roll*)
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We do have to find a way to talk about rape, and the fear of rape that acknowledges that most rapes are male penis to female, and still allow everyone space to come to terms with the fact that the fear of rape can centre on having a penis.
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Hope that makes some sort of sense. I’m kinda expecting to be blown to bits. I’m trying not to be offensive, or short sighted. But I am trying to express (however clumsily) that sometimes the fear of a trans-woman in some spaces is about the fear of a functioning penis you don’t know you can trust.
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And that’s about patriarchy, and men.
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And, obviously it’s a fear that many trans-women know too well. 🙁
This is entirely understood, but it is not the discussion that is being had. The TERF position is that no trans woman may ever enter a women-only space, whether or not she has ever had a functioning penis.
The way these arguments get presented is by assuming that any trans woman who turns up at a rape crisis center does have a functioning penis, and is probably going there to upset the women. That plays directly into your genuine fears. What you need to ask yourself is how likely that scenario is, compared, say, to the trans woman being post-op and having actually been raped. And then you need to ask whether your fear of the former gives you the right to deny help and support to the latter.
That fear would never give anyone the right to deny support.
Support should never be denied.
Ever.
Thank you. 🙂
“today’s fracas du jour on social media has been all about the vital importance of keeping those horrible trans women out of rape crisis centers, so that “real” women can feel safe in them”
What the hell is wrong with our society!!
I am a nurse and also a man, and I have looked after women who have been raped, both face-to-face and over the telephone. I have always found that it is the quality for the care offered and not my gender that was important. I found that believing a woman is very important, not matter who you are.
Gender is not something that is set at birth, what century we are in? Why should the victim of rape be denied talking to someone who could actually help them just because that person does not meet the requirement of being a “real woman” set by someone completely detached from the real world – requirements I completely ignore.
I was sexually abuse as a teenager. One of the first person told, years later, was a feminist woman. She denied what had happened to me and told me I needed to “forget all about it”. One of the first people to believe me was a trans woman. I am so grateful to her.
As a nurse I have meet many uncaring and sexist women. It is the person you are that makes you caring and understanding, not what genitals you’re born with.
Sorry about the rant but I am speechless with anger at the sheer ignorance of this argument.
Drew