The major issue Jeffreys addresses is the sterilisation people as one of the "practices of transgenderism", and she relates it to the practices of sterilisation of other 'unfit' bodies in the 20th century. The reason that I find this article worthy of comment (rather than a shrug and a "here we go again" roll of my eyes) is that some of what she says reflects the campaigns of many trans people around the world to get governments to remove genital surgery and sterilisation as requirements for a change of gender marker on our paperwork: [TRIGGERS]
It [sterilisation] was conceived as a practice of eugenics, to prevent the birth of ‘unfit’ people who would be a drain on the state’s resources and a social nuisance. These included those seen as mentally defective, criminals, sexual predators, homosexuals, prostituted women, gypsies and the chronically poor. The campaign led to the sterilization of tens, and probably hundreds of thousands of persons, mainly from the 1920s, when the practice was most widely taken up, through to the 1970s when it was abandoned. In Sweden, for instance, 63,000 persons were sterilized in this time period, 90% of them women. The medical campaigners represented a number of behaviours which formed the grounds for sterilization as biological, in precisely the same way that transgenderism is represented by the medical profession now. Tellingly, the vast majority of those on the left side of politics, and most feminists, supported the practice. It was considered universally just and the most reasonable way forward. There are few who think that now. Sterilization of the unfit is regarded with near universal opprobrium. This, I am quite sure, is the same fate that awaits the practice of transgenderism.
When I read this I thought, you know, this is remarkable. This is exactly what trans people are saying: we shouldn't be forced to undergo compulsory sterilisation in order for the state to recognise our gender. We shouldn't be considered 'unfit' for (biological) parenthood. Our bodies and genetic material shouldn't be considered 'unfit' for the gene pool. I thought, "Maybe I should comment and ask Jeffreys, the blogger and the commenters to join our campaigns to remove compulsory surgery and sterilisation as a requirement for ID document change".
But then I thought, LOLLLLL NO! There is so much wrongtown in the post and the comments, and I don't have the energy. Yuck, yuck, yuck.
If you want to help, consider contrbuting to this Australian campaign.
ETA: It should go without saying that I think all people should be allowed control over their own systems of reproduction. I'm constantly annoyed that the medical establishment made it impossible for me to choose sterilisation as a (cis) woman, but now I'm (a) trans (man) the government is pressuring me to do it!
7 comments:
I was going to leave a comment on that post, but...the comments already there are turning my stomach. It's like the willful ignorance of the Herald Sun commentariat.
Yeah, very similar in dogmatic inflexibility and complete lack of interest in self-reflexive criticism. Though they do seem slightly more literate.
I suspect critical comments might be modded out, anyway.
I'm impressed by your bravery and strong stomach reading that far! I know I'm lucky that my reproductive wishes (to not have children) and my biology (infertile without medical intervention) lined up very nicely. And thus, I would like everyone else to have the same experience, by choice rather than fortune.
Oh blimey. I read that all the way through. I must be a a newbie to the nutty rad-fem world, it's the first time I've seen eugenics bought into it. Ah well, at least she's a good writer.
The world is expected to understand what makes them lesbians - self-evidently they're born that way - yet we're deluded fools who choose to abandon our real selves on a whim. Sigh. About as valid as the idea you'll find among the more meatheaded of blokes, that lesbians somehow are only lesbian because they haven't been given a good seeing-to by a meatheaded bloke. Yet again, sigh.
If I have an idle day-dream to be granted a super-power, it is to receive a Magic Gender Wand with the ability to allow those at whom it is directed to sample the joys of gender dysphoria for themselves. I promise I wouldn't misuse it, I'd let them have their old genders back after a day or two.
lilacsigil, i'm glad things matched up for you! it's funny, but having the government *want* me to be sterilised makes me less inclined to go about it (even though i never want kids)! i'm a bit perverse like that.
jenny, actually i know that there are a lot of radical feminist lesbians who were not 'born' lesbian, but rather became lesbian (oh how de beauvoir-ian) as a way of not having to engage with the peni- i mean with the patriarchy on an intimate level.
ha, a magic gender wand indeed. the psych who assessed me for my 'suitability' for hormones kept asking me 'magic wand' questions, and i kept having to say "there IS no magic wand, that's why i'm HERE!"
omg, wtf! i didn't even go to the link because i didn't think i could deal. but that is so fascinating /intense / strange / infuriating that she's bring up sterilization in that way. it made me think of the really important analysis i've heard about how eugenics plays into how trans people are housed in (US) prisons -- this a link that touches on it a bit: http://srlp.org/prisons/reproductiveoppression
thanks for the link, timothy. what an eye-opener. wonder if i could send sj a link to that?
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