In an interview with the Sunday Times of London recently, Chelsea and Hillary Clinton were asked if someone with a beard and a penis could be a woman. Chelsea responded in the affirmative: "Ye-esss. Yes." () Her mom, however, reportedly seemed uneasy and responded:
"Errr. I’m just learning about this. It’s a very big generational discussion, because this is not something I grew up with or ever saw. It's going to take a lot more time and effort to understand what it means to be defining yourself differently."
Asked about whether someone should play on the sports teams that match their biological sex or which instead match their "gender identity", Chelsea of course suggested the latter, but Hillary had this to say:
"I think you’ve got to be sensitive to how difficult this is. There are women who'd say [to a trans-woman], 'You know what, you've never had the kind of life experiences that I've had. So I respect who you are, but don’t tell me you're the same as me.’ I hear that conversation all the time."
The reporter pointed out that many women are uncomfortable sharing public bathrooms with biological males. Hillary responded: "I would say that, absolutely."
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Asked again in a separate interview later wherein transgender politics were brought up again, Hillary Clinton once again stated that, while she believes that gender dysphoria is real, nevertheless women have "legitimate concerns" about the implications of arbitrary gender self-identification being accepted. The second time was after there had been time for people to chastise her for her answers in the first interview. I find that prominent public figures, and especially liberals, usually back down in the face of criticism on this issue and retract their previous statements with a groveling apology. The fact that Hillary instead reiterated the same base line opinion in a second interview suggests this to be her settled opinion on the matter for the time being.
Women who question whether men should be allowed to access women-only spaces (women's shelters and rape crisis centers, women's prisons, women's changing rooms, women's restrooms, women's athletic teams, etc.) if they claim to be female are vilified as bigots today, often with the specific term "terf", which is a slur that's supposed to mean "trans-exclusionary radical feminist". There is, in reality, no such thing as a "terf". The position of gender critical feminists like myself is that, for example, something much like what the UK has started doing for trans-identified prisoners, giving them their own separate prisons (in response to multiple rapes of female prisoners by so-called "trans-women"), could be done vis-a-vis restrooms (e.g. separate, single-stall public restrooms for trans-identified people, or just single-stall unisex restrooms as a third option), specialized rape crisis centers and transition houses for trans-identified survivors could be established and federally subsidized as is done for female survivors, etc. These solutions would accommodate everyone and they wouldn't force everyone to live as though we all agree that womanhood is just a state of mind that anyone can claim and not a material reality. That is the "transphobic" position of gender critical feminists like myself. According to trans activists, this position is tantamount to everything from banning trans-identified people from peeing to "genocide". You be the judge.
Unsurprisingly, the liberal-oriented sections of the media responded to Hillary Clinton's remarks hysterically. My favorite of these was a rant by a woman named Heron Greenesmith who writes for $#@! Media and prefers to be called a "they", which I will post a highlight of below:
"From white suffragettes aligning their interests with white men rather than women of color to get the vote, to Phyllis Schlafly’s Stop ERA movement, to the “sex wars” of the 1980s, to white women working against the decriminalization of sex work, to white female voters’ majority support for Trump, white cisgender women have consistently refused to see how patriarchy, racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, xenophobia, and classism work together to keep all of us oppressed. Anti-trans feminists are merely the current iteration of white feminism being lifted by the Right in order to bolster their grab for authoritarian control."
Apparently the author of these remarks, who is herself white (I looked it up), felt that that not only was all true, but had some logical connection to the issue at hand. First of all, the suffragettes wound up fighting for women's suffrage without the support of few African Americans mainly because the black liberationists like Frederick Douglas had sold them out on the issue of voting rights back in the 1860s. The black liberationists refused to insist on the inclusion of a woman's right to vote in addition to that of men of color, touching off a certain separation of white feminists from the black liberationists for generations. Even well after women's suffrage was ratified, most black people, including most black women even, opposed it. So that in the first place. In the second place, it was not only the campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and early '80s that was predominantly white, but also the movement in favor or it, it's worth adding. As to the so-called sex wars, I think it's worth pointing out that, frankly, if we were to survey women on the subject, probably more black women than white women would oppose prostitution and so forth. It is a well-documented fact, after all, that black women, more so even than their white counterparts, are truly valued primarily for their bodies. As to the fact that 53% of white women voted for Trump in 2016, it may be worth pointing out that the votes of white women were evenly divided in the 2018 midterms (49% for Republicans, 49% for Democrats), by contrast, that gender critical feminists are not most white women anyway, and that there are many women of color among us.
Also, how is race even relevant to this topic anyway? Seriously! What does any of this have to do with Hillary Clinton questioning gender identity politics? The whole screed seems like a desperate strawman argument to me. It goes on to point out that radical feminists are supported by many conservatives in our fight for our sex-based rights. If this is a problem for liberals, it's one they can solve by supporting us themselves instead of trying to censor everything we do, think, and say. It's just a thought. Not that that has anything to do with Hillary Clinton, frankly! I just mean to showcase the complete incoherence of the way that trans activists and liberals invariably respond to gender critical women of any kind, whether they're feminist radicals or, as in the case of Hillary Clinton, not at all.