Attack of the TERFs

The Kyriarchy

Apparently a thing: TERF Bangs.

I have heard so much about attacks by TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) on trans women that I decided to delve into feminist arguments to understand where they are coming from. I have to admit that initially I did this because, as a soldier, I have been trained to try to understand one’s attacker. But I was also genuinely curious about why they raise so much ruckus and maybe, just maybe, there was something to be salvaged from their arguments. Having had two daughters and knowing I was a woman from age 4 or so, I have often thought that I was a feminist because I believed from my experience in the equality of women. But that is not good enough, according to some of the TERFs.

But I did find some things to salvage from the feminist arguments. Ideas that helps us put into perspective the oppression that transgender people face and how to deal with it.

In my explorations I found references to a Catholic theologian feminist, named Elisabeth Fiorenza. Most of her writings are about reinterpreting Biblical history to include women which is not as interesting to me as her conceptualization of the kyriarchy. She sees it as a hierarchy of oppression of women and all minorities. As members of one or more of these minorities, what she is talking about relates directly to transgender people. The concept of the kyriarchy provides us with some perspective on the current attacks on transgender people by the broader culture and by populists — and how to counter them.

The kyriarchy relates to what we have been hearing about the intersectionality of minority groups in today’s politics. Essentially, the more “negative” minority identities you have (I am using identity in the sociological meaning, rather than the psychiatric meaning), and the more identities intersect at you, the lower you are in status. Most of us are at the intersection of some of these identities. If you are a woman, transgender, lesbian, atheist, non-academic and a senior citizen you are near the bottom. (That is my intersection). And some intersecting identities drive one further to the bottom. Heaven forbid that my forebears might have come from non-European locations!

Feminists used to call the system of oppression the patriarchy but Fiorenza realizes that some women are involved in oppressing minority groups, so it is more properly called the kyriarchy, the Greek roots of which refers to “ruler” in a non-gendered way. And the kyriarchy is broader than that — referring to a hierarchy of multiple intersections. Although women are one of the minority groups (actually they are in the majority but treated as a minority) there are many other minorities. The idea of the patriarchy is dead, long live the idea of the kyriarchy!

Populists exploit the kyriarchy by blaming intersecting groups for all the ills of the society and they making voters afraid of them. If you have seen The American President, Michael Douglas’s character says nearly exactly that in the climactic scene of the movie. It is the common populist methodology. In the past few months we have dramatically seen this populist strategy used against undocumented immigrants of color, transgender people who use restrooms, and women who have been sexually assaulted. The rulers at the top got there by trashing the people at the intersections beneath them. They exploit all available human frailties including susceptibility to conspiracy theories, fear of people who look different, fear that children will be harmed and fear that unfounded sexual harassment accusations will falsely sully the reputations of those held in esteem. The latter strategy turns the rulers into “victims” of accusation, so we can feel sorry for them.

In my research I also found a transgender professor who can explain another facet of how the kyriarchy attacks transgender people. In past blogs, I have observed that many of the attacks on transgender people involve sex. The anti-transgender pseudoscientists like McHugh and Anderson are constantly rejecting the concept of gender as behavioral categories invented by culture. They instead say that sex and gender are the same thing. They talk about “sex-typed traits and behaviors” instead of gender behaviors. Z. Nicolazzo points out that what they are really doing is trying to make people see “being transgender through the eyes of heterosexism”. Heterosexism refers to the outlawing of homosexuality as being “unnatural” because only opposite birth sex people should fall in love. Before attacking transgender people, the kyriarchy and their “defenders of the cultural faith” spent a lot of time and energy attacking gay people. They continue to do so. They are trying to build on their previous and current efforts against gay people by portraying transgender people as those who are confused and delusional about their sex, just as they claim homosexuals are.

After pondering the TERFs and kyriarchy for a while, I suddenly recognized the irony of TERFs attacking transgender people. Feminism’s main complaints have been about the patriarchy and now kyriarchy oppressing women. The TERFs are trying to assert their superior status over trans women by assuming a higher place in the kyriarchy by virtue of birth sex. In doing so, the TERFs are now a part of the kyriarchy that they have been complaining about for so long.

Our leaders need to stop using populist attacks on minority groups to get elected. The only way for this to happen is for voters to wise-up and see that they are being manipulated by unscrupulous politicians. Our culture needs to reclaim the realization that all people are human beings and not just labels of sociological identity in the vertical kyriarchy. There have been times in the past when Americans lost this realization and we managed to reclaim it. Those were our previous citizens. Now it is our turn.

What you can do personally in addition to voting and participating in elections is to refrain from categorizing any of our transgender subgroups as being inferior and thus adding even more lower levels to the kyriarchy. Transsexuals should not try to say or imply that they are superior to non-transsexuals, or gender non-conforming people.

And we must disarm the pseudoscientist “defenders of the cultural faith” and never stop arguing that sex and gender are different things.

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Tags: featured, kyriarchy, TERFs, Transgender

Category: Transgender Body & Soul