In case you missed it, for almost a week now there’s been a jolly olde shitstorme a-brewing between a couple of British feminists and a whole lot of angry trans activists and allies. It started off innocuously enough—it could have begun and ended with a whimper if certain parties hadn’t been such unyielding, bigoted babies (but more on that in a minute). Last Tuesday, journalist Suzanne Moore published an essay about “the power of female anger.” In it, in the service of a mediocre metaphor, she referred rather clumsily (but plausibly with no ill intent) to trans women:
We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape—that of a Brazilian transsexual.
Now, I think it’s fair to acknowledge that for a lot of non trans people, this reference might not immediately jump out. Moore’s meaning is clear—the modern “ideal woman” is a tall, thin, bronzed, busty impossibility—and, I suppose, the stereotype of a “Brazilian transsexual” conveys that image tidily (though, obviously, ugh). But to anyone even rudimentarily versed in the current social justice dialogue, the statement has some very clear problems:
1) Stop trafficking in shitty stereotypes to make your point. It’s selfish and dehumanizing and gratuitous. Stop. Trans women in Brazil are actual individual human beings—a staggering number of whom are murdered every year just for existing:
The “Brazilian transsexual” stereotype was available to Suzanne Moore because of trans women from Brazil seeking refuge from violence and murder.
Stop.
2) If you’re going to throw a marginalized group under the bus, you might take a second to research that group’s preferred terminology.
3) Trans women are women, and to say otherwise makes you sound like a batty old dinosaur. It is extremely othering and exclusionary to hold up trans women as a counterexample to “real” women. It’s also in poor taste to exploit an excluded group when you’re part of a famously insular and privileged group yourself (high five, fellow middle class white feminists! Now DON’T HIGH FIVE ANYONE ELSE).
4) This isn’t a nuanced or particularly novel point anyway—it’s a cheap punchline. I can tell because if I were editing Moore’s piece, my eye would catch, jarringly, on “Brazilian transsexual” and instinctually change it to “Brazilian trans woman.” Then I would realize that the phrase, “not having the ideal body shape—that of a Brazilian trans woman,” no longer works, because once you humanize the image, Moore’s point makes no sense. Her terribly pithy bon mot relies entirely on our eagerness to gobble up stereotypes, our titillation at the “strangeness” of non-cis bodies, and our refusal to look at the human realities of trans women in Brazil. Hence, gross.
But all of that could have been chalked up to carelessness and haste—it could have be solved with a “Hey, be more careful, lady!” and an “Oops, my bad!”—if not for what happened next. Which was Suzanne Moore and her mates down the pub going absolutely apeshit.
First, a reader (and fan of Moore’s work in general) approached her respectfully—out of concern, not anger—on Twitter:
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