The Renewed Objectification of Women, Part III: Sex Denialism

Sex denialism – exemplified by the ideology of transgenderism – is the newest angle in the push to objectify women, by erasing knowledge of the female body.

Transgenderism is both the product of Objectification of the female and necessary for it. It is a chicken and egg scenario because in order to treat women and girls so terribly, to sell them, to inflict such suffering and misery, one has to first dehumanise them. Has transgenderism emerged because women were dehumanised or did it emerge to make denying female humanity acceptable and mainstream? The system of male supremacy we live under has relegated females to second class and often less than human. First through religions of various names and then through sexist science. As women successfully challenge each, new justifications are being found. Transgenderism/transsexualism, sex denialism, is the ‘liberal’ trojan horse to degrade and debase women, stripping them of an inner life and reducing them to mix and match pieces for sale and male pleasure. Transgenderism/transsexualism argues that women’s oppression is natural and we all just want it, that what was understood as sex discrimination actually happens because of what we are wearing, that we identify into it.

Transgenderism and sex denialism dismantles legislation designed to protect females from male exploitation by neutralising them and making them so wide as to be useless. When, for example, maternity discrimination includes men companies have a different comparator. Safe spaces for women and girls where we know they are at even greater risk of sexual abuse by males, such as toilets, changing rooms and sleeping accommodation, become opened up to males if women is an identity one can declare instead of a physical reality. Women are at risk from men because of their sex, not because of their feelings. This is why ‘one woman reports a rape every 15 minutes in India’ and women in India ‘reported almost 34,000 rapes in 2018’.¹ Why Interpol has ‘estimated that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning to read’.² Why in England and Wales, according to 2017 statistics, approximately 85,000 women aged 16-59 experience rape, attempted rape or sexual assault by penetration annually.³ Why it was estimated that in America in 2019 406,970 women were raped or sexually assaulted.⁴ This is why how a man claims he feels regarding sex-role stereotypes must not remove women’s protections from male violence. Global male violence and sex discrimination against women, from healthcare to employment, rape to murder, is why we need data disaggregated by sex not fetish.

The problem for heterosexual males identifying as trans is misogyny not biology. A porn-soaked worldview, not a mind body mismatch. Pornography teaches a particular lesson about men and women: women are passive objects to be abused and men are active, taking sexual pleasure from hurting and debasing women. Dworkin argued that ‘being turned into an object is a real event; and the pornographic object is a particular kind of object. It is a target…This object wants it. She is the only object with a will that says, hurt me. A car does not say, bang me up. But she, this nonhuman thing, says hurt me–and the more you hurt me, the more I will like it’.⁵ Porn is boringly monotonous: the women and girls are reduced to orifices – vagina, anus, mouth – which either want to be penetrated and hurt because they like it, or don’t want to be, until they are, and then they like it. This is how males who identify as trans define women. A. Long Chu describes how trans identified males in porn when ‘being’ women ‘are expected to open their holes in worshipful surrender’ to penis.⁶ This is what designates the female according to males like Long Chu, the feminine essence we hear so much about. Chu is not a lone voice. The website SissyGirlSanctuary lists ‘Five Sissy Girl Essentials’, and number one outlines how a girl is a ‘Whore, slut, cumguzzling bitch… She likes to be dominated, used as a vessel for pleasure, and fucked until her asspussy is gaping and wet. She is submissive’.⁷ The link between adult male heterosexual trans identification and porn addiction is becoming ever more apparent.⁸ The ideology of women as Object combined with funding is why there is a constant crossover between those who support transgenderism/transsexualism and those who advocate for the sale of women and girls to men for their sexual or reproductive use. Trans is propagating the idea that to be sexually used by men, ‘a cumguzzling bitch’, is the true nature of the female.

Transgenderism is pushing the ‘sex work is work’ mantra and the decriminalisation of the sale of people for penetration. It was argued in Slate in 2018 that ‘Decriminalizing Prostitution Is Central to Transgender Rights’.⁹ Erin Fitzgerald writing for Red Umbrella (a pimp lobby group) reported that a ‘New Report on Transgender Experiences in Sex Work Recommends Decriminalization’.¹⁰ Transgender Europe, which describes itself as ‘as a legitimate voice for the trans community in Europe and Central Asia with 157 member organisations in 47 different countries’ and is funded by the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the Government of the Netherlands and the Open Society Foundation produced a policy document arguing for the decriminalisation of prostitution.¹¹ The ACLU, that bastion of misogyny that argued that revenge porn was a man’s fundamental right, claims that decriminalising prostitution is necessary to ‘advance equality in the LGBTQ community, especially for trans women of color, who are often profiled and harassed whether or not we are actually sex workers’.¹² LaLa B Holston-Zannell , the Trans Justice Campaign Manager at the ACLU, insists that ‘Sex Work is Real Work, and it’s Time to Treat it That Way’.¹³ One of Holston-Zannell’s arguments against anti-trafficking legislation is that ‘the passage of anti-sex work laws like SESTA/FOSTA harms the community by dramatically decreasing incomes, which further marginalizes members of the trans community, people of color, or those with low incomes to begin with’.¹⁴ The transgender activist Paris Lees writes many articles promoting prostitution of the poor, including in 2016 in Vice claiming the only way to make purchasing other people safer was to legalise it.¹⁵ We see LGBT political party activists championing decriminalisation of prostitution within their parties. For example, the trans identified male Sarah Noble introduced and helped passed the motion for the decriminalisation of pimping and prostitution within the Liberal Democrats.¹⁶ Similarly, the decriminalisation of prostitution, pimping and purchasing people was pushed by the LGBT+ group in the Labour party. Decrim Now celebrated how ‘In the fight for the Labour Party to support the full decriminalisation of sex work, we can now mark down a major achievement – LGBT+ Labour, the party’s official LGBTQ affiliate, has passed a motion in support of decriminalisation’.¹⁷ The pro-pimp lobby is using the T to force team the LGB.¹⁸ This is highlighted with the new attempt to include being prostituted as a sexuality on the Pride flag.

Rape and penetration is not the only way to exploit a woman’s body. Using a woman’s eggs then using a woman’s body to gestate and birth a child, subjecting her to physical, potentially life-threatening harm, and emotional distress is now being framed as an LGBT right. Businesses have sprung up to cater for this new perceived entitlement. Pride Surrogacy, branded in the pride flag, and specifically targeted at this new emerging market claims that they ‘understand that you have experienced poorly facilitated care when it comes to planning your family… we will advocate for you to ensure your care providers understand the difference between the biological contribution you are making to becoming a parent and your experience of gender’.¹⁹ The Family Planning section explains that ‘Prior to, or in the early stages of transition, many transgender individuals choose to make future parenting a priority. A trans woman might freeze sperm before transitioning; a trans man may want to preserve his own eggs. We can help facilitate this process so that you may have a biological child in the future. For trans parents that have not preserved their fertility, we facilitate egg donation’.²⁰ There is a small acknowledgment here that transgender treatment entails sterilisation. The Your Body Your Choice section argues that ‘Just because you were born with the anatomy to make pregnancy possible, does not mean you need to step outside of your experience as a person to become a parent. Surrogacy makes parenthood possible for both trans men and trans women’.²¹ It is only lowly, poor women, who need to experience the risk and physical work. The outsourcing of biological functions is presented as a luxury entitlement. The sales pitch finishes with the claim that ‘We know that you have many strengths that will make you an even better parent in areas like acceptance, authenticity, and courage’.²² Children of transitioners would contest that. Another company, Brilliant Beginnings also frames the use of a woman’s body and fertility as an LGBT right. It claims to have ‘championed LGBT+ inclusion for many years, and supports trans men, trans women and non-binary people building families through surrogacy. Trans parents who need the help of a surrogate include trans women (assigned male at birth) who do not have a uterus, and trans men (assigned female at birth) for whom, even if they have a uterus, carrying a pregnancy is not possible or counterintuitive’.²³ The mother has been reduced to a uterus and the biological link to the child that of carrying. The Centre for Surrogate Parenting, an Ovation® Fertility company, talks about ‘creating families’ and ‘fulfilling dreams’ rather than buying women and exploiting their reproductive capabilities. It states that ‘our surrogacy agency is happy to support surrogacy for transgender parents… and have been honoured to play a part in the fulfilment of their dreams of parenthood’.²⁴ The impact on the woman is not mentioned, what about her dreams?

There have been recent fluff pieces in newspapers and on television promoting womb rental and the exploitation of poorer women’s reproductive capabilities. In July 2020 Channel 4 released ‘Our Baby: A Modern Miracle’ in which the audience is served up the story of two trans identified individuals using a woman to carry and birth a baby. The ethics of this is not questioned and the idea that exploiting women is a ‘modern miracle’ is clearly false. The same ‘analysis’ that is applied to the sex-trade in women’s bodies is applied by Jake Graf to surrogacy: it is the stigma which causes harm to the woman, not the use and sale of her body and organs. Graf, who is trying to be a director and actor, claims they made the film all about them because ‘there is still so much stigma around the surrogacy process’.²⁵ Despite no ethical analysis or women’s rights considerations ‘the show also aims to educate, not only about what it means to be transgender in modern Britain but also about what it means to have a baby through surrogacy’.²⁶ Frequently when something impinges on women’s rights, such as reinforcing cultural objectification of the female, women are told they require educating. Educating until they accept the sale and use of their sisters.

Hannah, a trans identified male married to Jake, a trans-identified female, compares themself to women who are infertile. Hannah argued that ‘society sees carrying and giving birth to a child as one of the most intrinsic parts of womanhood and so being unable to do so can feel like your very identity is under threat. As a transgender woman [trans identified male]I feel this very keenly as I am already frequently confronted by individuals who want to invalidate my identity, but the truth of the matter is that there are a plethora of reasons for women not being able to carry their own children who suffer the same shame and invalidation from the expectations of society’.²⁷ They are planning on acquiring a second child, these are the words Hannah used: ‘We’ve always said we wanted to get a little sibling for Millie and it’s something that we are going to try and attempt when we’re allowed to in the current lockdown rules’.²⁸ The woman who carried and birthed the child is described as a ‘host’: ‘After five years together, the couple decided to find a surrogate to host the embryo’.²⁹ This is the dehumanizing language of the surrogacy industry.

Conclusion

Trans is the perfect means to bring in women exploiting industries such as the sex trade and surrogacy because any criticism can then be dressed up as ‘transphobia’ and the critic silenced. Indeed, accusations of transphobia is used as a way to no-platform feminist critics of porn, the sex trade and surrogacy.³⁰ In 2015, an open letter by academics calling attention to the censoring of feminists and those who criticise the sex industry and transgender ideology was published by the Guardian.³¹ In 2018 Bristol students voted to ban female speakers who had expressed views critical of transgenderism and the sex industry from campus.³² Transgenderism is the ideal men’s rights movement because although women’s oppression is based on sex it reframes discussing sex as exclusionary and hate. One cannot challenge discrimination if one is not allowed to talk about it. The sex denialism of the transgender movement denies the reality women live in and denies the reality of male violence.