Restricted Access
Siena College recently invited Dr. Bettina Love to speak to our community about how to be a co-conspirator in anti-racist work, especially at a predominantly white college. During the Q&A period, Dr. Love was asked about Black-only spaces and the feelings of exclusion that white people may feel in being denied access to those spaces. Her response was memorable (although I hope you'll forgive me for not recording it verbatim, and correct me if you remember otherwise)--she said something along the following lines: this is exactly what we are talking about, this is the issue--"Exhibit A"--whiteness is always trying to center itself. Black people have been excluded from spaces for hundreds of years, and now we can't have 35 minutes to talk to each other?
This answer resonated with me. Why do white folks feel upset--threatened even--when excluded from spaces? Why do white folks want to be in such spaces in the first place?
A little over a year ago, I attended a workshop at Soul Fire Farm called Uprooting Racism in the Food System. I learned a lot. But I also remember the emotional experience of feeling left out when the group divided into two subgroups to have separate conversations ("caucusing"): one group for persons of color and one group for white folks. The white group stayed in one place, and the persons of color group left and went to a different space, out of my sight, and out of my earshot. I remember thinking: dang...I bet they're having a great conversation and feeling support and solidarity over there in that other group. I felt a bit like a middle school kid who wasn't invited to the "cool kids'" lunch table. Recognizing my place in the white group, I felt ashamed.
Given my position of privilege in our society as a white person, and given the fact that I am trying to contribute to the work of dismantling racism, it strikes me as a very good thing for me to have had the opportunity to reflect on the emotional reaction that I had to the Soul Fire caucuses. I suppose I'm still working through it now.
Here's something worth noticing explicitly about the race caucusing strategy: it suggests contexts in which white-only spaces can actually be useful. Even as I type this, that phrase "white-only spaces" gives me the creeps. The history of white-only spaces has been motivated by racial oppression and white rage. Can white spaces now serve a positive role? As places for white people take up the work of examining and destroying racism?
Perhaps there will be a time in the future where race caucusing is no longer helpful. But for now, the possibility of allowing people of color some respite seems well worth it.
What about women-only spaces? Does the same sort of reasoning apply?
The infamous demise of Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in 2015 involved the controversial "intention" of the festival to restrict attendance to "womyn-born-womyn", which The Advocate reports was intended to put “the onus on each individual to choose whether or how to respect it”. The festival was roundly criticized for excluding trans women. If we admit the usefulness of some spaces reserved for Black folks, does that imply that we should also support the restriction of some spaces to "womyn-born-womyn"? How should we interpret "womyn-born-womyn" anyway? Do these considerations problematize our earlier assessment of race caucusing?
The question of whether trans women should have been welcomed into Michigan Womyn's Music Festival does not exactly parallel the question of whether white people should be welcomed into non-white race caucuses, or to Black-only spaces. It seems to me that some trans women could reasonably claim that they were just as "born womyn" as non-trans women. If being a womyn is a matter of gender identity, probably no-one has a clear sense of their gender identity when born, but it seems at least possible that a trans woman could have been aware of her gender identity as early as any non-trans woman. Is there any reason to think that being "born womyn" amounts to something other than gender identity?
Sociologists of gender Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook have argued that controversy over gender-restricted spaces isn't really about gender identity--it's about penises:
In our research, we find that opponents are making an argument against any bodies perceived as male having a legal right to enter a woman-only space because they imagine such bodies to present a sexual danger to women and children. Under this logic, they often conflate “sexual predators” (imagined to be deviant men) and transgender women (imagined to be always male). This exclusive focus on “males” suggests that it is genitals—not gender identity and expression—that are driving what we term “gender panics”—moments where people react to a challenge to the gender binary by frantically asserting its naturalness. Because most people are assumed by others to be heterosexual, sex-segregated bathrooms are imagined by many people to be “sexuality-free” zones. Opponents’ focus on bathrooms centers on fears of sexual impropriety that could be introduced by allowing the “wrong bodies”—or, to be more precise, penises—into spaces deemed as “for women only.” Gender panics, thus, could easily be relabeled “penis panics.” The shift from gender panics to penis panics as a point of analysis accounts for critics’ sole focus on the women’s restroom—a location that, opponents argue, should be “penis-free.”
In other words, the motivation for excluding non-women from women-only spaces, perhaps especially spaces in which women are perceived of as vulnerable, such as bathrooms and shelters, is to protect them from sexual assault (and perhaps to protect them from the trauma of remembering past assaults). Indeed, at least some festival-goers at the 1993 Michigan festival were apparently worried about penises in particular.
One reaction you could have at this point is: if what people are really worried about is assault, then why not focus attention on excluding assailants from spaces, rather than non-women? Not all penis-bearers are assailants, and not all non-penis-bearers are non-assailants. On this line of reasoning, it is not trans women qua trans women who should be excluded from spaces like public bathrooms and shelters, (or who should have been asked to leave the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival) but rather anyone who physically threatens others, makes unwanted sexual advances on others, or worse.
There seems to be some confusion on this issue among philosophers. Dr. Holly Lawford-Smith, for instance, wrote the following in 2019 comment piece: "Transmen, being female, don’t pose a threat to male people, either in terms of sexual assault or physical assault or indeed any other kind of shitty threatening or annoying behaviour." This statement strikes me as doubly confused. What kind of assumptions about sex is Lawford-Smith making so as to claim that transmen are female? Moreover, it just seems implausible that no trans man could pose a threat to male people. Certainly, a trans man could be shitty or annoying to other men if he wanted to!
While I certainly do not want to downplay the significance of sexual assault, I wonder if there might be other reasons to exclude non-women from certain spaces or events that are worth considering. Thinking back to the example of race caucusing, could there be legitimate reasons to give women respite, to share support and solidarity among just other women? Perhaps. But if these are the motivations for women-only spaces, then should they include trans women? If the motivation for the restricted-access space is to find temporary respite from misogyny and find solidarity among those who experience it, then it seems to me that at least some trans women ought to be welcomed into those spaces--in particular, those who seek respite from misogyny and seek solidarity in the work required to end it.
But maybe reasoning is too quick. Could a group of mixed-gender identity folks who are all seasoned anti-misogynists provide the sought-after sense of respite and capacity for building solidarity? Put this way, I am tempted to think that this question can not be satisfactorily answered in the abstract but will depend in important ways on who is answering the question and what sort of experiences that person has had.
I wonder if the case of celebratory spaces might actually warrant a different approach, however. If the organizing principle of a space or event is to serve or celebrate women, I'm not sure what the rationale would be for excluding non-women since non-women, qua non-women, could serve and/or celebrate women well too. Check out Emma Watson's speech to the UN on feminism at the launch of the UN HeForShe initiative, in which she makes a specific appeal to men and boys to help in ending gender inequality--I'd be curious to read your comments on it:
In this realm of questions, I'm also curious about the issue of women as role models for other women. One of the reasons (but certainly not the only reason) sometimes given in support of hiring women faculty at colleges for instance, is that women students want to see faculty "who look like them", and presumably, that it is good for women students to see such faculty. I would be curious to hear the thoughts of Philosophy and Gender students on this topic. Is it particularly, or especially good for women students to have women faculty? Are there credible studies investigating this?
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