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Feminism: Sex & gender discussions

To think that women should not be referred to as menstruators and pregnant people?

380 replies

FRETGNIKCUF · 04/09/2016 07:34

This is a thread about the impact trans activism is having on women. This is the beginning.

Don't read on if you're going to whine about another trans thread.



Julian Vigo (@lubelleludotcom on Twitter) wrote the following.

There is a war on women, folks. The transgender lobby has gone down the rabbit hole by refusing to acknowledge that women's lives and bodies not only matter, but that they are real. Instead women's bodies have become the simulacra in an extended theatre of male entitlement (to be women while telling women to STFU) or they are rendered an extension of male subjectivity such that we now see hairy transmen's female bodies breastfeeding, the only form of female body hair that would ever be allowed in Time magazine.

And now for the latest: we are being called "menstruators" by the same right-wing discourse which seeks to remove the mention of woman from women's healthcare across the USA (ie. now many providers have been pressured to remove the term woman and write instead "pregnant person.") It is as if the last 100 years of women's rights had never occured.

The ironies are multiple. Here you have a group which claims its own marginalisation while working steadily to marginalise an already marginalised group, women. Then you have a group of female people who by virtue of the current transgender identity doxa necessitates "gender dysphoria," yet paradoxically adheres to—and even embraces—the real and symbolic thrust of much of what the female body actually is and produces, a complete opposition to gender dysphoria. Therein lies the greatest contradiction which, not surprisingly, once again holds women hostage: woman is symbolic for those who emulate her, woman is only acceptable inasmuch as she recognises males as females, and women are now relegated to "non-males" by political parties, as "pregnant humans" and "menstruators" by females who reject their bodies yet who hold out for the double-bind of gender in this theatre of cruelty where only a [sic] "man" can truly understood pregnancy, breastfeeding, and motherhood.

The only parallel I can think of is if the KKK were to insist that the Black Panthers stop calling themselves "black", demand that their white hoods be viewed as black, assert that only white people know what it is like to experience life as a black person, and then turn around and maintain that black people are just a group of entitled, bio-essentialist racists.

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FRETGNIKCUF · 04/09/2016 07:38

Planned parenthood tweeted about the tampon tax and referred to women as menstruators.

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Mypurplecaravan · 04/09/2016 07:43

It reads as a rambling incoherent rant without any links to what action she is annoyed by.

Have pregnant transmen in America been denied insurance cover for their pregnancies because the policies refer to pregnant women and they are not legally women any more? Or is this more ideological fisticuffs?

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StealthPolarBear · 04/09/2016 07:45

What are women who have gone through menopause?

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Moosa · 04/09/2016 07:46

Genuine question. Please can someone please explain the whole trans debate to me from the beginning? I seem to have caught the tail end of it on mumsnet.

I know one transgender person in RL and to me they are just a mate, don't think he/she has an agenda.

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Mypurplecaravan · 04/09/2016 07:47

Are planned parenthood anti women?

Tampon tax does not affect all women. My gran has now spent more of her life not menstruating than she did menstruating. Tampons were not an option when she did menstruation. She couldn't give a flying fig about tampon tax as it is not a tax on women only on those who menstruate.

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FRETGNIKCUF · 04/09/2016 07:51

*Mypurplecaravan
*
No the point is that only women have periods not that all women have them.

I think that's an obvious point.

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Mypurplecaravan · 04/09/2016 07:51

Thanks for the link. I'm not sure I see the anger that article induced. But go new York city on repealing tax on all feminine hygiene products. Isn't that a good thing (even though some stores are still shit about it)

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FRETGNIKCUF · 04/09/2016 07:52

Why are you talking about your gran? ConfusedConfusedConfused

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FRETGNIKCUF · 04/09/2016 07:53

If you don't see the anger induced then this thread probably isn't for you.

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FRETGNIKCUF · 04/09/2016 07:53

If you don't see the anger induced then this thread probably isn't for you.

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SoupDragon · 04/09/2016 07:56

Don't read on if you're going to whine about another trans thread

Who made you the fucking thread police?

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AltheaThoon · 04/09/2016 07:57

Not all women menstruate but all people who do menstruate are women.

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SoupDragon · 04/09/2016 07:57

What I hate most about this is the whole "if you dont think like this you are wrong/antifeminist/mysoginistic" bollocks.

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FRETGNIKCUF · 04/09/2016 07:59

*Soup
*
yes I am the thread police.

Valuable comment you've made.

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dontwannapullahammie · 04/09/2016 08:02

Not all women menstruate so where is the issue in referring to menstruators?

This is just another hysterical thread to whip up anti trans feeling on mn

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Mypurplecaravan · 04/09/2016 08:04

Moose most people just try to get on with their lives. Some transactivists have been very vocal in their anger and some feminists have been even more vocal in their anger. They see the existence of trans men as women who have rejected their womanhood and transmen as men who are trying to take over womanhood and tell us how to do it. To remove all specialness of being female.

Then all trans women are pervert men waiting to rape you (the self declaration of gender -which is a social construct- is what makes this a thorny subject as someone who appears clearly anatomically male with beard and penis can stride into a female changing room and say 'I'm a woman' and any woman who objects even if she has a personal history of having been sexually assaulted by men in changing rooms is perceived to be the bigot by media).

The problem is most transpeople do indeed just want to pass. To live their own quiet lives without impinging on anyone else. But those who object to trans people even existing let alone having any sort of rights put the fear of the bogey men into your head. And some transactivists are just weird and appear to be deliberately trolling.

The same way people have through time immemorial when it was black people sharing bathrooms. Or gay people in swimming pools.

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SoupDragon · 04/09/2016 08:04

Yes, yes it was a valuable comment.

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SoupDragon · 04/09/2016 08:05

This is just another hysterical thread to whip up anti trans feeling on mn

You aren't allowed to say that! FRET said so.

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Mypurplecaravan · 04/09/2016 08:09

Ah sorry fret I thought as a menstruating woman I was someone affected by tampon tax. Which is what that article links to, women being unlawfully taxed. Not anything about pregnant people or menstruators.

So what is it exactly that has the original tweeter so het up?

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dontwannapullahammie · 04/09/2016 08:09

As Roy Walker says....say what you see!

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SoupDragon · 04/09/2016 08:10

The problem is most transpeople do indeed just want to pass. To live their own quiet lives without impinging on anyone else.

This, absolutely. Unfortunately, people focus on the ones in the media who make a huge fuss and who might well have other motives. However, the majority is why I will alway refer to them by their preferred pronoun etc.

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Moosa · 04/09/2016 08:18

Thanks, so presumably it is a vocal minority in America who are spouting the craziness?

I can't see this being particularly relevant in real life.... Or am I being naive?

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HermioneWeasley · 04/09/2016 08:22

I saw the planned parenthood tweet yesterday and was so depressed that they've succumbed to the madness. I am not a "menstruator" I'm a woman.

Same as when the abortion support network wanted to update their logo etc to include men, as trans men might need abortions.

If reproductive rights stop being a "women's issue" because "not all 'women' " and "some 'men' " then I fucking despair - we lose the language to name the problem. And it's happening really fucking fast.

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Mypurplecaravan · 04/09/2016 08:22

There are plenty of feminist spaces on the Internet. Where you can enter your own echo chamber and express your anger.

This isn't one. This is mumsnet where people will have different definitions of feminism. And some women will despise feminism entirely.

If you post here rather than in a radical feminism space you have to accept that some of us will not get your anger. Especially posted in isolation eith explanatory text or links (your link does not explain anything!) And some will actively disagree with your view.

You don't get to say 'this thread isn't for you' in a public space. To people who are simply, politely, asking to explain yourself.

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