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Feminism: chat

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Feminism: chat

Feminism: Sex & gender discussions

Transwomen answer why they are women

39 replies

Bambambini · 18/02/2017 23:04

Haven't seen these articles before. People are always saying TW never answer the question, thought these articles were quite interesting.

gendergp.co.uk/what-makes-me-a-woman-hannah-massie-050217/

m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/14427568?

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ArcheryAnnie · 18/02/2017 23:16

Eh, it's just the same old, same old "I feel I am a woman and I know I'm right" stuff we've heard a million times before.

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riobruins · 18/02/2017 23:17

I still don't feel like they have answered it. They are just saying they have this innate sense of being a woman, same as they always do. I'm curious what this innate sense feels like, because as far as I'm aware I don't have that.

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IamNotDarling · 18/02/2017 23:27

I have an innate sense that I am meant to be rich and live in the Mediterranean with a yacht.

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BenLinusatemyhomework · 18/02/2017 23:35

It doesn't really though, does it?

It explains why they are trans, sure, but not how they are actually female.

For the record, I feel like a 9 stone, 25yr old glamour puss. Sadly, reality vehemently disagrees with my internal knowing.

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Ouriana · 18/02/2017 23:53

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 19/02/2017 00:52

I've said this before but possibly it is similar to having a belief in god?

I literally have no understanding of what people mean when they say they have a faith or a relationship with God or Christ. Or that god or Christ is in their lives. I can't relate to it at all.

I know people believe this deeply and it is very important to them but it has no meaning for me at all.

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SaskiaRembrandtWasFramed · 19/02/2017 07:54

In the second article someone compared being trans to being lefthanded, the two things are not comparable. I am lefthanded, I don't feel like a leftie, it is something that has a real physical manifestation in that I can only write, use scissors or do a whole host of other things with my left hand. It's not something I chose, it's not due to a feeling. I could say but I feel righthanded and attempt to only ever use my right hand, but I would be crap at it, I would be a lefthanded person doing a poor imitation of a right-handed one.

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FrancisCrawford · 19/02/2017 08:04

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

dudsville · 19/02/2017 08:21

I'm so tired of this crap. You can't do it with anything else. Why gender? I can't, as a white European, feel that I'm really Japanese inside and therefore state that I am Japanese. I can admire the Japanese, and adopt habits and ways, but it doesn't make me Japanese.

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Datun · 19/02/2017 09:08

I couldn't get past the first two paragraphs of the first link. Airily dismissing biology as being in any way relevant to whether you are a woman or not.

Re the comparison to religion that Lass makes. People who are religious don't insist that you share their beliefs too, because otherwise their belief system falls apart.

Transgenderism requires the belief of everyone. Merely not believing what they believe is seen as personal violence towards them. It only works if they can force people to treat them in a certain way. It's all about how they are treated, not what they believe.

I do wonder what would happen if the law suddenly changed. If it was made quite clear that although they would not be discriminated any more than anyone else, they are not women and they cannot access women's spaces, scholarships, etc.

After the furore had died down. I think the transactivists would melt away.

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Datun · 19/02/2017 09:12

francis

I think the 'how can you know if you're not one' argument is the one the people think of first. Because it's fairly self evident that they can't.

But I got over that argument pretty early on. Because if you have any discourse with transactivists online, not only is it obvious they have no idea what it's like to be a woman, they come across as more male than any man I know.

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Datun · 19/02/2017 09:15

It's incredibly frustrating listening to a transwoman telling you why she's a woman and giving you a fine example of what a man would like in a woman, or what a man thinks a woman is.

They miss so much out, they concentrate on things that are unimportant to most women. Fact I never realised quite how different men and women are until I spoke to a man who thought he was a woman.

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Bambambini · 19/02/2017 09:22

"Transgenderism requires the belief of everyone. Merely not believing what they believe is seen as personal violence towards them. It only works if they can force people to treat them in a certain way. It's all about how they are treated, not what they believe. "

Yes, this makes it such a strange issue. Belief in god, religion - can't be forced on us. I can understand a trans person possibly just has this innate belief, it's powerful for them. But it's forcing others to believe to or lie to maintain what i'd think is basically just innacurate.

Jordan Peteson has brought this up in Canada where people will now be forced to use words or pronouns or they could be charged with hate speech/hate crime.

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QueenLaBeefah · 19/02/2017 09:32

The first link very eloquently describes why they are not happy as a man but utterly fail to explain why that makes them a woman.

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Datun · 19/02/2017 09:33

bamb

Exactly. It's like saying 'Jesus Christ' as an expletive now be considered a hate crime. Or 'oh my god'.

It requires everyone to proactively reinforce the belief, despite what they think, or be criminalised.

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Bambambini · 19/02/2017 09:42

Datun -

it's worse than that. We already have restrictions on what we can't say. Certain words, beliefs, opinions - lots of things we can't say. The law in Canada that Peterson was arguing against is about actually forcing people to say words they don't agree with or believe in.

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Datun · 19/02/2017 09:47

bamb

I am hoping as more and more people wake up to this, it will change. What do you think? Do most people understand the issue in Canada?

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Lessthanaballpark · 19/02/2017 09:56

in a bid to distance themselves from trans women, it seems that some feminists are prepared to reinstate the notion that being a woman is something that can be defined and constrained biologically.

This bit from the second article totally misrepresents what feminists believe and shows that the author has totally bought into the male backlash definition of what feminism is.

IME feminists don't believe there is no such thing as biological sex but do believe that 1) gender is to a significant extent socially constructed and has been hugely over hyped in our society. 2) biology shouldn't restrict a person's opportunities in life in as much as that is possible

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VestalVirgin · 19/02/2017 11:28

I have an innate sense that I am meant to be rich and live in the Mediterranean with a yacht.

Me too, me too.
Hm, I wonder how the rich people will react if I turn up and demand to be given a yacht and a membership in a golf club and all that, to be taken away from what they have - I am rich, it is the rich people's job to acommodate me - because I feel like a rich person.

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DonkeySkin · 19/02/2017 14:46

in a bid to distance themselves from trans women, it seems that some feminists are prepared to reinstate the notion that being a woman is something that can be defined and constrained biologically.

This is so manipulative. Jane Fae is deliberately conflating women's biology with the oppression women have experienced because of that biology, by saying 'defined and constrained', and by using the verb 'reinstate'. Notice what happens to the sentence if you take out 'and constrained' and replace 'reinstate', with 'assert'.

in a bid to distance themselves from trans women, it seems that some feminists are prepared to assert the notion that being a woman is something that can be defined biologically.

Because duh, yeah, it can.

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Bambambini · 19/02/2017 15:21

I've had several TW tell me i'm a misogynist for "reducing being a woman/ female to genitals" (biology basically). i'm not allowed to say that's what makes me a woman and that women can't afford to ignore our biology/genitals/reproduction capabilities when it comes to rape/sexual assault and being treated as inferior to males. Saying I can't ignore having a vagina and smaller weaker body when it comes to rape etc means I'm "a rape apologist and blaming women's bodies for getting raped".

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CharlieSierra · 19/02/2017 15:39

The mental gymnastics are utterly exhausting aren't they?

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Lessthanaballpark · 19/02/2017 18:53

The thing is I'm totally willing to accept that there is a thing such as feeling a strong identity with a particular sex. I just don't think it has anything to do with wearing dresses or makeup.

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Datun · 19/02/2017 19:03

What do you think it is to do with Lessthan?

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Lessthanaballpark · 19/02/2017 19:49

I have absolutely no idea Datun!

I identify as female because I've been raised as female. I identify with women but fancy men (although I understand that sexual orientation and sex-identity are different things) so I've had the privilege of never having to feel outside of my body.

For a while when I was a kid I wanted to be a boy but now I realise that was just because I wanted to do what boys did and have the freedoms they had.

But I definitely know that the idea of innate femininity being about romance, flowing hair and high heels is a pile of gubbins.