Thoughts on MNHQ's response to the Spartacus thread

Buffy not really at this precise moment, at work on my break, don't have my diss for exact references. However if you DM me I'll be happy to send them another time.

I thought you didn't support gender binary? Guess you do, when excluding MTT from society eh?!?!? grin

I think you are confusing sex with gender again.

A women dressed in a "masculine" manner is in the majority of cases going to be recognisable as a woman.
A man dressed in a "feminine" way is in the majority of cases going to be recognisable as a man.

We are generally pretty well programmed to recognise what sex people are for obvious reasons, and sex is a binary. However, none of this has got anything whatsoever to do with gender.

Fruit I can see you are trying to make some important points, but it is really hard to follow when you confuse sex and gender.

Sex = male/ female and is a binary
Gender = what society believes masculine and feminine are. Depending on point of view gender is either non-existant or a continuum.

If you could use language in the same way as everyone else it would really help

Buffy - fruit's not going to do that, any more than she did with me when I asked her what her understanding of gender-critical was. She just posted a link to a daft article which accused gender-critical feminists of being essentialists (in other words one which invented a straw-man which was the precise opposite of what gender-critical feminists actually are). I've come to the conclusion that she does not actually want to engage with any of us, she just wants to jump up and down shouting "you're all evil TERFs". So I for one am not going to engage with her any more, since there is no possibility of reasoned discussion.

The swerf argument is ridiculous. There are very few consenting sex workers. Over 90% of sex workers want to leave prostitution. I live in Germany, where prostitution has been legalised, to much fanfare. What is the result? A huge increase in human trafficking, in STDs amongst sex workers, in criminal gang involvement in the industry, and brothels which advertise flat rate sex - where you can violate a woman over and over again for several hours and pay a pittance. Once again, liberal feminism is just old fashioned patriarchy dressed up in shiny new clothes. It's a tool being used to convince women that oppression is sexy, fun and my least favourite word: "empowering". Empowerment is a bullshit funfem concept designed to make us collude in our own subjugation. I'm only interested in liberation. Empowerment and all the smug false narratives around it can just fuck off.

'Stop being hysterical!'

That's a terrible trans-exclusionary turn of phrase, you know!

Izzy MTT are not "men in dresses" for goodness sake. Stop being hysterical!

I cant see where any poster has said female sex workers should be excluded from female places or excluded from society.

I'm pretty sure the attempts to abolish sex work ARE excluding sex workers and their voices, driving their work underground, risking their safety, and making it impossible to work legally.

Fruit, you seem to be falling for the old chestnut that there's a right type of feminist to be and that your views on intersectionality make you the best type.

That's both an anti feminist and anti woman view. Calling a woman a TERF is never acceptable. Sorting feminist theory in to good and bad is never acceptable.

Feminisism is inclusive of different views but it always centres women. There's nothing wrong with a belief system that doesn't centre women but it isn't feminism. If transactivists want to centre transwomen, great, I'm glad someone is doing so but I as a feminist am not going to do that. Nor will I make any apologies for it.

Fruit, you seem to be falling for the old chestnut that there's a right type of feminist to be and that your views on intersectionality make you the best type.

That's both an anti feminist and anti woman view. Calling a woman a TERF is never acceptable. Sorting feminist theory in to good and bad is never acceptable.

Feminisism is inclusive of different views but it always centres women. There's nothing wrong with a belief system that doesn't centre women but it isn't feminism. If transactivists want to centre transwomen, great, I'm glad someone is doing so but I as a feminist am not going to do that. Nor will I make any apologies for it.

My origin is asking various friends who are RadFem, alongside reading various feminist literature whilst writing my dissertation.

Fruit, Fret supports the sex binary, not the gender binary. Because unlike the gender binary, the sex binary is real, and is generally visible due to these little things called secondary sex characteristics. It's that old chestnut biology again...

my train of thought is that these debates are attempts to exclude transpeople and sex workers from certain areas of society and this line of thought is ignoring their voices

I cant see where any poster has said female sex workers should be excluded from female places or excluded from society.
The posts which say transpeople with their penises should not be allowed in certain protected female spaces are spot on. That is not an exclusion from certain areas of society that is protecting the women who access those areas.
My dp would not be allowed in a womens refuge because hes a man and that is accepted by all including you Fruit. But if my DP wore a dress and called himself Jane you would then say he should be allowed?
Why, he is still a man his sex has not changed but the putting on of a dress makes him acceptable to you. Why is that?

IBelieveTheEarthIsFlat by the way thanks for posting that awful Julia Serano quote, I've seen it before but the solipsistic narcissism of it never fails to take my breath away. They are literally telling women to shut up about an issue which impacts upon us profoundly - the right to control our own reproductive capacity - because it makes them feel left out. And this person is influential, and considered credible by the trans community and its allies. Is this not the height of fucked up?

Fruit cider Nina passed as a woman???

I thought you didn't support gender binary? Guess you do, when excluding MTT from society eh?!?!?

Of course RadFem is not just about transitioning and the lack of support for it, RadFem also wants to abolish sex work and insists on calling consenting sex workers prostitutes, hence SWERF. Not all RadFems are TERFs or SWERFs, I have to add, but both of these ideologies stem from RadFem.

I don't use the term TERF or SWERF to shut down debate, I would rather have these conversations despite how uncomfortable they are. But by me using these terms, it makes it clear to the reader that my train of thought is that these debates are attempts to exclude transpeople and sex workers from certain areas of society and this line of thought is ignoring their voices.

The way transphobic is thrown around really boils my piss anyway, but I particularly object to it in cases of women who have lived with a male partner for years, maybe even decades, and are suddenly expected to accept that the partner is actually a woman and has always been a woman. You're turning that woman's whole reality and experience upside down, and just because she doesn't instantly accept it she's transphobic? Bugger right off. Especially since if you fully drink the cool aid the transgender person has always been a woman and so their body has always been female - does that mean that the woman who married a man and had sex with a man is now a lesbian?

I saw Kris Jenner getting a lot of stick for using 'he' in reference to Caitlyn after transition and all I could think was hang on, from her pov Kris was married to a man called Bruce for >20 years, had children with him, bla bla bla. TO expect her to not only fully accept this but also to change her language and effectively get rid of 20+ years of habits overnight was ridiculous. No Kardashian fan but I actually felt pretty sorry for her there.

Having an ex who transitioned I did get their point. I on the other hand was told to be supportive or I was Transphobic. Why is that the only option women have? I do not want to be demoted to 'other' which is what Cis is. Can we talk instead of being told?

Good point makeslogicalsensetome2 - what's a gender critical man called? Still a TERF? Or, for that matter, a gender critical transgender person, Ought they to sit down and stfu too?

The tweets in the article linked to up thread are so nasty. So much hate directed towards women. And we're the ones labelled phobic.

If "terf" alone implies you are a radical feminist (obviously knowing bugger all about what it is, but we'll ignore that for a second...) why does the term "swerf" exist?

I need to catch up properly, but just felt I had to post on the irony of "you are denying Mtt experiences" vs "you are not liberal if you don't believe in gender, you are a TERF"

Do not assume you know better than someone else about their internal thoughts - oh, ps I know better than you

yes errol its part of the reason kids should not be transitioning. But it absolutely is a choice. There are options for trans men and women to have children at a later date If they so choose.

Is fertility, again, only considered a women's only issue? we hear of transmen(who are biological women) having babies in the news a lot so one can assume they have considered the ramifications of hormone treatments and/or drastic surgeries and made a decision based on that. Rarely hear about transwomen having children.

Do any Transwomen consider freezing sperm before opting for surgery? is it offered as an option pre-op so a transwoman could use a surrogate later? Is freezing eggs/sperm information given at any consultation for a person transitioning? Is it standard practice?

Just how many transwomen are affected by infertility given stats state only a small percentage have complete surgery?

Curiously is the infertility a perceived infertility - due to lack of female reproductive organs or because they are in fact sterile/had surgery/no longer have any reproductive organs?

sorry - that was in response to microferret. My analogy came from the conservative right not the left ... dogmatists of either extreme are as bad as each other in closing their minds to facts which don't fit their theories.

twat - yes. Having been through subfertility I know .... I'm desparately sorry for people who are infertile but that translates into trying to help those who are in the throes of it, not STFU. A trans person generally has had a choice about their fertility and put it as a lower priority? (unless they were medically transitione as kids )

I think that Radical Feminism is much broader - it's not just about attitudes to trans issues but encompasses many other areas (e.g. views on prostitution, porn, and is a political movement aimed at eliminating patriarchy and is more militant than, say, liberal feminism. Interestingly the first definition on Urban Dictionary calls it a hate speech movement which I would disagree with.

TERF is a term only ever used as a way of silencing people who are in any way critical of either an individual trans person or wider trans activism and is very frequently accompanied by hate language or abuse.

Gender critical is less clearly defined but to me means that you acknowledge biological differences and believe these are what defines the difference between the sexes but reject the gendered definitions of masculine and feminine stereotypical behaviour which both sexes are often expected to conform to.

Many trans activists claim that being Gender Critical means you are inherently rad fem and a TERF however I think there are a fair amount of women - including me - who wouldn't identify as rad fem but would say they are gender critical and feminist (but maybe liberal)