Conway Hall no-platforms Rad Fem Event

I find what you are saying about Trans trying to validate their own feelings interesting RulersMakeBadLovers. What feelings are they trying to validate? You see I think part of the problem is not that other women don't accept them as women but that they themselves actually have a problem understanding who/what they are and where they fit into a society that since time began only has two distinct biological sexes. The way this translates is to make sex a fuzzy and ambiguous concept to accommodate their own insecurities and feelings of confusion.

Well said Rulers.

I'm interested to know something about the naysayers.

Is it really that you have an issue with women only spaces, or is that that you have an issue with radical feminism? And this whole transpeople debate is just another stick with which to beat radical feminists?

Genuine question. Think. Dig deep.

I suspect that latter.

WW-"Still don't see what is offensive about trans women discussing a problem they face and can't escape at all."

In the context of trans-activists shutting down this conference because women who are born as women can't escape that fact either. And suffer from it in ways that are far beyond going to bed with whom they think they are entitled to do so or the dilemma of using toilets, tough though those things may be to deal with.

And, quite frankly, there were other ways of dealing with the fact that men don't want to be men than co-opting women's spaces and shoe-horning their way into feminist conferences. For what? To stop personhood laws in the US? To eradicate rape myths? To fight against forced marriages of pre-teen girls? To ensure that women the world over have control of their fertility? To combat male violence against women? Or to validate their own feelings? Feminists should not be marching alongside trans. Trans should be marching alongside feminists, if they feel like they are women and want to show some solidarity.

And no, I'm not paranoid. Do you know what's happening in the US? And do you know that many of our conservative politicians take "summer schools" over there to learn from them? The battle against anti-women legislation is nigh. And squabbling over trans issues is taking the focus off issues that really affect women.

And I'm interested in where you think this vague but powerful 'women knowing their worth' effect has come from?

Ask women who don't identify as feminist how they feel about sharing changing rooms, domestic violence shelters etc with people who have intact male genitalia who are sexually attracted to women.

Pan, gender is a social construction. Imposed on us all by our social system (patriarchy).

Sex is a concrete physical biological reality.

An immutable gender?

Blimmin eck.

WW I don't think I'm transphobic, thanks. Thanks for chucking that one at me though

I am also not sure why you are under the impression that feminist conferences (radfem or otherwise) only talk about issues in the UK. The ones I have been to have mainly focussed on things happening around the world.

WidowWadman are you accusing SQ of transphobia?

(I know it is the latest anti feminist buzzword but MN doesn't approve of personal attack on the basis of political disagreement.)

Of course SQ can speak for herself but IMO her point is obvious. The global oppression of women is in the main part due to our biology (we are the group that bears children and have been historically oppressed as a consequence).

Feminism is concerned with violence and injustices against women under male supremacy - a supremacy which is founded on the (previously referred to) major biological difference between men and women.

It is quite simple really.

Beach - now you are the one trying to be 'funny'.

I am pretty sure this will just go the same way as most 'discussions' will go re transgenderedness and rad fem, ie a bit pointless so I'll leave you to it, thanks.

Gender is an outer label. Sex is written in our DNA.

The women moved

an issue where RadFems are in line with the views of women who wouldn't necessarily identify themselves as 'feminist'.

Beach - I don't understand your post. Are you saying that people are born into an immutable gender, and there is nothing about their development subsequently that can in any way compromise that?

Funny? This isn't a matter of easy humour at all. It may be just difficult to know that women=women's rights=feminism=radical feminism isn't an equation that most/ a lot of women recognise.

Yes, washing machines and dishwashers are gender neutral.

We can all relax laydeez, our oppression has been brought to an abrupt halt thanks to technology .

I think this is actually an issue where women RadFems are in line with the views of who wouldn't necessarily identify themselves as 'feminist'.

SQ - "I don't see how making sex "fuzzy around the edges" and agreeing that women can have penises and all the rest of it is going to help a girl being married off at 10 in pakistan or a women bearing child after child because she does not have the means to control her fertility.

Sitting around saying that these female might actually be men so it's not really a feminist issue and all the rest of it isn't going to help them is it."

Sorry, I can't follow you - what do trans rights in the UK have to do with forced marriages in Pakistan? Nothing. Why would it make it less of a feminist issue when you accept that trans women aren't men? How does your transphobia help the girl access birth control?

I actually reject the idea that a feminist issue is one which only concerns xx women. The shape of one's genitals have nothing to do with whether one can (or should) be a feminist.

I am guessing the new technologies made lighter work so that women don't have to compete to do manual hard labour in the modern work environment.

Much of the feminist activity around the world looks pretty radical to me.

A liberal approach won't get very far in many countries.

"Knowing your worth" won't help girls in scores of countries around the world.

I am not sure what the new technologies stuff is about.

Are you trying to be funny Pan?

Or are you just not aware/concerned by the gains for women that have their origins in radical feminism?

Beachcomber - re the 'advances due to origins in rad feminism' - not really? Massive gains by millions of people, mostly women, who would run a mile from such a definition of themselves. Empowered through new technologies which are fairly gender neutral, liberal feminists who don't have a 'over throw the patriarchy' as an agenda, and just women who have come to 'know their worth' and can work stuff out for themselves.

Pan, I don't think I understand your post.

Do you mean that you think all MTF transpeople are women? As in, exactly the same as biological women?

As in with the same issues, oppression, politics, socialization, biology, biological concerns and identity?

yes, mini, that concern around what 'makes a woman' has been covered in literature, angry and v personal debate for years. It's only just raised it's defined head now ( and latterly on MN) due to transgendered being a 'protected characteristi'c under the Eq. Act, which has massive legal implications, of which this decision by the Conway Hall is but one. (assuming CH receives public funding, so it isn't private).

'they know they are not women, as do rad fems..'.....so backward it's not worth discussing with you I'm afraid - it's been thrashed out here for months.

Yy beachcomber too many women take it for granted

The meeting is political, what else would it be. Is it controversial, well it is now because the Transgender community have been very vocal.

I might be way of the mark but my intuitive reaction to this is that MtF transgener people want to be accepted as women, however the biggest stumbling block isn't how others perceive them at all. They know it, just as Radfems know it, they are not women. It just seems like a petty case of if " i can't have something neither can you" Thing is if you make women as a sex, less that "perfect" or absolute, then you make the very thing you crave the most lose all of its integrity.

But oppression of women is not historical.

I don't see how making sex "fuzzy around the edges" and agreeing that women can have penises and all the rest of it is going to help a girl being married off at 10 in pakistan or a women bearing child after child because she does not have the means to control her fertility.

Sitting around saying that these female might actually be men so it's not really a feminist issue and all the rest of it isn't going to help them is it.

SardineQ, you say, "If you accept that sex = gender and gender = a feeling, then logically sex does not actually exist and there is no such thing as oppression of women worldwide and people born with vaginas aren't necessarily women and people born with penises aren't necessarily men. It totally removes the framework for discussing any issues relating to sex, therefore no discussion can be had."

Race used to be seen as a biological entity. It is now seen as primarily a construct (but still has a biological element, eg it's a useful statement to say, "medical condition X is more prevalent in ethnic group Y".) Ethnic groups have also never had hard-edged definitions - despite occasional ludicrous attempts to do so.

None of this makes it impossible to discuss historical racial oppression, or means that race-the-construct-or-the biology-element doesn't exist, or removes the framework for discussing race. It's just harder work.

Given which I don't see why discussion of sex and gender can't also cope with fuzzy-edged groups. Again, it's harder work - one has to add more context. But adding context is good, it copes with all sorts of sophistications which ought to be part of the discussion anyway. Eg some of the previous trans discussions got into, "but trans people can't bear children" - cue women-born-women popping up to say they couldn't have children either but that not having that shared experience didn't make them less women. Similarly, I've lived in a context where to be a white woman was to be the historical (and possibly current) oppressor of a black man - because race trumped gender in that context. It didn't make it impossible to discuss historical oppression of women - one just had to make clear what one was talking about.