Following on from the TERF thread...

Beachcomber, I also really appreciate the fact that Mumsnet allows women to discuss these issues openly. Trans politics affects all women, so women should be allowed to debate it.

Flora, I agree that MN is a pretty exceptional place as we are able to have these discussions at all. There have been much fewer cries of 'transphobia' recently too - I wonder why.

If you take places like The F-Word it is just ridiculous the way no one can say anything trans/gender critical or anything that prioritizes women. I remember reading this discussion for example calling for women to boycott the London Reclaim the Night march because the organizers don't expressly invite "self-identifying" women (they don't exclude transwomen, they just don't extend a special snowflake invitation). Also notice in the comments that a couple of posters mention the fact that your comments will only make it through if they are not trans critical.

There is also this discussion where a poster called Old Music posts an entirely reasonable explanation of radical feminist thought (Old Music Posted 25 September 2011 at 00:44) and then a mod comes on and tells them that comment slipped through but more comments in that vain will not be published.

I have copied and pasted the mods comment because the grovelling self flagellation speaks volumes.

You are correct - it was a mistake to publish @Old Music's comment.

I am a cis woman and I was moderating the thread. I did not recognize, because of my cis privilege, that the comment was cis centric, reinforcing cis privilege and transphobic.

I apologize to everyone on the site, and this thread in particular, for my mistake and for undermining TFW's efforts to create a safer space for trans women on the site.

Thank you for calling me out.

The F Word calls itself "the UK's leading website dedicated to all aspects of contemporary feminism" but you can only post there if you adhere to their position on transphobia and cissexism .

So yeah, thanks MN that we are allowed to discuss these issues.

Villa, I don't know how to give resources that are not unbiased on this! This is by someone who tried to 'find common ground' although it did not end well, but might give a summary of the issue.

www.giagia.co.uk/2013/10/22/controversy/

Villa, I would recommend the GenderTrender blog. Gallus Mag has been tracking the impact of trans politics on feminism and women's rights for quite some time and she is a fearless advocate for women and girls.

gendertrender.wordpress.com/

Gia Milinovich has also covered this issue from a more neutral (but still feminist) perspective.

www.giagia.co.uk/2013/10/22/controversy/

www.giagia.co.uk/2014/02/13/i-heart-you/

FloraFox said up thread that "if you are involved in feminism in any way, trans issues will find you." Well it's just recently found me and I feel like I've fallen into down the rabbit hole into an unfamiliar place where nothing makes sense.

Where's a good place to start reading about this?

I just don't know enough about the trans activist movement to understand how we've got to this point. I see arguments on Twitter (eg recently between Laurier Penny, Glosswitch, Caroline Criado Perez and others) and feel totally alienated by the conversations.

I agree with that bit too Buffy.

Biological sex does not oppress women. It just is. Men oppress women.

Women are oppressed because of our biological sex via the socially constructed hierarchy of gender. Gender had to be invented because there is no material reality to one sex having more worth or status than the other. In a non patriarchal society, the differences between the two sexes would be acknowledged when relevant (maternity services for women, prostate exams for men) but there would be no value judgement on those differences, they would be neutral. They would just be. Gender would not exist and neither would sex as a class/caste.

The thought of that makes me want to break into dance

I also agree that biological sex does not inevitably lead to oppression, but in any possible society, biological sex differences would have to be acknowledged for there to be no oppression, in the same way that childhood, height, old age, physical impairments and so on would have to be, because physical diversity requires a society that meets diverse needs.

It is like the Daphna Joel video I linked to. We used to think left handed ness was a symptom of mental problems and in capabilities. We used to tie left handed children's left arm down to force them to write with their right hand. We still say 'two left feet' as an insult.

But nobody really believes that left handed people have different brains and capabilities anymore. They still need left handed scissors and other appropriate tools though. Because differences in handedness still have consequences that can't be ignored. That is like biological sex. Tieing somebody's arm down and claiming they are mentally feeble because of their left handedness is like gender.

What I am trying to argue, perhaps unsuccessfully, is that the sex / reproduction biology is not the fact of oppression. Oppression isn't an inevitable result of sex and sexual differences. The oppression is build upon and around those differences, and the oppression is socially constructed. The oppression and its long and inglorious history is the source of our problems today, not the sex. The sex just is.

And consequently, I suggest that the problem with trans activism and feminism isn't due to sex it is due to the oppressive edifice that has been constructed around sex. I am proposing that if there were no sex-based oppression, then there would be no problem.

ITA with this. The problem for feminists is how to challenge and dismantle that oppressive edifice. I can't see how we can get anywhere if we can't name what is at the root of it.

And I'd love to see your interpretive dance, but alas there is no embedded video on this forum

We may be talking at cross purposes.

I think race has been constructed by racists and slavery, and has been a disaster, but ethnicity has a basis in people's lived experiences which are ultimately rooted in material reality. We would lose most of the world's knowledge of environments, medicine and so on if there was no such thing as ethnicity. It wouldn't be possible for people to survive in different places without developing unique cultures, so they are here with good reason. In fact, the construction of race is connected to material reality - grabs of land and people, but it isn't a useful category of people for any positive reason other than as a reaction to ending the consequences of that and helping people understand what has happened.

With biological sex, I am arguing against the idea (I think!) that there was biology, on which people built negative social constructions exist and which have negative social consequences for the group now socially called women.

I am arguing that a material reality exists, which we comprehend through a social construction called biology (and other social constructions) and that construction itself is prone to issues of social power. Materially real females are then harmed through social constructions and material events which are maintained through power which is both constructed and real, and the consequences of that are materially real and socially constructed.

FGM, for example - done to the genitals (really female, named and understood through constructs), demanded by a whole society with a proposed reason (social construction), done through power (social, who is named as controlling resources they may withold) and by literal power (holding someone down and harming them, with a social consequence (status of females) and a materially real one (illness, infection, impairment, death).

There isn't a point at which you can separate the two concepts, other than to say that some aspects of material reality will always exist, while some aspects of material reality and all social constructions can be changed.

I tell you what, if there were a bunch of white people having cosmetic surgery and getting stuck into anti-racism activism and changing the very shape of that activism and the discourse around it, I bet there would be an upsurge in black activism and a huge amount of WTF? all round. It is a stark example of the distorted socialisation of women that the same hasn't happened here in greater numbers.

We need some robust feminist discussion on a national level. And international, given how much ideas develop and spread on the internet. If it's always What about the Menz? and What about the Tranz? it's game over. Discussion never gets anywhere - it's an MN thread with a troll on a global scale.

Buffy, it is reasonable to argue that race is a social construct, given that it didn't even exist as a meaningful concept until Europeans invented it about 500 years ago, and DNA modelling shows that the notion of there being separate 'races' of humans is a very nebulous idea indeed, whatever the variations between us in skin, hair and eye colour.

It is not reasonable to argue that sex is a social construct, unless you want to claim that the means by which all species reproduce is simply an ideological construct that has been recently invented by humans. Are you going to argue that there are no male and female animals - that it is a human conceit to imagine we can say whether a dog is male or female?

Although both race and sex are indeed 'real' in a social sense, given the power structures that have been built up around them, the key difference between these two concepts is that there are no meaningful biological differences between various ethnic groups, whereas the biological differences between the sexes will always be meaningful. It does not help feminism to pretend that sex differences aren't real and can be argued away - indeed it leaves us with no ground to stand on when challenging women's oppression.

Buffy, I don't think pretending to be something you're not has to be based in biological difference when it comes to race.

If I pretended to be a person who was Indian, it would be bizarre and ridiculous. It would be equally ridiculous if I pretended I was an Irish Catholic living in West Belfast, as they are also an ethnic minority group experiencing racism. There is of course, no genetic difference between the 'white' English and Irish. We are of the same genetic group. But there is an ethnic difference as a consequence of social constructions which have materially real consequences.

The same could be said of a USA citizen whose ancestors moved to the US hundreds of years ago and then claims to be 'Hispanic' in the sense that they are from South America, even though there are Hispanic South American people wholly of European descent.

And of course physical appearance is part of ethnicity for a lot of people, but it doesn't have to be. So it isn't really comparable to biological sex and gender.

There is a significant body of evidence for human variation in skin pigmentation, likelihood of certain illnesses, facial features and so on that has a basis in geographical ancestry, but these fit very poorly with the social perception of who is a member of each 'race' as race is socially constructed with little reference to material reality.

Yes, if trans activism recognised the material reality of biological females and the social constructions around those people and the power dynamics that have social and material consequences for females, we would be in a very different conversation.

People can only comprehend material reality through social constructions, but social constructions that have no basis in engaging with material reality are at best useless and at worst a tragic disaster, because humans and the resources we need to exist are materially real.

Buffy that's interesting but I think the fact there are disputes over some biological facts doesn't mean there are disputes over every biological fact. Biological differences between races are really not the same as biological differences between men and women or whether a person born with a penis can be a woman.

While I agree that politically and socially constructed applications of facts are significant, I think the facts that are not in dispute need to be recognized.

Beach I'm fairly sure you are not allowed to "misgender" an actual MNer - I saw some posts deleted as PAs. I replied to Kim's question upthread about being a man and that wasn't deleted but maybe because it was clearly not intended as an attack and also was in answer to a question (or maybe nobody reported it).

Not sure about talking about another person. We are generally allowed to "PA" people in the public eye. I haven't seen any posts deleted for saying in general that transwomen are men.

I agree it's hard to keep up with the rules on what we can say.

Interestingly, there have been more open discussions on MN recently than used to be permitted. We have been able to have some very good discussions of the politics of genderism without being shouted down by calls of "transphobia". Much more so than is generally possible on mainstream forums. I'm grateful to MN that we are able to have these discussions even though I don't agree with every rule about what we can and can't say.

Buffy, I think one of the issues is that all 'facts' about material reality get lumped in together and all 'facts' about social constructions get lumped in together as if in each group all can be said with the same degree of certainty.

There is very little of an established evidence base for male and female brains or West African and European brains.

There is a huge and overwhelming body of evidence that a binary of biological sex exists. 99% of people do either have XX, ovaries and clitoris at birth all together or the male equivalents all together.

I don't think you can separate the importance of social constructs and material reality. Both social constructs and the materially real lead to outcomes that have consequences for social constructs and material realities. Power itself is both socially constructed and materially real.

I think there was a recent thread where MNHQ said they would delete posts if a transwoman is called a man or male pronouns are used.

Thanks for the info Flora. Does that mean that I get deleted if a "misgender" an actual MNer (which I wouldn't do, I would just avoid pronouns) but not if I say " X the well known transactivist is male"?

Or can I get deleted for talking about a public figure and calling them a man but not deleted for saying in a general manner that IMO transwomen are male.

It's hard to keep up with the rules of what women are allowed and not allowed to say!

Beach / almond

I think there was a recent thread where MNHQ said they would delete posts if a transwoman is called a man or male pronouns are used. A number of posts in that thread were deleted.

MNHQ don't seem to be deleting posts that discuss this in general. If they did, it would kill our ability to talk about this.

The "transwomen are women" mantra (and our ability to discuss this) is absolutely at the heart of this issue. If you accept transwomen are women, everything else trans activists argue for makes sense - up to and including the cotton ceiling. Liberal feminists like Sarah Ditum, Gia, Glosswitch are seeing the consequences of this problem. While they are (or have been) willing to accept transwomen as women but with limits, this is not acceptable to transactivists. IMO, we need to frame the discussion more clearly by saying that transwomen are not women but some accommodations can be acceptable. Any waffling around the "transwomen are women" mantra just opens up the door to pointless arguments.

Some really great posts on here, thank you.

Why does such a small minority take up so much posts on here?

Like many others here, I didn't go out looking for transgender issues to be concerned about. If you are involved in feminism in any way, trans issues will find you. Also like many others, my first response was sympathy for people living difficult lives and being open to ways to make their lives easier. However, it became clear that there is no middle ground here, no compromise, nothing other than complete capitulation to the cult of trans is acceptable.

From an intellectual position, I cannot, cannot pretend to believe something that is so patently and obviously false on a material (not political) level. There is a biological reality to the existence of two sex classes that is not overcome by cultural influences nor the existence of a tiny number of people who are intersex. This suspension of reality has no parallel in any other social justice movement. Social justice for other groups has never depended on denying biological reality.

From a political position, I cannot accept genderism as it is counter to everything I believe as a feminism about constructed femininity imposed on the sex class of women. Genderism is founded in liberalism, individualism and post-modernism, none of which I agree with. Genderism is misogynistic and profoundly anti-feminist.

Why do I take up so many posts on here? Partly it's a reaction to the huge amount of silencing and shouting down that goes on in most other public space, especially liberal and liberal feminist spaces. As others have pointed out, it is often women who are enforcing this silence on other women. If we don't speak out, these transmaidens will frog-march us into accepting the destruction of our understanding of the reality of being a woman.