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Original poster

Following on from the TERF thread...

635 replies

CailinDana · 15/06/2014 21:28

Trying to get my head straight on this. Surely the whole malarkey around transwomen wanting to be recognised as women even though they have penises will eventually actually help to break down the idea of gender?

What I mean is, if a person with a penis can be labelled a woman simply because they want to be labelled in that way, surely gender becomes meaningless as it tells you nothing meaningful about a person except perhaps the clothes they like to wear?

This is a half-formed thought, feel free to develop/challenge.

OP posts:
CrotchMaven · 17/06/2014 22:53

Add a "do".

CrotchMaven · 17/06/2014 22:52

I am a woman. I don't have to anything about it.

"You are a post-postmodernist crotch". Very Withnail.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 17/06/2014 22:52

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BillnTedsMostFeministAdventure · 17/06/2014 22:52

Ok, thanks Kim.

BillnTedsMostFeministAdventure · 17/06/2014 22:51

"I don't get postmodernism and I'm not ashamed to say that :-)"

Votes TeamCrotch.

Err...Grin

kim147 · 17/06/2014 22:50

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Original poster
CailinDana · 17/06/2014 22:50

"You are a post-postmodernist crotch"

OP posts:
BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 17/06/2014 22:49

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BillnTedsMostFeministAdventure · 17/06/2014 22:49

And I am constrained by recognising that gender dysphoria must feel awful and wanting to be sympathetic - but thinking that "just stating" you are the opposite sex is too low a bar.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 17/06/2014 22:48

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EverythingCounts · 17/06/2014 22:47

kim147 and Norma This is why I asked the question before about when 'trans' as the whole term in itself started to be used and popularised. Yes, it does have the straightforward convenienceof being shorter, but it also has the appeal of avoiding naming 'sex' 'gender' or any of the other concepts being negotiated specifically - people are just 'trans'. Allows for a lot of vagueness (or freedom, depending on your pov)

kim147 · 17/06/2014 22:47

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CrotchMaven · 17/06/2014 22:46

I don't get postmodernism and I'm not ashamed to say that :-)

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 17/06/2014 22:42

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CrotchMaven · 17/06/2014 22:42

Fair point. Sex is pretty genetic, though, I would've thought.

BillnTedsMostFeministAdventure · 17/06/2014 22:41

Norma, I think that is l a key question.

DonkeySkin · 17/06/2014 22:40

I have used language as carefully as I can above. My understanding is that the definition of trans (transgender and transsexual) by those who self-define as trans is much broader than the above.

Yes, BillnTed the definition of a trans is now 'identifies as trans'. Trans activists are very clear that one does not need to have dysphoria with one's sexed body to be trans, and I read that 80-90% of males identifying as trans women do not plan to have surgery (this was based on a survey of trans people in the New York area - can't find the actual source, sorry).

And that definition is being pursued politically too - Denmark just became the first European country to approve legal change of gender without any clinical diagnosis.

www.ilga-europe.org/home/news/for_media/media_releases/denmark_becomes_the_first_european_country_to_allow_legal_change_of_gender_without_clinical_diagnosis#.U5h4qwKPPos.facebook

It's one of the many contradictions at the heart of the current trans political agenda: on the one hand, they push transgenderism as a crippling medical condition that should be treated with extreme interventions like surgical and chemical modification of bodies (including those of children). On the other hand, they say a person's self-stated gender identity should be accepted without question and demands for medical diagnoses or treatments as 'proof' of trans-ness are discriminatory and oppressive.

kim147 · 17/06/2014 22:38

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kim147 · 17/06/2014 22:37

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NormaStanleyFletcher · 17/06/2014 22:34

Can I ask a possibly stupid question.

Is there a different definition of transsexual and transgender? Surely wanting to change your sex (body) is difffrent?

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 17/06/2014 22:32

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almondcakes · 17/06/2014 22:31

That is one of the things I find incomprehensible about the idea of non binary, gender queer, gender fluidity etc. It is about performing gender in a way that is associated not with male or female, but all of humanity in all its forms. But actually, there is nothing about being or appearing socially male that couldn't also be done by a woman who isn't pregnant. So by not having the appearance of pregnancy as a common part of gender queer culture, what is really being said is that there is a new binary, group one -- humanity who perform gender in a fluid way, and group two - those things that get pregnant.

CrotchMaven · 17/06/2014 22:31

My Dad really wants to be Scottish. All of his names are Scottish. We have Scottish ancestry (actually, I have more because of my dad AND my mum, going back). He has spent a lot of time in Scotland. He supports Scotland in the rugby.

He was born in Chester and was brought up, and lives, in Yorkshire.

He's not quite as much of a tosser as that makes him sound! And he's still not Scottish. And would be laughed out of town by a Scot if he claimed that he was Scottish. He knows that, so he doesn't. He still loves doing some of the things that make him feel an affinity, though.

Beachcomber · 17/06/2014 22:29

Yes to what DonkeySkin says to postmodernism.

It is smoke and mirrors.

It seeks to annihilate class identity, politics and powerful collective activism and replace them with individualized, vague, powerless, obedient, sectionized, non confrontational identity politics.

Post modernism is the antithesis of grass roots movements and activism.

It is an every man for himself schema. It is an intellectual denial of the non privileged and their actual, real, concrete class struggles and subsequent distress.

BillnTedsMostFeministAdventure · 17/06/2014 22:22

" Or when genderqueer people performed womanhood, a lot of them would do so with a strap on baby bump, but they don't seem to"

That's interesting.