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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

To think that women should not be referred to as menstruators and pregnant people?

380 replies

FRETGNIKCUF · 04/09/2016 07:34

*This is a thread about the impact trans activism is having on women. This is the beginning.

Don't read on if you're going to whine about another trans thread.*

Julian Vigo (@lubelleludotcom on Twitter) wrote the following.

There is a war on women, folks. The transgender lobby has gone down the rabbit hole by refusing to acknowledge that women's lives and bodies not only matter, but that they are real. Instead women's bodies have become the simulacra in an extended theatre of male entitlement (to be women while telling women to STFU) or they are rendered an extension of male subjectivity such that we now see hairy transmen's female bodies breastfeeding, the only form of female body hair that would ever be allowed in Time magazine.

And now for the latest: we are being called "menstruators" by the same right-wing discourse which seeks to remove the mention of woman from women's healthcare across the USA (ie. now many providers have been pressured to remove the term woman and write instead "pregnant person.") It is as if the last 100 years of women's rights had never occured.

The ironies are multiple. Here you have a group which claims its own marginalisation while working steadily to marginalise an already marginalised group, women. Then you have a group of female people who by virtue of the current transgender identity doxa necessitates "gender dysphoria," yet paradoxically adheres to—and even embraces—the real and symbolic thrust of much of what the female body actually is and produces, a complete opposition to gender dysphoria. Therein lies the greatest contradiction which, not surprisingly, once again holds women hostage: woman is symbolic for those who emulate her, woman is only acceptable inasmuch as she recognises males as females, and women are now relegated to "non-males" by political parties, as "pregnant humans" and "menstruators" by females who reject their bodies yet who hold out for the double-bind of gender in this theatre of cruelty where only a [sic] "man" can truly understood pregnancy, breastfeeding, and motherhood.

The only parallel I can think of is if the KKK were to insist that the Black Panthers stop calling themselves "black", demand that their white hoods be viewed as black, assert that only white people know what it is like to experience life as a black person, and then turn around and maintain that black people are just a group of entitled, bio-essentialist racists.

OP posts:
TwatbadgingCuntfuckery · 09/09/2016 07:21

It's bullshit and you know what. I'm gonna go ahead and compare it to the evangelists, the scientologists.. They have a list of answers for 'difficult' questions that don't answer the initial question and ways of subverting meanings in an attempt to confuse.

I was taught critical thinking and for anyone who is interested and has teens who need to learn it - futurelearn.com runs free short online courses on critical thinking. I did it a few months back and will do it again. When it comes up.

A course in learning how to think critically should be compulsory in school but it's not taught. Not even so much as a whimper at uni ether :/

shins · 09/09/2016 07:11

"Gender is not a biological binary" you carefully explain to your boss who's torpedoing your career after you come back from your second maternity leave. Or the rapist in the dark alleyway. Yeah Hmm

shins · 09/09/2016 07:07

"We have always been at war with Eastasia". Wish they'd read some Orwell. It's easy to mock them ( they're very young) but I find it genuinely sinister how lacking in critical thinking they are and resistant to opposing opinions. The banning and no platforming etc. It's the internet generation where they're scared of having the wrong opinion outside their echo chamber. It's not just the usual generation gap -I was a young feminist in the 90s and while I didn't believe 70s third-wave feminism had got everything right, I respected those women who'd gone before and knew we were on the same side. Whereas this is some weird Year Zero shit I can't quite comprehend.

Prawnofthepatriarchy · 09/09/2016 01:05

Biology is a construct? That sounds like meaning creep. Men are lesbians. Peace is war. There was some TA convo on Reddit in which Mtts who had had bottom surgery were saying that meant they were now ciswomen... Grin

venusinscorpio · 09/09/2016 00:23

This new one I keep seeing is "biology is a construct" in response to someone saying gender is a social construct. Really?

Prawnofthepatriarchy · 08/09/2016 23:46

Gender is not a biological binary? Wtf does that mean?

Ans: Nothing

shins · 08/09/2016 23:05

I've been querying a national abortion rights campaign group (Ireland) about their recent adaptation of gender neutral terms -"pregnant people".."people who need abortions"..."not only women get pregnant" I made all the usual points about biology being central to women's oppression and the dangers of ignoring this. and it was some small consolation that I wasn't the only one. I said I didn't see men's health campaigns stating that "not only men get prostate cancer" and why are women being erased?
I was blocked from their FB page. FFS. I was campaigning for legal abortion before most of them were even born and they're treating me like some kind of conservative troll. They don't engage, just these borglike assertions that make no sense like "Gender is not a biological binary" and imply that an old codger like me doesn't understand this brave new world. It's depressing. Trans people have their own stuff to deal with, why do TRAs keep barging into women's spaces and causing divisions and distractions?

Prawnofthepatriarchy · 08/09/2016 10:38

I've just read the whole thread. Got to the end, read Winchester's post and thought "silly ashtrays? They sound fun."

Very disappointed to discover it was a typo. Silly ashtrays much more alluring than hashtags. Off to google some.

Cisoff · 08/09/2016 03:20

Olennas, I shit you not, I actually read a story about a happy couple expecting their naturally conceived baby the other week.

The birthing parent was 'he' (FtT) and the sperm provider was 'she' (MtT).

So, yes. A regular heterosexual couple expecting a baby...but not.

WinchesterWoman · 07/09/2016 23:29

Ashtrays = hashtags. My tablet is so very old.

WinchesterWoman · 07/09/2016 23:28

Think I need to calm down , I'm getting cross ! Need to read about silly ashtrays Wine

OlennasWimple · 07/09/2016 23:25

I'm tempted to start a #ifmenweremothers Twitter thingy, see what responses it draws...

IBelieveTheEarthIsFlat · 07/09/2016 23:20

It's all bizarre Wimple.

Illogical, irrational, insane bloody guff

OlennasWimple · 07/09/2016 22:56

It does raise the bizarre prospect of an individual saying that they are a man, giving birth, claiming maternity leave and pay entitlements, but insisting that they are the father, doesn't it?

CoteDAzur · 07/09/2016 22:32

Sorry Olenna. I totally misunderstood you there.

WinchesterWoman · 07/09/2016 21:38

They would say it's entirely up to them what they call themselves, if you disagree you're phobic, and assume the right to take offence at literal genocide if you put one step wrong in their imaginary world of eternally fluid semantics.

OlennasWimple · 07/09/2016 18:19

Yes, Twat - but would they describe themselves as a mother or father?

TwatbadgingCuntfuckery · 07/09/2016 18:16

Then they are, imo, men in dresses or men who just like to play at being the stereotype of women.

OlennasWimple · 07/09/2016 18:14

I meant a MTT individual who has not undergone bottom surgery and isn't taking hormones, Cote. No reason why they couldn't father a child, as we used to be able to say

CoteDAzur · 07/09/2016 18:11

speed sperm. Although ejaculating speed would be fun, too.

CoteDAzur · 07/09/2016 18:10

"What about transwomen who have functioning penises that are used to impregnate a woman even after transition?"

There is no such thing. Even if a sort-of "functioning penis" can be fashioned out of flesh taken from elsewhere, it will never ejaculate speed because transmen are still female - I.e. If the sex that can make eggs, not sperm.

Bambambini · 07/09/2016 13:56

I don't think anyone does have a plan or actually knows how to deal with this. It's just all being made up as they go in regard to laws, rights and recommendations. No one has a clue what to do.

TwatbadgingCuntfuckery · 07/09/2016 13:41

I now have Brain ache.

OlennasWimple · 07/09/2016 13:37

Interestingly, the Government guidance on Mat Leave and Mat Pay is pretty gender neutral already (I'm sure this is coincidence not design).

The word "maternity" leads to another thought, though: are transmen who give birth mothers or fathers? What about transwomen who have functioning penises that are used to impregnate a woman even after transition?

ChocChocPorridge · 07/09/2016 13:02

It seems to me that the transmen who menstruate, already wanted to be erased from womanhood didn't they? Isn't that the point of being a transman?

In which case, why do they mind about being erased by using the word 'woman' to describe people who menstruate, which is an entirely female process.

In fact, if they are fine with menstruating and want to be included and talk about it, doesn't that make them sound like they might be comfortable with some aspects of their female body, and therefore not trans but cis (to use their terminology)

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