Just when you thought Everyday Transactivism could no longer surprise * title edited by MNHQ*

If there's no gender, then aren't we all lesbians?

"Many of us have had or are currently enmeshed in sexual or romantic relationships with people who aren’t women."
So, you're not lesbians then, so stop complaining about it!

Dearie me, us lesbians (who actually may be butch and femme, despite the queer land-grab going on here, butch and femme is part of lesbian history, despite the gender issues as regards butch and femme and feminism) are just plain ole boring that is the problem! Old, fat, unfashionable, and don't want to have a sexual or romantic relationship with someone who has/used to have/wishes they had a penis. Boring ole female homosexuals, in other words.

Here's to boring ole grumpy lesbians and dykes.

"So....if DH puts on a dress and calls himself Margaret - does that make me a lesbian? "

Apparently yes, if you believe this lady.
www.amandajetteknox.com/blog2016/06/dear-internet-please-stop-telling-me.html

The whole blog is very.... interesting.

Just read up about fallon fox. What the? They let people born male fight women? That is just beyond...

"I do wonder if we're guilty on these threads of the opposite - frothing unecessarily, like the Daily Mail reader fed a diet of snippets lifted from extreme Islamist websites who then projects that on to all Muslims."

I fo think of the his and i try to seek out more mature trans voices to show me it's all not as bad as we see on these trans threads. Just looked on a Reddit trans board. Many look lovely, young vulnerable and makes me ask myself if i am in the rught side. Then i think of Jillian Bearden and Fallon Fox and the pushing in on every female space with no regard to what this means to females and what we think about it - and it just makes me angry again. That i get blocked, insulted, called a bigot for stating what i feel is reason - because i will not bow to their wants and ideology.

It really is all a mess. We keep being asked to be good trans allies - to learn and rethink our words, our beliefs, thoughts. Where is similar asking TW to be good allies to females/women and listen to us?

M0stlyBowlingHedgehog

I disagree with none of that. Forget economics, you should see how military power correlates with sexual equality, it's an unopposable argument.

What I'm saying is that that if feminism is perceived to have retreated to a biologically essentialist position, it will be seen to be sharing a platform with those who argue that women are fundamentally unequal as a result of biology; That it's 'natural' for women to take a more nurturing, less assertive role in society due to their inherent biological vulnerability.

The language around trans-issues from non-inclusive feminists is already based around 'rejecting biology' and it being 'unnatural' - certainly on MN threads. If this language within feminism becomes commonplace, how soon before it's turned around against it? It already mirrors a lot of the anti-feminist language from last century.

I'm certainly no more specifically 'pro-trans' than I am pro any other form of marginalised group. It's just very interesting to watch the evolution of identity politics and the pressure that social development puts on older progressive ideologies.

*grasped.

I think if we don't keep saying that its not acceptable for women to be erased as a category to placate the trans lobby, the powers that be just go for the easier option.

I hear you Most, and I check my conscience for that as well. Unfortunately a lot of this mad stuff is now the mainstream, and has already made serious legislative changes which negatively affects women. I know we like to vent, but raising awareness is so important. Lots of people I know weren't aware of the Olympics Committee ruling last year for example, and were quite shocked and disbelieving when they gasped what it meant.

Meph - you're still not getting the biology thing.

Feminism: Women's oppression didn't come out of nowhere. We are smaller and less muscular, and vulnerable during late pregnancy/child rearing. Those are genuine sex based biological differences. The decision that we are lesser human beings and that we are ripe for exploitation because of those vulnerabilities is a social and political decision - there is nothing in the bare biological facts which says that these must or ought to lead inexorably to our oppression.

The claim that they must or ought would indeed be biological determinism. But feminists are saying the opposite - that these biological facts need not and ought not lead to our social and political oppression, and that someone who uses our biological vulnerabilities in this way is morally wrong and politically stupid (if you look, for instance, at GDP per capita, it correlates rather nicely with having sane, enlightened attitudes to women's place in the workplace and in political life).

This is a first class wind up.
Can some ask them to define a woman; and thenask them what they would call someone with the potential to produce eggs? Or the potential to produce sperm.
Absolute nonsense!

It's almost like a sociocultural chess game.

If they push classical feminism towards biological essentialism, that's checkmate - it undermines years of separating gender expression from sex (it actually won't, but it will be perceived to have done so and that's damaging enough).

Intersectional feminism will become so diluted focusing on other issues that it will lose the capacity to make any impact on women's rights.

A backlash against trans-issues could end up with feminism associated with backwards looking conservatism - or associated with fanatical 'SJW' hyper political correctness and washed away with a more general backlash against those attitudes.

I doubt it's deliberate, probably just an expression of the fact that classical feminists are mostly of the older generation and formed their opinions in a different socio-cultural environment, but if there are some culture-war hypertrolls creating this effect they're masters of the art.

Also, Everyday Feminism is not an extremist site and it has many thousands of followers, and these opinions are supposedly the only acceptable face of feminism as they have set themselves up as arbiters of that.

Greysexual just makes me think of aliens

I think a big difference is, these are the people who are engaging with us when we try to discuss it. Daily mail frothers are not coming up against Jihadists when they discuss that online.

I do wonder if we're guilty on these threads of the opposite - frothing unecessarily, like the Daily Mail reader fed a diet of snippets lifted from extreme Islamist websites who then projects that on to all Muslims.

Having said that, I do think that the transing of children - prescribing lupron off label with its hideous side-effects, encouraging surgical mutilation - is unconscionable. (In an odd sort of way this leaves me with a certain, limited amount sympathy with the whole lady stick nonsense - I'm sure if I had a son who was trans, I'd sooner he entertained the delusion that his penis was a "lady stick" than cut it off.)

I'd just like to say that I identify as greysexual, not graysexual. The latter is an act of cultural imperialism and highly triggering for me.

It's almost like a game to them- who can try and be the most hard done by, marginalised and offended.

That pretty much sums it up doesn't it

Nicking this from the BTL comments on the linked article above...

"I guess the next article will be how 'black doesn't work for young Japanese women' or something. I mean it's not just lesbians that are suffering from this sort of inclusivity nonsense, intersex people have routinely told trans people to stop using their words such as afab/amab, black women don't appreciate us appropriating the word 'intersectionality' either. At some point we got to realise this blind march towards inclusivity at all costs is actually doing more harm than good. When you're taking words, culture and history from marginalised groups of people those groups are going to suffer. Just because you are from a marginalised group yourself does NOT absolve you of any power to oppress others. Straight white cis dudes are NOT the only people capable of oppressing minority groups. The queer community really needs to wake up and smell their privileged scented roses on this one."

Bravo!!

Surely their over invested need to put everyone in boxes I.e hetro/homo/pan/grey/Demi/fuckinglalaland sexual, is against their whole 'don't pigeon hole me maaaaan' thing they've got going on? They've taken it too far the other way.

I really hope that there's a backlash from the next generation against Generation Snowflake and their pathetic, self centred drivel and we see a generation of young people who are proactive, outward focused and committed to really fixing the world's problems rather than angsting on social media about hurt feelz

It may be helpful to remember that what we see on social media is a small self-selected group, not necessarily representative of their generation.

and I suspect in future also denied birth control - make no mistake, Trump and his merry men are planning full on Handmaid's Tale here

In the US you have to have a yearly pelvic examination to get the pill. No reason, probably just because they can. Given the offence rate of doctors, I bet there's a fair whack of women who've been sexually assaulted at the same time too. Of course, coerced vaginal exams I would personally put over the line of assault too.

Can you imagine doing that to blokes? Oh, you want to get Viagra? Right, just take your clothes off and lie down here for the compulsory rectal examination.

twunk

My dad has a friend that transitioned late that he met on holiday

He said that everyone in the group was laughing and joking 'with' his wife and saying 'well that obviously makes you a lesbian'

He said she was smiling along but i think it was to disguise the fact that she wanted to kill everyone there...cos thats what i would want to do

Omg mirror
How have we ended up in a situation where feminists are getting told whether or not they are feminist enough by a man?
That poor lesbian who got banned for "transmisogyny" for saying she wouldn't have sex with a penis.
I am so angry about that group. Grrrr