Lesbian's and the Trans debate

However, I haven't seen this total polarisation of views, with no one listening to anyone else and each side trying to out-scream the other, since the Sex Wars and they resulted in the death of second wave feminism.

Reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated.

christ alive I'm getting some serious education on here from you lot. when i joined mums net i never expected this! as an (almost) 45 year old lesbian who came out at school (cue bullying, aids jokes & martina navratilova comparisons - it was the 80s after all) i thought my fight to get to where i am now was the heavy lifting done, clearly this is not the case. Thanks to MN I've become a twitter stalker of trans/rad fems and anyone else in between.

@Stillscreaming

It's true that there are lots of different cultures in the world, but the crucial thing from a feminist perspective is that every single one of them is patriarchal. This goes for all human cultures, throughout history too. There's no compelling evidence that there has ever been a true matriarchal human society.

The reason that the radfem analysis emphasises the importance of biological sex is that discrimination and exploitation of women by men throughout history is based on biological factors - comparative physical weakness, lower aggression and exploiting the realities of our reproductive functions and childbirth to create structural inequalities that benefit men. Over time these factors have been dressed up and overlaid with cultural constructs (menstruation being unclean, childbirth a punishment from god, women are "naturally" meant to raise children and stay in the home, the Male Gaze etc etc), as well as gender stereotypes, all of which fluctuate, but at the core of them is female biology.

Conflating and confusing sex and gender dangerously muddies the water and potentially ignores this reality. That's why it's important for them to be distinct - in our understanding and in the law.

What part of XX = female and XY = male do you not get?

However you try to mystify it with your pseudo intellectual ruminations, at the basic level of our genes, our womanhood (if not our full humanity it appears) is bound up in those two X chromosomes. All the rest of the arguments flow on from there.

Ok we disagree at the start because I think biological = female, and woman = adult female human. There is no definition of woman pursuant to which adult human female isn't a necessary and sufficient condition.

Still screaming: of course there's more to us than reproductive role. Who is saying there isn't.

It does all get a bit fragmented, so I'll do a recap.

I said that I didn't agree that human female = woman, because that female is a biological term that related to sex and that 'woman' is a broader term that relates to other things, usually called gender.

Someone said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that gender was a social construct, an outside force that was applied to females and I ummed and arred a bit because, while I don't think that's wrong I don't think, it's the whole story. There are lots of different cultures in the world, all treat women differently, and we all turn out women.

I'm suggesting that there is something else, other than gender performance but of which gender performance is an aspect, that is both innate and currently unmeasurable.

I say currently unmeasurable because of the 'gay finger' thing. I've talked before about my mum needing physical proof that I was really a lesbian and not just showing off to make her look bad in front of the neighbour and her delight at discovery that a significant proportion of gay people had a longer ring finger than first finger, that was enough for her to see my errant behaviour as having a biological, not behavioural basis, i.e. not her fault. Of course, not all gays have the gay finger and not everyone with a gay finger is gay, apparently it occurs a fair bit in people with autism too but that wasn't a problem for her because it's a bit 'other' and that's all she needs.

That's a very long way of saying that we don't fully under the human genome and maybe it will all turn out to be biological but we've still got the whole genotypes and phenotype thing to work through.

"The genotype is the set of genes in our DNA which is responsible for a particular trait. The phenotype is the physical expression, or characteristics, of that trait. For example, two organisms that have even the minutest difference in their genes are said to have different genotypes."

So 'it's biology' probably raises more questions, for me than it answers. If someone tells me that they are a women, I don't argue with them. I don't necessarily want to share a bathroom with them, I'd like everyone to have a nice, fully enclosed cubicle. I don't necessarily want to have sex or a relationship with them, I might be a lesbian but I'm not a public service.

I think we need to focus on arseholes bring arseholes. If a a young lesbian doesn't want to have sex with an individual, and pressure is being put in her, we need to focus our fury on that persona and whoever is enabling them. When we go off into 'trans this and trans that', everyone stops listening and starts fighting. Leaving the young lesbian, who everyone claims to care about, isolated in the middle of an anger fest.

I was being facetious, I can't understand Stillscreaming's point at all, in that she seems to be arguing against a position no-one in this thread appears to hold.

No, not agreeing. Stillscreaming is a social constructionist. We're all our own disembodied avatars. This ideology is just lovely for the hyper-privileged and consigns all the actually vulnerable people to entrenched and structural inequality. But that's alright because all the hyper-privileged people enjoy gazing at their navels.

I think you're all agreeing with each other...

what we need to do is sever the connection between the body (real) and gender roles (social)

You can't create a false division between what's bodily 'real' and what experienced 'social'. Firstly, some things that are experienced come from within, many mental illnesses don't show a structural change in the brain but they are very real for those who suffer. Secondly we're still not close to knowing what's nature, what nurture and what's a combination of them both.

this isn't done by inventing more gender roles.

I'm not trying to invent new gender roles, I'd be happy to throw all gender roles out of the window, I'm suggesting that we recognise all the aspects of gender performance, that are already there. I see very effeminate boys and very masculine girls but mostly I see kids with a massive range of behaviours, covering every shade of 'gendered'.

I see women who want to spend hours on their grooming and wear constricting clothes and those who are the diametric opposit. They should both be safe and respected.

Still screaming: of course there's more to us than reproductive role. Who is saying there isn't.

I feel like you missing my point: boudica isn't less or more of a women that any other else based on what she did (or anything else) she's exactly the same amount woman as any other woman, it's a simple biological binary.

There is no 'biological determinism'- the weird misreading of radical feminist thought - your only a woman because of chromosomes, thats literally all it means, it determines nothing about personality, behaviour anything else, it's not a blue box or a pink box, those things are social, it's just reproductive role. what we need to do is sever the connection between the body (real) and gender roles (social), this isn't done by inventing more gender roles.

Gender is its tool. Whether we perform or not, our sex is still defined by reproductive role.

Sex does define your reproductive role. Your reproductive role might define a portion of your wider role/identity but there is more to us that our reproductive role. Women might have it bad but we haven't totally internalised The Handmaiden's Tale.

Biology isn't a concept.

Biology is a fact when it relates to our physical make up. Biology is a concept when comes to examining how much impact it has on the part of us that isn't physical, the part that happens in our minds, soul/spirit/whatever.

Women are discriminated against for NOT performing gender (trying to look feminine) and that is sexism.

That's abdolutley true and it's one of the reasons why I think that we should, try and push the boundaries of what is accepted 'feminine behaviour'. Society need to be as accepting of female masculinity/butch behaviour, as it is of anything else.

Maybe the answer to so many young people approaching gender clinics, is not being so hung up on how they present themselves. The biological determinist view gives us very clear pink and blue boxes. If we built a society that didn't stick with gendered clothing , gendered pronouns and gendered spaces, effeminate boys and masculine girls wouldn't be rushing to be 'trans', they be accepted as normal variation.

The cultural phenomenon is going on - you got it. The cultural phenomenon is patriarchy. Gender is its tool. Whether we perform or not, our sex is still defined by reproductive role.

Biology isn't a concept. Sex is defined by reproductive role, and 'what's going on' is not innate but is patriarchy, weaponising gender through socialisation.

Maybe you could go explain to girls dying in menstrual huts that biology doesnt define them or their experiences?

Menstruation isn't killing them, being kept in dirty huts is killing them. Huts aren't biological, they're a cultural phenomenon. You and I share the same biology with those women but we're not being kept in huts.

sex is material and real, it describes a couple of important things: what role one might potentially play in reproducing, some aspects of physical strength that are relevant for e.g. sport.

I agree.

On top of that basis is build thousands of years of patriarchal culture that teaches us that sex is meaningful in other ways: that women are nurturing and men are decisive, that women are submissive and men assertive. this is gender, we taught that it's natural and springs from sex

This is more nuanced. Culturally a woman's biology has shaped gender but there have always been exceptions. Boudica Is no less a woman for violently and decisively seeking revenge on the men who raped her daughters. That doesn make her less of a woman, conversely the avenging mother figure is more of a woman.

That Boudica got properly angry and some other women don't get properly angry but they all have the same socitial constrains and basic biology, suggest that something else is going on, something innate.

- and a lot of current transgender thinking is about explicitly making this 'natural' again, making it the determinant of sex/gender as a (purposely) confused idea. but it's not nature it's culture. the purpose of feminist is to strip away gender to liberate women.

No, this is a concept of a specific school of feminism. First and early second wave feminism was focuses on throwing off the idea of biological determinism. Some late second wave feminists believed in it and the third wave have thrown it off again.

It's a concept embraced by some feminists, it's not something every feminist believes.

From what I can make out, much transgender thinking goes down the queer theory route, which has parallels with third wave but isn't exactly feminism.

There isn't One True Way here.

Haidees: 100% agree

Women are discriminated against for NOT performing gender (trying to look feminine) and that is sexism.

Unless we are basing sexual orientation on biological sex, sexual orientation because a meaningless, subjective definition at an individual level.

Well, as a society we're quite civilised, we don't root around up other people's skirts or watch people, about their sexual activity. On an individual levels, yes I'm a tad annoyed when someone compares my lesbian experience to their own of living a life of heteronormative privilage + a drink in a gay bar once but the world doesn't stop turning.

In the same way that if you don't recognise biological sex, you can't identify sexism.

We can and we do, using the concept of gender. You seem to be quite successful at pulling out examples of sexism in our society where the deviding line is gender, where DNA isn't taken and passports aren't checked using bathroom rooms or changing rooms.

We have no problem naming toxic masculinity, without changing the concept to toxic maleness because we know it isn't something that drips naturally from the male.