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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Your peaktrans moment for today! Top this if you can.

388 replies

Ritzsaltedcrackers · 25/04/2018 13:21

A woman was thrown out of a FB feminist group for challenging the idea that transwomen get periods.

apparently they DO get periods just without the small aspect of bleeding.

She was told that she was minimising transwomen's periods.

www.facebook.com/beth.rep/posts/10216741083464856

OP posts:
TransAuthor · 25/04/2018 14:52

So you're saying that sticks and stones will hurt my bones but words will never hurt me?

And then claiming the Powerful Trans Lobby™ is the ones bullying you into not disrespecting them by using the correct pronoun?

And no, I don't think Dolezal was showing respect at all. But bringing that into this discussion is another transphobic dogwhistle phrase.

Toomanybourbons · 25/04/2018 14:46

Trans, I do see your point, but the fact is we are being told by using someone's preferred pronouns that we have to lie. I do not for one moment accept or believe that the person on that post claiming to have periods is a woman.

Why should I be compelled to lie and pretend that I do, just to be nice? I'm sorry, but it's a slippery slope. Men are colonising womanhood. Forcing women to pretend men are women is just the start and many of are standing up and refusing to collude and insisting on speaking the truth amidst the collective madness.

NowtSalamander · 25/04/2018 14:44

I’m just going to engage with the comparison given. My children and I have my “maiden” name. Pretty much everyone who writes to them or me ever addresses them with my husband’s surname. I find this pretty annoying but the idea that it would feel like “actual violence” or that it would somehow demean me as a person is simply not true.

As a woman, I am utterly used to having my personal choices ignored in favour of patriarchal preconceptions.

The fact that I’m engaging with a historical relic of patriarchy and not trying to deny biological reality also relevant but not something I’m
concentrating on at this moment.

TheUterati · 25/04/2018 14:41

And BTW I am Jewish, so you have mis-religioned me.

Is this literal violence and antisemitism that you have committed?

TheUterati · 25/04/2018 14:40

Author
Not wriggling. Statement of facts.

Hurt feelings, whether these are reasonable or not, do not trump facts, and do not trump my right to refer to the facts correctly.

No. Lying and stating that a man is a woman is not decency. It is a lie. To bully people into participating in this lie is indecent and shows no respect.

Out of interest, where does the lie end for you? Is is correct to participate in Rachel Dolezal's delusion and call her a Black African American woman? Is that decent? Does that show respect?

CharlieParley · 25/04/2018 14:38

Thank you for posting this latest. Because it led me to this powerful statement by RadFemFatale:

"Men do not lose their power by changing their clothing, or wearing makeup. To imply that male privilege is dependent on how men feel about their bodies and how they choose to decorate them is the same as saying that women can change our status in patriarchy by altering our looks.

It's an inverted argument. Men who adopt femininity claim to be oppressed because they get a small dose of what women experience on a daily basis, compounded by law, by violence, by history.

Somewhat ironically, males who claim a desire to be treated "like a woman" then declare they are more oppressed than women, because in the process they are assaulted or killed.

It begs the question: What, exactly, do they think being "treated like a woman" means, if not an altogether dangerous way to be in a patriarchal society? Being treated like a woman inherently means being excluded, or being harmed, or objectified.

By all evidence, they must think it means the latter: objectification is the end goal for men who misappropriate our existence. And possibly, if we're optimistic, they hope that being treated like a woman means they can gossip about fashion with women, sharing a bathroom without men, and other "privileges".

Not the stark reality of existing in a female body.

When men ask to be treated like women, and then experience violence, they say they are more oppressed than women.
In every aspect men presume their lives and experiences to be the default, carrying more weight, even to the extent that when they pretend to be us, their pain matters more. They adopt our identities and still declare themselves the victims of the system that granted them the privilege to appropriate us.

When men accuse women of being exclusionary, they are entirely ignorant to the past 6,000 years of history which, through men, excluded women.

Women should not feel guilty about calling a man what he is. We have a history and culture of our own. Women are the excluded sex. They burned her, enslaved her, experimented on her, locked her in asylums, bound her feet, broke her body and erased her name.

Men don't want a part of that reality. They only want to be objectified. To be told they are sexy.

The fantasy they project onto women is the image they have become jealous of, like Narcissus reflecting back on a pool of water, with mirrors all around.

They are in love with this fantasy they create. It's a double mirror. Men who self-objectify are not identifying with women at all, but his own projection of us, so that we are twice removed: "cis women", doubly othered, and the man who falls in love with the false image, doubly removed from himself and the world. No wonder there is so much anger in this group. Men who call themselves women already hate their bodies and that insecurity is unleashed onto women.

Women are the excluded sex.
Recognize. No male is entitled to women's attention, or identity."

Bowlofbabelfish · 25/04/2018 14:37

Deliberately using the wrong pronoun is an act of violence.

No it’s not. Come on now. It may be rude in certain circumstances. It’s not violence. Violence is stuff like...oh I dunno just grasping for examples here...say punching a woman to the ground at speakers corner. That would be violence. One can have the implied threat of violence too. Say a group of masked men blocking a woman from entering a room.

Don’t minimise violence because that really is disrespectful.

And saying that people who just disagree with you are violent is childish. It’s like a toddler tantrum. Engage with the argument, don’t shut it down with claims of violence

MissTeri · 25/04/2018 14:36

fae/faer? someone suggests they are 'fairy pronouns'? surely not? Does this person identify as a fairy? Genuine question BTW.

Ardant · 25/04/2018 14:35

PLEASE don't feed antagonistic posts too much! They go high we go low and all.

I do sometimes wonder if there are trolls in the trans community out to harm that cause. (That or really deeply unwell people?)

Oswin · 25/04/2018 14:33

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TransAuthor · 25/04/2018 14:32

You can wriggle and worm around all you like, Uterati, but it doesn't change the fact that deliberately disrespecting a person's chosen identity and using the wrong pronouns is gonna hurt them.

It'd be like if I was your mum and you got married to a person I hated and started using their surname. My letters to you would be addressed to your maiden name and every time you received a Christmas card, you'd feel like your life choices were being disrespected. It would eat away at you over time and you'd feel less than equal to everyone else who your mum respected their marriage.

Disagree with what you want, it's your life. Just have the decency to use the right pronouns, it takes zero effort on your part and it shows you enter the debate with respect for other humans.

TERFragetteCity · 25/04/2018 14:32

Why all this misgendering? Please just show people respect.

Correct sexing. Why don't these men show [all] women respect by stopping pretending to have periods for sympathy?

Gileswithachainsaw · 25/04/2018 14:29

author

Just how far should the lie be taken?

Would you misgender your friends if it was medically necessary?

Does truth really not matter?

Toomanybourbons · 25/04/2018 14:27

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Oswin · 25/04/2018 14:25

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PositivelyPERF · 25/04/2018 14:18

Spellcheck Auther

PositivelyPERF · 25/04/2018 14:18

Arther, forcing me to lie about someone’s sex and trying to bully me into using untrue ‘titles’ to describe someone is literal violence and I feel triggered.

Toomanybourbons · 25/04/2018 14:17

'And using unusual and extreme behaviour of trans individuals to explain why you have ‘peak transed’ is really unfair to trans people in general who don’t deserve to be treated like this by you all.'

You know, if this was just a case of a few poor, deluded souls who are obviously unwell, I'd ignore it and move on.

The problem lies in the fact that these people are LISTENED to. We have large organisations such as Planned Parenthood calling women 'menstruators' and saying that some men have uteruses. We are told by high profile TRAs like Monroe Bergdorf that talking about our biology is transphobic, at women's marches of all places.

We hear abortion organisations talking about 'pregnant people' and companies that make bras for teenage girls forced to issue grovelling apologies for referring to their customers as 'girls' and companies that make period pants talk about their customers as 'menstruating people'.

This collective insanity is not just confined to a few little corners of the Internet. It's seeping into everything and it is important that women appreciate what is happening and via sites like Mumsnet are empowered to call it out for the Orwellian, erasing, dangerous nonsense that it is.

Women don't deserve to be treated like this. We don't deserve to be erased.

Yet here we are.

TheUterati · 25/04/2018 14:16

No. Words are powerful, and in particular the right to name and to define confers great power. It is by naming things that we are able to eg refer to them in law and to safeguard them in law.

Language is political. We all know that.

But what words cannot do is to make something not exist in the violent way that TRA insist that they do.

OohMavis · 25/04/2018 14:15

If you referred to me as 'cis' it would piss me off. If you called me a cunt it might hurt my feelings.

Still wouldn't be violence.

Datun · 25/04/2018 14:14

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Justanotherzombie · 25/04/2018 14:13

So basically you are saying Uterati, words are only words and can’t cause any real damage....

TheUterati · 25/04/2018 14:11

Author - I am not 'misgendering'. I am accurately referring to this person's sex, a fact that is directly relevant to his claim to be pregnant, or in the case of others, their claims that they have periods.

Neither you nor any of these individuals have a right to insist that their delusion trumps my right to use language accurately.

Further, it is not an act of violence. We are constantly told that it is, but it manifestly is not. Were you to call me 'he', what would happen to me? NOTHING. What violence would be committed? NONE.

I am perfectly aware why you all require so badly that the 'correct' pronouns are used. It is because the claim to womanhood solely consists in the social agreement that you are one. Hence, any deviation from that position, by saying 'he' instead of 'she' poses an ontological threat: your 'womanhood' is solely social agreement, so my disagreement weakens it.

But my womanhood consists of empirically verifiable scientific fact. The incorrect use of language to refer to me: 'he', 'man', 'male' makes no difference the fact that I am a woman.

HesterShaw · 25/04/2018 14:09

"Violence"

Do you really think that dropping a single letter from a pronoun is akin to actual violence? Like a woman being beaten up/killed by her partner, or the mass rape of females during times of war by male solders?

Or are you just on a bit of a piss take?

Justanotherzombie · 25/04/2018 14:09

And using unusual and extreme behaviour of trans individuals to explain why you have ‘peak transed’ is really unfair to trans people in general who don’t deserve to be treated like this by you all.

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