Why does MN feminism focus on trans?

Why does MN feminism focus on trans?

It doesn't, it focusses on women (adult human females) and children.
The mistake is to perceive that 'trans' is centred
Females are centred, unsurprisingly on 'Feminism & Women's Rights' board
The issue is that trans-ideology & trans-rights have been so widely prioritised to the significant detriment of women's rights, safeguarding, free speech & political process.

To answer whether women have bigger problems than the TRA agenda, we would need to know what a woman is, wouldn‘t we?

The removal of the female sex class would affect every issue that women face...it is fundamental and is therefore the most important feminist issue.

We get this question a lot. I suggest you look around a bit more because it will show that there are other important issues discussed, and why this one gets so much attention.

‘I said’ not ‘I says’

You know, sometimes I think iPads are set up to make people look illiterate.

Brava, @ChattyLion

And this? Is in a nutshell what I think.

There is nothing wrong or transphobic with describing transwomen as transwomen, a subcategory of men.

But I’d be called a terf and have death threats if I dared say that anywhere outside of here.

Actually this might even get deleted because I says the ‘t’ word.

I mucked up the link- this should work: www.ipetitions.com/petition/dear-stonewall-please-reconsider-your-approach

This is a fundamental clash of rights. And only by the outraged efforts of women at the grassroots and a few brave journalists and basically one MP, has this been very slowly coming into the public consciousness. Still hardly anyone outside of MN has heard about this, yet it affects all women. And people want us to shut up about that?

Why would anyone of good intention want women to shut up about issues that affect women? I mean...throughout history, when has that never not taken a dark and nasty path against women...?

It’s authoritarian and disingenuous for trans activists (who do not represent all trans people) to try to (no debate allowed) force (by threat of police involvement, sanction by dissenting individuals’ employers or by social ostracism of dissenting individuals) a group (‘women’) to mean by their collective word, something new (ie to convey only a set of gendered stereotypes- particularly when many women suffer every day from the application of these very same stereotypes to their lives).

Women self-describing as women are using a time-honoured and commonly understood, biologically objective sex-based word for themselves.

Why should we accept a change to that against our will? There is nothing wrong or transphobic with describing transwomen as transwomen, a subcategory of men. Same as transmen are rightly described as transmen, a subcategory of women. Transmen remain welcome in women’s spaces.

Forced language should be a massive red flag. As PP say it has massive practical consequences which many women would not agree with and indeed as Stork shows, which have life-restricting consequences for women affected by them.

It’s obviously not OK for transactivists to be hounding people who peacefully have a difference of opinion, as Stork illustrates.

Yet this bullying behaviour goes on and eg the major charities who promote this political dogma do not call for a free exchange of peacefully-expressed views, which is the opportunity that women have been asking for.

Instead there are false claims that ‘the right for trans people to exist’ is somehow equivalent to ‘the need to be validated by being allowed into women’s spaces and subsumed into the category of women without question’. Which are not at all the same thing and which betrays a hyper-individualistic authoritarian agenda which pretends that a clash of rights is not happening.

This denies the obvious problems for women’s freedom of speech and association, privacy and dignity in single-sex spaces, services, education, sports, awards and opportunities and public services such as prisons and domestic violence support services.

Women just want to start with an open debate: eg for example via this petition to a major UK LBGT rights campaigning charity, Stonewall:
petition launched calling on Stonewall to:

• Acknowledge that there are a range of valid viewpoints around sex, gender and transgender politics.

• Acknowledge specifically the conflict that exists between transgenderism and sex-based women’s rights.

• Commit to fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate, rather than demonising as transphobic those who wish to discuss or dissent from Stonewall’s current policies

^Link here: www.ipetitions.com/petition/dear-stonewall-please-reconsider-your-approach^

Now look at a response from Stonewall: showing a complete brush-off of the problem and reiterating that calling for debate is in itself offensive:

www.stonewall.org.uk/stonewall-stories-category/come-out-lgbt/our-work-trans-equality-heart-our-mission-acceptance

The critique, (that this dogma is both sexist and homophobic)- is simply not responded to by those working to change public policy and the law to erase the category of biological sex, to retain the labels for biological sex with an altered meaning: in favour of categories of femininity and masculinity. Harmful concepts that get used against women (and men) all the time.

This avoidance of examination and debate is why women need to talk about this wherever they can- including on MN which lets us talk anonymously.

We’re not going to shut up when we can see sexism and homophobia being promoted in plain sight.

Or any political parties?

I fear there are greater risks to women from men than from trans 'women'.

We fear there are few greater risks to girls and to women from men than from transwomen, and none of those risks is promoted by all major political parties

50% transwomen - sorry missed a word out.

All the above OP.

Due to blatant, unfair and widespread discrimination, women managed to make sex a protected characteristic under equality law.

But if anyone can be any sex, it's rendered meaningless.

Normal women pointing this out were subjected to such fury and organised harassment that their questioning turned to outrage and now real fear.

Women's rights - all of them, disappear if men can legally be women. Including fair political representation - the only means to effect change for women.

Many transactivists blatantly assert their goal of true sex equality by promoting 50% men and 50% as our political representatives.

We are going back in time at a rate of knots.

I know of:
One young Muslim woman whose father will no longer allow her out without a male escort thanks to widening spread of gender neutral toilets. She has been forced to drop out of university.
Several survivors of sexual abuse whose freedom of public movement has been restricted because the presence of unknown men in a small toilet space/performing medical examination despite requesting a female practitioner (including a dentist) has triggered them. This is what peaked one woman who formally identified as NB with they/them pronouns.
A transwoman who transitioned many years ago being hounded for stating that she does not agree with the current agenda. She lost her job with a local authority following a campaign of harassment. She was recently sectioned as a result of said harassment. Someone on Facebook mocked her saying that it would be ironic if she helped inflate the suicide statistics therefore aiding them in her last act. Such compassion.
Several women who are afraid to speak out any more, whose employers have received emails against them.
Many pro-trans liberal feminists who privately disclose to me their fears but are afraid to speak out themselves. Instead they tow the line and join the pile ons.

I also know several people who began transition in their teens and now in their early 20s are unhappy with the lack of support given to them beforehand. Some of them are leading complicated lives with confused legal documentation and health complications from hormones based on a decision they made as young teens with tumblr accounts.

That is why.

You want to focus on the risks that men pose to women, but in order to do that you must first have some idea of who the men are and who the women are. Trans/queer theory, taken to its logical conclusions, makes the categories of 'men' and 'women' entirely subjective and thus meaningless. You can't focus on the risks that men pose to women if these categories cease to exist.

@aspieandproud thanks for articulating that. What a terrifying thought.

Well this is the biggest femenist issue in British politics at the moment. Two years ago MN feminists had little interest in trans issues as a femenist issue. But since the trans rights movement in Britain has been taken over by incel style trans women who have taken to physically attacking feminists who congregate and exposing their lady penisis in sex segregated space for women and organisations promoting the use of puberty blockers and the inclusion of cross dressers and fetishists under the trans umbrella have become increasingly politically powerful many mumsnetters have percieved this as a threat to women in general (trans women included), to feminists who are politically active and, to children and organisations and individuals who serve the interests of children. The interest on the mn femenist board isn’t about trans rights and it’s not about being trans exclusionary. The interest has arisen as a result of acts of violence and political momentum of aggressive and misogynistic factions of the trans rights movement that have cropped up in the past two years.

It’s infuriating. I don’t fucking WANT TO TALK ABOUT TRANS ISSUES - But. We really have little choice right now.

This. Absolutely this. With bells on. It is rage inducing that rather than talking about WOMEN, actual bloody women, inordinate amounts of effort and energy have to be expended defending the fact that humans can't change sex and if you're born with a penis you ain't a woman and you never can be. Get over it. Can't we all just move on? Honestly, I am so pissed off with how frequently I have to say or type the word 'penis'.

So yes, there are really important issues facing WOMEN that I would love to focus my time on, but instead I have to defend the very definition of the word WOMAN.

People who don't understand why this is of such fundamental importance either haven't considered it fully or are idiots.

It's like asking why people are all smoking in a smoking shelter - it's because they can't anywhere else.

This. Absolutely this.

The trans issue intersects with another issue that is close to me: autism.

A hugely disproportionate number of those being put on puberty blockers are on the spectrum.

I don’t think there’s a bigger autism issue at the moment than the sterilisation of autistic children.

Also this is one of the few places that will host the discussion, hence the number of related threads.
It's like asking why people are all smoking in a smoking shelter - it's because they can't anywhere else.

It’s infuriating. I don’t fucking WANT TO TALK ABOUT TRANS ISSUES - But. We really have little choice right now.

Damn right. Stop with this gender ideology bullshit, stop trying to push self-ID into legislation, stop trying to change our language beyond all meaningful recognition - and I daresay we'll shut up about it.

It’s infuriating. I don’t fucking WANT TO TALK ABOUT TRANS ISSUES - But. We really have little choice right now.

This. I'd really like to advance women's rights instead of having to defend things that have been considered common sense for decades if not centuries, like sex segregated prisons.

But we are in a castle under siege. If we do not win this battle, we have nowhere to go, nothing we can do, feminism as we knew it would be dead.

But aren't there bigger issues?

Please start threads about these. Please post on the Cyntoia Brown threads and make a difference. Please be an activist for women leaving DV relationships, campaign against rape myths, talk about period poverty and better education for girls and women. Healthcare and pain being ignored, power not being shared, and the pay gap.

Unless it's about telling women off for not right-thinking, rather than actually doing something. In which case, carry on. Good job.

What is bigger than the ethnic cleansing of women?

This.

Not that long ago I started a thread stating I didn’t want to talk about trans issues any more, but it wasn’t that I didn’t/don’t think it’s important. It’s quite the opposite - it’s one of the biggest challenges facing born women in our lifetime.

My point was that *they’ve demanded so much and we have no choice but to try to counteract these assaults on our rights, at the seeming exclusion of all else.

It’s infuriating. I don’t fucking WANT TO TALK ABOUT TRANS ISSUES - But. We really have little choice right now.

I wish that we could just all ignore them and they’d go away but that’s not going to happen.

*Please note. When I say ‘they’, ‘them’ etc., I mean the transactivists who are trying to erode the rights and experiences of born women. I don’t mean every transgender person.

Well, at least the only other right I know of - might be different in other countries. Anyway, as has been said, we can't fight for any women's rights if "woman" means nothing.