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Original poster

The 'aren't women who can't reproduce women then?!' argument

32 replies

DaiStation · 25/03/2019 20:04

So I've officially peaked and I'm really, really angry. Women's sport, lesbians on chairs and Susie Green trying to argue she didn't castrate her child have pushed me over the edge.

I've been trying to find evidence for the idea that no disadvantage exists for natal women competing with trans women - there fucking isn't any. I watched the lesbians on chairs video crying, it reminded me of the scene with Emily at immigration in Handmaid's tale - all 1st world country, following procedure, stamping on the face of women's rights. I'm fucking appalled by what happened to that child and the kids in the states - KIDS - having their bodies mutilated because they don't conform to gender 'norms' which are fucking social constructions and not some kind of innate feeling I mean wtaf is this shit?!

But the female biology thing got me thinking. I've read a lot of crit about the idea that women are the sex capable of bearing children, because some women obviously cant, amd some intersex people are born with female genitalia but no womb etc etc. And then I though about all the i fertile women throughout history who'be been - and who are - having the shit kicked out of them and being killed for exactly this reason, and shamed/subject to invasive questioning in our culture for exactly this reason. Which again speaks to our biology as the tool of our oppression right? Or am I wrong?

Anyway that was cathartic. Exhale.

OP posts:
WineGummyBear · 25/03/2019 20:47

Check out Peachyoghurt on YouTube. She has a video called the bicycle analogy.

Cuts to the heart of what a spurious, disingenuous line of questioning it all is. Anyone can identify a bicycle. Same goes for a woman. It's really not complicated.

(And yes intersex conditions exist, but actually that's really not what this is about is it?)

Ereshkigal · 25/03/2019 20:44

Yes, just like intersex women with CAIS find out they have XY chromosomes when their periods fail to start as teenagers and investigations are done. Devastating. Whereas many MTF trans people appear to discover their innate womanhood after fathering several children. So disingenuous.

sackrifice · 25/03/2019 20:38

How do these women find out their infertile? When they try to have a child, or when some other aspect of their female anatomy causes an investigation which uncovers it, or when they have some disease which affects their female anatomy.

Yes. I don't think any of them found out they couldn't conceive when a doctor examined them and said 'the reason you cannot conceive is because you are a sperm producer and that is a penis'.

Ereshkigal · 25/03/2019 20:34

Which again speaks to our biology as the tool of our oppression right? Or am I wrong?

No, you're not wrong. They are the ones reducing women to our bodies when you look at awful dehumanising language like "people with a uterus", "cervix haver".

butteryellow · 25/03/2019 20:33

How do these women find out their infertile? When they try to have a child, or when some other aspect of their female anatomy causes an investigation which uncovers it, or when they have some disease which affects their female anatomy.

These women were recognised as female from (or before) birth. They made assumptions, and had assumptions made about them. Then as part of some other issue, they now find that some of these assumptions were wrong in their case. It's bloody horrible to use women's fertility issues as a gotcha to suggest that these women therefore aren't women, just piling yet more abuse on women who are already likely having to re-write the expectations of how their life will go.

Alternatively, for women who don't want kids, no matter their fertility status, it's biological determinism - suggesting that women are only women if they use their female biology to reproduce. No feminist would support that idea.

Our biology has been the source of our oppression since time immemorial, the fact that we have it, that it defines our class, doesn't mean that each of us individually can, or has to use that biology.

ErrolTheDragon · 25/03/2019 20:06

Which again speaks to our biology as the tool of our oppression right? Or am I wrong?

Spot on, I reckon.

Original poster
DaiStation · 25/03/2019 20:05

*infertile obviously!

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