A pleasant surprise

Queer includes gay.
Can’t believe I have to explain what queer means!

Well, to assist, AWA means Anti-Woman Activist. It's used because it fits all manner of misogynistic patterns, from MRA incels, to those who use the trans issue to try and wedge women away from their rights and protections by including men in the sex category 'woman'.

Laws should be based on equality and thankfully they increasingly are (however slooooowly).

Just try to avoid getting into trouble with the law for hate speech or any worse actions you take targeting trans people in future.

Basically, if everything was as simple as you would like to believe it is, there wouldn’t BE transpeople. There wouldn’t be queer people either. Just heterosexual cave people hunting and gathering along biological sex divides.

you forgot gay people Zoe. there would definitely be gay people. what with it being a thing

there would also, indubitably be people who felt compelled to comply with the appearance stereotypes of the opposite sex. of course the stereotypes they'd be complying with would vary wildly by society. what with them being socially constructed.

(Btw I have no idea what some of your acronyms and references mean but I’ve just been assuming it’s something gross and misogynist and swooping straight over cos I don’t feel the urge to look up more negativity to add to my life)

Trying to apply objective terms and measures to parts of identity which are so subjective and alive is like trying to measure the length of a piece of string with litmus paper. You can’t quantify the unquantifiable.

Perfectly expressed, Zoe. This is exactly why no law should ever be based on such subjectivity or anything else that is unable to be objectively quantified.

Thank you for agreeing with us here.

continuing from the above, you'd think it must be glaringly obvious to the Sally Hines's of this world that they are defending a belief that all women are

submissive
interested in appearance
kind
less capable

do you think that is what they actually think women are like, including themselves?

Lolololol.

Jacky swoops in with some quantifiable reality, and our erstwhile pomo academic lays some 'it's unquantifiable' waffle down in an amusing x-post incident. Fab.

Well if no one has the imagination and/or motivation to put themselves in another’s shoes
There is a thread here where a whole bunch of us said what we would do if we woke up as men suddenly.

There was a lotta lotta wanking 🤣

Suddenly I am hungry again!

I’m immensely proud of my thoughtful, informed, balanced, respectful and supportive feminist education and the strong women that have influenced me all my life. I was taught to question, research, evaluate, and consider the human experience (humanities!) because hey, I am not a robot.

Trying to apply objective terms and measures to parts of identity which are so subjective and alive is like trying to measure the length of a piece of string with litmus paper. You can’t quantify the unquantifiable.

Basically, if everything was as simple as you would like to believe it is, there wouldn’t BE transpeople. There wouldn’t be queer people either. Just heterosexual cave people hunting and gathering along biological sex divides. That probably sounds like an ideal society for misogynists but it doesn’t sound appealing to me.

Thanks Jacky. It's good to get a report from reality after the afternoon we've had here.

personally, if my ideology left me unable to answer simple questions like 'how do you know you're a woman?' for fear of appearing sexist, I would wonder if I was, indeed, sexist.

I know we're all into self improvement here

Never forget, dear sisters here:

UK case law defines biological sex as "a congruence of chromosomes, gonads and genitals".

Beyond that the GRA acknowledges it creates a Legal Fiction when it grants a GRC to anyone. [And that the granting of a GRC is restricted to the purposes of marriage [to achieve same sex marriage, which since 2013 is law anyway]; claiming benefits and claiming state pension [ both of which are now also redundant since we have universal benefit plus equalisation of pension ages between the sexes].

Beyond that, the Equality Act 2010 defines the sexes as:

man = a male of any age
woman = a female of any age.

Nothing anyone says can change those three Legal Facts.

Talking of body parts, may I refer Our Zoe to this thread... read the linked piece and then come back...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3603347--Glinners-medium-account-suspended?msgid=87565987

The sexism of saying 'women are like this inside and men are like that' has always worried me. I'm hoping to put that to bed today.

I'm hoping for a non sexist list of characteristics that I share with Jane Fae that makes us both women in Zoe's world view.

My vagina is indeed one of the specific parts of the female anatomy that means I am part of the sex class 'woman'. Nothing else about my personality is specific to my sex. Not my hairstyle, not my relationships, not my accent, not my job, not my education, not my stellar wit, not my feelings.

The disadvantages I face due to my sex in relation to all those things is exacerbated by people like you thinking gender is in any way a way to define me and other women.

You have been spoonfed this utter nonsense by misogynists, who have taken over Gender Studies, half of all academia, and a lot of the Arts and Social Sciences, and who don't like feminism, and don't like women who refuse to bow down to men.

And she or he has lapped it up instead of questioning it. Just shows, you don’t have to be intelligent to earn a degree.

How's the weather in Cambridge, Zoe?

Zoe has a degree with parts in it, including languagy parts but not, clearly, sciencey parts.. and there’s the rub.

Still what has science ever done for mankind.

if it depresses you to define a woman just by her biology, share how you do know you're a woman - I'm genuinely interested

"Parts of your degree" zoe ? What like a module, or subsidiary subject? I did a subsidiary in sociology as "part of my degree" - I don't consider myself an expert in sociology.

It's blatantly clear that you don't have the first clue of even the most basic principles of radical feminism.

You have been taught some bs "intersectional feminism" (no doubt in some bs Gender Studies module) that has taught you that males should be centered in feminism, because of how they feel, and that men that feel like women, literally are women and that they are the most oppressed of all oppressed people. And you've fallen for it.

You have been spoonfed this utter nonsense by misogynists, who have taken over Gender Studies, half of all academia, and a lot of the Arts and Social Sciences, and who don't like feminism, and don't like women who refuse to bow down to men.

Huh? Never mind! We get it, really we do!

We see you Zoecb, we see you!

Is your vagina literally the only thing that makes you the woman you are?

I dunno Zoe, I'm asking for your help. what out of my list do you agree makes you a woman apart from your vagina? what would you add? what would you remove?

I’d recommend Judith Butler - Gender Trouble.