Are feminists getting played?

Littlebrowndog was very succinct.

Well maybe we have different ideas about what sex and gender are. For me, anything to do with external presentation is gender, and so that includes all male perception of women, including sexual harassment, discrimination and so on

It's called sexual harassment and not gender harassment for a reason.

Female sexed bodies are not 'gender presentations', unless they've been glued on to someone's T-shirt or chest.....

^Mama Mia, here we go again.
^
I'm a feminist because I support the rights of women and girls. We are discriminated against on the basis of our sex and it matters to me that I can define and articulate what I am campaigning for.

I recently went to a trendy place on a works night out with just one set of toilets. They were non-conforming with regards to building regs as well as gender. As a menopausal old baggage, the lack of sanitary bins no longer affects me. Strangely though I am capable of empathising with my younger colleagues.

It's not about the toilets. It's about the women who use them.

No. Feminists are not getting played. It's foundational. HTH.

This is your periodic reminder that on FWR, the focus of topics is the rights and protections of women and girls, andthe only reasontrans anything is discussed here is when it intersects with those rights and protections negatively.

If a law about trans people provides a wedge by which predatory men may access female victims, it is relevant to discuss it here. If the requirement to 'live as a woman' feeds into all sorts of harmful stereotypes about women's lives, it is relevant to discuss it here.

The fact that there are people who believe themselves to be trans is not something any of us deny, and all of us have been quite happy in the past to acknowledge that trans anyone should be free from unfair discrimination such as losing their job or not getting housing because they are trans. But those issues are not feminist issues, and they don't find a home here because Feminism is not about solving all the issues of everyone ever.

This board centres women and girls, and that is an exclusive designation of those who were born into it. There are many, many places where the desires of the male born are focused upon. This isn't one of them.

This is evidence of the two sex classes:

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/no-girls-born-india-villages-female-foeticide-sex-selective-abortions-a9015541.html

I think what it is, is that I refuse to put any more of my energy in what is essentially men enjoying a cat and mouse game with us.

Trans activism, the GRA, is an expression of men's utter contempt of women and they love it that we are running round like headless chickens trying to put everything in order. It's gross.
There has to be another way.

Yes but for reasons of gender perhaps rather than reasons of sex?

What does that even mean?

Women are disadvantaged because of their sex, whether they have children or not; whether they are gay or straight; whether they are young or old; whether they are black or white......

Nothing to do with 'gender'.

Datun, I didn't say it wasn't an important fight. I enjoy the trans threads very much. I peruse them. I just put my own energy on other issues.

I will say, though, that quite a few women who seem to understand Trans issues are apparently unaware of the underlying class analysis.
Why I am I having so many namalt discussions on here, so that when you say "men are destroying the environment" you don't necessarily mean all men, and why does it even matter if that's what you do mean? It's still men doing it.

If you don't understand what is meant by men as a class, on what basis can you exclude men from the bathrooms?

I wonder if we need to be a class

Women simply are a class whether they have children or not. Or whether you feel they need to be or not.

Semantics are not irrelevant. Semantics are fundamental to the way that people are viewed. Nothing is " just" semantics.

So accordingly, for me, sex would cover pregnancy, child birth, breast feeding, and of course periods and menopause.

Sex relates to gametes. That is it. There is nothing more.

In plants, animals and mammals which rely in sexual reproduction to perpetuate their species the label for the species that supply the large gamete is "female"; the label for the species that that supply the small gamete is "male".

For example, the plant that is labelled holly requires an optimum ratio of 3 female plants to one male plant for fertilisation that results in those lovely red berry seeds.

Is trans really such a big deal?

Yes! Radical Trans ideology is absolutely fundamental in its impact on women's rights, issues, services, spaces and sport.

The idea that being a woman is just a feeling in a man's head is insulting in the extreme - to the lived experience of all women - including those you talk about in countries in which women still are not even able to safely use a toilet or go to collect water.

If being a woman is nothing real; if there is no material reality to being a woman - then women's issues cannot be properly addressed. the very real and particular needs of women and girls are threatened by radical trans ideology.

This is the reason the the women's rights boards are so active these days...with so many new posters - myself included.

A lot of women and feminists are on board with trans ideology. It's not about letting them. Language changes happen.

Indeed language changes do happen, but what does not change is the natural fact that it is females who supply the large gamete and it is males who supply the small gamete. So, if language changes, now terms will still be required to express this fundamental natural difference.

Language changes have no impact on reality.

For example, we could label a sun as a moon and a moon as a sun. Such label changes do not impact on the physical function of such entities.

So what has this new wave achieved, or, what will it achieve do you think?

The women have achieved the reawakening of their sisterhood in the face of the vileness of patriarchy and the awareness of the lengths to which men will go to assert their dominance over women and the depth and breadth of their misogyny; that their misogyny is four dimensional.

It will achieve the realisation that women must always fight against patriarchy. This brings women together in common cause. This is something about which men can never know.

For example, men do not realise that as soon as just one of them enters a woman's space that space immediately becomes a mixed sex space and it changes. Men can never know what is women's only space, no matter how hard they try to penetrate it.

sakura, i'm delighted you're talking about other issues that affect, let's call them humans with XX chromosomes.

You go ahead and keep doing that. Meanwhile we will try and get the language preserved to enable you to do that. And then we can meet up afterwards for a beer.

I agree with you OP. That's why I try to stay way from trans threads and talk about other things: mothers rights, men destroying the environment, war, nuclear weapons, women's experience in birth, the fact that men have destroyed the food system, marriage as slavery, surrogacy-- anything except the trans and maybe porn.

While trans and porn are very important issues it's the women concerned with these issues that have the loudest voices in feminism and other issues are , I feel, being talked over.

Try it Maniak

Here. Now.

Take some well-known transwomen, and refer to their sex using the correct pronouns. Discuss what they are doing to women, but throughout, refer to them by the sex they are.

Do that three times and you'll be banned from this space. You're not allowed.

Talk about them without using the word woman, but still referring to their trans status as the sex they were born and you will be deleted.

Talk about autogynephilia in the context of any transwoman you think has it, and you will be deleted.

And if you're not sure what I'm saying, it's because I have already been robbed of the power to use the correct language to describe what I mean.

Well said Datun

The word woman has not changed in the way gay has, nor is it going to.

So reposting....

If you remove 'woman' then what happens to these words?

mother
/ˈmʌðə/
noun
1. 1. 
a woman in relation to her child or children.

birth
/bəːθ/
noun
1. 1. 
the emergence of a baby or other young from the body of its mother; the start of life as a physically separate being.

wife
/wʌɪf/
noun
1. 1. 
a married woman considered in relation to her spouse.

sister
/ˈsɪstə/
noun
1. 1. 
a woman or girl in relation to other daughters and sons of her parents.

Or am I missing your point?

Maniak

I'm wondering if, because you personally have not encountered a problem with the trans ideology, except in theory, you're not seeing it.

Once the scene is set, everyone will be encountering problems. From every walk of life. Because it will be constantly challenged.

Women are being threatened, imprisoned, fired, and attacked, for simply stating what is the current law, and what is biological truth.

I cannot possibly overestimate how important this is.

Already, these things are happening, over theoretical transgressions. Harry the Owl was visited by the police for something they thought he might do in the future. Wrong think.

You don't stand a chance in hell of organising a woman's group to campaign over any of the issues that you think are important in feminism, without a man challenging you. Challenging the premise, challenging the people you have invited to discuss the premise, challenging what you want to do about it, challenging why you are in charge. Basically stripping you of power.

Currently, the only women who are able to gather to discuss feminism, or anything to do with women, are doing it in secret. Currently every single public place is subject to supervision.

Including here.