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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

The women promoting transition.

56 replies

PermanentTemporary · 27/11/2019 06:55

@MNHQ I'm notifying you of this thread before even starting it...

I think a lot about women involved with promoting transition. Dr Olsen-Kennedy, Dr Webberley, Susie Green. The mothers who appear on forums discussing their small child's social transition in terms of clothing recommendations.

To me they seem like anti-feminists who locate the solution to women's oppression in changes to individuals' presentation in the world, and who will medicalise personal distress by removing distressed women from the community of women, while internalizing the distress of men at toxic masculinity by insisting that any man who feels that distress must be female.

But I'd feel pretty sure that every one of those women would say they are feminists. And many opponents of their approach would use their actions to discredit feminism and say that it's literally about castration... or that 'feminists asked for this' by analysing society in terms of sexual oppression.

I guess I am struggling with the fact that so many women disagree with me in this! I feel like a sex traitor. These, after all,are the women Dworkin meant when she talked about women you don't like.

OP posts:
NonnyMouse1337 · 27/11/2019 16:41

Women have all sort of opinions and ideas on different issues and topics.

Women are just as capable as men in acting out of self-interest or because they don't directly experience certain issues and so therefore don't see why it would be a problem.

I think feminists in general need to move away from thinking there's some default stance that all women will 'naturally' gravitate to simply because they are women. The vast majority of women don't view themselves as feminists anyway even if they might agree with feminists on certain things.

It's important to hold women responsible for their actions and stances rather than sweep it under the carpet as them being 'brainwashed by the patriarchy'.
Women have agency. Respect that.
They have the ability for intelligent thinking. With freedom comes accountability, so critique their ideas, engage and debate with them. A woman isn't going to agree with you simply because she is a woman. If you have a robust argument, it should be possible to persuade someone to see your side of the debate irrespective of whether they are a woman or a man. They might not agree with it, but you should be able to state the reasons for your position clearly without having to resort to appeals that she should be on your side because she is a woman too.

JellySlice · 27/11/2019 16:09

Most trans rhetoric doesn't make sense, no matter the sex or identity of the ideologue.

PermanentTemporary · 27/11/2019 07:55

Oh yes, Sally Hines! I don't understand her at all. And I'm not dumb, I think I can follow her theories at least at a simple level, they just don't seem to make any sense.

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FadingStar · 27/11/2019 07:16

I think these women are so entrenched in misogyny they don't even see what they are doing to themselves. I know that sounds patronising but I genuinely think they don't know what they are doing. It is the women like Hines who ACTIVELY and gleefully attack women and use this ideology to do it who are truly treacherous.

JellySlice · 27/11/2019 07:07

Why should you feel like the sex traitor? To me it feels just the other way around: that they are the sex traitors. I, too, cannot understand why any woman would support her own erasure. They are, indeed, the women Dworkin refers to.

NovemberDays · 27/11/2019 07:05

Do any of the women you cite identify as feminists, though?

And, speaking generally, identifying as a feminist is not really the same as being one, if your practice harms women.

But also, it seems to me that feminism has always been a broad church with different strands. Neoliberal feminism will of course support individual choice in a market place where the self is commodified. Others would argue that commodifying the self does harm to women as a group and therefore is not feminist.

I do not think there is one agreed definition of feminism which remains static over time and place.

The point about feminism being literally about castration - surely the counter-argument is simply that feminists such as Sheila Jeffries (hope I have that right?) have argued against transition from a feminist point of view for decades and that the first sex change operations were done by men (Johns Hopkins Institute, if I have that right) who talked about gender identity before feminists even picked up the concept of gender.