Future of legal gender and mumsnet

I'm re-reading the thread about Meg-John Barker's BACP foolishness that I linked earlier. I thoroughly recommend it, it's much more fun than Cooper's ponderous waffling nonsense.

"Action for Northern Health"

That's genderwang.

Okay, that made me LOL. Probably the best description I've run into of the whole ideology yet.

What I'm getting from this piece is that people don't agree on what gender is. Why then would we want to validate it in law?

Okay sorry I misunderstood Goosefoot. But people who think that way are obviously a little bit dim. You could equally say that being human is about reproduction and that people who can’t or don’t want to reproduce are not human.
Being a woman is a material fact, nothing more, nothing less. Once we start looking for an inner essence that has nothing to do with embodied reality, we run into big problems and end up with nonsense like Prof Cooper’s blog and assertions that being a woman is about vulnerability and appearance.

“the more pressing question is: how do our bodies matter in shaping our lives? ”

In a world where little girls have their clitorises sliced off and their genitalia mutilated giving them lifelong pain and removing any sexual pleasure in order to please a future husband, I find this comment utterly offensive.

“I want to suggest we might focus on how diverse gendered subjectivities and experiences form (and reform”

No I’m out. There’s a limit to the amount of meaningless guff one can read in a day.

you misunderstand me I think. Sex is reproductive capacity yes, but whether or not it is exercised (given that humans have a large degree of choice over whether to do so) is not relevant to whether a person is of a particular sex.

I don't think, what you are saying is what I said is the case.

My initial point was that many people, I suspect, really do not understand that. They believe that is we say sex is an element of reproduction, that sex exists for reproduction, then we must believe that all individual men and women have to reproduce or at least be able to. An infertile women would not really be a woman.

So, they argue, because some individual women can't (or don't choose to) reproduce, being a woman can't be about reproductive category.

They are making an error about biological classes, but it seems to be a common error and I think for many it is completely genuine.

YY, Academicexposer

can we find a more generous place for thinking about and responding to the feminist politics of others?

Be nice.

Ereshkigallangcleg she’s awful. She’s had a very privileged academic career and has never had to deal with any of the shit that many less privileged women have to. Therefore she can pontificate about the safety of rape-victims and conclude that it’s more important for a man to gain validation of his identity.

Goosefoot you misunderstand me I think. Sex is reproductive capacity yes, but whether or not it is exercised (given that humans have a large degree of choice over whether to do so) is not relevant to whether a person is of a particular sex. Nor does a malfunction of reproductive capacity mean that a person is not the sex they are. My cat was spayed at a young age but presumably nobody would say she wasn’t a cat.

It’s presented as a complex argument but it’s actually not. 99.9% of the world’s population can be divided into one of two sexes and are perceived as such. One sex is disadvantaged compared to the other. Sex also has an impact on medical treatment and many other bodily experiences. Feeling that you are really a woman (when you are male) doesn’t change anything materially and nor, apart from in very few cases, does it make you appear female to the surrounding world.

I also remember Cooper's slippery, disingenuous twitter spat with Julie Bindel. She is fully wedded to trans ideology, however objective she purports to be.

Below in this 2016 article, along with lots of references in other places in the text to "anti trans" feminists, is how she framed male trans activist Kimberly Nixon's court case against Vancouver Rape Relief, who had denied Nixon the chance to work as a volunteer rape counsellor in a female only refuge:

In Nixon, the court refused (or deemed themselves unable) to stop the rape counselling organisation from excluding the claimant, despite the fact she was legally defined as a woman, because the organisation had the right, according to the court, to not recognise her as a woman (or, in their terms, as the “right” kind of woman).

https://www.academia.edu/29907082/Ifthestatedecertifiedgenderwhatmighthappentoitsmeaningandvalue

Reproduction isn’t at the centre of sex.

This idea is why people find the argument that reproducing doesn't make you a woman convincing.

It's interesting - I'd have assumed all GC people were cognisant of this.

We have sex - sexed bodies, for the purposes of reproduction. It is the same reasons that lions come in two sexes, or nettles. It is to accomplish reproduction. Even homosexuality would not exist if we did not reproduce sexually.

If, like an amoeba, we all just divided into two identical beings at a certain point, we would not exist as men and women, we would have no sex, no one would be interested in sexual activity. There would be no sexism because there would be nothing to e sexist about.

Even in people that never reproduce, or can't, they are sexed because we are a sexually reproducing species.

It's genderism.

Which, it turns out, looks an awful lot like sexism.

^^This.

for anyone who got through that twaddle.

I got as far as the bit about second wave feminism becoming popular in the seventies and eighties. Presumably like big hair and shoulder pads.

Cooper really hates women.

Remove the 'femin' bit, then. You've got an ism of some sort, but it isn't feminism.

It's genderism.

Which, it turns out, looks an awful lot like sexism.

working class northern women's "femininity is associated with strength and aggression"

I'd forgotten about that particular gem!

therefore sex can't be about reproduction.

Have they never heard of the term "sexual reproduction"?

Kit19 totally. Sex is binary. If you weren’t a woman, you’d be a man. You clearly aren’t. When people talk about motherhood and being a ‘real woman’, that’s solely gender stereotypes. Interestingly, few people tend to say that childless men aren’t real men.

I am sure Prof Cooper understands this stuff but enjoys complicating things because after all it brings in the cash. It harms women though but hey ho.

goosefoot

im genuinely baffled by that argument

I cant have children because my fallopian tubes dont work properly. my chromosomes are still female though, im still a woman, how could I not be?

the fact that I have not reproduced doesnt change my sex, the fact that my husband is not a father doenst change his sex either

baffled of somerset

Reproduction isn’t at the centre of sex. The point is that women and men are treated differently in society. The way that this discrimination/oppression is applied to people is according to their sex. It doesn’t matter if they’re parents. Women are discriminated against for being mothers and for not being mothers (remember Andrea Leadsom-gate). Therefore, to say oppression is sex-based has nothing to do with the actual biological processes.

Other than in exceptional circumstances, TW are not perceived as women by the rest of society and therefore any oppression they face is not due to female sex.

I did an in person interview for this study which took about 2 hours, with a woman and an apparently gender diverse female student

I thought that was really interesting and has given me something to consider. I don't know much about serious feminism, so can see I may be being naive, but naive and thinking at least!

There are two things I think I don't grasp well enough; gender and feminism. I see women as massively disadvantaged due to sex, and I had thought feminism was the thing which addresses this.

I can see, though, that the societal impacts on women are because of gender stereotypes. In my case they affect me in a tangible way more than my actual sex. I grew up in the 70s and we seemed to be moving away from the stereotypes, so I suppose most of my frustration is that they have reappeared and that most people casually accept them.

In all of this, I don't care how people look or dress, and I struggle with the idea that just because you look better in a frock than me you must be a woman. Because that's irrelevant. And I just don't buy that female stereotypes are applied to anyone other than women. I get that trans people are treated badly and that should not happen; but I don't see that as being about gender.

I don't think I understand gender very well. Any suggestions for further reading would be welcome?

i am extremely bored of childlessness being dragged into this. I am not any less a woman because I cannot have children - no not all women experience becoming a mother, it does not mean they are not women

It seems crazy, but I think a lot of people take this seriously. Their logic is, if someone is a woman but isn't a mother, or a man but not a father - and not even potentially due to infertility - then reproduction can't be at the centre of sex.

You sometimes used to see a similar argument about sexuality, saying that since some people are homosexual which is not a reproductive combination, therefore sex can't be about reproduction.

In both cases there sometimes also seems to be a fear around saying that our sex, or sex generally, is about reproduction.

There is a logic there, but there is something important missing, and many, many people seem not to understand that. I think it points to something that may really need to be addressed for a lot of people.

It's all about as deep, meaningful, inclusive and useful as that BACP guide that non binary Freemason Edward Lord's partner Meg John-Barker wrote, in which it was stated that working class northern women's "femininity is associated with strength and aggression" and therefore fails in "adhering to social norms of femininity, such as being nurturing, caring, social, emotional, vulnerable, and concerned with appearance."

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3339137-BACP-Gender-Sexual-and-Relationship-Diversity-by-Dr-Meg-John-Barker