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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Another incredibly annoying Guardian article

108 replies

xxyzz · 10/08/2020 19:40

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/10/trans-rights-feminist-letter-rebecca-solnit

Apologies if already posted here - couldn't see it.

Apologies also to anyone else as irked by it as me. I just want to hear some other people also express that it is like nails on a blackboard in its utter tone-deaf wrongness throughout.

OP posts:
Northumberlandlass · 10/08/2020 20:01

I’ve just read it on Twitter.
I’ve been reading the feminism board for a while & following many GC twitter accounts.
I’ve peaked & finding it really hard to put into words how distressing & dehumanising I find it all.

stumbledin · 10/08/2020 19:58

Its just another Guardian distraction article.

Some hippy dippy west coast american the Guardian has as an employee writes an article about their own experience. And in doing so totally fails to engage with the actual politcal issues.

And better stil the guardian gives it a title to make it show that trans activists are really, really, worried about silly old gender critical terfs not being made outcasts.

somehow totally reversing the reality that TRAs have been campaigning to make gender critical feminists outcasts.

Am beginning to think the Guardian editorial board are now so young they haven't started secondary school!

WeeBisom · 10/08/2020 19:57

I think my favourite part is how she frames the existence of two biological sexes like it's some ye olde crazy belief from the deep past, before science and Enlightenment. Yes, biological sex is just like witches, and miasmas, and a flat earth!

Back then, back in the mists of time, way back in er, 1970... " we thought gender really was kind of binary and defined by genitals; science has gotten smarter in the decades since and we now know it’s a complex interplay of chromosomes, hormones, primary and secondary sexual characteristics and other stuff, some of which is in the brain, not the pants, and also that quite a significant number of people are born intersex, and some are misgendered at birth, and male and female never were airtight categories anyway."

Aaaaah! She just conflates sex and gender all over the place! No, in the 1970s they thought that SEX was binary. They were correct about that, because it's a fact. (There are just two kinds of gametes, and just two kinds of sex chromosomes.) Sex is not 'defined' by genitals (you can still be male with no penis.) Rather, genitals are an incredibly reliable way of telling what sex someone is.

Scientists knew about sex chromosomes in the 1970s. In fact, they knew about the X and Y chromosome, and their role in sexual differentiation, since 1905. Does she honestly think that in the 1970s we didn't know about hormones and chromosomes?

"Some of which are in the brain, not in the pants." Is she arguing for sexed brains? So she thinks there's lady brains and man brains? The sexist trope that has been used to oppress women since the 17th century? And if she's talking about gender, it's not much better. Gender is a social construct. It's not innate. It's certainly not 'in the brain'. Babies aren't born desiring glitter and pink.

It's like she's just taken all the weird gender memes from Twitter and just spewed them out. I'm surprised clown fish didn't get a mention.

Skyliner001 · 10/08/2020 19:57

Brilliant article, thanks so much for sharing 😊

Lemonyfuckit · 10/08/2020 19:55

Churchofwoke you completely beat me to it! I just read that article as I saw a friend had posted it on Facebook (and she was applauding it) and I was so tempted to comment in particular pointing out the irony of that sentence. In the end I thought I'm tired it's been a long day and I'm not sure I'm up for some Facebook spat and potentially being hounded on Facebook as a Terf so I came on FWR to read some sense and be reminded that not everyone in the world has gone mad....

Thank you as ever MN for being a forum in which I feel safe to express my views on this which I certainly don't on other forms of social media, and for so many intelligent posters speaking sense. It is comforting to be reminded you're not alone in some mad emperor's new woke clothes world....

PaternosterLoft · 10/08/2020 19:53

And yes, men who want to harm women could dress up as women, but they could also pretend to be repairmen or emergency workers to get into our homes, and actually have, and we haven’t banned repairmen and emergency workers yet

No but we have safeguards in place. An appointment to come to your house. Online reviews. ID cards. You can ask for someone else to be in. That man in the changing rooms with the penis and the camera? You're not allowed to say anything without him yelling transphobe at you.

The whole article is just 'be nice, be kind, shut up, it'll never happen'

TBHno · 10/08/2020 19:51

That is one of the Guardian's worst articles on this subject, and that's really saying something.

ChurchOfWokeApostate · 10/08/2020 19:48

Second wave feminism produced the classic 1972 children’s album Free to Be You and Me, which I’d like to point out was not titled Free to Be Me But I Get to Define You

The fucking irony...