Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

There's a WOMAN in the White House (nearly)

303 replies

ReallyRatherNerdy · 07/11/2020 19:35

Finding this very emotional. Dancing round the kitchen. Anyone else?

OP posts:
FOJN · 08/11/2020 15:14

FrankieSezRelax

Thanks for some sanity. I come here to lurk from time to time and thought I was in the wrong place. Biden/Harris is a disaster for women.

ThatIsNotMyUsername · 08/11/2020 15:13

👆yes this...

FrankieSezRelax · 08/11/2020 14:53

The naïveté in this thread towards Biden/Harris and Biden’s well established ties to the trans lobby is disheartening, to say the least.

Biden specifically said he is fine with an 8 year old declaring to be transgender during his town hall appearance last month. Biden was heavily involved in the US Dept of Education guidelines (the infamous “Dear Colleague” letter) saying trans people should be able to compete in sports based on gender identity, not sex. His own foundation, The Biden Foundation, are major advocates for the transitioning children and teaching trans ideology in public schools— go to their website and see for yourself. He, his wife and his late son Beau are close friends with Sarah McBride, a transwoman whom they consider “one of the family” and have been pushing McBride up the Delaware political ladder for years.

For all its faults, the Trump administration has been instrumental in protecting girls’ rights under Title IX via the Dept of Justice‘s support of the lawsuits brought by female athletes. A DOJ Under Biden will most certainly drop their support of these suits.

This is very bad news for the rights of women and girls. Anyone arguing otherwise, that Biden/Harris will bring normalcy and sound judgment to this issue, is simply, flat out wrong. This is absolutely about the redefinition of “woman” and the removal of sex based rights.

HecatesCats · 08/11/2020 14:02

Thanks for sharing nobody

Aesopfable · 08/11/2020 13:51

I am thinking it would be ‘good’ for the next olympics to have men winning gold medals in women’s sports and for women’s podiums to be full of these men. Even better if they are the sort who don’t believe you need to shave or change what you wear in anyway to be a ‘woman’ because it is based just on internal fluffy feelings. For people to see where this ideology leads. Though my heart cries for the women who should win.

Imnobody4 · 08/11/2020 13:50

Excellent thread from Allison Bailey

twitter.com/BluskyeAllison/status/1325352338714992640?s=19

7/ The plan to replace sex with gender in HR5, the Equality Act, should scare the living daylights out of all sensible people, LGB, trans & straight. Discrimination protection for trans people must not come at the cost of erasing women. It’s not an LGBT ‘inclusion’

9/ Biden / Harris are politicians. The Georgia senate runoffs in January could become the battleground to protect women’s sex based rights. What @KamalaHarris & @JoeBiden say & do now could lose them the senate. I hope that we can make them see sense. #AmendTheEqualityAct

END

CaraDuneRedux · 08/11/2020 13:49

No. Don’t be silly dear. That would be exclusionary.

Oh god, have I been exclusionary?

Aesopfable · 08/11/2020 13:46

@CaraDuneRedux

I worry about what’s to come for Women but I sense it has to play out in order for the world to see the injustice

Do you think we'll eventually get our own category in the Paralympics, for "Y chromosome deficient womxn"?

No. Don’t be silly dear. That would be exclusionary.
CaraDuneRedux · 08/11/2020 13:34

I worry about what’s to come for Women but I sense it has to play out in order for the world to see the injustice

Do you think we'll eventually get our own category in the Paralympics, for "Y chromosome deficient womxn"?

TheJourneyWoman · 08/11/2020 13:15

She says that "gender education" is compulsory in schools in the state of California at elementary level. There is parental opt-out for traditional sex-ed, but not for this part of it.

Yes this is because they've slyly included this as part of the anti bullying curriculum rather then sex ed. That's why parents can't opt their kids out.

HecatesCats · 08/11/2020 13:14

I worry about what’s to come for Women but I sense it has to play out in order for the world to see the injustice

I'm sadly increasingly convinced of this. I wish it weren't so.

HaveaStock · 08/11/2020 13:06

I’m feeling the familiar warm glow of the morning after the night before in 1997 when Blair got in. ‘Things can only get better’ we sang. Blair’s ‘Babes’. The feeling of a seismic shift... and then the grinding dawn of realisation that change doesn’t happen by just paying lip-service, virtue signalling, pushing certain people to the front in photo shoots. I only share the relief that Trump has gone - I’m too disillusioned by politics to feel joy for the forthcoming administration (is that the right word - US politics not my strength).

I worry about what’s to come for Women but I sense it has to play out in order for the world to see the injustice that will ensue from the ‘kind’ and ‘well-meaning’ gesture politics. And meanwhile, closer to home, we’ve got an election in Scotland to look forward to. I can see myself ‘uncoupling’ from party politics until I see a party that truly represents me.

JoodyBlue · 08/11/2020 12:55

I have just listened to the chapter on schools in Abigail Shrier's book. She says that "gender education" is compulsory in schools in the state of California at elementary level. There is parental opt-out for traditional sex-ed, but not for this part of it. So this ideology is in at grass roots. I think within a generation the women's rights movement will be starting from scratch unless sufficient numbers of women who remember having tasted equality freedom for a couple of decades make enough noise now.

queenofknives · 08/11/2020 12:26

This is not progress. Trump was open about it whereas the Democrats hide it in the mantra of being kind and progressive. Particularly pernicious in my view.

This is how I see it too. In some ways I think Trump would be better for women, because he is more willing to see off some of the identity politics nonsense. Yes the republicans do have an issue with abortion but I also think that a lot of women support them because of that, not despite it.

We've had two female prime ministers - I don't believe that simply having a female in office makes any difference to women. It's good to see that the barriers to women achieving office are no longer what they were, but it's what individuals do when they're in office that counts. Trump's administration also gave us women in powerful positions in government, but that doesn't mean that his government was good for women generally.

I agree that the party Democrats are overall not the same as the angry woke, but will the Dems take a stand for democracy and against identity politics? I fear they will use the language of social progress to hide the erosion of democracy and public institutions that act as a check to their power.

Thehollyandtheirony · 08/11/2020 12:19

I can’t be excited by a woke woman in the White House.

She is intelligent enough to understand the importance of sex- based rights and yet is pushing to abolish them. So is she a liar or a manipulator?

ThatIsNotMyUsername · 08/11/2020 12:11

He has teenage granddaughters so I hope he can put 1&1 together when they start realising that there are pitfalls to the no-debate/unquestioning stance. But they are very rich and live in a privileged world so won’t need to worry about womans refuges, jails, hospital wards...

Floisme · 08/11/2020 11:58

I hope you're right Cara and, if it were a one-off incident, I would agree and have good laugh at my own paranoia. But it feels symptomatic to me of the way any discussion has been controlled and silenced - even on here.

I feel very let down today by so many prominent GC feminists - and to be absolutely clear, this is not for supporting Biden, it's for avoiding the discussion.

CaraDuneRedux · 08/11/2020 11:38

@Floisme

Biden's always struck me as a pretty conservative kind of guy guy so if he's using this kind of language, I can only assume it's because he's been told. The President-elect of the USA is being told what to say.
Not as sinister as that sounds, I think.

I agree on your reading of him as small c conservative (remember, he and Harris had a spat in the primaries over the fact that back in the day, he opposed busing children to different schools).

But he won't be being told in the sense of having shadowy advisers standing over him telling him to say something that is at odds with his instincts.

He's a (nearly) 78 year old comfortably off middle class white man. He has no dog in this fight. Someone (several people) will simply have said "phrasing it this way is an easy win in terms of inclusivity, reaching out to those on the left of the party who maybe would have preferred Biden, distancing yourself from Trump, reassuring people in hte LGBT community that the bad old Trump days are over..." (And don't underestimate the importance of this last point - I know gay couples in the states who had bricks through the window from rednecks emboldened by Trump's rhetoric. There genuinely is a need to reassure LGB and gender-non-conforming people that their human rights are safe. Just not at the expense of women's rights.)

Floisme · 08/11/2020 11:23

Biden's always struck me as a pretty conservative kind of guy guy so if he's using this kind of language, I can only assume it's because he's been told. The President-elect of the USA is being told what to say.

Greektome · 08/11/2020 11:17

It was striking that in his speech Biden very deliberately avoided using the word "women" and used "identity" instead:
"We must make the promise of the country real for everybody – no matter their race, their ethnicity, their faith, their identity, or their disability."

ThatIsNotMyUsername · 08/11/2020 11:14

I don’t think they will either. When I heard the Biden namechecking in this speech and Harris say ‘gender’ I though - Is this the devil or the deep blue sea?

CaraDuneRedux · 08/11/2020 11:04

@ThatIsNotMyUsername

She will do what gets votes. She is a politician after all. I hope to god they start listening to women’s groups.
I don't think they will. They (she and Biden) will simply bask in the "not Trump" glow of everyone knowing they didn't campaign on a ticket of stripping women of their reproductive rights.

This will be their get-out-of-jail-free card to use to excuse themselves from listening to any grass roots women's organisations with reservations about the implications of trans ideology.

ThatIsNotMyUsername · 08/11/2020 11:03

It is a shame that they went this route it really is. I have family who live in some true blue states and it sounds like ‘kids company’ is running some of the social services - and that causes a lot of issues (not solving issues but just throwing money at them).

Galvantula · 08/11/2020 11:01

I do also feel the new administration are not looking good at all in terms of women's rights.

I just have to go with "slightly better than more Trump" for now. :( Which isn't a very high bar I know.

ThatIsNotMyUsername · 08/11/2020 10:59

She will do what gets votes. She is a politician after all. I hope to god they start listening to women’s groups.