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Original poster

Trans [male] inclusive feminists, help me understand - Part 2

56 replies

TalkingtoLangClegintheDark · 15/11/2020 12:06

I think this is an important debate and the first thread filled up over-fast with a couple of giant derails, so I’ve taken the liberty of starting a continuation thread, hope that’s ok with you thinkingaboutLangCleg, (OP of the first one).

I’ve amended the title to include [male] as - as many on the previous thread pointed out - the issue here is not about including trans people in feminism, as those of us questioning this do automatically include biologically female trans/NB people, but about including biologically male people in the movement which most understand to be about the fight for women’s rights.

If anyone has a less clumsy way to word that, please let me know and I’ll ask MNHQ to edit the title.

OP posts:
PearPickingPorky · 15/11/2020 12:53

I never understand how people making Joswis's "argument" can really believe it or not see how insulting it is.

The reason they do this is because they don't have a reply to the actual argument, so they have to pretend the argument is something else.

Or they suddenly have to rush off because they have a life and we're so mean. That's their other tactic.

Sometimesonly · 15/11/2020 12:34

The GC argument is categorically not that in order to be recognised as a woman you must have a perfectly/still functioning female reproductive system.
I never understand how people making Joswis's "argument" can really believe it or not see how insulting it is. Humans are bipedal. Do they also argue that humans who lose a leg are no longer human?

Original poster
TalkingtoLangClegintheDark · 15/11/2020 12:32

Well, yes...

OP posts:
Aesopfable · 15/11/2020 12:27

If anyone has a less clumsy way to word that, please let me know and I’ll ask MNHQ to edit the title.

I can think of many less clumsy ways but they would probably get you deleted.

Original poster
TalkingtoLangClegintheDark · 15/11/2020 12:23

I am always amazed at the sheer lack of arguments from those who do include males in their feminism, and the endless need to build a straw man to take down.

Joswis you come across as highly educated and articulate so I was disappointed by the level of your arguments.

For example, you said:

Due to cancer, I have no female reproductive tissue of any type left. If being a woman is biology, I'm no longer a woman, I'm a husk

Only TRAs/allies have ever suggested that women with disorders or cancers of the reproductive system are not women. It is so nonsensical it isn’t even an argument. Only women can have female factor infertility. Only women can have disorders of the female reproductive system. Only women can have hysterectomies.

The GC argument is categorically not that in order to be recognised as a woman you must have a perfectly/still functioning female reproductive system. I don’t even know how someone could come up with such an absurd notion. As a post menopausal woman myself - again, only women can go through the menopause - I know that whether or not a woman is ovulating, able to give birth, menstruating etc, is immaterial. The only thing that determines whether someone is a woman or not is if that person is an adult who is of the female sex class.

I’ve always loved this quote (from a black radfem, now suspended, on Twitter):

Imagine lacking the intellectual capacity to understand having a class defining characteristic is not a reduction thereto

But you don’t lack that intellectual capacity, Joswis. And yet you choose to conflate having a class defining characteristic with being reduced to nothing but that characteristic.

Why?

OP posts:
Original poster
TalkingtoLangClegintheDark · 15/11/2020 12:07

Link to first thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4077998-Transinclusive-feminists-please-help-me-understand

OP posts: