Q&A thread for New Posters

@2020iscancelled, I first came across the expression 'your right to swing your fists around ends at someone else's nose' on this forum and it makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of mischaracterisation of GC feminism (or 'feminism' as it is better called, as you say!) as a controlling, overly-dogmatic, 'bio-essentialist' ideology, when really it's just that - someone else's right to dress and behave in the way that feels most comfortable for them should not infringe on the safety and dignity of anyone else, with a particular awareness of how women's safety is so often under threat.

I used to believe I’d be happy to call a trans woman a woman and I think I still would in societal settings

Another thing I looked into after finding this forum was seeing how many public figures (e.g. Germaine Greer, Jordan Peterson) denounced for their 'harmful transphobia' are people who have clearly stated they're prepared to do this - by using preferred pronouns etc - out of politeness. When you see how viciously these figures are treated on the basis of their 'transphobia' (there's a lot more you could criticise JP for, and GG isn't perfect either, though she is an important feminist) it really hammers home how aggressive and controlling the trans rights movement is, in comparison to gay rights. (A reminder for those at the back who need to hear it again - the movement is not the community it purports to represent.)

Thank you! Good explanations.

Ok so removing a penis is just an act to support Gender identity. They aren’t changing their sex as we know that is impossible so the argument in its very essence becomes void -
You cannot use a female single sex space even though you no longer have a penis because you are not a woman as per the legal definition (your sex recorded at birth).

I also thought about the other spaces, just because you don’t have your penis anymore doesn’t take away the fact you are (probably) stronger than 9/10 women and therefore shouldn’t be competing in say, women’s wrestling.

Rape counselling - again just bc you don’t have a penis doesn’t mean you aren’t identifiable as male born, therefore the vulnerable women may be sat opposite a noticeable masculine trans woman. Same with Healthcare - I may be offered a very lovely trans nurse who doesn’t have a penis, but I don’t know that - all I see is a trans woman and I don’t want that. I want a woman.

It makes sense a bit, I think.

I am ashamed to say I am late to the GC side, I don’t think we need GC as a tag because by its very nature feminism rebukes gender stereotypes- but it’s helpful for newbies to the TWAW debate, like myself.

I used to think “people should be able to say they are who they think they are”... and to an extent I still think live and let live....but you can’t can you, not when it’s my / our rights being erased. You can’t claim other cultures, why can you claim my sex. How can you come and take the space specifically protected following a millennium of oppression. No, not happening.

I used to believe I’d be happy to call a trans woman a woman and I think I still would in societal settings - I’d not say “oh I met this great trans woman at lunch today” for instance. But when it comes to protected rights I feel very differently.

There’s so much to process but I’m glad to be learning - always been a feminist but I’ve never taken the time to explore what it really means. I am a bystander - or I have been until now!

This is my line.

Will including this person tacitly exclude any women from female single-sex spaces intended for women?

I've thought about it and I've thought about it, and I couldn't come up with any reason why we should care more about a space being inclusive to transwomen than that it should be inclusive to women, that didn't break down to my own internalised misogyny.

We've all heard about how important toilet access is to trans people I think. Well, of course it is. They're human beings. Toilet access is important for people's health, comfort and dignity.

The first problem is that women are also human beings. If any women don't feel safe when using public toilets, it has just as big an impact on their lives as it does the trans people.

So we've shifted the problem somewhere else, instead of creating facilities for the group who needed them.

The second problem is, it's not just about toilets. It's about things like single-sex hospital wards. I do not want women feeling uncomfortable and unsafe in hospital, because someone that looks like a man to them is in the next bed. I don't want sick women self-discharging from hospital because they felt unsafe.

If one woman says no, it shouldn't matter if 99 say yes. If her no doesn't matter, then we're saying that transwomen have more right to decide who goes in women's spaces than a woman does, if the woman gives the incorrect answer.

It's like a shared house. Suppose Dave wants to move into your house and 5 out of 6 people say yes. But the sixth, Peter, says no.

Does Dave's wish to move into the house really trump Peter's? It's Peter's house! Being kind to Dave and letting him move in necessitates being extremely unkind to Peter.

"Papists" is an obvious typo and Lord knows how it got in there. Please read Rapists.

The problem goes like this.

Sex is a protected characteristic, and single sex spaces, including hospital wards, rape crisis centres, changing rooms and public lavatories, are mandated as single sex. Not single gender: in law, gender is not actually defined as far as I know, and it is hard to see how it could be since it deals entirely with what an individual feels rather than with objective fact.

You can change your gender; you cannot change your sex.

Whether some (male) trans women are able to pass as female is not the point. The point is that if the law allows any males the right to use single-sex female-only spaces, then any male has the same right in law, and males who will take advantage of this are very likely to be precisely those males who should not under any circumstances be allowed free access to vulnerable women, or woman in a potentially vulnerable state.

Papists and abusers do not have obvious tattoos on their foreheads to say that they are dangerous to women, any more than a trans woman has a tattoo saying "harmless". They cannot easily be told apart at first sight. Better safe than sorry is a good watchword at that point, even leaving aside the one-in-five women who have been assaulted by a male person and may suffer trauma as a result, and all those women of religions (also a protected characteristic) which prohibit being alone with a male who is not a member of your family.

Assuming we’re still doing new and random questions -

And I’ll admit I don’t know the legal stance on it although I can google that - I’m interested in the feminist opinion and argument.

If a male born person has gender reassignment are we comfortable with them using female spaces? Toilets, changing rooms etc.

On the one hand I feel yes because someone who has gone the lengths of surgery to remove their penis, probably does meet my personal level of changing identify for genuine reasons.

• how much does GR go towards making it ok for a trans woman to call herself a woman. If you don’t have a penis is it better?

Or is it simply - born male, always trans woman therefore always excluded from women’s protected spaces?

(I realise the law around GR and what we think is right could be different here)

Misogynists - women should do the dishes
Feminists - anyone can do the dishes
Gender ideologists - whoever is doing the dishes is a woman

Yes - but I don't think Gender ideologists are concerned about dishes.

I think it's more

Misogynists - women should wear lipstick

Feminists - anyone can wear lipstick

Gender ideologists - whoever is wearing lipstick is a woman. People who do dishes probably just like cottagecore.

👏👏👏

I think a friend gave me that book, though I haven’t read it yet - we did discuss it and she explained the main points. I’m obviously not denying that women have historically been hugely disadvantaged in many ways and for various reasons, I’m just arguing about whether obsessing over the definition of womanhood will help us address those disadvantages, insofar as they still continue

If you redefine woman to mean anyone who wants to be one, I can guarantee you those disadvantages will dissapear. From being visible to anyone except the women who suffer the disadvantages. Try naming something you don't have a word for.

Funnily enough, that was how I did the first essay..

It all looks wonderfully progressive on the surface, but everyone's faking it, aren't they?

You demonstrate membership of the educated class but like womxn etc, no-one can actually pronounce these neologicisms. And while playing a game of better-educated-than-thou is normal for the internet, what happens when businesses, charities, and public services join in on it, in real life?

In the UK 16.4% of adults in England, or 7.1 million people, can be described as having 'very poor literacy skills.' They can understand short straightforward texts on familiar topics accurately and independently, and obtain information from everyday sources, but reading information from unfamiliar sources, or on unfamiliar topics, could cause problems. This is also known as being functionally illiterate.

[source: National Literacy Trust]

Or more likely, wrote it in male-default and then translated.

On the grammatical tangent, I entirely agree with the Académie. A couple of years back I was required to write an essay (French refresher course) using l'écriture inclusive to prove I could do it. So difficult. At the time I felt very cynical about what level of enthusiasm there could be for it in France!

No matter how enthusiastic the younger members of the class were about how progressive and non-sexist it was, I privately suspect almost all of them defaulted back to male-default in subsequent weeks.

Very topically for this thread, the Academie Française isn’t havent it feminising or gender neutralising the traditional French masculine primacy is a “mortal threat”. Isn’t it just spooky how women have been banging on about this for decades to pretty much no effect, but when the affected group is widened to “women and others who do not identify with the male gender” (sic), suddenly things start happening?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/04a46cfc-76d5-11eb-80c3-8cc375faed89?shareToken=8a49572ad598d9fae23065275a3392ee

So, now we have new reports stating their is an increase is women committing sex crimes.... and if this trend continues, females will need to be subject to new restrictions for safeguarding etc. and society now believes women are more dangerous than they were 5 years ago. Well, not really, because someone then has to work to pull out those perpetrators who are male from those statistics. Because we know in the UK that males have a higher propensity to commit those crimes from historical data. But, males are now shaping how women are perceived in society this way too. How is this not harmful to women.

Absolutely this. As an example of how easily things get skewed, in 2010, there were approx 47 women convicted of sex offences across the whole UK.

At the same time a sex offender called Andrew Ward was charged with 12 offences relating to serious CSA. Andrew identifies now as a woman called Beth and will have offences recorded as female if he chooses. Andrew/Beth has been caught again with extreme images of children being sexually abused.

How many offences will Andrew/Beth be charged with? With his existing 12 offences, one person would have accounted for one third of ALL the sex offences recorded against women in the entire country!

That is how easily the number are messed up and the police/CPS have been doing this for 10 years. It is now being reported that sex offences committed by women are soaring - how many of those are male??

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread?pg=19

The 47 convictions of women had mysteriously shot up to 74 by 2014 and doubled again IN TWO YEARS to 142 by 2016 - something odd going on there?? This is around the time that the police started recording crimes by the criminal's self chosen sex.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5465541/Record-number-women-convicted-sex-crimes-Britain.html

Once gender norms are less pervasive perhaps the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ could genuinely just denote biological sex without any associated expectations of gender presentation

This is what we want though. Abolish gender completely (we were well on the way to doing that), man and women simply is a reference to humans of the relevant sex, and people living free from expectation of being perceived to act in a certain way or with certain skills or interests etc because of that sex.

And while we work towards that, making sure women and girls are protected from said sexist discrimination and from violence of all types which is in the main being perpetrated by males.

How do you suppose we can continue to do this while bolstering up stereotypes (this is the way people should look, wear, whatever because this is what that person, who was not born this sex but believes they are that sex, perceives is what members of that sex should look like and act.)

So, by a male taking a women’s officer role, policies in place for women become shaped by what that male perceives in needed by women or their own needs. Again, policy for women’s needs become based on a male view. How is this not harmful to women?

So, by a male breaking sporting records in women’s sport, males are again superficially changing the expectations on what women can realistically achieve. How is this not harmful to women and girls?

So, now we have new reports stating their is an increase is women committing sex crimes.... and if this trend continues, females will need to be subject to new restrictions for safeguarding etc. and society now believes women are more dangerous than they were 5 years ago. Well, not really, because someone then has to work to pull out those perpetrators who are male from those statistics. Because we know in the UK that males have a higher propensity to commit those crimes from historical data. But, males are now shaping how women are perceived in society this way too. How is this not harmful to women.

So, males get to shape the realities of being a woman. Again.

The majority of people have a range of conscious or unconscious expectations and assumptions they make about other people on the basis of whether they’re a man or a woman.

Stereotypes are harmful to both males and females of all ages. I don’t know about you, but I have spent my life trying bust them. Because eliminating them, starts to eliminate sexist discrimination. Why on earth do we want to allow sexist discrimination to become the norm again? Or do you honestly believe that women had equality in the workplace, health, education and sport?

If so, please describe the utopian country you live in because it is not the U.K.

But that's never going to happen while people like you insist on reinforcing the stereotypes. One way to make the stereotypes less pervasive is to start by saying that the way people dress doesn't change anything about them apart from their clothes. As soon as you start making it all about 'gender' you're reinforcing the stereotypes.

Yes, exactly.

It increases the stereotyping. How can it not?

Menstruation, morning sickness, breast feeding issues, miscarriage (many of these will happen on the loo).

There's a lot more to women's biology than most men realise or consider.

The majority of people have a range of conscious or unconscious expectations and assumptions they make about other people on the basis of whether they’re a man or a woman.

Yes, they do. They are called stereotypes, and they are harmful to both sexes, but most obviously to women and girls. We would be better off if we could work to dismantle these stereotypes, and stop making assumptions about people based on their sex.

So it’s really about a person being allowed to adopt a name associated with the gender they identify as, to ask others to use the pronouns corresponding to that gender, and to wear clothes which are generally expected to be worn by people of that gender (without being mocked or shunned).

Why do you want to reinforce these stereotypes by identifying as a gender? Why not just be yourself, wear what you want and work towards a world where people are no longer expected to look a certain way just because of their sex?

Once gender norms are less pervasive perhaps the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ could genuinely just denote biological sex without any associated expectations of gender presentation, and then there wouldn’t be any trans people,

But that's never going to happen while people like you insist on reinforcing the stereotypes. One way to make the stereotypes less pervasive is to start by saying that the way people dress doesn't change anything about them apart from their clothes. As soon as you start making it all about 'gender' you're reinforcing the stereotypes.

The majority of people have a range of conscious or unconscious expectations and assumptions they make about other people on the basis of whether they’re a man or a woman. So it’s really about a person being allowed to adopt a name associated with the gender they identify as, to ask others to use the pronouns corresponding to that gender, and to wear clothes which are generally expected to be worn by people of that gender (without being mocked or shunned).

Many women are fine with this, if that's where it ends. (I'm not, particularly, because of Stonewall's decision to include cross dressing, transvestism and other sexual motivations under the umbrella.)

However, It's not exclusively pronouns and sartorial choices that most women are fighting against. It's the erosion of their rights to sex segregated facilities and services when they're vulnerable. Prisons, refuges, changing rooms, mental health wards, etc. And sports.

Do women do anything in the loos that men don't...? If someone's forgotten about menstruation, I'm not sure they're equipped to have this conversation.

So it’s really about a person being allowed to adopt a name associated with the gender they identify as, to ask others to use the pronouns corresponding to that gender, and to wear clothes which are generally expected to be worn by people of that gender (without being mocked or shunned).

It's an unreasonable expectation to expect other people to automatically buy into this when someone is obviously the opposite sex. Also it's about a hell of a lot more than this or we wouldn't be having this conversation here in FWR.

Once gender norms are less pervasive

How do you think this can be achieved in the current climate?

@OldCrone

What are the "concepts of 'man' and 'women'" that you want to "allow people to inhabit", if they are not to do with sex and they are not to do with stereotypes?

The majority of people have a range of conscious or unconscious expectations and assumptions they make about other people on the basis of whether they’re a man or a woman. So it’s really about a person being allowed to adopt a name associated with the gender they identify as, to ask others to use the pronouns corresponding to that gender, and to wear clothes which are generally expected to be worn by people of that gender (without being mocked or shunned).

Of course, the extent to which people they interact will actually perceive them in the same way they perceive others of that gender who are not trans will largely depend on factors which are less easily within their control - like their physique and facial features.

Are you saying that if some men can 'become' women and some women can 'become' men, that sexist stereotypes will disappear? If there are no stereotypes, and if (as I believe you are saying) a woman is something other than an adult female human, how does a man 'become' a woman?

Once gender norms are less pervasive perhaps the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ could genuinely just denote biological sex without any associated expectations of gender presentation, and then there wouldn’t be any trans people,