Q&A thread for New Posters

I have never required the use of any service to stop me having children.

However, most women do require contraception.

Pregnancy requires some adjustments such as time off for appointments and not having to do certain sorts of physical work. Pretty similar to many disabilities or medical conditions.

Most people do not suffer from a disability or medical condition until they are older. Most women have children in their 20s and 30s.

Not everyone can or wants to breastfeed. And in the case of any couple (or single person) caring for a baby, regardless of their sex, someone needs time off work to care for it, including feeding

But only women can breastfeed and women are advised to breastfeed.

Depends on the kind of toileting in question - we all sht the same.*

Not sure what your point is here. You aren’t really saying anything that is relevant.

I’m just arguing about whether obsessing over the definition of womanhood will help us address those disadvantages, insofar as they still continue.

‘Argue’ would imply presenting an argument. You aren’t doing this.

@merrymouse

Women also need specific services and rights if they want to avoid having children.

I have never required the use of any service to stop me having children.

Pregnancy and breastfeeding require specific accommodations.

Pregnancy requires some adjustments such as time off for appointments and not having to do certain sorts of physical work. Pretty similar to many disabilities or medical conditions.

Not everyone can or wants to breastfeed. And in the case of any couple (or single person) caring for a baby, regardless of their sex, someone needs time off work to care for it, including feeding.

Diseases impact differently on men and women (sometimes to men's disadvantage - also see Covid).

I agree that information about biological sex can be important in data collection terms, and clearly a person’s biological sex will need to be known to their healthcare practitioners.

Even leaving aside the topic of single sex spaces and any social or cultural norms, men and women use toilets differently because their bodies function differently.

Depends on the kind of toileting in question - we all sh*t the same.

None of this should be a problem if society doesn't assume that the default norm is male. However to do that you need to acknowledge the impact of sex. You should probably read Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez.

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.

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Can we not still have protection against maternity discrimination and FGM

You need to be able to talk about the class of people that is affected by these things. You can't talk about FGM for instance without talking about the impact of FGM on having periods and giving birth.

as well as people having the right to use the toilet they want to?

If you want to allow people to use any toilet, you are saying that on balance it is better to have unisex toilets. There are many situations where there are pros and cons to segregation by sex - the pros and cons of single sex education for girls are often discussed. However, you need to be clear that you are talking about sex, not gender.

There is never any reason to segregate by gender, because, apart from anything else, nobody can agree what gender is.

Can we not still have protection against maternity discrimination and FGM as well as people having the right to use the toilet they want to?

What do you mean by "people having the right to use the toilet they want to"? Do you mean everything should be mixed sex? If so, I can't see why gender should be involved in this at all. There is no legitimate reason to separate anything by 'gender'. There are legitimate reasons for some single sex spaces.

Why are thing segregby sexor gender? Can we not still have protection against maternity discrimination and FGM as well as people having the right to use the toilet they want to?

Could we have sex based rights and gender based / self ID rights?

No. Either services and sports are segregated by sex or they are not. It is that simple.
Could a compromise be found, that some services and sports are single and some are mixed? I don't think transpeople and their allies are looking for a compromise. Meet me in the middle said the unjust man.

Could we have sex based rights and gender based / self ID rights?

Like together? Is it one or the other?

New poster - apologies if I use the wrong vocabulary or have misunderstood something. A (possibly facetious) question regarding the census - if I understand correctly, the census in its current form is allowing people to tick the box of their gender identity rather than their natal sex. If transwomen all tick the 'woman' box, could that actually benefit women? If it makes it look like women are more numerous, could that improve eg women's healthcare provision? But it could disadvantage transwomen with regard to healthcare. Wouldn't it make sense for the trans groups to be pushing for both natal sex and gender identity to be counted via the census?

Didn't Tampax refer to women as people who bleed last year?

So presumably all sex-pay-gap issues at Procter & Gamble have been remedied now.

I've been pregnant and given birth twice, but today I tore apart our dilapidated shed by myself while wielding a hammer and wearing steel-toe shoes. I'm also wearing eyeliner and perfume. Should I identify as non-binary?

yes quite.

And has there been an uplift in benefits to women in allowing males to take the role of women's officers?
Are the university campuses that have males in these roles better for freedom of speech around women's rights?
Have these campuses improved the safety of women from male violence?

Or just the topics that interest that particular women's officer which may have little to do with the inherent needs, the less spoken of but just as important needs that they are blind (sometimes deliberately) to.

People have already changed all the words. We have women called men, men called women, both sexes called enbies, etc.

And it's got worse, as it's the ones with the vaginas who are being attacked in prison, raped, losing refuges, losing sports, losing political representation, losing online space, losing their sexual orientation and their statistical data and now you want them to lose the language to even describe it.

Wilful blindness.

Or, by using the term Forced Genital Mutilation, does it allow people to deny it is as bad as it actually is?

A great place to start really is working out exactly how forcibly changing the term Female Genital Mutilation to Forced Genital Mutilation is useful for the victims and activists to fight to eliminate this horrific act.

Exactly how does a female identify out of being a target for the act to happen?
Exactly how does changing the words to remove the focus of this act needing to remain on females assist in law, in culture, in real effect?
Exactly how does dehumanising the term in removing just who it effects help those already feeling dehumanised because of it?

Basically, acceptance based on a pretence or denial of reality is not acceptance, is it.

@datun exactly this. It’s also an extremely morally questionable ‘solution’... ‘the best way you can expect equity is if you deny reality / pretend you’re something you’re not / dilute what you are. It’s the best we can hope for.’ Nah. You would demand better than this for any other immutable characteristic.

detach the concepts of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ from biological sex and allow people to inhabit them as they wish.

I am another who actually wants to know what this means in material reality. Throughout this thread you have conflated gender and sex.

However, what does this mean? That when people want to have a surrogate to gestate their child, that that person will be described as female? Or incubator? Because, it does seem that everyone knows who to go to for that service.

A poster asked up thread about attacks on women. A transman was attacked and kept saying they were a man, grimly, the person attacking simply kept on. This is the reality, no female can identify out of being the sex that is the target of VAWAGs.

Just like I have had several members of my family experience rape, and because of it, I am hyper vigilant. I too am someone who would leave a train carriage if I was there alone with a male of any presentation or sit in the view of the bus driver on a bus.

The reality is, the words 'woman and man' have a long history where the meaning is attached to sex, and that some people wish to change these words to reflect their perception of reality. A reality that is actually in no way the reality of the over riding majority.

Also I grew up without the colour pink, wearing mostly boys clothes and haircut, doing things that were free of gender expectations (in fact, revolved around manual labour). It did not stop me experiencing sexist discrimination at all.

Why on earth would anyone think that it would?

I know that changing terminology or concepts wouldn’t stop sexism overnight, but I also think a blurring of the boundaries between ‘man’ and ‘woman’ over time will help to erode sexist stereotypes

It clearly doesn't. That experiment is already here.

Men and women everywhere are saying they're the opposite sex. Or no sex at all. They are getting it set in legal stone. And ensuring that no-one can say otherwise.

The sexism has got worse.

Because now you've entirely lost the language to describe it.

Show me all the ways that the exact thing you advocate for, detaching the words man and women from biology, has helped eliminate sexism.

It's happening all over the western world and women are being silenced, restricted, bullied, threatened and intimidated in a mammoth display of sexism.

How has the very thing you endorse helped reduce sexism???

@Helen8220 , you seem to be confused about what we’re saying. People can express themselves however they like. Progressive - men and boys can wear dresses, girls can be tomboys. Or indeed wear / be interested in whatever they like, irrespective of their immutable sex. This is gender non-conformity. We support this.

Regressive - a man wearing a dress makes him less of a man, or indeed a woman. A girl wearing less frills or looking more ‘masculine’ makes her less of a girl, or indeed a boy. This is absolute gender-conformity taken to new levels of absurdity.

Saying that a girl who doesn’t perform societies gendered expectations of her sex, who doesn’t perform femininity to an acceptable degree, makes her a man... is the most gender conforming thing you can do. It is reinforcing those stereotypes, not smashing them, by attempting to move her from one rigid set of gendered expectations to another. There is no wrong way to be a woman. There is no wrong way to be a man. Saying that not performing masculinity or femininity to an appropriate degree makes you less a member of your sex is to suggest that you believe that there is a wrong way to be a man and a wrong way to be a woman. Take Alex Drummond - if they’d said they were ‘expanding the bandwidth of what it means to be a man’, I would’ve been applauding them.

‘You’re no man’ ‘im more of a man than you’ll ever be’ etc directed at effeminate men is the language and rhetoric of playground bullies of my childhood. This ideology is saying exactly the same thing. It is not progress.

I had seen speculation as to whether the endgame was 'to detach the concepts of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ from biological sex' and, to be honest, had wondered if that was a little bit far fetched, so very interesting to read such an unabashed confirmation on here.

@gardenbird48 precisely this. The rank hypocrisy of Benjamin Cohen is a prime example... spending an inordinate amount of time telling women they exist only as a state of mind... and then somehow knowing exactly who to ask when he wants a biological function performed that only women can. No amount of linguistic coercion changes male entitlement to female bodies, whether that’s for sexual availability or reproductive labour.

Maybe if everyone stopped banging on about how men and women are profoundly different, stopped declaring babies’ sex before they’re even born so they can buy them the socially expected clothing and gifts, stopped unnecessarily dividing up children in primary school into boys’ and girls’ teams, changing rooms etc, then we would see how that changes things. You clearly don’t think it would make much of a difference. I disagree

You're conflating two completely separate things here: sex and gender.

banging on about how men and women are profoundly different

This is sex. Chromosomes, reproductive systems etc. Men and women have different types of bodies.

stopped declaring babies’ sex before they’re even born so they can buy them the socially expected clothing and gifts

This is gender. The 'socially expected' bit gives you a clue here. I agree with you that it would be better if everything wasn't so 'gendered' from birth.

stopped unnecessarily dividing up children in primary school into boys’ and girls’ teams, changing rooms etc

Sex again. Boys and girls have different types of bodies (those chromosomes and reproductive systems again). Even before puberty, the two sexes are not totally equal in terms of sporting ability (although I'll admit here that I'm not sure how great the difference is, so it might not matter too much, particularly for the youngest children).

As for changing rooms, many girls start puberty whilst at primary school. It must be difficult enough for them already if they are one of the first to have their body show changes, without having to expose themselves to the boys as well.

You clearly don’t think it would make much of a difference. I disagree

I'm with you all the way as far as gender is concerned, but it's absurd to pretend that sex differences don't exist.

Maybe if everyone stopped banging on about how men and women are profoundly different

We are different though.

Maybe if everyone stopped banging on about how men and women are profoundly different, stopped declaring babies’ sex before they’re even born so they can buy them the socially expected clothing and gifts, stopped unnecessarily dividing up children in primary school into boys’ and girls’ teams, changing rooms etc, then we would see how that changes things. You clearly don’t think it would make much of a difference. I disagree

But we are profoundly different - that isn’t a bad thing - just a fact.

Removing ‘socially expected’ clothing or ‘girl’ ‘boy’ labels will make absolutely zero difference to that situation. Everyone will still know who the females are when they want babies grown or to not employ them be a they might get pregnant or pay them less.

Taking away the means of identifying us a group with a broadly common set of needs just makes it harder for us to advocate for ourselves.