The TWAW debate for beginners

Sugarintheplum maybe the title of the thread could be updated to make it clear you are seeking answers from those who believe in the TWAW idea as well? I don't know how many of them frequent this board, but it might not be obvious from the thread title that they might be interested in engaging with the discussion.

As I say, I don't fully understand it. But of course, our womanhood never seems to mean as much, so for example the Zambrano Women

I'm curious OP re whether there are two things happening here? One is about womanhood and this intersects with black (and skin colours other than white) people in many different parts of the world, mainly the global south and in colonised nations, not being seen as fully human (?). Hence, they could be tortured, worked to death, were considered not to feel pain, and family ties were not considered important (i.e. they were not seen to feel the same emotion re having children removed and so on). What happened and continues to happen to black women is a subset of this (maybe)?

I believe it's more moral cowardice rather than an ardent belief of TWAW.

I think this is generally true for most who go along with it. It's always awkward to say "no" to an individual.

And a hell of a lot harder when society or peers won't support you in the "no".

But, on the positive side, this TWAW stuff (and Woke stuff more generally) turns out to be an excellent way of assessing someone's character. You find people who you thought were trustworthy actually are made of jelly, and you find individuals who have hitherto been unremarkable turning out to have spines of steel.

Shut up and fuck off.

Well said :) Everyone - go back and read NiceGerbil's post. It's better than my long one.

I think there is some sort of historical baggage specifically in the US about feminism? Their first-wave early 20th-century feminists are somehow associated with racism in a concrete way?

I think that's where the "white feminism" thing comes from - to UK ears it sounds totally random, and to non-Western ears it must be totally idiotic - but it's possibly meaningful within specifically US history.

But to claim that this history is in some way universal, and to weaponise it against women now fighting for women worldwide?

"Our US forebears didn't properly acknowledge some women, so now we're going to use that to justify not acknowledging women's existence at all. And we're going to try to impose that 'logic' on the rest of the world."

Fuck the fuck off and fuck off some more when you get there.

I know a woman who whilst agreeing it was dangerous for women and girls to let males (however they identify) into womens spaces, she argued we should because its kind. When asked to justify that, the ol chestnut I dont know enough/I'm not that bothered about it/I know someone who is queer and he wouldn't hurt me. This is a supposedly intelligent woman with a msc. I pretty much lost all respect for her. I dont think anything would change her mindset although I believe it's more moral cowardice rather than an ardent belief of TWAW.

On intersectionality. It is not really just a 'thing' - your post sounds dismissive to me. I might be wrong. But can you tell me more about how it is used to advance the campaign for TWAW?

Yes, I could feel I was being dismissive as I wrote that, but my charity has been depleted somewhat over the last few years.

I'm dismissive of it because while a I can see why it is a valid viewpoint to think about as one part of an academic framework, when it hits the real world, it goes bad, like post-modernism does. It's like a virus escaping the lab.

When you get down to it, it boils down to one of two things:

a) applied correctly, it's just saying "someone can be more than one thing at once", which doesn't seem like a very deep concept;
b) applied incorrectly - as it seems to be a lot now - it's "count how many things apply to you, add them up/net them off, and compare totals". So you've just gone back to a single axis. And then you decide to consciously treat people worse/better based on the total.

So it's either not that deep, or it leads to dumb thinking and bad behaviour. The upside does not outweigh the downside. And people tend towards (b) just because (a) is so obvious - it's an attempt to "make more of it".

But that wasn't really my point - my real point was that no matter how much you value the concept, it makes no sense for "sex" to not be the one of the most significant axes.

The only other axis I can think of as underplayed is "wealth" (or "family wealth"), which is generally even more important than "sex" for most purposes.

And even if, as some point out, and it's true, that "perceived sex" (or race, or whatever) is what matters, rather than "actual sex", then, still, neither "gender identity" nor "gender presentation" are "perceived sex". Very few trans people are truly perceived as the opposite sex - especially males. Females can pass more due to the effects of testosterone - it's not symmetrical.

But now you just can't say to someone "no, you clearly aren't being treated like a woman, because everyone can tell you're male, and everyone is walking on eggshells around you - so no way are you in the same position on the 'gender' axis".

You have to pretend they're treated like women. (And the fact that you expected to pretend for them is an example of how they're not treated like women. It's paradoxical.)

Sometimes this is almost comical - it's been repeatedly observed how James O'Brian (UK radio host) speaks very brusquely and dismissively to real women callers and yet fawns over transwomen callers...

A realistic set of intersectionality axes up would certainly incorporate being gender non-conforming into a transwoman's "male+straight". GNC people - males in particular - are looked at a little askance.

But I believe the current view is that they're the most oppressed ever - even more than women - by flipping the "male+straight" to "female+lesbian" and adding the "trans". But that doesn't match societal or biological reality. You're feeding the wrong inputs into the algorithm.

GNCcentric and others have talked about how various LGBTQ communities use this to basically shit on transmen - telling them to "know their place" because of their male privilege and defer to transwomen. So now you're at a double whammy - doing the bad thing of deliberately mistreating people via "intersectionality (b)" but with incorrect totals on top, so your mistreating the wrong people.

'I would suggest it means parts of feminism has historically excluded women of colour. It has focused on white women and their fight for, white women. So when we say ‘woman’, we mean white woman - or that we think of white woman.

(When I say we, I just mean society as a whole)

Therefore a degree of breaking the word down, to expand it outside of the white experience is welcome.'

You've not heard of feminist activism around the world? I don't get the comment above.

Before the word feminist was coined there have been women who kicked against their role, fought for girls and women, took massive risks to do so.

When was the word coined? Not sure. But the ideas. The approach. The refusal to submit. There have been women like that forever. All over the world.

The idea that the word women meant anything other than white women in the USA /West? What now?

Woman = adult human female

Women all over the globe. From Russia to China to Iran to South Africa to Iceland to Rwanda have said NO. Women through history have said NO.

WOMEN. Not one skin colour or religion or virginity level or social class or caste or... Anything. Every country in every world for all time will have had a word for woman. Male and female are the most basic things there are, in humans and most other mammals.

Who exactly historically excluded women who weren't white from the word? In the sense that is being talked about so much at they moment?

It's about the USA and their history.
The USA is not the whole world. Or the whole of history.

The way to address the appalling treatment of black women in the USA is NOT to say the word is obsolete, or a costume that a man can don.

The way I'd have thought. Is to say. We are women and women globally and historically for as long as anyone can remember have been and continue to be oppressed. So fuck off. You don't get to say who is what. We're not submitting. You racist bastards said we were not women. In this country in this small piece of time. In fact for women in all countries through time and now who are treated as less than. Less than human. Less than men. Less in a hierarchy built to meet what men wanted.

No. Women are a thing. Everyone knows what one is. All over the world. All through history. You do not get to divide us. We know who we are.

And if that's too long.

Shut up and fuck off.

On intersectionality. It is not really just a 'thing' - your post sounds dismissive to me. I might be wrong.

I think you have misunderstood the point being made by the pp.

Yet in this one, solitary case, they work against that idea.

They're trying to insist that the axis of "sex" does not exist, or at least must not be acknowledged. They would deny that male "women" would have any different experiences from female "women". Or that male "nonbinaries" would have any different experiences from female "nonbinaries".

Where is your "intersectionality" now? How is this coherent?

I agree, and have been raising this for a while. Pretending biological sex isn't a valid axis of oppression is about as unintersectional as you can get.

pleas also direct me to where I can be exposed to the most compelling arguments from the other side of the debate!

Yes, if anyone finds some compelling arguments, please direct me there, also. I have looked ...

What about the women and feminism around the world?

This conversation is incredibly Western (and USA at that) centric.

So when we say ‘woman’, we mean white woman - or that we think of white woman.

Right, but none of that makes any sense, because none of it was about "womanhood". It was about "personhood". (And even then, it's a very US-culturally specific view?)

In that environment black X's were excluded from a group of X's for many values of X, but X was not relevant.

You no more need to redefine "woman" by substituting for X than you do "academic", "president", "atheist", "athlete", "vegan", ...

"I would suggest it means parts of veganism has historically excluded vegans of colour. It has focused on white vegans and their fight for, white vegans. So when we say ‘vegan’, we mean white vegan - or that we think of white vegan"

"Therefore a degree of breaking the word down, to expand it outside of the white experience is welcome."

"So we should accept that meat-eaters can be vegans too?".

Um... No, black non-meat eaters can be vegans too. But they still have to actually not eat meat. And black women can be women too. But they still have to actually be female.

@2020iscancelled

That makes sense if you say that historically perhaps feminism as a movement has focused more on white women's rights than black women's rights, if that is indeed true.

But saying that the category "women" needs some rethinking and widening to include previously excluded back women seems to me to be a strange thing to say. A woman is simply a woman. But then, I despise all forms of intersectionality and identity politics. Seems to me to play right into the hands of those who are trying to complicate the term "woman".

(When I say we, I just mean society as a whole)

Therefore a degree of breaking the word down, to expand it outside of the white experience is welcome.

But I am not black, this is purely from discussion I’ve heard and read.

They then have further issues springing from their race (insert any other social marker here).

That's the thing that sticks out for me - this "intersectionality" thing has some truth to it, and we are dealing with people who are extremely invested in the concept, and will - gleefully, almost - try to find new axes for their intersectional issues. Possibly to an unhelpful degree.

Yet in this one, solitary case, they work against that idea.

They're trying to insist that the axis of "sex" does not exist, or at least must not be acknowledged. They would deny that male "women" would have any different experiences from female "women". Or that male "nonbinaries" would have any different experiences from female "nonbinaries".

Where is your "intersectionality" now? How is this coherent?

Is sex just "too big" for this intersectionality? Can it only handle "socially constructed" squishy things like race, not actual real biological differences with hard boundaries?

You said it yourself there - "social marker".

I think about that a lot - a lot of social-justice activism seems to be based on the insistence that everyone is the same, and all "axes" are social artefacts. Groups actually being different is verboten. (Yet group boundaries are super significant? ) You might see group differences, but they must all be society's fault, as a faith position. But it's impossible to deny sex differences, if you acknowledge sex -- so they try to hide those differences by denying sex. Don't know if that makes sense...

My black friends do say that the category women could do with some disruption and dismantling given black women were and are often excluded from it.

What does this mean? Or what are they attempting to mean?

Thanks for the motte and bailey metaphor. Useful, and accurate.

Yes, absolutely agree, in everyday language and in life people are constantly mixing the two terms up. It isn't feasible to divorce sex and gender - just I think this is what the gender ideology is trying to do.

If we could carefully explain to everybody in the world the distinction between gender and sex, it could in theory work. My 11 year old son seems to grasp it quite clearly.

In practise, though, and in law (I believe this was discussed recently wrt Scots law, anyway) the two words are interchangeable,

and therefore one can't say TWAW without implying that TW are of the female sex, which is by definition incorrect.

I want to understand how anybody can chant this mantra with conviction, is all, and I think this is how - gender ideologists are running along on the 4th dictionary level of meaning, and using arguments that refer to that level of meaning, but also quietly in the background applying this definition to the 1st dictionary definition.

ArabellaScott - I think I understood your meaning, but it's just you

It might work in an acadmic text.

Well, yes, in an academic discussion you can work at the 2nd/3rd layer of meaning and do all that stuff.

But is it the sort of thing that makes sense to be taught at primary school level to children who still don't have a firm grasp of material reality?

Or can you trust the police to make sensible decisions after hearing about it on a training course?

I could certainly concede that "transwomen are women" in some sort of meaning of "women" four dictionary entries down from the primary meaning. But clearly activists and campaigners clearly aren't aiming at that - they're aiming at the primary meaning, including in legislation. People who go along not realising this are falling for a motte-and-bailey. Having realised that, I'm now implacable, and cannot concede on "TWAW".

This isn't just fun and games. Human females are a clearly defined group that need a word - the word "woman" is taken. Sure, you can use "woman" for some other metaphorical purposes in some circumstances, but the primary meaning has to remain "human female" so they have a word.

And in reverse, when "human female" is the primary meaning you intend, eg in this ongoing maternity legislation, you must use "woman" or you're conceding the word in it's primary meaning. If you wouldn't use it then, when would you?

(I think I didn't initially see the importance of making a fuss about that bill, but I grasp it intellectually now, even if I struggle to feel that passionately about it.)

Although!

If we are using 'woman' as purely a term referring to 'gender', the idea of 'woman' - as described by Greer in the Female Eunuch about a hundred million years ago - then TWAW works. But it has to be entirely divorced from and unconnected to biological sex. Which in the real world, it never is.

Because people can opt out of the 'gender' of women, but women can never opt out of the biological realities of being female.

I think that this is what Butler was trying to do, isn't it? Sever any ties between gender and sex.

It might work in an acadmic text. Possibly in a Twitter anime avatar. It doesn't really work in the real world.