Are women discriminated against due to their biology?

So desperate to be inclusive that she's gone full weapons grade batshit.

But it's not really "out there" at the moment, is it? It's the prevailing view.

Either you think women are a distinct sex class that sometimes need to be treated like so - with protections and things made to accommodate or even, God forbid, prioritise this biological difference from 'default male' where necessary -

• or you don't, and 'women' is anyone who says they identify as feminine, female, or whatever definition that person chooses to use, regardless of biology.

The second view is very popular and many people in power claim to believe it. The first has had people fired for believing it. The two can't overlap. You can't think 'woman' is both a sex class and an identity because those can be in conflict.

You can think that for some situations we treat people who identify as women as biological women, and for some - where appropriate - we don't, but even that is deemed transphobic.

The debate gets twisted, turned, constantly brought round to 'toilets' and chromosome disorders, but this is what it is, to me.

I also suspect KB will soon fall foul of the though police for putting forward a theory of gender oppression that doesn't include non passing and non transitioned transpeople. How does her theory that women are discriminated against on the basis of perceived sex marry up with the insistence that someone like Alex Drummond also experiences misogyny? She'll be driven out by her own side soon enough.

Yep. She's too stupid to see this.

She's lost the plot. So desperate to be inclusive that she's gone full weapons grade batshit.

I also had the pregnancy question at a job interview with some utter dinosaur where the establishment was less than clean (which was important) and the accounting ledger was still done in a big dusty book so I wasn't bothered about getting it anyway but besides the point.

But sure, that question was nothing to do with my biology, it's cause I wore a dress to the interview obviously! Should have worn a suit and tie, then my perceived gender would be male, and Mr Dinosaur employer would never have asked about pregnancy - I'm sure of it 🤦‍♀️

I was reading about the forced sterilisation of Uighur women earlier, I guess that's on the basis of perceived sex too?

And let's not forget that the forced sterilisation of black women used to be legal as well. I'm sure I've read that Planned Parenthood are more likely to set up clinics in black neighbourhoods as well, and that black women are more likely to be offered sterilisation. Conversely black women are less likely to be taking reversible user controlled contraception. Guess that's all based on perceived sex.

When we go to the hospital with heart attack symptoms that are non standard for males and don't get diagnosed correctly, I suppose that's all about our perceived sex?

And all those women who have been wearing ill fitting ppe all these years because they're designed for a male body?

Girls being married off as soon as they're old enough to menstruate?

Those areas in India where women are forced to have hysterectomies in order to work because they aren't allowed to have periods at work?

Basically everything in the book "invisible women"?

Seriously, does she even have a brain? I was able to come up with that list in 5 minutes off the top of my head.

Every example I've seen of people claiming discrimination happens on the basis of perceived sex its always things like street harassment, things like "they weren't cat calling my chromosomes". And whilst street harrasment clearly sucks its hardly the life or death deeply embedded structural discrimination that is based on actual sex. I've had homophobic abuse in the street for holding hands with my female friend, but that doesn't mean I'm actually a lesbian or that the LGBT movement should center my experiences. The idea that the experience of a person mistaken for belonging to an oppressed group should be taken more seriously that the experience of people actually belonging to that group is so mind blowingly stupid and offensive that it's hard to believe she isn't trolling tbh.

I also suspect KB will soon fall foul of the though police for putting forward a theory of gender oppression that doesn't include non passing and non transitioned transpeople. How does her theory that women are discriminated against on the basis of perceived sex marry up with the insistence that someone like Alex Drummond also experiences misogyny? She'll be driven out by her own side soon enough.

This - women's oppression due to biological sex - is the inescapable and underlying reason for so many of my political views. It would be amazing if it wasn't true and there was no power imbalance, no abuse, no discrimination, and if people from one of the two groups weren't killed at a rate of two a week by members of the other group.
I'd love it if that wasn't happening but I can't somehow... pretend... that it's not and that it's not important.

I think the only explanation for this level of foolishness is that she's desperately trying to bury yesterday's tweet and doesn't know that when you're in a hole you should stop digging.

twitter.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1375030663305367552

So I should get a mastectomy to avoid discrimination? Because that's the minimum surgery required if I am not to be perceived as female .

Bloody hell.

Most people who are female are perceived as such so what is she saying? It's our responsibility to try and change how we look so we are perceived as male? That as we don't do that then it's all our fault and we should put up and shut up?

Effectively, but I don't think she understands what she's saying herself.

She's drawing a false dichotomy. 99.9% of the time "actual sex" is the same as "perceived sex". Women and girls are discriminated against because of their actual sex as correctly perceived by the discriminator.

What is this weird fashion for acting as though it's really difficult to distinguish between the sexes? It's a basic skill that most toddlers have mastered.

I can't understand her original tweet here. She is saying discrimination happens on the basis of actual sex? It does, doesn't it? Which is why it's dangerous to obscure what 'actual sex' you are as that leads potentially to boards being balanced as they are 50% men and 50% transwomen.

Most people who are female are perceived as such so what is she saying? It's our responsibility to try and change how we look so we are perceived as male? That as we don't do that then it's all our fault and we should put up and shut up?

Its almost as though it would be good to have a trans inclusive sex category!

Yes! I'm not sure why she would think we would exclude a group of girls from legal protection?

There was another thread about this yesterday, which has screenshots of responses by Nimco Ali and Hibo Wardere to KB's tweets.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4201960-Kirsty-Blackman-SNP-on-diversity

I’ve really tried to follow the logic here. There is none.

From the screenshots, KB introduced the completely inappropriate term 'trafficking' into the question of FGM herself.

It's not a dissolvable category in the same way a socially constructed one is

Agree - and the pandemic showed this.

The situation changes, it impacts women and men differently, and we have to renegotiate. I think the most clear recent example is access to the MAP when Covid restrictions were introduced.

I’ve been trying to figure out what she thinks is happening since last night.

My best guess is that she either thinks that:

Girls who later turn out to be trans identified and therefore boys/men are being subject to FGM, and this is worse than girls having FGM, because in addition to having their clitorises cut off or their labia sewn up, they’ve been misgendered and boys should not be subjected to FGM because they’re boys and that’s transphobic.

OR

Trans identified boys, so transgirls who have been mistaken for girls have been subject to attempted FGM, only for it to have been thwarted when there turns out to be no clitoris to cut off or vulva to sew shut, and this is bad because, as no FGM occurred, on account of there being no FG to M, the perpetrators aren’t being punished properly.

Additional punishments should be put in place for the trafficking element that doesn’t exist, because trafficking is wrong.

I’ve really tried to follow the logic here. There is none.

I think the most worrying thing about this tweet is that Kirsty Blackman is an elected MP, but doesn't understand the concept of discrimination.

I would guess that most discrimination is not direct, and that a large amount isn't even intentional.

If a work place canteen only services pork sausages for lunch, their intention may just be to take advantage of a special offer on pork sausages, but they are still discriminating against people who can't eat pork because of their religion.

When an organisation (let's call it 'parliament' or 'Kirsty Blackman's workplace'), doesn't allow for staff to go on maternity leave, it's probably because it hasn't occurred to them that maternity leave might be necessary, not because they hate women. However, they are still discriminating against women.

How can Kirsty Blackman have lived in the world, let alone been worked as an MP and not understand this?

That tweet really does demonstrate an incredibly high level of ignorance and lack of critical thinking. Not everyone is strong on reasoning, that's ok, but I do think inability in that area makes you unsuitable as a politician, given the amount of understanding of complex issues and decision making required in the role.

Yes, as a young working woman in the 80s. I remember being asked if I was planning a family or, after I had my first child, was I planning on having more children. Were men asked these questions at job interviews? I think everyone here knows the answer to that one.

Some women are deluded into thinking their biology hasn’t played a part in their lives. They think themselves superior to other women.

I had a smidge of this - motherhood opened my eyes.

It depends upon whether you regard bearing children a burden or a privilege!

Condemned?

That's an odd word to use.

How can women ever be equal when one half of humanity is condemned to bear the children of all humanity.

@SmokedDuck do you mean for equality there has to be a difference between men and women, because we are different so have to be acknowledged as different ? X

But as far as being disapproved of - I'd stand by that. Most people don't approve of sex discrimination at work, around things like getting fired over pregnancy. There's certainly a minority that doesn't give a shit, and there are employers who are self-serving, but generally it's almost an assumption by many that such things don't happen unless they've experienced it directly. That's because it is socially disapproved of, if people thought it was fine they wouldn't think that way.

The point being, it's a recognised problem, there are institutional efforts to control it and it could perhaps become more effective in that regard - some jurisdictions manage it better than others for whatever reason so it seems possible.

But there's never going to be a time when the nature of being female doesn't create a different set of needs for women compared to men. So even if employment laws were perfectly observed, there would be a need to consider women as women.

It's not a dissolvable category in the same way a socially constructed one is, there is no revolution that will make men and women the same in some Marxist explosion of classes. (Unless you are into transhumanism and artificial wombs and such but I think that's very much a niche perspective.)