Anti trans for asking not to conflate sex with gender?

I automatically make the judgement that woke men who tell women what to think and what language to use about their own experiences, are having a laugh at our expense. Because I cannot see how someone who was genuinely respectful of marginalised groups' right to a voice could do this.

I'm afraid I don't see these men as genuinely concerned about social justice and amplifying the needs of people with less power.

I used the words brain fog in response to a poster who used brain fog.

How dare you use language specifically about incredibly distressing and debilitating female menopause symptoms to handwave away women you don't agree with?

It's easier than saying "some women and trans men" every single time.

Then let's just say "women". Nothing is ever good enough.

That is not what patriarchy is, although there may of course also be groups of plotting men here and there. Patriarchy is the men coming into FWR with a sense of entitlement to dictate to us how we should speak, what we should think, and how we ought to behave towards others.

FWR is still holding out, which is what functions as a red flag to some men. It is an abomination to them that there should be any pockets of womanhood that does not bow to their superiority.

Yes, this exactly.

Is that like the bloke that was trying to explain to women that they shouldn't need additional facilities when they had their periods, they should just keep it in until they got home?

Fun times.

I’m not 100% sold that all sex role stereotypes are purely conditioned by socialisation- spend any time around a stud farm and see the staggering difference between stallions and geldings and it’s obvious testosterone has some impact on some behaviours associated with males, I don’t believe this magically isn’t the case with humans- but boys dominating discussions and mansplaining I think it’s not nature or nurture but socialisation of sex role stereotypes (socialisation of gender).

Why do men feel the need to mansplain and assume women need them to do this. What makes them like this. Is it nature? Born to dominate and explain even if they know nothing about a topic. Or is it how they're brought up.
I have even observed very young male, (children) doing this, I just wonder what exactly it is that makes them behave in this manner.

It's quite striking, isn't it?

Not a murmur about the recent campaign on prostate cancer aimed squarely and unequivocally at men.

No male politician has been hounded relentlessly for liking a tweet saying only men have a prostate.

No male politician has had to say on a radio show that men do have a penis, Nick.

Men are referred to as men, biological things that only impact them accommodate only them, there is no and or people who used in anything to do with men's health issues.

Why would that be?

Why should we be trying so hard to be inclusive to a group of people who have chosen to exclude themselves?

Using terms such as 'women and transmen' is pandering to the idea that women who reject womanhood are special individuals who can be both included and excluded from the class of people formerly known as women according to what suits them best in different circumstances.

This is to pacify males, transmen are little more than a smokescreen to hide it behind.

I'm just thinking this through the other way round. There doesn't seem to be a requirement for men to change their language in order to accommodate transwomen. I haven't seen anything anyway. Yet there are things that only impact on biological males. Prostate cancer springs to mind. How is this approached in order to, for want of a better word, include transwomen?

I have not seen any mandate that women just accept being addressed in a way which they find objectionable. Any individual woman (who wants to be) must be addressed as a woman.

I am an individual woman. I can tell you that there is no way whatsoever a way can be found that complies with gender ideology which is not offensive to me as long as the ideology itself rejects any recognition of female people as a single contiguous group.

This ideology insists that in every circumstance, even female biology, the diversity of gender identity is prioritised above the singularity of the sex class, and in doing so obscures the reality of sex-based disadvantage and oppression.

So the second someone includes me in any construction of the type “women and…” or “people who…” I am being addressed in a way I find objectionable, because it tells me the person using the word Woman does not mean it as a simple fact of body, but as a genderist concept of mind.

Genderist so-called “inclusive” language actually encodes the belief that womanhood, the reason that half of humanity suffers sex-based oppression and disempowerment to a greater or lesser extent, is simply a state of mind and I utterly reject that. It denies the real challenges female people deal with and reasserts the outmoded and damaging belief that women’s mind are innately suited to different things than different to men’s.

I am happy to accept gender states of mind as a separate and co-existing human attribute that allows for a different classification to sex, but cannot accept it as a wholesale replacement for sex classification in every circumstance.

I don't think this is a good example to focus on if you are painting the problem as male persons requiring female persons to accommodate their demands, because this is about female persons (transmen) being accommodated and not feeling excluded.

No, it's really not. If you dig down into it and read around it then you rapidly find that TM are used as the most justifiable shield and excuse. However this 'people' and 'menstruators' and 'cervix havers' and other dehumanising stuff for women comes with the comment earlier about 'ok, you may say some women'. It's about the need to separate the word 'woman' from 'female biology' and it is male born people who drive this and wish to benefit from it.

It is this need of male people to make 'woman' something that someone of either sex can be, with no links to biology, that is causing female born humans such major issues. And it is why this cannot be allowed. It's also why I tend to use the word 'female' a lot on these boards. The word 'woman' is now interpreted by some as 'someone of either sex'. Which is not helpful when seeking to deal with sex based needs and disadvantages for female humans, without tripping over male needs which others wish you to put first.

Hence this kind of discussion all over a women's rights forum which really shouldn't have to be preoccupied with untangling male people's needs in order to be able to (or frequently allowed to) see and meet the sex based inequalities and issues. Such as menopause. Which is not about the issues faced, the medical care, the challenges and symptoms and barriers female people often encounter in the workplace with their reproductive system etc etc - but first and foremost are they using language to talk about it that does not offend male people ?

Sex based issues. Wholly sex based.

That is an interesting point shedmistress. So transmen do have very different needs around this, and would require a completely different approach anyway. So removing the word woman isn't going to benefit women or transmen.

I doubt it! Has someone somewhere done a survey? It would be interesting to know. In many ways (assuming none of us is trans) we are making the mistake referred to earlier of projecting our assumptions onto a group we are not part of.

Tranen are likely to go through early onset menopause by about 30 years, and suffer from osteoporosis, vaginal atrophy and other quite serious complaints, and if you wait til they get to middle age before inviting them to an inclusive workshop, you will be far too late.

They are two distinctly different issues. And two distinctly different workshops.

I don't think this is a good example to focus on if you are painting the problem as male persons requiring female persons to accommodate their demands, because this is about female persons (transmen) being accommodated and not feeling excluded.

Yet transmen deliberately leave womanhood behind. Or at least try to. I don't think it's reasonable to turn your back on womanhood and exclude yourself from it, whilst at the same time expect the language that women use to then be changed to include transmen.

Something I've never been quite clear about - in the new transmen-are-men terminology, is it acceptable to say that transmen are female?

Do you mean, is it acceptable to say a biological truth. Transmen may identify as male. That's their identity. But their biology is female. That's a fact. And menopause isn't about identity. It's about biological fact

Do you think transwomen want to be addressed as “penis people with erectile dysfunction”?

Do you think transmen want to be specifically included in menopause materials? As in transmen who will go through menopause?

I doubt it! Has someone somewhere done a survey? It would be interesting to know. In many ways (assuming none of us is trans) we are making the mistake referred to earlier of projecting our assumptions onto a group we are not part of.

Sorry, this is very interesting, but I must go!

Hello @PurgatoryOfPotholes

All legitimate interesting points.

Sorry, I need to disengage for a while. But two thoughts.

Firstly, at he heart of all this of course is whether you accept that transmen are men. And really if you reject that (and we all know the arguments, and I can absolutely see why you might) then everything else falls away: the session is for women, and transmen need to accept that (would be the argument).

Secondly, maybe we are on different threads! I have not seen any mandate that women just accept being addressed in a way which they find objectionable. Any individual woman (who wants to be) must be addressed as a woman. This is not about how to address any individual. This is about how to label the session. If you go to a workshop for people who have diabetes you won't be addressed as "person with diabetes".

But Muriel, many transmen don’t want to be “people who go through menopause”. Transmen don’t want to be reduced to their body parts either.

I think this is about males trying to show women and transmen what they think is the best solution- and ignoring both women and transmen in the process.

Do you think transwomen want to be addressed as “penis people with erectile dysfunction”?

Do you think transmen want to be specifically included in menopause materials? As in transmen who will go through menopause? I don’t particularly think transwomen want viagra adverts everywhere with “pink pill for erectile dysfunction in women with lady penises” but I could of course be wrong.

I think we should stick with women for women and do a few surveys about how transmen would like to be included in the targeting of menopause workshops.

And males trying to get their 10 cents in can get lost.

I’m all ears to find out what the non female menopause is…..

The thing is as Helen Joyce said, there can’t be a compromise on any of this. We have to win

We were nice & kind & accommodating at first and look where it’s got us? Biological men in Women’s outdone, sports and refuges, a biological man running a rape crisis service and saying that women who have been raped will need to learn to cope with TW in their services, programmes designed to correct the under representation of women in politics and STEM being open to men who identify as women and the leader of the fucking opposition saying live on TV that it’s wrong to say only women have cervixes

So no, no more, no compromising, not now, not ever. Only adult human females are women, the word women have a taken

No thank you

Muriel

But what you're describing is a long way removed from someone saying that they're being told they can't callthemselvesa woman. There is a danger that legitimate grievances get discredited if manufactured ones get thrown into the mix. It sounds a bit like the more "enthusiastic" wing of Daily Express readers claiming that they're not allowed to call themselves English any more due to "political correctness gone mad", or whatever

I feel like we're on a different thread.

The OP was at a menopause workshop, where there was an argument over what to call women.

I'm going to be very blunt here: when I do not like how other people are addressing me, it is very much a legitimate grievance. If I might bring up the disability comparison again, I neither accept people using offensive terms about my disability to me or my children, and I pull people up quick smart when I hear them using such terms to anyone else disabled.

The debate over whether to use the word Christmas or to use a catch-all term for all the religious festivals that occur at the same time of year is absolutely not comparable to being rude to me or other women. And I really do find being referred to by biological functions rude.

And in this instance although I don't much like it either the description "people who menstruate" is
a) accurate (I'm guessing)
b) contains no words intrinsically offensive (partly because)
c) it's only being used in the context of a discussion about menstruation.

Reducing people to their biological functions is not a culturally neutral act, especially when done to women. Women have been described and treated for centuries as vessels, bleeders and so on. It is contemptuous.

And within the context of that discussion you are quite at liberty to describe yourself as a woman! But some other females might not use that description for themselves.

What they call themselves is immaterial. That is up to them. The issue at hand is what they call me to my face.

In a world where we are expected to abide by the 3rd-person pronoun preferences of people who are not there, I cannot understand why women are expected to tolerate offensive forms of address towards us.

Something I've never been quite clear about - in the new transmen-are-men terminology, is it acceptable to say that transmen are female? I'm not a big fan of using "male" and "female" as nouns (Martin Goodman, I'm looking at you), but a compromise could be a workshop for "females going through menopause".

Or so as not to make grammar pedants feel unsafe "workshop on the female menopause".

(Not expecting a warm welcome here But could this be the way our language could accommodate the brave new world?)