Anti trans for asking not to conflate sex with gender?

Theflamingnerd

Thank you. I very much appreciate the kindness you and other posters have shown tonight.

DadJoke
“or annoying, except for people whose attachment to the belief that trans men aren't men gives them brain fog.“

Who are the people who are attached to the belief that trans men aren’t men?

This is an excerpt from a video by transwoman and youtuber Natalie Wynn, otherwise known as Contrapoints, discussing what transmen think of terms like "menstruator". Natalie describes it as dehumanising, too.

Now I've had a chance to recover my equilibrium after seeing such a distressing sneer, I am now feeling very confused that a man (who cannot experience menopause) thinks he is being inclusive by lecturing menopausal women on what language they should find acceptable during a workshop aimed at menopausal women, on behalf of other female people who don't like the term women.

There is something very distasteful here on two levels. Firstly, it is for a target group to say whether something is an appropriate term of address, and secondly, DadJoke has taken it upon himself to decide what transmen and female people identifying as non-binary want to be called.

Shouldn't we be asking them?

There is, in my experience, no clear consensus of preference for the type of term DadJoke advocates.

For example.

Person 1, he/him

Really need afab as a term to not be abandoned so I don't have to deal w people calling me a womb haver or menstrator in the context of reproductive healthcare/rights

Person 2

At this point I'd rather you just misgender me and call me a woman than call me a fucking "menstrator" or "uterus haver"

It's not inclusive imo, it's dehumanizing and reduces me down to what makes me dysphoric 🥴

Purgatory I hope you are ok, that was quite a bit of an insensitivity there. Particularly considering the discussion is all around language and inclusivity. Inclusion does of course apply to everyone, including the female ones. Perhaps a better understanding of intersectionality may help some posters?

I also agree wholly about lived experience, having learned a great deal about this from trans activism and how very important it is to respect this. How does it go - nothing about us without us? Those who have not ever menstruated, never will menstruate or are menopausing of course have their own very special and unique experiences, but obviously it would be unhelpful to go speaking over those who have in matters specific to them as a group.

I am still in shock that someone has come here and interrupted this helpful discussion about how to make sure that menopause workshops were reaching their target audience.

Someone without any lived experience of menopause decided to lecture us who are going through it. This person also used ableist language and made Purgatory feel unsafe.

And this poster had the audacity to claim that they were inclusive (within a topic about which they know nothing). And their supposedly inclusive language excluded the daughter of a woman posting here.

I really think that DadJoke needs to educate themselves in how not to exclude disabled people. They should be more kind. And listen to the lived experience of people around them.

But of course nobody pushing for 'inclusivity' really gives two fucks about women or their health or feelings. That's abundantly clear.

• and on a website called 'mumsnet'. Astonishing. It's almost like the more boundaries women put up the more some people want to test them.

As someone said so well on another thread - I couldn't care less what penis havers think about women's issues. Couldn't give a fuck. No lived experience and no experience of sexism due to being a woman means that your opinion just isn't relevant.

Men certainly don't have the right to tell women what words they should accept to describe their own bodily functions. That's really weird behaviour.

It's important when discussing siuch issues to use inclusive language

The only people that need to be included when talking about people who get the menopause are women.

It's not rocket science.

I see dad joke hasn’t been off to pistonheads to lecture them about being kind & inclusive then - colour me shocked

The opinion dadjoke is expressing isn’t just irrelevant, it’s actively harmful. I agree, Sophoclesthe fox.

A workshop for men regarding prostate cancer would never experience this, never in a million fucking years. No way would men who have prostate cancer be referred to as people who have prostate cancer, or be harangued that women get prostate cancer too. No way would information and literature around prostate cancer tie itself up in knots resulting in the exclusion of the very people who require that information.

Menopause only happens to women. Women are the only humans on the planet who have the biology for menopause.

Doubletoilandtrouble

Thank you for your kind words. I very much appreciate it. MN was the first forum on which I ever dared admit I was autistic, after years of using the internet, because it had such a suppoetive culture. I hope we're not going to lose that.

People who experience menopause is exclusionary for my daughter with learning difficulties. She would understand that menopause is something she will experience if it's described as something women do, as she knows she is a woman. She wouldn't understand it includes her if you said people. It would confuse her and she doesn't have the language skills to question it.

Yet again, for what seems like the millionth time, why is it ok to exclude her?

The opinion dadjoke is expressing isn’t just irrelevant, it’s actively harmful.

I bet these workshops are run by volunteers off the side of their desks, eg not their core duties.

I bet there are a number of women here who will volunteer or be asked at their jobs to do similar.

What do you suppose those women will do if they perceive that anything targeted towards women, such as a menopause workshop will inevitably turn into an identity politics shitshow?

They just won’t run them.

Nobody will get a workshop. And trying to get the language right from the start is doomed to failure, because it’s never enough. The physical fact is, this workshop is only for issues related to female biology, which is under great pressure to be unspeakable again.

Slow fucking handclap. Menopause gets shoved back into the shadows. Achievement unlocked.

but because I agree with this example of inclusive language and do not agree with the gender critical position

Frankly, DadJoke, I don't care whether you agree or not, this is not about you or anything to do with you, your opinion is irrelevant.

Oh Purgatory, I am so sorry that DadJoke has made you feel unsafe. I cannot believe that anyone who claims to be inclusive would use such outdated and ableist language.

DadJoke, I think you need to apologise to purgatory, this really isn’t on. I also am a bit confused. I thought you also might be going through menopause and were trying to help us to make these sessions more suitable for the target audience.

It appears that you may be talking about a topic where you have no lived experience and I find that deeply insensitive. You talk about inclusion but without the lived experience of this issue you are actually coming across as quite offensive.

I think you should try to educate yourself and listed to us who are telling you our feelings around this.

No Purgatory. It is as derisive as you should expect it is .

Women who disagree with being dehumanised, yet again, after decades of being told that our health issues don't count and that every other woman deals with it, why can't you, are being told we are having 'meltdowns' about being dehumanised.

Why should we accept being dehumanised and called 'people with' body parts and functions? Because some females and males have disassociated from their sex and therefore, their needs have been judged to be more important.

So instead of saying 'women, and', because SOME males feel it is too clumsy, women should be dehumanised and the words 'people who x body part or function' which is actually just as much as a mouthful. Because THEY think it is more inclusive.

The complete lack of awareness of the shame and the degree of discrimination that has meant that these events even have to take place in the first instance is very apparent.

I initially thought that that had been accidental, but now I fear not.

the assigning to me of views about the menopause

like the view that it's useful to weaponise "brain fog" against women you disagree with politically?