Second/third wave feminists argued against a biological definition of womanhood??

I was a second wave feminist, active in the late 60s and the 70s. I can't speak for every second-waver but in my circle we were very clear that we were denied equal pay, the ability to get a loan or a mortgage, without male guarantors, the discrimination against younger married women because we were women, access to certain jobs etc. because of biology. The social/cultural discrimination followed on from the biological facts. So it was a double whammy - discriminated against because of biology compounded by discrimination because of prevailing social norms.

will read the article later but i agree with this. I would add that as well as not wanting to be limited by our biology, we wanted gender stereotypes to do one. Hence we were all hairy legged dungaree wearing, doc marten be-booted harpies.

Most of the article is factually wrong, misguided and confused. I can’t bring myself to explain all her errors but suffice to say that we never thought in the 1970s and 1980s that we needed to define what a woman was because everyone bloody knew. And we were fighting against the stigmas, oppression, lack of choice, lack of recognition of our adult autonomy etc etc all caused because everyone knew what a woman was and it suited society to keep us downtrodden, underpaid, dependent on male goodwill.

that article is a load of tosh.

That article is a huge missed opportunity. I think the way Aniston has been treated is very illuminating from a feminist perspective, but the author makes it about trans rights. Odd direction to go in.

This
The position that "feminists used to be against biological reductionism" is a misinterpretation by TRAs.
Feminists are against the idea that having a vagina predetermines what you can do with your life. Always have been, always will be.

Just rubbish. I cant imagine how anyone, even the Guardian employs Zoe Williams as a contributor. Most of her stuff is just meaningless. Makes you wonder the reality of her world. But I suppose a useful tool for the paper.

How did women all know who they were to fight for their rights then?

I was a second wave feminist, active in the late 60s and the 70s. I can't speak for every second-waver but in my circle we were very clear that we were denied equal pay, the ability to get a loan or a mortgage, without male guarantors, the discrimination against younger married women because we were women, access to certain jobs etc. because of biology. The social/cultural discrimination followed on from the biological facts. So it was a double whammy - discriminated against because of biology compounded by discrimination because of prevailing social norms.

Biological denialism isn't sexy.

I think some women are limited by their biology, not in mental ability, but physically. I am incapacitated for at least one day every month with pain. No endometriosis or fibroids or anything like that. I am just bloody unlucky (if the dreadful pun can be excused). Some women sail through their periods and are able to ignore them. And I still feel that to prove our capacity, we must pretend that periods do not exist. I don't know what we do about acknowledging physical limitations as a result of biology without letting it impact on views of our mental ability. Bit of a ramble there, sorry.

“Womanhood completed by fertility, meaningless without it, was a peculiar creed in the late 90s;”

This bit is bollox, women were (and still are) avoiding motherhood like never before. After a mild jump in the very early 90s, the birth rate was down (and age at first birth was on the rise) in the late 90s. There was another minor blip a few years into the 2000s, but childbirth has been basically been declining for a century, and it hasn’t signaled “womanhood” in a culturally significant way for many decades. I think Zoe may be confusing her clique of friends for society as a whole.

I always think of these female-empowerment films in the 90s, maybe the late 80s even, which had women compete against men and win in sports or similar settings. Girlfight or GI Jane being examples.

I suspect that those examples are much more influenced by liberal or "choice" feminisms, than 2nd wave Women's Lib-style feminisms.

There have ALWAYS been divisions & differences in the women's movement. I can remember, as a teenaged women's libber in the late 1970s, the divisions between socialist feminists and lesbian separatists, for example.

I think we gloss over them, because we need to be united against the common "enemy" - and any division is an excuse for misogynists & anti-feminists to point at us, and say "See, even the women don't know what they want!"

This is also, I suspect, why that kind of feminism largely failed to deal with motherhood.

It's a corrupted interpretation of the "biology is not destiny" argument as far as I can tell, which, as I understand it, means being a woman is a biological fact but that should not limit our choices in life.

What I would say, though, is that if you take that conclusion as stated - that biology should not limit our choices in life - you have to give up biology in the end. Because it doesn't matter whether you believe that to be true ideologically, biology always has it's say.

I always think of these female-empowerment films in the 90s, maybe the late 80s even, which had women compete against men and win in sports or similar settings. Girlfight or GI Jane being examples. That's the starting place - we should not be limited by biology. And what you end up with is something that is simply departed from reality.

I think it probably does, if we want to understand how we got where we are today, in terms of the intellectual/political landscape.

It's a corrupted interpretation of the "biology is not destiny" argument as far as I can tell, which, as I understand it, means being a woman is a biological fact but that should not limit our choices in life.

Yes, yes, yes! Thanks for putting it so neatly @FOJN

It's a much longer history & theoretical argument than I can go into here, but in 2nd wave feminisms, [I stress the plural] there WAS a move away from - or perhaps CAUTION - about insisting on sexual difference, in terms of biological essentialism.

This was because women's biology - sexual difference - has been used against us for thousands and thousands of years. Particularly menstruation (a source of fear amongst many men, and patriarchy) and childbirth. I am old enough to remember "Oh women can't do X, because they'll only go & get pregnant" & so on & on & on. In the 19th century, education was thought to be harmful to girls & young women, because we menstruate.

So it is totally logical that in campaigning & pushing for ALL the things we take for granted now - basically, equal treatment in all sorts of public institutions - some areas of feminisms of the 1960s and 70s elided or deliberately overlooked sexual difference.

That doesn't mean we didn't recognise it! We knew only too well who was being raped, who was being denied jobs because "there are no suitable toilets" , who got sacked when they got pregnant. And so on.

If you feel like writing a letter in, the more GC ones seem to get printed in the Saturday paper. Just sayin’

It feels like this is all wrapped up in the idea that being a woman is some kind of hindrance that we should try and minimise and deny if we want full human rights.

Treating pregnant women, menopausal women, menstruating women as disposable, repulsive and to be hidden away is age old.

I can't bear to read it. I can't understand how it is possible for someone with her education to be that stupid. JacquelinePot above puts it beautifully and succinctly:

"Sex is defined by biology, but we should not be limited by it."

That is all that needs to be said on the matter.

It's a corrupted interpretation of the "biology is not destiny" argument as far as I can tell, which, as I understand it, means being a woman is a biological fact but that should not limit our choices in life.

Supporters of anti women activism always seem to weaponise "biology is not destiny" to lend weight to claims humans can change sex or to imply feminists who think you can't are hypocritical.

Its just more of bending the real meaning of something to fit their delusional agenda.

No the argument was that being a biological woman didn't automatically mean engagement, marriage, kids, grandkids, death.

There were so many other things out there to do.

There are a few second-wave feminists who do: Shulamith Firestone, for example. But it’s very much a minority of the second-wave, and more complicated than Zoe Williams suggests.

Methinks Zoe (who has jumped the shark a long time ago now), is just recycling the usual TRA nonsense about past feminist movements. Most of them just make it up as they go along.

Not sure which age group of women are second and third-wave feminists, but I am 74 and have never heard that 20c feminists ever 'used to argue against a biological definition of womanhood'. This is a 21c argument. Most of our time was spent arguing for equality with men e.g. wages for doing the same job. We all know that a woman is an adult female human being, right?

Additionally, Greer has been asserting for a very long time that sex is immutable and therefore that womanhood's definition must be biological. I know this because I first had an argument with someone about it over a decade ago, back when we could still talk about such things openly.

I'm not expert enough to give specific quotes on this.

I believe that it's actually the direct opposite of ZW's comment though.

I do know that it was pretty much the whole point of feminism of all types to say that you were still a woman whether or not you had children, had sex with men, had sex with women, had sex with nobody: because you had a female body. That what you did with your female body did not make you 'really a bloke', 'manly', 'a failed woman'. And that this rose out of the massive wave of 1940s popular Freudianism in the USA, translated into the Ladies Home Journal etc, that did LITERALLY say that you were a failed and inadequate woman if you didn't get married to a man, have regular vaginal orgasms due to having a penis inside you, and have kids. Lots of them.

Half the trouble with these pieces is that we don't even remember what used to be quite seriously argued about women. But I can recognise the misogyny of believing a female body is irrelevant to 'womanhood' (i loathe that term).