"What Is A Woman" by Richard Dawkins - in the the New Statesman!!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/28/jacqueline-rose-books-interview-motherhood

Interestingly, she tells us in here. Susan Stryker explained it to her.

I’m getting rather bored waiting for a persuasive well-evidenced argument FOR gender ideology, and am beginning to reluctantly conclude that there simply aren’t any.

So who is this Rose?
Cannot form a coherent argument at all, but is at the pinnacle of a profession?
Which profession? Paintball?

Dawkins is bang on the money, though a bit behind the times with his mention of «true transsexuals»

I've got the copy in front of me. I've read the Rose piece but not the Dawkins one yet. As PP have said, the Rose article is very poor, and many of the arguments (if you can call them that) were familiar from various bad-faith posts right here on MN! Nothing new, the same old, same old. If this is what 'clever' academics are coming up with...

I just don't even understand how someone could think this. I assume AC is just fibbing, but isn't it obviously a fib to everyone else?

This boggles me a little, they don't seem to realize they are arguing in a circle.

But it's common with critical theory types in my experience. Always assuming their approach is true when trying to argue it is true. Like, there seems to be no requirement for even basic logic in their arguments.

Oh ffs.

If this ridiculous bunch were capable of understanding and permitting that some women must have single sex spaces to be able to access, and would just let this happen alongside third spaces/additional spaces, this could all happen without anyone having to get really blunt about this being a space for the real women, because biology, because no one changes sex. We could just quietly do this and TW could be women all they wanted.

The more the pomo bollocks and fantasy, and the further this ridiculous stuff is pushed, the clearer and blunter everyone has to get. And it will end with everyone losing patience and saying right, fuck this, there are men and women and you use sex based spaces, end of.

You’ve really got to wonder how these people think babies are made

what a confusing world they live in where nothing means anything and you can’t tell what sex anyone is

I'd never heard of her. This is just ridiculous:

As the New York Magazine critic Andrea Long Chu has written in her book Females (2019), the biological category “female”, as it is understood today, was developed in the 19th century as a way of referring to black slaves.

Relax, everyone, there's bound to be a response in the next issue where the vexed question of "What is a Man?" is discussed.

There is limited point in wailing at women to care and mind about people who have no fucks to give about them. No. Not a doormat, not co dependent, not a misogynist, and not that bloody stupid.

Exactly. It's surprising these people haven't grasped that yet. Still, I suppose it's mostly tribal and performative.

Shame about the mention of Jan Morris as a 'true transsexual', when this article by Suki Morys shows that Morris was quite typical of the late transitioning male.

Yes, I doubt Dawks was aware of that.

I'm actually quite ok with 'viciously excluding male people' so that female people have equality of access, can use public spaces, join in public life, minor stuff like that which those male people would happily deny them to meet their own needs.

There is limited point in wailing at women to care and mind about people who have no fucks to give about them. No. Not a doormat, not co dependent, not a misogynist, and not that bloody stupid.

I was disappointed by the Jan Morris reference too. I don't really believe in the "true transsexual" idea any more but I suppose it takes a long time to shake off these entrenched ideas.

For those who don't know her, Jacqueline Rose is quite famous in her field. It depresses the hell out of me that someone who has reached the pinnacle of her profession can be so unutterably stupid.

Shame about the mention of Jan Morris as a 'true transsexual', when this article by Suki Morys shows that Morris was quite typical of the late transitioning male.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jan-morris-was-a-trans-pioneer-and-a-cruel-parent-9x82s5cg9

In fact I can see me posting it every time someone posts that Scientific American article the TRAs like so much.

I'm not the greatest fan of Dawkins, but it's an excellent article. Definitely one that can be shared with people not familiar with the debate.

...Dawkins actually understands and explains clownfish and DSDs, repurposes the phrase "fictive sex", alludes to "the new religion of transsexual transubstantiation", and references Shrier, Joyce and Stock.

Rose understands little, and throws in references to Chu to reflect her belief that the standpoint of a given member of the marginalised group must have precedence. The bizarre point she is keen to glean from Chu is that the notion of 'female' is racist. And demonising males is analogous to racism: the mindset that believes in safeguarding (ie separation of all biological males and females where the latter are vulnerable) is "characteristic of some of the most reactionary politics of our times", and "viciously excludes whole groups of people".

She hails "transitioning" as "one of the most imaginative leaps in modern society" without saying what the word means. Because, I guess, words do not have meaning.

Didn't even read that and knew that if it was Dawkins against anyone it would be Godzilla meets Bambi.

"This is why the suggestion that trans women are all potential abusers invading women-only spaces is so misguided and cruel.

This womenbekind bullshit is getting on my nerves.

even ‘what about transmen with uteruses’).

Which is idiotic. Yeah, they are women. I don't believe in your ideology, that's the point. I've had genderists honestly say many times, what would you say if it was a "trans man saying he was a man", as if its a cunning gotcha because we're only pretending not to believe in gender identity ideology so we can be mean to "trans women".

A professor of critical theory versus one of zoology, evolution and actual science isn’t a fair match. But Rose’s piece is poor even for critical theory. It has all the ragged straw men and tired old tropes (misinterpretation of Beauvoir, not-all-men, be-kind, what about women who’ve had their uterus removed - and even ‘what about transmen with uteruses’).

Apparently concern about males in female spaces, services and sports, conceals “the yawning gulf between rich and poor, the escalating brutality of racial and gender inequality, the advancing climate catastrophe”.

It really is that piss-poor.

Dawkins - bunch of solid science.

Rose - meandering nonsense like ignoring the fact the word female was in English use long before we had slave societies. Also hilariously she relies on FREUD. Freud is outdated but it is totally based on a sexual binary. Also she should bear in minds Freud’s view of crossdressing, the “sexual inversion hypothesis.” Men's desire to dress as women was all about heterosexual sex drive focused on women's clothing and/or repressed homosexuality. Based on looking at a bunch of cases of transvestites the familiar pattern was apparent even then. Basically a forerunner of AGP theory. One of the areas where Freud's ideas actually have some merit.

However Rose forgets Freud's actual thinking in an attempt to create a fantasy world where men and women are vague terms.

Anyone who thinks Andrea Long Chu, the misogynist who described women as blank eyes & an expectant arse, is a valid source has to be a complete idiot.

Zero mention that Chu is a male trans rights activist.

"This is why the suggestion that trans women are all potential abusers invading women-only spaces is so misguided and cruel"

For "trans women" read "men". Rose characterises the principle of sex-based safeguarding via segregation as vicious.

We should question a mindset that viciously excludes whole groups of people

But ’woman’ is not a mindset, it’s simply the name of half the human race. How can that be vicious? Or good or bad or any other quality?

Any defined group has to exclude some others, otherwise it wouldn’t be that group. Legs are the limbs that aren’t arms. Women are adults who aren’t male. Nothing vicious about it.