'Biological essentialism'?

I googled it to find out what he meant so I could go back and argue and found that he - yes he, yes a man ffs had thrown me out of a female only group for being gender critical!

If this doesn't make starkly clear how fucked things are, I don't know what does.

Snap! What a coincidence, I was called exactly that same term. By a trans woman who had taken control of my union's Facebook group.

The group rule was and had always been that it was a female only group. This is within a union that is about 95% male reflecting the industry in which we worked which was 95% male - hence we needed a women's group as we were disparate, scattered all over the country and tiny numbers.

Like you I was stumped. I did not understand what he meant but he seemed to be using it as an accusation or insult.

I googled it to find out what he meant so I could go back and argue and found that he - yes he, yes a man ffs had thrown me out of a female only group for being gender critical!

I'm not sure the genderists believe that one changes sex so much as changes - or finally expresses - their true gender. Innate sense of gender trumps biology.

So perfectly put!

Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to believe humans can change sex. He is learning these arguments from somewhere, and he has more respect for that person than he does for you.

You are the one most affected by the policy of making single sex facilities mixed sex, but he has no respect for your lived experience or opinions. Stop letting him control the argument, he's just doing it for fun. It doesn't affect him, it does affect you. Call him out on that.

I think I’d ask your friend two questions:

1. do you believe humans can literally, physically change sex?
2. do you believe women sometimes need single sex spaces and should be entitled to have them?

If he says yes to 1, there’s honestly no point continuing to discuss this with him because he’d be denying reality.

I think the vast majority of people would say yes to 2, particularly if they’re trying to play the ‘I’m the reasonable middle ground in this toxic debate’ type role.

So assuming he’s not mad enough to think humans can physically change sex, and that he’s reasonable enough to acknowledge that sometimes women might need single sex spaces, I’d then be asking him how you reconcile those two answers with allowing biological men into women’s spaces.

Or, showing him this excellent analogy from legal feminist might be quicker 😅

of course there should be women's spaces, but transwoman need healthcare and support too'.

In terms of this comment, the spaces which are lacking are the single sex spaces (services), not the spaces (services) for transwomen. Many rape crisis services (particularily across Scotland but Brighton and ERCC as the most obvious examples) provide mixed sex and in the Brighton example, trans/non binary specific services but refuse outright to provide single sex services.

But to be honest, I'd only engage in dialogue with your friend if you can be arsed. I've come to the conclusion that people who still (despite the vast amount of evidence of harms to women and girls by the erosion of single sex services) insist that there's 'no problem, shut up bigot!' are either utterly credulous and/or actively hostile to women. Even with evidence and well argued debate, you're not going to be able to have a rational discussion about all this with him. I'd just say 'we're not going to agree on this matter' and change the subject.

Although the power of satire is a wonderful thing (my previous post with the Monty Python sketch), I thought I'd better add something that may be of more use, OP.

I've found it very helpful to talk about gender identity as a belief that I don't hold i.e. I'm aware that some people believe that we all have a gender identity but I don't hold that belief myself. I'm also aware that some people with this belief feel that they are in the wrong body and this causes them distress (obviously some people - some "MtF"s - also feign this distress as a front for their paraphilia). But calling someone a "bioesssentialist" just because they don't believe in this is unfair. It's a sleight of hand to mix sex (biological fact) and cultural sex-based stereotypes, even if it's done unintentionally out of a misplaced sense of being kind and open-minded.

Personally, I'd be saying to your friend that you respect his right to believe that everyone has a gender identity but in return, you ask him to respect your lack of belief and ask that he doesn't reframe your lack of belief as "bioesssentialism".

If someone genuinely believes that everyone has a gender identity, no logical argument is likely to change this. IME it's more effective to explain your own lack of belief and leave it there because for me, the more important discussion is the impact of the enforced belief e.g. the impact on women when men who identify as women demand access to women's sports and spaces.

Just ask him what is it that transwomen don't have in common with males but do have in common with females that makes them women?

What, exactly is it?
He needs to answer this question.

It's not periods.
It's not pregnancy or childbirth.
It's not menopause.

What is it?

Honestly I'd just try and point out that he's neither a trans woman, nor a woman, and doesn't he perhaps think that those two individual experiences will be entirely different and need entirely different care, support and spaces?

A trans woman will never experience a period, a pregnancy, a miscarriage.
A trans woman, no matter how many hormones they take or surgeries they have will never have been "raised" as a girl or woman - No matter how young their "transition" starts.
Mammals have evolved to "see" sex. The experience is not the same.
If one can't speak on or understand a PoC's issues because they don't understand the lived experience, the same applies to men, and men trying to be women with women's issues and lived experiences...

I'm so glad more people seem to feel emboldened to speak out when their male friends are being absolutely dense - Good on you OP!

chef’s kiss

(can’t find the emoji sorry).

😂They were way ahead of their time weren't they?

Or the short version:

We need words for biological sex in humans. This is important in many aspects of life including healthcare, sport, pay gap data and crime statistics.

The word for female humans should not be redefined to include male humans because if it is it no longer means anything useful.

We don't know what trans women are identifying with but it has nothing to do with female humans and so they need to come up with a different word for whatever it is, and campaign for their own spaces if they feel they need them.

@BenjiCat

Once upon a time, humans developed language for the purposes of communication. There were many different languages, and each language had a name for each animal and separate names for males and females of each animal, including humans themselves. In English, male humans (the ones with the penises) were called men and female humans (the ones who bore children) were called women. The meanings of these words remained pretty much static for thousands of years even as language evolved.

In pretty much all cultures, at all times in human history, men oppressed women, denied them equal rights, exploited them for their reproductive labour and committed acts of violence against them. This continued for thousands of years and continues to this day.

Relatively recently, women in most western societies gained a whole host of rights designed to make them men's equals. Space was also made for women in society, including public toilets and changing rooms for women, as well as their own sporting categories.

Very recently, some men decided that they wanted these things for themselves. Because it was no longer the done thing to say women shouldn't be allowed to have their own things, these men came up with the frankly GENIUS idea of changing the definition of the word "woman" so that it could include them. Obviously this meant stripping the word of any meaning relating to biological sex and giving it a new meaning instead. The new meaning was based on stereotypes, because once you strip the word "woman" of any meaning relating to sex, stereotypes are all that is left. So these men wore dresses and makeup and said that they are women because of how they feel inside. They started using women's spaces instead of men's.

Some other men, who like to think of themselves as progressive but are deep down far more conservative than they care to admit, did not feel comfortable with effeminate or cross dressing men in men's spaces, and were very glad that these men had decided to call themselves women and use women's spaces instead.

But some women were not happy about this and protested against biological males identifying as women and accessing women's spaces, as well as being redefined as a stereotype. They maintained that a woman is an adult human of the female biological sex.

The sexist men did not have a good answer to this and certainly didn't like the implication that they were upholding deeply sexist stereotypes and performing traditional misogyny by prioritising male women over female women, because they identified as progressive. So they accused the female women of "biological essentialism" in the hope that their little female brains would be confused by long words and they would stop talking.

But they didn't.

The end.

Tell him that you've given it some serious thought and, on reflection, you stand with Loretta. That it is indeed unfair that anyone should be limited by biology 😁

You said what I was trying to say so much better!

Genderists believe Man and Woman are labels for different personalities/mentalities/bundles of social preferences. So when you say " female people are women, male people are men" what they hear is "all female people have this personality/mentality/bundle of social preferences and all male people have this personality/mentality/bundle of social preferences" which to them sounds terribly sexist (because it is) hence them accusing you of biological determinism ie that you are restricting what personality/mentality/bundle of social preferences can belong in what body.

The irony being of course that you don't consider "man" and "woman" to be a personality/mentality/bundle of social preferences in the first place. The sexism they perceive is coming from their own prejudices about men and women.

They have twisted "A woman can be anyone she wants to be" into "anyone who wants to be can be a woman" and believe they are being progressive 🙄

This is an excellent and succinct definition, you've written what I was about to post.

It’s usually used by people who think the word woman is a judgement rather than a description

He's talking bollocks (pun intended)

This is correct. Years ago when the feminists of the second wave used the term "biological essentialism" or "biological determinism" they were talking about the kind of people who insisted that because women could bear babies, therefore their role in life was to be mothers. In other words, biology determined your role in life. Feminists, on the other hand, believe the opposite - that biology does not determine your role in life. If you're female, you can do anything - become a lawyer or a rugby player or a plumber. Whatever you want.

Trans activists, either because they are liars or just very very stupid, now pretend that "biological essentialism" means that by saying men can't be women, you are reducing women to their biology. As if the very act of defining something is reducing it - which of course it isn't. In order to define a thing, you have to put a clear boundary between what it is and what it isn't, otherwise anything could be a woman: a cat, a table, a tree.

Buy him a copy of Helen Joyce's book. It's excellent.

Just say that women need women only spaces and you don't know what biological essentialism means. There’s no point being dragged into a philosophical debate for stating the obvious.

Do you mean - would anyone argue that “teen girls share the same lack of material oppression as teen boys, therefore teen girls who say they are teen boys are teen boys”?

If so, good point, I can’t imagine anyone making that argument.