Friends suggesting transphobia and misogyny both rooted in policing gender roles

The point you are missing is The Patriarchy was using biology to justify the discrimination of women just like biology is being used to discriminate against trans people. It's effectively saying there was no psychological legitimacy to women or trans people being treated equally because of their biology when there clearly is

."The Patriarchy was using biology to justify the discrimination of women…" I didn't miss that point. I felt it was so obvious it didn't need to be stated.

"... just like biology is being used to discriminate against trans people." No, not "just like" at all. Women's biology, which makes them uniquely vulnerable in ways men are not, and the needs caused by that biology, were used to restrict their freedoms. Men needed to control women's reproductive abilities in order to control children, lineage, inheritance and wealth distribution. False but convenient conclusions about women's intellectual abilities were based on the assumption that because men are physically stronger, they must also be intellectually superior, as if the one had a direct correlation with the other.

Biology is not being used to discriminate against trans-people. They are claiming membership of a sex class they simply do not belong to.Transwomen are not women, they are men. If their situation is analogous to anything, it's analogous to someone claiming to be a Muslim when they're not so that they can visit the Ka'aba in Mecca, as Richard Burton did. The difference is that anyone can become a Muslim, and then they'd be entitled to visit Mecca, but the only human beings who can be women are the ones whose biology is by nature female.

Ahhh the curious case of Germaine Greer's 'metamorphosis' from gender non conforming dungaree wearing, unruly hair sans make up to feminine coifed stylised dyed hair, make up, jewellery, glasses & pretty dresses in her eighties?What 'dark cultural forces' could possibly have 'brain washed' someone who already knew & lived better about feminine stereotypes for much of their younger adult life?

The same 'dark forces' that 'brain washed' elite GC's JK Rowling, Helen Joyce & Maya Forstater into a blind worship for injected made up faces, long dyed hair & dresses but somehow bizarrely just like Greer wax lyrical about trans people single handedly maintaining feminine stereotypes?

Or maybe they like what the like because of their personal sensibilities?

We are to believe that they 'know' but yet 'don't know' about misogynistic sex stereotypes that 'caricature' women? The incoherence i breathtaking.

We are all limited by our biology in a variety of ways. My digestive biology makes it impossible for me to survive on a diet of bamboo. My respiratory biology makes it impossible for me to breathe water like a fish. My skeletal biology precludes me from growing a pair of wings. All the self-determination in the world can't change these biological facts. Why should my reproductive biology be the only exception? My reproductive biology means I can only be a mother, never a father. My husband's reproductive biology means he can't contribute to breast-feeding our child.

The point you are missing is The Patriarchy was using biology to justify the discrimination of women just like biology is being used to discriminate against trans people. It's effectively saying there was no psychological legitimacy to women or trans people being treated equally because of their biology when there clearly is.

Self-determination never meant that we could re-write biology to suit our preferences.

Biology isn't being rewritten for trans no more than it was rewritten for women. The justification for self determination was psychological interchangeability. Both women & trans people have been accused of lacking legitimacy in these areas.

There's a reason why MRA blame feminism for the increased visibility of trans gender people because they believe feminism opened the door to their legitimacy when they claimed interchangeability with men…& they would be partly right.

What it means is that, when it comes to the choices we are all free to make - such as what work we will do, or what hobbies we will pursue, or who we will love, or where we will live, or what clothes we will wear, or how we will vote - our sex should not dictate the options available to us.

Yes & trans people have been discriminated is similar ways in terms of access to employment, housing, health care public utilities, safety etc. Like women protections from discrimination have been written into law & like women inequalities still persist on many levels despite the law.

What a load of wank.

When you're right, you're right

What a load of wank. It’s all words to avoid getting to the point.

A trans woman, according to gender ideology, is a woman because He has told you so. All this crap about dress /gender this or that/ when you get down to it the reason is “because I said so”. All of us know that, even you know it.
He is a woman because he has said so, and you want to punish in law anyone that would contradict him.

Nothing. I'd just ignore it. If this is the first time your friend has felt moved to post in this vein, she's very late to the party. A committed trans ally would have been saying this stuff for years, so she's probably just a faddy dabbler, who will likely move on to something else in time.

I really enjoyed the discussion between @MyAmpleSheep and @FlirtsWithRhinos, thanks!

That's fine. We don't have to agree on what's possible in the future to agree on what's needed in the present.

Some cultures are much more comfortable with nakedness and with men and women mingling. The fact that ours doesn't is not an excuse to weaken women's boundaries - I've seen numerous TRA apologists "no one minds in Germany, you're all just prudes."

So I'm a little wary when people pull out the "it's just cultural" line.

I agree with Ample that men do deserve spaces away from the female gaze for privacy. It's just safety in those instances isn't really an issue so it doesn't get as much attention. No women are invading boys' toilets and assaulting them like Dolatowski.

I really don't recognise the characterisation @TheHateUGive claims to see - that we see men and women in some monolithic group-think way. I have two adults sons who couldn't be further away from the "Boys will be boys" stereotypes, and my daughter was by far the most dominant, forceful and athletic one.

I've had 27 years of seeing the stereotypes not apply. Hell, they didn't apply to my parents either while Dad did the groceries and the cooking and mum preferred to do the driving and use the power tools.

Some women wouldn’t. Maybe even most women in your utopia. But some women will, especially with religious or cultural considerations. It will never be the case that all women are comfortable undressing in front of men.

But there is never going to be a time where no man is leering at women’s bodies, is there?

I like to think there could be. After all, men used to leer at ankles. In some places they still do. So it's cultural and that means it can change.

Though actually I think the after effects of rape/violence are the thing we will never get rid of rather than culturally sanctioned leering.

But no, I'm not suggesting a cutoff when few enough women care to matter. I'm suggesting I'm happy to believe in men enough to believe that someday women wouldn't bother walking past a mixed sex space to find a single sex one.

I also find it a very helpful position to defang the "you just hate men / you just think women are inherently victims" line of attack or obfustication.

But again, since we are very far from that possibly, it's not a difference of belief that needs to divide us here and now.

Me neither.

But you said that transwomen's rights are women's rights. Transwomen are men so they cannot have women's rights because they are not women.

I don't want unsolicited dick pics in my in box and I don't want to see random dicks when I'm changing for a swim. Even if all men become magically safe and unthreatening.

They’re not unnecessary, and it’s not trivial to those who value those boundaries. There is never going to be this lofty utopia because human beings are animals at base.

But there is never going to be a time where no man is leering at women’s bodies, is there? I think the suggestion that there is implies that there will be a cut off somewhere where women or men as pp said are deemed unreasonable for objecting to mixed sex spaces.

That's fine. As I said, we don't need to agree on this to have the same objectives in the here and now.

Do purely cultural ideas of dignity and privacy have the same weight as innate drives? To me anything that causes unnecessary restrictions or divisions between people is fair game to at least challenge as to whether it's actually a good thing to have.

Personally, I think that the reason we experience mixed sex spaces to be undignified and less private than single sex ones is simply because of how male people fetishise the female body and female nudity. I think it's cultural not innate.

Do men not also have a right to privacy and dignity away from the female gaze?

Women don't fetishize the male body, broadly speaking, but I think privacy for men is also a consideration. I also don't think that because it's cultural it's less important.

Personally, I think that the reason we experience mixed sex spaces to be undignified and less private than single sex ones is simply because of how male people fetishise the female body and female nudity. I think it's cultural not innate.

Similarly, I think we need women's social and professional spaces today because of the overbearing professional behaviour of men, but I would again hope in future this is no longer needed because gender has ceased to be a limiting factor in women's careers and men have stopped crowding women to the metaphorical edges of social activities.

None of this is to minimise the reasons we need them today. And never would I suggest this changes until such a time as women, all women, no longer feel they are needed.

So, it's rather a moot point in practice. If I'm right, we will still only move on from sex segregation at such a stage we all agree it's unnecessary. And if those who believe privacy and dignity are inherently single sex are right, we will never reach that cutoff. So having different views about where we might end up in future is never going to cause us to disagree about what's needed in practice.

The only practical place we might differ today is that I would generally support mixed sex options (not as the only provsion but as an alternative) so that men and women who are comfortable in a mixed sex environment have that option, in the hope that over time this lessens the "mystery" of women's spaces that is seems so compelling to some men.

For me at least, that is a fundamental misunderstanding. I recognise it is necessary today because of the marginalising or exploitative behaviour -physical, sexual, social or professional - of some men towards women today. But I believe those protections ought not to be needed because that behaviour ought not to be happening.

Does that mean you don't put any weight on the privacy and dignity reasons for providing separate facilities for men and women?

I can see that safety may be less of an issue in in a future nirvana, but that's only one of three headings under which single-sex facilities are mandated. Or do you see issues of privacy and dignity disappearing too?

I think that is more to do with your interpretation than what women actually say.

Here's the cliff notes for how I see it.

Men and women have different bodies and to a small degree at the population level we see biological differences in character, mainly to do with agression and risk taking. However, at an individual level men and women display a lot of overlap - plenty of women are more agressive and risk taking than plenty of men.

On top of this is a huge amount of socialisation where different behaviours are rewarded or punished depending on ones sex. This is not just, indeed mostly not, simple obvious stuff like parents telling boys not to be babies and girls to play nicely, but the cumulative influence of all the people we interact with, hiw they treat us and how we observe them interacting with each other, the stories we are told and the media we consume, millions and millions of tiny message about what it is to be a woman or a man and how those intersect with all the other social cues and rules we internalise, and also what we as women or men can expect from others, women and men.

And then on top of that, Feminists are trying to unpick it again to understand who we as individual women really are, what we could be outside that framework, while also dealing with the reality that the framework still exists and doesn't just influence how we feel and act but also how others see us and treat us, and a man's belief that we are only there for sex, for example, or an employer's belief that women are not as strong leaders as men can still hurt us whether or not we see ourselves like that.

So yes, there is an element of "sugar and spice, slugs and snails" but it's not describing what women and men innately are so much as current socialised behaviours that need to be managed if women are to have the freedom to take as much advantage as they can of their native talents and live the best lives they can within this society.

One of the Gender Absolutists, I forget which but Howse or Emily or whichever one it is on this thread, currently has a bee in his bonnet about "is" and "ought". He thinks we think that because it is necessary to have sex based protections and supports today, we think that is the way it ought to be.

For me at least, that is a fundamental misunderstanding. I recognise it is necessary today because of the marginalising or exploitative behaviour -physical, sexual, social or professional - of some men towards women today. But I believe those protections ought not to be needed because that behaviour ought not to be happening.

As a Feminist, I am entirely capable of separating what we pragmatically may need to support women today from the more equal and safer future I hope we can build towards for women tomorrow.

We are all limited by our biology in a variety of ways. My digestive biology makes it impossible for me to survive on a diet of bamboo. My respiratory biology makes it impossible for me to breathe water like a fish. My skeletal biology precludes me from growing a pair of wings. All the self-determination in the world can't change these biological facts. Why should my reproductive biology be the only exception? My reproductive biology means I can only be a mother, never a father. My husband's reproductive biology means he can't contribute to breast-feeding our child.

Self-determination never meant that we could re-write biology to suit our preferences. What it means is that, when it comes to the choices we are all free to make - such as what work we will do, or what hobbies we will pursue, or who we will love, or where we will live, or what clothes we will wear, or how we will vote - our sex should not dictate the options available to us. When it comes to our sex, though, we don't get a choice. Nature makes that decision for us.

Presumably in this analysis gender critical lesbians just don't count as gender critical women.

No, and society would be very different if it were assumed that all men did think like this. However, it does explain why women are campaigning for the right to e.g. keep men out of rape crisis centres and why many women are so dependent on a wider range of single sex services.

You can argue the toss about when single sex services are appropriate, but you can't provide a single sex service that is used by both sexes simultaneously.

Bit sexist...

/s