Some clarity in how the trans movement became so embedded, so preeminent

Mate. You really seem obsessed with femininity and the definition of it.

Maaate, don't shoot the messenger.

I understand that to you, it is the pretty much the sole entry point for a male person to be able to claim to be female. But ‘femininity’ is a concept that simply is not valid as a categorisation tool.

The context is self identification which means its upto the individual to decide who they are not wowser rubber necked onlookers.

And no, language cannot simply be repurposed away from its established meaning. Material reality prevails and even if it is a passing fashionable repurposing of language to mean the opposite, the original meaning will still abide and as with many trends, will outlive that attempted forced change.

Psychological traits are material reality.

Adding ‘trans’ doesn’t take away the fact that male people have attempted to repurpose the reference words female people need. It could be considered an act of misogyny that they continue to do so.

The idea that we can longer distinguish males from females because trans people exist is frankly el bizzarro land. Here's a tip, if you want to maintain a modicum of credibility this kind of off the charts hysterical catastrophising nonsense won't help.

Thanks for the mansplaining

Oh yeah, there's literally no difference between women's & men's wear consumerist choices. Keep digging bro.

Lol. Assuming my sex based on my replies sounds a tad pro stereotypical. I thought you guys were against that? 😂

What have any of your posts got to do with the OP? Can you please get back on topic or start your own thread elsewhere? Thanks

ETA most of your posts look deliberately inflammatory so it would be good to stop now

As associated to the social categories of men & women? Sure.

This was your response to a post about the long cut and paste post about the 'waves' of feminism.

You wanted something more precise?
Well, for one thing, this is a UK site, and what you have cut and pasted is about the US. Different country, different history, different culture, different laws, different politics and - significantly - different women's movement.
So it is an interpretation of what happened in the USA.

I say an interpretation because that's all it is, it is somebody putting their own framing onto feminism over the decades, which is open to argument:

For example,
Intersectionality and Diversity: Broadened the movement to embrace diverse identities, acknowledging how race, class, and sexuality intersect with gender (the concept coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw).
is listed in the Third Wave, but it was already a very live issue in the Second Wave.
On that basis, I'm not sure how it can be claimed that the concept was coined by K. Crenshaw - the term 'intersectional', perhaps - though I doubt it, I'm pretty sure was already in use. But the concept of race, class, sex and sexuality all having an input into women's lived experiences and oppression was definitely very present before the Third Wave.

Suggesting that it wasn't is to write out of feminist history the work of the many Black feminists and lesbian feminists active in the Second Wave. I haven't time this morning, I'm afraid, to provide more evidence than this, but I would point out that bell hooks started publishing her important work in the early 1980s.
Audre Lorde, Pat Parker are just a couple more examples off the top of my head.

It wasn't 'White feminism', unless you exclude the work of all the Black feminists and lesbian feminist writing and campaigning during the 'Second Wave'.
It was a struggle, but it was a struggle within feminism, which they made sure was never exclusively white.

Similarly, placing
Individual and Sex-Positive Expression: Challenged rigid definitions of femininity, promoting bodily autonomy, individual empowerment, and personal expression. 1
in the Third rather than the Second Wave is wrong.
That was a very strong element of the Second Wave.

I could go on, but I am already behind schedule for today, so I'll leave it at that!
I hope this level of critique of that particular framing of the 'waves' of feminism is more to your liking.

Agree @KnottyAuty I was attracted to this thread because @MarcTheGenderSkeptic posted a really good OP.

As with many threads on MN the activists are simply disrupters with a small knowledge on various topics. They as @Northernlightsss is demonstrating are not open to anyone else’s views and are unable to answer questions posed or see anything other than their own perspective. They responded with a word salad of TRA language to my simple question about TWAW TMAM. I literally asked for a simple yes no answer.

I am very open to being told how people change sex and presume all the evidence is there that men who become women are given a cervix, periods via a uterus and the menopause. If that evidence is there please share.

If it isn’t any surgery is purely cosmetic. A women with breast implants to look bigger than her natural breasts is simply a cosmetically enhanced woman she is not by definition a woman with large breasts. Same with all aesthetics-they are just that - they are not reality.

99% of your posts are meaningless, logically incoherent, or just plain factually incorrect. But I don't have the time or inclination to pick apart each one line by line - it has all been said and done before, many times over.

This one struck me as different because if you dig deep enough there may just be the kernel of an interesting idea worth discussing. The trouble is that whilst your grammar is correct, the sentences don't quite string together to make a coherent argument.

the real problem is & has always been the association of femininity with women [...] that's why gender critical 'feminists' only reserve their viciously mocking rage for trans women not trans men. [...] a deep resentment that's directed at trans women as a proxy for feminine expression

It is vastly off topic for this thread, but it has drifted too far to be recovered now (sorry @MarcTheGenderSkeptic ), but would you care to expand upon what you are saying here?
Is it something about how women feel that only women should be allowed to have a feminine presentation? Or that women are angry at feminine men for some reason?

The overt reason that women are so enraged by transwomen, and are not bothered by transmen, is that males are inherently dangerous to women (some few males, but we can't tell which ones until it is too late), so transwomen invading female-only spaces is a genuine cause of fear (not necessarily fear of any particular transwoman in front of us in the moment, but fear of the dismantling of safeguarding for women across the board).

However it is worth discussing whether there are, as you propose, other deeper psychological factors at work behind this rage.

One snippet of evidence is the way that society widely accepts the adoption of what used to be coded 'masculine' clothes by women, whereas there is still a common taboo against men ordinarily wearing 'feminine' coded clothes. Some taboos for women still remain: we can wear tailored trouser suits to the office, but don't ordinarily wear ties. The taboos for men are wider and deeper.

What the fuck is a ‘ snookie ‘ in your world? Back in my childhood it was slang for kissing and I have no intention of ‘going’ anywhere with you for a ‘snookie’ or any thing else.

‘female coded’ apparel ? Female people have worn trousers throughout the ages. an inconvenient fact to be sure for your argument. However, it is true. Just as male people have worn what some people call ‘dresses’.

The key difference is, neither of the groups of people wearing that apparel claimed to be the opposite sex in general. A rare few female people did claim to be male to escape negative sexist discrimination to enable them to achieve careers they were blocked from entering. Otherwise, the selection of apparel did not change the sex category of the personal choosing that clothing.

It seems to be a very weak argument even in the present era. All the women in my family have had more trousers in their clothing choices than dresses or skirts. So what!

Just like behavioural traits, clothing choices are a very poor categorisation tool for defining sex categories.

Isn't it funny how the nebulous social commonalities that make one a woman never include taking on the bulk of elder care? And yet any data shows this burden is far more correlated with being a woman than those publicly performed woman-coded elements a preference for which apparently show that trans women really are women.

Seems like trans women and their Genderist champions are cherry picking which parts of the nebulous constellation of social commonalities count and which don't. And seems like they generally leave the shitty bits on the unclaimed pile for female people to carry on having to deal with.

Almost as if there's a bit of a significant social division between these male women and the female ones after all?

This is not what I have said. If you have misunderstood please do ask for clarification.

However, I believe you have somehow twisted this to choose to ridicule the point.

Shall we start with when you came ro believe that women’s and girl’s trousers were not very common place clothing item for women?

As I have said via a Mia Hughes quote - Trans is an overvalued belief.

I think to have that discussion that terms such as ‘femininity’ should be clarified.

There seems to be some different meanings of the term assumed on this thread. Not only that, but clarity as to the expression of what is considered feminine for a male person to be considered ‘feminine’ vs what really is sexist sterotypical trope.

In Howseland, men are associating with the social categories of women by going to work wearing lipstick.

For some reason they are less interested in associating with all the women going to work not wearing lipstick, having organised packed lunches, remembered clean PE kit, posted the thank you cards they made their kids write to Nan and checked the elderly father in law has a taxi booked to the dentist.

Yeah.

I wear business shirts and trousers to work and not a skerrick of make up. There really seems to be a disconnect with some people’s perception of what women wear every day and what is considered standard.

@MarcTheGenderSkeptic great thread. Interestingly I am currently ‘watching’ the Sandie Peggie case against the RCN union. Lisa McKenzie has just be questioned by Naomi Cunningham - exposing what is going on and has been going on on in the NHS is quite frankly shocking.

Eh?

'a deep resentment that's directed at trans women as a proxy for feminine expression'

Oh my god, is this the 'you're all jealous because men who call themselves women are better women than you' line? Really? Honestly?

Some men find 'transwomen' sexually exciting. I understand this perfectly well.

Feminists would be more than delighted if the men who are attracted to transwomen would go off and have fun with the transwomen who are attracted to men and leave us all the fuck alone, I promise you.

.
Deleted, I addressed the wrong person.

'the real problem is & has always been the association of femininity with women particularly one of the sexual kind. And that's why gender critical 'feminists' only reserve their viciously mocking rage for trans women not trans men.
I strongly suspect that at the very bottom of this pot is a deep resentment that's directed at trans women as a proxy for feminine expression. They can't direct it at women in general because that's not gonna fly support wise so the whipping boy it is.'

I can discuss that, StandingDeskDisco.

I'm entirely ambivalent about men wearing women's clothes. Gender non conformity is grand. Fine. Go for it.

What is NOT tickety boo is transvestic fetishism. For one, these men are misogynists, often getting kicks from the non consensual participation of others. For two, their kicks rely on a pornified, damaging, and insulting caricature of 'femininity' that contributes to rape culture.

Greer described how 'the female eunuch' (an embodiment of 'femininity') was a third entity, not in fact even distantly related to women, but sharing some of the same characteristics as a child. We can see that in some of the gross costumes these men wear. Paraphilias are damaging to individuals and society.

Femininity and masculinity are basically the same thing as sexist stereotypical tropes. But that doesn't make them any less worthy of discussion and analysis.

Is there something in the idea that (some) women's rage against transwomen is not just for logical and practical reasons, and not just because 'womanface' is misogynistic mocking women, but that it is to do with men transgressing the boundaries of stereotypical femininity in a socially-unacceptable taboo busting way?

One can make the argument that 'transsexuals' or 'transgender' men are differentiated from 'cross dressers' or AGPs or transvestic fetishists. This is laid out in the ICD and the DSM.