Continuation thread re IOC/trans policy and related trans issues

[fidel1ne]

Also a plug for the FB group

www.facebook.com/groups/ATWIWS/

There is a uniform experience of being a woman Claudia its called a Vagina

but in the other hand, lots of us don't give birth, some of us can't. Giving birth is not a uniform experience of being female. There aren't any uniform experiences of being female.

Did you assume I was saying my personal experience had implications universally for every woman? Why would you make such a daft assumption?

It was one example of how being aware of my 'femaleness' was at the opposite end of the spectrum of the performance of 'femininity'.

Other women can, I'm sure, think of their own examples if they wish. But most examples of my body being explicitly female: menstruation, breastfeeding, growing breasts at puberty, vaginal secretions, ovulation pain, menopause symptoms and so on, are weirdly completely at odds with any definition of femininity.

It's almost like femininity has Nothing To Do With Being Female.

(My original point, and that of many other posters)

Ability or inability to get pregnant are part of the same thing really. From when we become sexually active, we are very aware of our fertility aren't we; trying not to get pregnant, trying to get pregnant for a big chunk of our lives

From www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/books/2012/08/16/mother-transgender-toddler-gets-lesson-love which was linked from 'The Emperer's Penis' article above.

"So, I started letting Izzy be a boy at home, wearing what- ever clothes he wanted, and playing with whatever toys he chose. Most of these things had previously been removed from our home after some really bad advice from ill-informed “experts.” We had been trying for a while to have everything be “female” around the house, and we even created a special “girls’ club.” I think Izzy would have loved to have been a girl just so this terrible nightmare would end. In fact, he really tried to act like a girl for a while to appease us, yet would always say things like, “See I could make a cute girl if I wanted to, but I’m really a boy.” It took a while for us to really get that message.

One day my husband, Izzy’s stepdad Buzz, was having a hard time getting Izzy ready for school. He decided to just let Izzy wear the boys’ shirt with the car on it that day. His message on my phone went something like, “Honey don’t be mad, I know we said not to let Izzy wear boys’ clothes out of the house, but I had to get the kid to school.” Later there was another message: “You’re not going to believe this, but Izzy is playing with other kids! It’s amazing. I can’t believe it.” Izzy never played with other kids; he never had friends. Not a girl and not a “real” boy, Izzy never fit in and usually felt isolated and depressed. It seemed as though this were about to change."

I am speechless. The father (ex-husband) wasn't supportive so this mother, hell-bent on pigeon-holing her child into pink=girl, blue=boy is actively encouraging this stereotyping?!

I just can't express how sick that article makes me feel.

A few pages back...

MaidOfStars
That DGR article is excellent.

Is there anyone here who is willing to put across the other side, explain what they see when they read stuff like that? If you are, please do and I think we should all agree to no attacks, just debate.

www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/21/55123/

I found the author's writing style engaging. Digging deeper, I thought much of the piece was nonsensical. The conclusions drawn are not justified by the examples she provides. She appears bemused by the reason for the protest: The book and other materials never even mention the words “transgender” or “queer". The story seemed to lack detail - looking elsewhere, it would seem that she has very long-held, fundamentalist views on the subject, which the organisation also supports. The third author of the Deep Green Resistance book, Aric McBay, left the organisation because of those views.

So the author makes the protest story about men silencing women (although they also direct their efforts at a male member of DGR) and safe spaces not being safe, without commenting on the primary issue of historic tensions based on their transgender position. (I did click on the video link to look at DGR's evidence and get some context, but it just links to another article.)

Here's another non sequitur:

Men are made by socialization to masculinity. Being a man requires a psychology based on emotional numbness and a dichotomy of self and other. This is also the psychology required by soldiers, which is why we don’t think you can be a peace activist without being a feminist.

It's hard to know where to begin with this claim. Even if you buy into her interpretation of society's expectation of men, her soldier comment, followed by her peace activist/feminist conclusion makes no sense.

I found a couple of things to agree with in the article. The first, that whatever the reasoning, the alleged methods of protesting were wrong. The second, that there should be room for debate: Isn’t all this worth discussing? Why do we have to plead something so basic: in a pluralistic democracy, people can hold differing beliefs? Subsequently I discovered that DGR have a policy of no debate on their line on gender.

Sorry that's a bit of a derail, I meant to put it in the general trans thread.

Felicia it just reads as totally ludicrous doesn't it. Why didn't they just let her wear 'boys' clothes in the first place? Why not let her have 'boys' toys?? Why make her go to a girls club???? Of course that was bad advice!! How would you think otherwise????

Its total insanity IMO.

"There aren't any uniform experiences of being female."

Not true. There are many experiences of being female that are so similar as to be essentially identical:

Biological examples:

• breasts growing
• periods
• period pains
• pregnancy
• child birth
• breastfeeding
• menopause

Social examples (compared to men):

• expected to be pleasant, gentle, etc
• socialised differently to boys
• unwanted/unexpected sexual attention at a young age
• sexual grooming and/or assault of various kinds (e.g. groping)
• discrimination at work (less likely to get hired, lower pay if hired, lower chance of promotion)

hungryofbristol.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/freedom-of-speech-womens-rights-and.html

• I'd be very grateful if any of you could post your comments about this blog post I have written onto my blog - I'd be really interested in your views!

maryz

By that wiki definition i am deffo not feminine/female

I am going to go out on a limb and say that i bet the male definition is nothing like me either

When it comes to loos i think there should be male, female and gender neutral (i will use whichever one has the smallest queue)

I have never seen a mixed changing room in a shop...ever

Its the thin end of the wedge and sidetracking onto loos and changing rooms is just a tactic to make women, who want to retain safe places for women, look petty and pathetic

Cote

with respect, all of those examples you give. Not every women experiences and/or can be experienced by hormonal introduction

Biological examples:

• breasts growing (some men experience this)
• periods (some women do not have periods or develop functional ovaries)
• period pains (see above)
• pregnancy (not all women fall pregnant)
• child birth (not all women have children)
• breastfeeding (see above)
• menopause (this definition is too open ended as to what it means)

maybe I could have used the word 'exclusive' as well as 'uniform' I don't know.

It seems to me that there really are no things that those born as either sex (whatever that even means) that cannot be either exactly replicated or not experienced by large numbers of the group.

So what if very very few women have unusual physiology and never have a period? The rest of us do. It is a shared experience for nearly the entire population of human females.

And even those will be socialised differently than boys, because of the assumption that they have the potential to make babies. Again, a shared experience of all females.

Yes, sure, you can point to a few exceptional cases & people with various disorders whose bodies don't work the way female bodies normally work, but that does not invalidate the very real shared experiences of females around the world.

Your argument is no different than NAMALT, and here as well as re men, a few exceptions don't disprove the rule.

Oh for goodness sakes, its impossible trying to converse with that kind of reasoning

Yes, you should have used the word "exclusive" rather than uniform, because you're trying to claim that because of a minuscule number of women who haven't developed ovaries and have never ever once had a period, there is no commonality of experience for the vast majority of the world's women. Which simply isn't true, and is a rather silly way of looking at it.

What kind of reasoning is it that drove you to the point of throwing in the towel, Shortcut?

"there really are no things that those born as either sex (whatever that even means) that cannot be either exactly replicated or not experienced by large numbers of the group."

(1) If you really don't know what "sex" means in this context, again, a dictionary will be very helpful:

Sex: Either the male or female of a species, especially as differentiated with reference to the reproductive functions.

... where:

Female: Of the sex that can bear young or produce eggs.

Male: Of the sex that can make sperm.

(2) If what you mean by the sentence above is "Any experience of females can be replicated by large members of males and vice versa", I would like to know how many females in the world have ever known the male experience of an erection. I would also be interested in hearing how many men have ever given birth and breastfed a baby.

cote I actually do feel like throwing in the towel.

How can you have a meaningful discussion with someone when the starting point is, that some men have tits too and some women are infertile

I want to move to Themyscira

It's a deeply silly argument and I have no patience with it. It gets wheeled out by trans allies as some sort of killer logic, as if women as a class don't share any commonality of experience. It really isn't.

Thanks Slugs. I still wish there was an irony emoticon.

That's why I like the simple XX chromosomes = female, XY chromosomes = male. It gets rid of all those 'but if a man has moobs does that make him a woman?' type arguments. I think the only people who should get to choose their sex are people with intersex conditions and even then they should be given a lot of help with making their choice. (And I apologise for bringing intersex into this because I know that many people with intersex conditions hate being dragged into the trans debate.)

What's this nonsense about shared experience? Women have them.

Stop erasing us please.

It's taken fucking years to get to a point where women can say "what about us?" And this shit is basically saying "what about what?" Dismissive bullshit.

All women have shared experience with eachother, we overlap.

The existence of intersex conditions is the reason trans lobbyists won't accept the xx/xy view. Transactivists have a vested interest in using people with intersex conditions in their arguments, as they don't really have any scientific basis for those arguments without them. They're just using them for their own purposes. I can see why people with intersex conditions would get pissed off with being drawn into it.