To think that scholarships for women shouldn't be open to men?

[HermioneWeasley]

So, scholarship to support women in STEM - a massive issue for all societies that we're not harnessing th talents of half our populations in this area.

But if you "identify as a woman in a way that's meaningful to you" you can apply.

What the ever loving fuck?

Another example of the damage being done to actual women, by saying that "woman" is a feeling in a man's head.

Well actually there was uproar about the women's 800m final linked to the change in allowable testosterone limits.

So not entirely uneventful

Also the IOC guidelines were so recent that they were unlikely to cause changes for Rio. Lets see where we are in 5 years time.

The women athletes have made veiled references to this.

This thread is 'should transwomen be excluded from a fellowship'. I think the first question is 'would it make any difference if they were?'

IceBeing you may see the thread that way, others will see it differently. I, for example, see it as " should men be eligible for a fellowship that is open only to women" or "should men be allowed to apply for a fellowship designed to redress the sexist and problematic over representation of men in STEM". It isn't about excluding transwomen because they are trans but because they are men.

Does it make a difference to allow a subset of men apply for a fellowship designed to address misogyny? Um, yes it does because it is misogynistic. Sure, we can cross our fingers and hope that no men who transition apply or that if they do apply the organizers are willing to run the risk of being tarred TRANSPHOBIC if they don't choose a male trans candidate....

Do you have data to suggest that a non-zero number of transwomen have applied, let alone been given a fellowship? If not then this is at least mildly transphobic, because you are excluding for the sake of making a point...rather than making a difference to women's actual experience.

That's a very cavalier attitude to women's rights. Women have fought really hard for things like this. We have fought really hard to have sexism and discrimination recognized and accepted as unfair and in need of redress. We continue to fight against ladybrain (a battle that is far from won and which is being set right back by trans ideology and indoctrination).

Women's rights are being eroded bit by bit. Sure, we can shrug and say "this is just a small bit" or "I'm not affected by this bit so it doesn't matter" or "ok so it's now legal and possible but it probably won't happen much". But to do so is anti-feminist and IMO foolish and dangerous.

The whole point of women's rights is that they are rights - they don't depend on luck or chance or crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

The trans movement keeps on adding straw to the camel's back - a fellowship here, an award there, some raped women, some frightened girls, a law here and a right there. A chip chipping away of women's fragile rights, safety, dignity and humanity with the odd big scary leap forward.

I don't know how long you have been keeping an eye on the trans movement, I have for a number of years now and all the things the radical feminists predicted and warned about that the liberals said wouldn't come to fruition are happening (stuff like self-identification, the transing of children, the transing of lesbians, lobbies going into schools with trans propaganda, etc.)

felas yes...we absolutely should see where we are in 5 years time...or even sooner if a worrying trend begins to be seen, that girls are becoming disproportionately disengaged with sport due to a lack of XX role models.

But 1 genuinely intersex athlete raised her whole life as female is a million miles from the scare stories of an end to girls doing sport or even taking exercise that were abounding on MN.

With the boxing story...I don't know how anyone can feel they have a 'right' to a professional career in being payed to be violent, let alone expect not to get seriously hurt at any point in the process. A single unlucky punch can kill, regardless who you are fighting. It seems most recently that Fallon Fox lost by knock out to an XX competitor...so it seems pretty unclear she has a massive advantage over all XX women.

beach I don't think this is a women's rights issue. That is because I don't think women have the right to a fellowship scheme only aimed at them.

I do very strongly think a lot should be done to redress the imbalance in STEM by all of gender, race, disability, sexuality and yes gender identity too. But that doesn't mean these groups have a right to a bespoke fellowship.

When it comes to genuine rights...like the right to not be raped in jail I am 100% behind the exclusion of TW from female spaces.

When it comes to 'does it actually reduce the effectiveness of the intervention to increase numbers of women in STEM to open the applications to a tiny subset of men who may themselves be from a disadvantaged underrepresented group'...then no...I am going to need to see evidence of a problem before taking up arms.

It wasn't one ice there are questions around all the medallists in that event.
And yes semenya is intersex. I don't think its coincidental her form dipped when she had to maintain testosterone at a lower level and then recovered when the bar was lifted. The level now is a level no female can achieve without doping, its only possible for (some) intersex and trans women.

I think that isn't a fair playing field.

Each to their own IceBeing.

I prefer to look at the bigger picture.

So if you like I don't necessarily view this specific incident as on a scale of 1 to 10 of things bothering about but as evidence of a shifting zeitgeist. It is the shifting zeitgeist which I'm bothering about - and it is the sum of its parts of which this is one.

And really what the question always comes down to is "are transwomen female?" and "do you believe that women are oppressed because of and via their sex?".

I don't sometimes care about the answers to those questions and sometimes not.

beach I have problems with the shifting zeitgeist too...I just don't think we help the over all cause by going crazy over the things that don't make any real difference. Not when the risk of being labelled TERF and ignored is so high. Sticking to the provably damaging to women areas seems like a more successful strategy in terms of preserving women's actual rights.

But everyone can care about and champion whatever they like. It's up to them.

felas I don't think an XX woman with massively higher than average testosterone is competing on a level playing field with an XX woman with average testosterone either. All elite athletes are genetic outlyers in one way or another. I couldn't compete with any of them on a level playing field (genetically low muscle tone, short, etc.)

So why single out Semenya's genetic difference as particularly significant?

There is not and has never been any such thing as a level playing field in sport.

Ugh. Lets not rerun the IOC thread, you are entitled to your opinion of course as am I. I was just pointing out that its factually incorrect to suggest the hooha about the 800m is restricted to one intersex competitor.

Ice I think you're missing the point. A transwoman is not a woman. Ever. It's the principle. I'm sure your advice on how to do feminism is in your view well intentioned but in my view misses the point spectacularly and is patronising to boot.

Fascicle the posters concerned about the IOC and women's sports weren't predicting that this year's Olympics would be overrun by transwomen athletes. The international rule changes happened far too recently for that. Qualifying for international sport takes time.

The concern is that, as time goes by, increasing numbers of mediocre male athletes will relabel themselves (or be relabelled by repressive governments) as transwomen and, very, very gradually, skew women's sports. This would be unarguably very damaging to women and girls. And to sport itself.

If one transwomen gets a scholarship then one woman lost out.
If white people started feeling "black" and this enabled them to apply for scholarships specifically kept open for black students there would be an uproar. This IMO is no different.

Ice you may think you are looking for a reasonable compromise but according to TAs, you are a TERF if you do not accept MTTs as women "period" i.e. regardless of biology, presentation, previous crimes or potential harm to women, all based on self-identification and only self-identification by the individual concerned, which may change from time to time. Unfortunately, in large part due to well-meaning people like you, the government is on the verge of adopting this TA position in law which will then not allow for any consideration of "provably damaging to women areas".

Why is it though that women need to prove damage? The TAs are looking for a change in sex segregation to "gender segregation" whatever that is. Why aren't you asking them to prove there won't be damage to women? Especially not when it is bleeding obvious. Are you saying MTTs should be able to apply for this scholarship so long as none of them get it? Or only a certain type gets it? Isn't that transphobic? Same for IOC.

I agree with Winchester and Flora.

Also I think it is an untenable (indeed hypocritical) position to say that one will sometimes accept transwomen as women.

I agree it is in part what has got us in this position in the first place. Additionally it's unacceptable to transwomen and definitely comes under being a TERF.

Also agree it isn't up to women to prove harm and also harm is very open to interpretation.

but....but...sometimes women are oppressed by things related to being seen as and treated as women. Like being catcalled...or body shamed, or having to wear high heels and make up to work.

In those cases it makes sense to consider TW in with women, because they suffer the same discrimination.

Then sometimes women are oppressed by things related to having a womb and getting pregnant...like when pain relief is treated like an optional extra during your traumatic major surgery (childbirth) and nobody gives a shit about patching you back together afterwards...then it doesn't make sens to consider TW alongside women because they won't be giving birth.

I think there is an argument for self-identity as female being a key component in the discrimination against women in STEM and of why this specific fellowship is available to women, so it makes sense to ask the question at least as to whether or not this is tied more to possession of a womb or self-identity as female.

I get that rather than finding common ground what I am actually doing is being damned by both sides.....but I can't help that it seems just to me to not include TW in attempts to improve the safety of childbirth...or to include them in attempts to improve the ratio of women in STEM.

'I think there is an argument for self-identity as female being a key component in the discrimination against women in STEM'

I'm not sure that's quite accurate. At this point in history, there's less overt discrimination against women in STEM (indeed, there's positive discrimination). The reasons for the imbalance in numbers is largely (a) stereotype threat, as already mentioned, leading to girls self-selecting out of these areas and then (b) career development being particularly affected by motherhood. Factors which aren't applicable to transwomen (but may be to transmen).

A friend of mine is in a STEM subject. She has a tenured position at a university, a rarity in itself for a woman in her field. The tales she tells me would make your toes curl, but two things in particular stood out:

A man who has been repeatedly accused of sexual harassment getting a very high up job (European level) despite claims being upheld.

She nearly gave up the job she loved because of the pressure of academia and home life. She was given a female mentor who basically said "academia was developed by men who never see their children. You will go crazy unless you make some changes"

But transwomen don't need encouragement to enter STEM, Ice. Their male-socialization takes care of that. Transwomen are more common in male-dominated sectors than in other occupations. There are so many in IT that it's become a sort of joke among feminists. Prominent TAs have achieved high status in such fields prior to transition. Had they been women they would've found it far harder.

As for catcalling, the very few transwomen who pass are indeed victims of sexual harassment if the men calling believe they are women. However that's the only area where there's any overlap.

In terms of disadvantage, transwomen have more in common with gay men: being at possible risk in men's loos is the obvious one. Transwomen are oppressed by homophobia rather than misogyny. Men see them as failed men.

As for wearing heels, if someone insists on adopting stereotypically feminine clothes that's their choice, not oppression. Reminds me of an article I read in which a transwoman mourned their infertility. On closer examination said transwoman had opted for SRS and (despite being a dad!) felt it was bitterly unfair that she couldn't conceive!

Ice the first type of oppression you mentioned is part of the second. Women are expected to be decorative for the male gaze and catcalls are part of women's treatment as sexually available to men. It's part of enforcing the gender hierarchy on women.

Men don't want MTTs to be sexually available to them. To the extent some MTTs might pass men might treat them like women but only because they don't know they are MTTs. Even then MTTs like Paris Lees talk about how much they love catcalls and wolf whistles because it means men are reading them as women. Men don't deride MTTs for not conforming to female gender norms, as they do with women, they deride them for not conforming with male gender norms. It's totally different.

Ice what I hear from your arguments is the following;

1. Transwomen are sometimes women.

1. Sometimes sexism isn't sexist.

Good luck with that sort of woolly position in trying to resist the trans juggernaut.

errol why wouldn't (a) in your list not also affect TW who self-identified as female from birth though? (b) clearly doesn't - so as I was attempting to say sometimes TW have the same issues...sometimes they don't.

twunk I have the same stories and more from STEM. There are certianly deep seated problems. But the one this particular fellowship addresses is as errol says to mitigate for stereotype threat and societal bias. TW may well have experienced either or both of these as women/girls in their presentation as female or their self-identification as female.

Ice how does a newborn identify as female?