GnotherGnu: It is odd, though, that such a small proportion of MN feminists can apparently bring to mind any other feminist issue they wish to discuss. It's not as if there aren't incredibly important issues out there [...]
The trouble is of course that out there in the real world where women are trying to tackle these issues they are literally told to stop centering these issues because they are trans exclusionary.
Currently two very active campaigners against (and victims of) FGM are being attacked for:
a) not concentrating on fighting against circumcision of male babies
b) calling it female genital mutilation because that is transphobic
c) concentrating on female biology because that is transphobic
d) making out that "vulva mutilation" is a serious issue (unlike transphobia)
The amount of energy they now have to expend defending themselves from these accusations is damaging to them and to their campaign.
Or in case you missed it, pro-choice and contraceptive services in the US have had to remove the word women from their names because they were told targeting advice on abortion to women is transphobic because transwomen are women but can't have an abortion.
Or here in the UK several types of services aimed at women are no longer refering to women because this is seen as transphobic. The British Medical Association for instance has issued guidance stating that they are not to use the words pregnant mother in addressing their staff as this might offend transgender people (who are less than 1% of the population and less than 0.001% of those who are pregnant) but their hurt feelings weigh heavier than the hurt feelings of those 99.999% who are pregnant mothers.
Or the breastfeeding advice that refers to dads, partners, husbands but no longer to breastfeeding mums (it's now breastfeeding parent)
As my friend who organises NHS health campaigns recently pointed out to me we are now running the risk of not being able to aim anything at female people because naming them as women is increasingly considered transphobic. (She had to run her campaign about bladder problems past legal as it used the word "woman".)
But non-political women who know nothing of self-id will not respond to a campaign for "pregnant people" or "chestfeeding parent" or "assigned female at birth" or whatever other linguistic abortion is out there to erase the word woman for adult human females.
So discussing female erasure in the context of trans threads on self-id is pretty darn important.
And here's one last example that hasn't been mentioned yet: research. DH works with a surgeon whose R&D project was developing groundbreaking software that could diagnose serious female illness from a blood sample. During the clinical test stage it worked 100% until they had one blood sample the software kept returning stupid results for. Over and over again. After years of work and hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on this project they were looking at starting all over again.
Until the receptionist overheard their anguished debate and calmly informed them the sample was the problem, not the software. It had come from a transidentified male with a GRC who thought it fitting to be included in this women only medical research project.
Transwomen are women after all.