To not care whether people say sex or gender.

[TeeJay1970]

Many people and organisations use these words interchangerbly. The meaning is always clear. I actually don't give a stuff if others disagree.

If it were biology causing the inequality then it can never be different can it? For as long as biology remains the treatment of females can't ever be difference if it is only biology causing it.

Actually no. We could be respected and valued because of our unique biology and we could stop being devalued and discriminated because of it. It’s our biology that is used to discriminate, but that certainly does not mean discrimination is inevitable because of it. That’s a silly suggestion.

What I am saying is that it is society's view of being female that is the problem, not the biological reality of being female.

Women are treated that way by society because of their biology. When a woman wasn't allowed to vote, that was purely on the basis that she had a vagina. Nothing else. Wasn't it?

I have to say that Rat is the only person I've ever seen to have a go at answering the question of what Theresa May and Jane Fae have in common that neither of them share with Bernard Manning (or variants thereof).

I think her answers are way off beam, but I salute her for at least having a position she can articulate.

weetabix I’m gettting the feeling that you want to dismantle women’s sex-based rights and protections, so yes, that is effectively what you said.

Unless you are 100% in favour of the female sex class remaining a discrete category with its own rights, protections, single sex spaces and services? From which ALL males are excluded (on the basis of their being male, not whether they’re trans or not)?

This weetabix person certainly knows how to avoid answering a question.

Yes indeed.

When a woman wasn't allowed to vote, that was purely on the basis that she had a vagina. Nothing else. Wasn't it?

Yes it was. But it wasn't caused by having a vagina was it? It was caused by society's view of women, who have a vagina.

Having a vagina doesn't stop us from being able to vote.

Society just decided that anyone who had a vagina would not be allowed to vote.

This weetabix person certainly knows how to avoid answering a question.

Firstly,I am not in your employ so I don't have to do as you say.

Secondly, how many questions do any of you answer?

Thirdly, when I do answer a question you ignore it and simply jump in with an entirely different question.

So, why should I bother? You just ignore any answers anyway.

So again, it isn't just biological fact but rather social changes that are slowly changing the prospects and chances for women.

What you don't seem to be accepting though, is that men already have the power and aren't very keen to give it up. No matter how much we tell them that we should be equally valued, that's not happening.

Society didn't decide women didn't have a vote, men decided that wasn't women's place in society.

Well that’s alright then. If sex based oppression/discrimination wouldn’t necessarily exist in a parallel universe, then there’s absolutely no need at all to recognise and address the sex-based oppression that exists in the real world we actually live in, then, is there!

Absolutely. Well said.

weetabix I’m gettting the feeling that you want to dismantle women’s sex-based rights and protections, so yes, that is effectively what you said.

Then your feeling is entirely wrong and it is not what I said at all.

So, sorry but you are entirely wrong about me.

I disagree

Do please elaborate why.

Well said to all your post at 10.49 weetabix

Unless you are 100% in favour of the female sex class remaining a discrete category with its own rights, protections, single sex spaces and services? From which ALL males are excluded (on the basis of their being male, not whether they’re trans or not)?

She isn't. So you've called it right.

So not so "entirely wrong" really, eh Weetabix?

Society didn't decide women didn't have a vote, men decided that wasn't women's place in society.

Yes you are right. But I think you have to look at why women were considered to be the "weaker sex" and it was based in far more practical reasons - women were made physically much more vulnerable by pregnancy and childbirth and by the limitations of a less strong body in a time where strength was imperative for survival.

These physical differences are now no longer important in developed countries.

I don't agree with it but I can see the evolutionary reasons for it and how the hangover effect continued as society became more civilised.

In evolutionary terms the amount of time that society has been civilised is minute.

Society just decided that anyone who had a vagina would not be allowed to vote.

Yes, exactly.

And women are still treated differently in varying degrees around the world because they have a vagina. They can't 'identify' out of that. They can't say 'hey, I'm actually a man' and identify their way out of their oppression.

But men seem to think that they should be able to say 'hey I'm a woman' and access the sex based protections and rights that women carved out for themselves.

The transgender argument says that 'womanhood' only exists as some sort of social construct that anyone can identify their way into. And yet, we still live in a world where women and girls are abused, exploited and murdered for no other reason than that they have a female body. That they cannot identify their way out of.

8th rule of misogyny: men are whatever men say they are, and women are whatever men say they are.

That’s the first delusion. That society is or ever has been civilised.

We like to think we are but we are a long, long way off it yet.

It’s a work in progress that is actually being put back by this outrageous prioritising of members of the oppressor sex class over the entire sex class their class oppresses.

A civilised society would not tolerate rape, pornography, prostitution, child abuse. But all those things still thrive. In every part of the world.

The transgender lobby is trying to get everyone to wring their hands and question 'what is a woman anyway' to try and frame womanhood as some sort of fluid construct, so that they can identify into it.

Whereas there are millions of women all over the world who could tell you exactly how they know they are a woman. And it's nothing to do with innate 'feelz'.

And women are still treated differently in varying degrees around the world because they have a vagina.

Yes,society treats women differently.

It is not a biological cause. It is a social cause.

If I were born with no legs I couldn't walk. No amount of societal rules or views would enable me to walk. That is a biological fact.

If I have two legs but society bans me from walking that is not a biological fact but a societal one.

That's the point that I am making.

Women's position in society is the fault of society, not a biological fact.

This weetabix person certainly knows how to avoid answering a question.

Its Groundhog Weekend.

Indeed. These conversations will start to appear in my dreams.

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper writes well on sex / gender

"Some basic questions about sex and gender for progressives

1. Do you believe that being born with the kind of body that has the potential to gestate children – a body with a uterus, ovaries, and a vagina – is of any political significance? Does having that kind of body have any bearing on a person’s likely opportunities and outcomes?

1. Do you believe that people born with those kinds of bodies have historically been subject to any distinct forms of injustice, oppression, exploitation or discrimination? Have they historically been subordinated to the people with penises and testes?

1. Do you believe that people born with those kinds of bodies continue to be subject to any distinct forms of injustice, oppression, exploitation or discrimination?

1. Do you believe that people born with those kinds of bodies often suffer physical and sexual violence, abuse and harassment perpetrated by the people with penises and testes?

1. Do you believe that people born with those kinds of bodies ought to have a label with which to define themselves? Does our language need a word to refer to the people with uteruses and ovaries?

1. Do you believe that people born with those kinds of bodies have a right to organise politically around their shared experiences, and to campaign and work for policies to secure their own interests?

1. Do you believe that people born with those kinds of bodies have a right to associate freely with other people with those kinds of bodies, and to have some separate spaces for their safety, privacy and dignity? Do people with those kinds of bodies have a right to some spaces where people with penises and testes are not permitted to enter?

1. Do you believe that people born with those kinds of bodies sometimes have a right to policies and resources designated towards rectifying their historical and continued marginalisation and oppression?

If your answer to any of these questions is “yes”, you should reject the ideology of gender identity, and policy proposals based on that ideology such as the self-declaration of legal gender."

rebeccarc.com/2018/01/14/some-basic-questions-about-sex-and-gender-for-progressives/

It’s a work in progress that is actually being put back by this outrageous prioritising of members of the oppressor sex class over the entire sex class their class oppresses.

This. You mean you thought women were considered people, in the same way as men? Silly.

Women's position in society is the fault of society, not a biological fact.

No one is denying that weetabix.

It's the basis of feminism. That the biological differences between men and women should not result in the massive differential in power.

Men exploit women's reproductive and sexual labour, and the means by which they do it is gender roles, enforced by greater strength.

They're doing it now. They are using greater strength/power to infiltrate the few sex segregated spaces that women have managed to claw for themselves. And they are leveraging women's gender roles (female socialisation) in order to do it.

Which is why it's feminists who first spotted it. Their radar for how gender roles disadvantage women is finely honed.