To think Margaret Atwood is amazing

[Bibijayne]

Just that really.

Trans women would be killed in Gilead, in fairness, for gender treachery, they certainly wouldn’t be having a more cushy time than the women!

I disagree with her expressed opinions on sex and gender.

However, I very much admire some of her work. "The Testaments" is truly awful: this was more of a disappointment than her disagreeing with me.

I agree, I think she's brilliant, and a much-needed voice of support for trans people right now.

It’s an indication that in the deeply oppressive, patriarchal hierarchy of the world she had created for that novel, trans women weren’t recognised as women or trans men as men because the structure of that society was based (in part) on division by sex.

Because it would have been better to divide by gender?

It would be much easier for women if we could say that men and women are the same, so sexism is irrelevant. The problem is that there are specific services and protections (e.g. contraception) that only women need and withdrawal of those services affects women, not men. This shouldn't be difficult to understand.

Gender isn't real but a social construct designed to keep people in boxes (dress like this, play with this toy etc). Sex is real and in 99.99999% of cases easily established (which is why a rapist has no difficulty picking their victim).

I'm GC and I don't reduce someone to their genitals/reproductive organs. You can express yourself anyway you please provided it doesn't put anyone else in harms way.

If however you are a biological male there are places you can't go and things you can't have, for safety and equality reasons (based on law). If such a male or their supporters would like to push ahead anyway and try and take those things and put any woman in danger or at a disadvantage, then they have made it personal and damn right at that point I'll remind them of their genitals and I'll push the fuck back.

Because it would have been better to divide by gender?

I think it’s quite obvious it would be better not to divide at all...

Meh, not terribly impressed, honestly. Her latest tweets are just confirmation of the little I already knew of her.

@StampMc

If anything the handmaids tale should be discouraging people from reducing someone’s gender to their reproductive organs, but that’s a level of thought I’ve realised is far beyond the vocal minority

I don’t “reduce someone’s gender to their reproductive organs” whatever that might mean. I know that someone’s sex can be identified with a high degree of accuracy by their reproductive organs. That doesn’t mean they are reduced to their organs and only the disingenuous could possibly think it does.

I also know that gender is a hierarchy of oppression that has men being logical and well paid at the top and women being ditsy and making sandwiches at the bottom. It’s a social tool of patriarchy and anyone who “identifies” with gender or “reduces themselves to gender” or has a “gender identity” is a fucking idiot. The idea that if your genitals don’t match the wholly constructed gender role stereotypes assigned to your sex then you are literally the opposite sex and should have surgery to untrap you from YOUR OWN BODY is both laughable and monstrous.

This with big flashing knobs on.

Yes I’m amazed. And horrified. And bewildered and confused.

Amazing. Incredible. Chilling.

If anything the handmaids tale should be discouraging people from reducing someone’s gender to their reproductive organs, but that’s a level of thought I’ve realised is far beyond the vocal minority

So, what? You think it would have been an o.k. society if women could have identified as commanders and men as handmaidens and marthas? The only problem was the sex segregation? Bit more gender fluidity would have solved that?

She has either lost her mind or she's desperate to be popular.

"much-needed" voice of support for transpeople--hahaha. Everyone else has been forcibly silenced.

@yelyah22

I agree, I think she's brilliant, and a much-needed voice of support for trans people right now.

You mean apart from nearly all the media, partial civil servants, police, everyone who is a ‘Stonewall champion’, all the organisations going into schools to train children in gender ideology, all the lobbyist funded to the tune of millions of pounds by government to lobby to government, various supermarkets, the crown prosecution service, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrat’s, the Green Party, the nhs, PC gull and the thought police, twitter, Facebook, and more beside. All pushing deliberate misinterpretations of the law which denies sex as a protected characteristic. Yes I can see why they need Margaret Atwood.

Still I suppose we can be glad she isn’t inundating anyone who disagrees with tweets screaming for them to die in a fire, to suck in her lady cock, and other foul misogynistic language so favoured by trans rights activists. terfisaslur.com/

must be suffering from some kind of medical condition for her to have expressed an opinion that’s supportive of trans rights?

It's not about "trans rights" it's about the absurd denial of biological sex. A subject on which she is not an expert, but has read some biased thinkpieces.

:( I have had her so wrong for a long time.

Is the only way we can support trans rights to deny biology, reality and stop defending women's rights?

It would seem so.

I'm wondering if I'm allowed to now tweet that MA is committing literal violence towards me as a GC woman.

Or that she's fueling the hatred towards me as a vulnerable minority (GC women in twitter most definitely are!).

Or maybe that "she's ruined my adolescence" (I started my love affair with her writing when I was a teen).

Or maybe I could invite her to get in touch with me as the mother to biological female and male children so she can talk to me and get some more education on the matter. To help her educate herself.

It's funny though, I don't feel the need to actually do any of those things - never mind throw insults or threats or even think about burning her books!

I'm currently reading The Testaments and I shall just continue.

She's wrong about the science. That's it.

This is base misogyny, and I am perfectly entitled to challenge any poster who falls into the sexist and ageist trope of invalidating the opinions of older women with whom they disagree on the basis that they must have lost their minds.

Did you "strenuously object" to people saying that about JK Rowling, too?

I'm puzzled by people on here, who are supposedly 'gender critical' asking whether women can 'identify' out of their roles in Gilead. The whole point of the books is that anyone who doesn't conform to a strict stereotype is either tortured/killed or both.

Yes, that's the point gender critical is about rejecting those stereotypes. Biology isn't something you can identify out of. But it shouldn't determine your destiny, the way it does in Gilead. It's literally sex based oppression. Nothing to do with gender identity.

Attwood has repeatedly asserted that Handmaid's Tale is based on the oppression of females that is happening in real life around the world. Women being categorised and discriminated against because of their sex. So, if Attwood has always believed that biological sex is a sliding scale, what is she saying about all the women around the world upon whom her tale of oppression is based? Were/are those women womening incorrectly? What should we (adult human females, that is) be learning/doing to stop the oppression happening right now that she apparently witnessed in order to write Handmaid's Tale?

Exactly. Perfectly put.

This is base misogyny, and I am perfectly entitled to challenge any poster who falls into the sexist... trope

Don’t you mean you feel perfectly entitled to challenge anyone who treats someone as a certain gender? After all gender is sexism. Therefore you must be transphobic,

Fertile trans men would likely be forced to be handmaids however, and forced to identify as a woman.

Yes you're absolutely right, they probably would!

And why would that be? Could it be because the oppressive patriarchal regime in the book doesn't give a shit about how transmen identify, no matter how sincerely held their feelings about their gender, and are in fact oppressively imposing gender roles on the basis of biological sex?

GC feminists don't advocate doing away with biological sex because we don't like the gender roles. It's the other way around.

If we cannot talk about the existence of the female sex as a class then we are unable to name it or fight sex-based oppression and the oppressive imposition of gender roles and discrimination on the basis of our sex.

Ha, the amount of people here saying I think self ID would improve Gilead. Pals I think the whole point of the Handmaids tale is that Gilead is bad

And once more for everyone at the back. Trans people couldn’t self identify as commanders. They’d be hanged for being a gender traitor.