Are you a feminist, if yes, what does it mean to you?

[YouAreNotBatman]

YANBU = I’m am
YABU = I am not

I don't think there is a new way of categorising sport which does not exclude women as TW are biologically stronger and faster due to being male. Clearly you piss all over the rights of women if you effectively exclude them from sport. Unless you mean there could be a third category for trans people?

Sorry I missed this earlier. The point is that vast swathes of TW look like a man in a dress, or nowadays just like man. The women who have been effectively excluded from rape crisis centres knew they were men. It's facetious argument to base it on the pretence that you can't tell when people clearly and repeatedly have. There are differences between men and women's bodies so it's not surprising that the vast majority of the time you know who is encroaching on a female space.

I'm not going to engage in conversation about people with DSD as they have asked not to be used as pawns in this ideology. TW, however, cannot experience the same pressures as women as they have nothing in common with women and society does not really think they are women. They can't be discriminated against due to their biology because it's clear that they are biologically male. If you think there is some commonality, can you be the one person who actually is willing to say what it is? Because no one else will answer that question.

Feminism seems to have become fighting to correctly recognise women, even before we can address the systemic disadvantage they are subject to.

When we have lost the definition of woman, with some people thinking they can include men, we've really lost ground.

It's hard to believe anyone can genuinely not understand. I mean, being kind is nice and all but losing the ability to talk accurately because words are up for grabs makes functioning sensibly very hard.

Sport maybe there just needs to be new ways of categorising sport.

Why? Why not just accept that it's not possible to change sex and male people are not women, because that word is needed for female people, but gender non conforming male people?

This. So true.

Good questions. I've been mulling them over since last night and I've ended up with more questions than answers.

Patriarchy is so ingrained that imagining what female liberation looks like is like trying to imagine something that has never existed. I agree with gnilliwdog at 22.35 that the more women work together and build communities the more likely we are to think of different ways of doing things. Patriarchy is geared towards the pursuit of power and possessions which feels so futile and cultivates a "dog eat dog" culture which doesn't feel particularly helpful.

I think the distinction does matter and this question gave me lots to think about. Would women pursue the patriarchal idea of success of we were liberated? I thought about our amazing women's football team and wondered whether women, in the absence of patriarch, would have a passion for football or are women imitating men in order to gain status? What would success look like in the absence of patriarchy? Would women still value status, power, influence and wealth in the same way?

I then I wondered whether striving for equality was a necessary step on the road to liberation or is the only way of achieving real liberation to refuse to participate in the current system at all and how would that work. Do lesbian separatists have a point?

Would it still be patriarchy if we had true sex equality? Patriarchy is such an accepted way of organising the world that I wonder if we would even know what true sex equality looks like. Would equality mean something slightly different? At the moment we seem to think everyone having access to the same opportunities and resources would be equality which leads us to a belief that a legal right to equality of opportunity means you are some how at fault if you fail to achieve the patriarchal idea is success.

There are differences between men and women but its hard to know which of those differences are innate and which are due to socialisation. Evolutionary biologist and psychologists are conducting their research in a patriarchal society so can we even rely on their findings?

These are my random thought rather than any kind of answer but thank you for giving me so much to think about.

It isn't just about changing in front of other people is it?

Its about the presence of males, which in itself increases the risk. It is about the ability of males to install recording equipment whilst in those spaces. The presence of men when you are in the cubicle and the ability of men to corner women in a quiet unmanned changing room.

It is about the lack of this all female space being the reason that many women are able to actually do sport in the first place.

It is about the whole of society being designed around males with women and girls having to fit in as best they can, rather than things being designed around women and girls.

One example is playgrounds, which are never designed around what girls might want...
makespaceforgirls.co.uk/

There are so many facets that 'cubicle' fails to recognise or anticipate or improve that it is hard to see how you believe that this is the holy grail answer.

It is about the whole of society being designed around males with women and girls having to fit in as best they can, rather than things being designed around women and girls.

Exactly. It's not progressive.

I don't understand how people can feel like something. Can't imagine thinking to myself I feel like a human, or feel like a woman.

Well quite. A person can only ever feel like themselves, because they cannot possibly know what it feels like to be anyone else. So arguably there is no such thing as 'feeling like a woman', because you can't know what being any other woman feels like. So logically anyone who identifies as something they are not can only ever be imagining what it feels like.

My point is that the issue there is how would they know that the person providing their care and support was born male

Well, you'd hope they would say so, and either get freely given consent or respect the women's boundary if they don't get it. Which some transwomen do but others do not. You can't consent if you don't know.

And what happened in reality to Sarah Summers was not "how would they know". An obviously male transwomen joined the women's support group and the group was instructed to welcome them.

I'm leaving out intersex as that's not relevant for care and support.

And what happened in reality to Sarah Summers was not "how would they know". An obviously male transwomen joined the women's support group and the group was instructed to welcome them.
And in this case there was an appropriate alternative for the transwoman.

Well, you'd hope they would say so, and either get freely given consent or respect the women's boundary if they don't get it.

Surely it should be the default position to expect a grown adult male to have enough respect to be honest about their sex knowing that it matters to many females, and that even finding out in retrospect would cause those females distress. And the same for males who want same sex provision too.

Well yes. This is true.

And when you have people who have included this as an area of their final work for university admitting that they don't care that their definition of female is not that of established science and medicine.

Yet then argue that 'females' are being harmed by the regulations that exclude males, and only males, from female categories of sport despite having no actual evidence of this, you begin to understand where 'be kind' has taken us as females. Back into the wilds. This lack of care is replaying the injustices done to women in sports before testosterone was reliably detected.

But people either cannot, or refuse to, see this.

It has taken us to a place where people will twist language to a point where it becomes pointless in accurately describing what you are trying to say. And it becomes impossible to be able to work out the exact outcomes of policy discussions needed to protect females. It is like when Starmer agrees that women should have 'same sex' services.... when at the time no one knew what Starmer meant by 'women'. Or 'same sex services' even. Those who picked up on the sleight of hand he dealt were not surprised in his refusal to answer what a woman was.

Even less surprised when he stated that 'It's wrong to say 'only women have a cervix'.

That numerous people on this thread are happy to have this ambiguity and seem to be arguing for it, is very concerning. Because they are also calling themselves feminists.

Good laws and policies need to be absolutely clear who they protect. And allowing loose language in an effort to be kind, or whatever your motivation, means those laws are not fit for purpose.

Yes, I'm not sure why we need to find new ways of categorising sport just to accommodate trans women, to be honest.

Nobody is talking about excluding trans people from sport. They just need to compete according to their sex, because their gender identity isn't actyually relevant in anyway.

Just catching up on this thread. Is this the one where Anne Fausto-Sterling seemed to be under the impression that babies could be born who were hermaphroditic, à la Greek myth, and where she speculated about their sexual usefulness?

Part of my feminism is that I don't sexually objectify people or their medical conditions. Isn' this sometimes known as the "male gaze"? Not something women should wish to emulate.

Did this paragraph read better to you in context? The people with DSDs who advocate for better treatment of affected children, whose writing I follow, did not find that it did. On balance, I find the fetishisation and othering of babies with uncertain medical futures is abhorrent.

Wholly agree Pots. No child is born for their future 'usefulness' in 'pleasuring' others, this is appalling.

Fuck, that is an appalling paragraph!

Wow!

Good lord. Feminism means, to @electricdreaming being able to pleasure everyone?

Wowsers.

Note there is nothing there about reciprocation to the partners.

It's just about people with DSDs growing up to sexually service other people.

Because society has moved on and people identify in different ways that don't always fit into the two categories. So look at how trans/non binary etc people can be include without taking away from others. So maybe instead of mens/womens sports are mixed or based on height/weight etc depending on what the sport requires. That way everyone gets to be included.

Who says society has moved on?

Trans women are literally the only people who don't think they should be competing according to their own biological sex like everyone else.

Women don't want to compete against them. Women want to compete fairly.

I don't really care how anyone else identifies because it has literally nothing to do with me, women, being a woman, what a woman is, or competitive sport.

The problem the mn feminists have is they want to deny a change that's already happened. Space is being made for trans men and women. Rather than saying " it's wrong we want to go back to before trans people had rights". Maybe it would be better to look at how women can be safe and how trans women can be safe. So then everyone is safe. Your argument unfortunately shuts you down because you come across as transphobic so you will never be taken seriously. Which potentially causes more harm to women because this platform could be very helpful at raising awareness for womens rights.

@babyjellyfish the laws that protect trans rights (in uk)

And the way trans and non binary people can compete is really very obvious: the same way everyone else competes. According to their sex.

There are two sexes, male and female. Trans and non binary people are one or the other of those things, like everyone else, so there is already an appropriate category for them.

The obvious solution is for them to stuff their gender identity in a locker along with their jeans and their valuables before they get in the pool or hit the racetrack.