To Think That Archaeology Proves That Men Cannot Be Women

[MrsMappFlint]

A burial site has been found in Cardiff. It dates from the 6th or 7th Century.
The skeletons are all women.

In death, when all genitals have gone, the skeleton retains the truth about the simple fact-it is either male or female.

There is no third way. That's science and hundreds of years after death, the truth of biology is retained in the bone.

Your sex is in your very bones-male or female-that's it. In the end, that's all there is.

Men can pretend to be women but skeletons tell the truth.

The story is on the BBC website.

I've tried to edit this post but it's not working--I wish it to say 'i don't give a fuck about men's sad/angry feelings'

A shockingly significant number - too many actually - of women have been ‘directly affected’ by men. Men as a sex class commit most of the sexual and violent crime. And we can’t police who the nice and nasty ones are in our spaces so only way is to exclude ALL men. Even those with trans identities.

What don’t you get? 🙄

I have no problem with people presenting as the opposite sex but I will not pretend men are women. that isn't persecution.

But there HAVE been discourses and theories on human identities for centuries, including gender and sex.

There was a very interesting paradigmatic shift in the Early Modern period.

Before that, European science tended to be of the opinion that male and female bodies were the same, but inverse - ovaries were inverse testicles, etc. This led to the belief that a woman must orgasm to create a child (good), and that a pregnant woman therefore couldn't have been raped (bad).

Personality was driven by humours - men were more likely to be sanguine, women phelgmatic, BUT it was also considered possible that women and men could display different balances of their humours. There were many women of prominence, status and power.

This shifted to the "two body" theory. Men and women were wholly different, and men were definitively superior. This changing belief led to the legal and political oppression of women, who were definitively inferior and belonged in the home.

People assume that history is a straight line. It isn't. Ideas and modes shift. This is just the current set of ideas and modes - and all have their pluses and minuses for what it means for individuals.

yeah that's all fine. but which set of bodies was brutalized and commodified by the other set throughout all of that theorising?

Always impressive how a segment of Mumsnet can twist every scrap of news into fuel for their culture war, this is an impressive archaeological find, it raises many interesting questions about the culture and customs of the time, none relate to transgender people.

Seriously, for some people it's genuinely impressive how much the transphobic obsession can colour their every thought. Doesn't it make you tired?

You don't have to pretend anything, but not addressing people by their chosen name is just rude. It isn't even about pronouns because when you are in direct conversation with someone, you only tend to use 'you'. But how hard is it to just do someone the courtesy of using the name they have chosen? Especially since the whole concept of male and female names is ridiculous anyway? Some calmness and basic good manners from both sides would take the heat out of things.

What’s your ‘move on in a positive way’ then? You seem to have no problem scolding women who are still angry at having been gaslighted all this time that their rights and dignity don’t matter, but let’s hear it genius, what’s your cuddly kumbya solution to this clash of rights?

this is a particularly interesting find being entirely composed of women. trans ideology would not let us acknowledge the existence of women.

Not the ‘intersex’ argument… that’s so 2019.

intersex… or to use the proper, more accepted name DSD = ’disorders of sexual development’ are a range of disorders and anomalies which affect the reproductive system.

however, every single child/person who has this disorder will have either XX or XY chromosomes so male OR female… never both… so saying ‘Intersex’ is akin to ‘trans’ is insulting and incorrect.

it's not rude if it's bloody nonsense. you wouldn't agree to call me lady foofoo frankentits and I would think you were a fucking idiot if you did.

quick interlude to point out that this entire case came about because the Scottish government was trying to circumvent their pledge to hire women by instead hiring men in skirts. women do not give a fuck what men wear but do not try to tell us a man in a skirt is a woman. I don't know why this is so hard to understand.

You've just waded into an argument about archaeology that you don't understand. I am, quite literally, one of the world's experts on the Venus of Willendorf and I can tell you, unquestionably, nobody of any knowledge on the topic thinks that artefact is a drug icon.

does anyone think it was a bloke with lady feelings?

I have never suggested that it was, or that anyone with expertise on this topic thinks that.

how can you possibly say that? I find that frankly transphobic.

What?

how can you possibly claim that the figure with a womanly body was not in fact a man with lady feelings?

Ah yes. Sarcasm is often the default way to make a point when one has run out of actual facts. I'm out.

it's not sarcasm. it's gender ideology. tell me why that figure is a woman and not a man.

I agree with you op but having spent the last 15 or so years editing archaeology papers for publication you'd be amazed at the muddled thinking around this, especially from early career stage academics . Sex and gender are regularly conflated or used interchangeably to prove points that are just not backed up by fact.

Same with murder victims. The Long Island Serial killer has a victim who was found skeletonised and was wearing woman’s clothing but is male .

Interested to see some think YABU.

Off to read the thread properly now,

To be fair, it wasn't GC women who put the heat in.

I agree that some commentary has been crowing, some comments have been harsh, even unkind. But mean comments are in no way synonymous with what TRAs have routinely dished out to women who disagreed with them, for years and still currently. You can't expect women to get threatened with violence for wanting to have the right to a name for our own sex class, for years, and then not exclaim a bit now.

It's not fair to say 'oh extremists on both sides aren't helping ' when the extremes in one side is saying mean things and the extremes on the other is violence, rape threats and death threats. They're not equivalent and we don't like it when its suggested that they are.

Had there been a little more sympathy for (as only one example) the women in the female prison estate who were locked up with violent male sex offenders as per the policy of the Scottish Prison Service, who were (deliberately) advised incorrectly of the EQA 2010 by lobbying groups and
concern about them feeling unsafe, I imagine the landscape would look rather different now.

As it was, women were sent death and rape threats for expressing concern that women were being turned away from rape crisis services and told to 'reframe their trauma'.

No debate didn't work. Be kind was basically 'shut up women'. Now it's 'both sides!!'

No.

I have never, and would never, publish a paper on the basis of identifying that figurine, or any, by their sex or gender. I would describe it as an anthropomorphic figurine made from oolithic limestone, with certain physical features (the striking hair or headpiece, for instance), associated with a specific Palaeolithic techno-culture (the Gravettian).