To think that society would not be immensely simpler were women denied the right to vote and own property

[BungeeCord]

The link to this article was originally posted in FWR but I think this paragraph (written by trans woman Robin Moira White) is so offensive and telling that it needs to be seen widely.

translucent.org.uk/a-supremely-poor-job/

"We could simplify society immensely by removing women from voting, property ownership, and working in the professions, but that would not be right."

How? How would removing women from society make for a simpler society? Is this what some people think of women? Clearly some people do think that, I didn't think that was an acceptable belief to hold in our society though.

So @Tandora when you talk of bodies being female, do YOU mean something other than, as you put it, "being born with a vagina/ xx chromosomes etc " ?

If so, what?

I wanted to jump in because I've been giving this a lot of thought. I think the notion of definition is tricky because within it is the idea of something fixed ('definitive') and comprehensive. A better concept could be 'preliminary condition', as in female biological sex is a preliminary condition to being a woman. I think it's important because I understand where @Tandora is coming from but have also read enough posts from GC feminists to see their point of view as well. The issue I have had with defining a woman as her biological sex is that indeed, we are so much more than our biology. Toxic ultra-right ideologues align word for word on the definition of woman as biological sex BUT for them that is all we are. A womb. A vessel to carry children and possibly a sex toy but that's it. Women for them are only relevant according to their biological function. That's the prism through which they see us and want to use to determine our fate in society. I know GC feminists (being feminists) don't believe that is all we are of course- but somehow the definition of woman as biological sex only has led to two apparently opposed world views joining on this issue.

Gender roles- sure, we should do away with any form of social determinism based on biology. Basically, down with clichés and stereotypes.

On transpeople- I do think that there is such a thing as sexual identity which is distinct and separate from gender norms and from biology. I knew that I was a girl growing up; my parents made sure that what it meant for me was not linked to any form of social restrictions. I realised what my sexual identity was early on and thankfully for me it aligned with how I perceived myself. It is distinct from the notion of social norms; for instance, I did not conform to gender stereotypes. Nevertheless, I knew I was a girl, that I presented as feminine and that I did not like what was expected of girls generally. So for me those are three different notions: biology, sexual identity, and social gender norms. I am not an expert on gender dysphoria but I assume that when 1 and 2 are misaligned, it is permanent and real. If all you see is 3 (socially imposed gender norms) and don't accept that there is such a thing as sexual identity (I don't mean sexual orientation, which is again its own thing), then it's easy to dismiss it as a harmful fantasy, which I think is too simplistic and can lead to denying the very existence of a whole community.

This may be of service to you:

The far right and trans ideology have a lot in common. They both believe that everyone has a gender identity and that it should ‘align’ with your sexed body. They just disagree with what should happen if they don’t ‘align’. Feminism is the idea that gender is pretty much entirely social conditioning (back to de Beauvoir and the making of women), that this is a bad restrictive thing that we should try to shake off.

We can accept (the possibility) that some people feel a genuine disconnect with their body sex and some innate sense of identity without having to accept that this makes the people who experience this in any way interchangeable with people of the opposite physical sex.

The generist sleight of hand is not the (potential) existence of gender identity itself, but the ideological belief that it supercedes the observable fact of body sex to the degree that, for example, a woman should be happy getting naked with or being searched by an entirely bog standard physical male because his gender id is that of a woman, or that men who predate on women are reacting to their innder gender not their outer body, or the history of womanhood and the rights for which feminists fought weren't in reality anything to do with how society treated the female-bodied, but because those people were identifying as women.

I wold have no issue accepting, indeed I already do accept, the existence of a community of people who feel a disconnect with (what they believe) society allows for their body and who believe this is a feature of their inner gender rather than the simple rejection of sexist gender roles. If it stopped there that would be great, a positive thing. Where I draw the line is the ideology that claims this belief makes them somehow interchangeable with people of the opposite sex to the degree that protections, provisions and rights based on sex are not needed at all, or that people should not be allowed to speak about the experiences and consequence of sex as something different to gender identity.

@StandFirm but also yes yes yes to "preliminary condition". I think of it as "necessary condition".

The issue I have had with defining a woman as her biological sex is that indeed, we are so much more than our biology.

Again, a definition, or preliminary condition, does not limit. A Man City supporter is someone who supports a football club but is more than that. A tesco Clubcard holder is someone who has a Tesco Clubcard holder but is so much more than that. A dancer is someone who dances but is so much more than that. That's a GIVEN for any other word we define yet oddly when it comes to women people pretend that anyone is saying "female with no other qualities" isn't a single criterion but a full and comprehensive description of a person!

It's such a dishonest argument.

Personally, I think there are behavioural differences between men and women that aren’t wholly socially determined. The main one is that, globally, men are on average much more violent than women. This doesn’t change, unfortunately, when they put on a frock and call themselves Lorelei. So yes, they may well believe they are expressing their inner gender fairy dust, but it doesn’t make them women for all purposes, as the Supreme Court wisely concluded.

You and whoever produced this diagram has a lot of work to do understanding what being trans is.

I've never deliberately bookmarked a post before but I'm bookmarking this one.

Really, why?

Gender is innate, they have known since they were a child, everybody has a gender identity, they transitioned from one gender to another or to none

Sex is changeable: I am not a robot and I call myself a woman, so I am a biological woman and have changed my appearance, dress, hormones so you cannot tell

Accept gender variations: a masculine transfemme, non binary, a feminine transmasc and many, many options in between.

So where is the circle incorrect for trans? It is the trans communities own words about themselves.

You seem to have confused ‘social construct’ with the advent of language.

If there was no one around to apply any kind of word/label or social expectation on a baby, that baby would still be either male or female and develop accordingly.

For example, the child found in the forest having apparently been raised by dogs (or whatever wild animal felt sufficiently maternal) was still female, regardless if the fact the dogs had no human language to label her as female.

The sex of a baby is observed at birth and given a label based on a set of facts.

What facts would you group together to determine which label your baby requires for medical and social policy planning purposes?

Stonewall said you don’t need gender dysphoria to consider yourself as trans. As ‘gender dysphoria’ is the supposed mismatch between sex and ‘identity’ - Stonewall, the self appointed arbiters of all things trans, have said that you can be trans without any mismatch between sex and ‘identity’.

You can literally just say you are trans and expect all the benefits that brings.

That is why the whole concept of having an identity that overrides all facts and considerations of your sex is nonsense.

Well for a start being trans isn’t an ideology it’s just something someone is.

In terms of theoretical reasoning about sex and gender- there is of course a huge range of ideas expressed within the trans community and no one way of looking at things . But very few would be accurately characterised by the simplisms in that diagram- as they make very little sense .

I am not trans but I am someone who presumably you would call as adhering to “trans ideology” (in the sense that I believe trans people are who they say they are and accept them as exactly that). I would never say “gender is innate”, but “sex is changeable” . It would be an absurd position to adopt.

Ideology - a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.

The ideology, @Tandora, is not the belief in mental gender identity and the acceptance of valid and meaningful cross sex identification in itself, but the belief about what society should be as a result.

It is the belief that this inner gender should supercede the material reality of sex in almost all cases,.

The belief that social identity, interactions and law should be based upon it and not on sex.

The belief that the history of women includes trans women and the language and experiences of women apply to a mixed sexed gender.

The belief that the experience of a male bodied person imagining himself as female has as much if not more authority as to the needs and expereinces of women as the lived experience of actual female people.

The belief that biological sex is so utterly meaningless and irrelevant to anything that it need have no name, no legal existence, no cultrural value or authority, that to even speak of it is at best gauche and at worst akin to genocidal hatred.

And most importantly, the belief that it is right, peoper and necessary that society be pushed into making this true.

That, @Tandora, is why genderism is an ideology.

I agree in the sense that we can and we must separate being trans (which is not an ideology), from the belief that society must be inclusive , dignified and safe for trans people- which could reasonably/ meaningfully be described as an “ideology”. The term “trans ideology” is therefore quite inappropriate /
misleading as it conflates the two .

I think it would be simpler from a child rearing perspective. We would all be stay at home mams and housewives again, so no childcare, no nanny's, no ferrying to and fro, no running out of time to do the housework, no full time work plus all of the home responsibilities, no commute etc etc. I'm not saying this is better or right. But simpler? Yes. Don't see what voting has to do with it though?

So if a transperson is not changing their sex, why should they be allowed to use the spaces designated for the opposite sex? Or are you saying gender and sex are the same thing?

Well, as soon as you posit an underlying "reality" to trans identity which is more than the observed fact that some people believe themselves to be innately aligned with what they believe the opposite sex experiences in ways that others of their sex are not, you are moving from shared reality into ideology.

But really I just want to clarify what you mean by "inclusive , dignified and safe for trans people"

Do you mean in that society needs to accept and allow trans people to be trans people - people of one sex who believe themselves to align better with the other? And to ensure they are not insulted or threatened or made to look foolish? While their belief system is obviously offensive in that it projects the trans person's idea of reality onto others, it is no more offensive than many religions and certainly not something that should stop trans people partipating in society safeky and with dignity as long as they can accept others may not align with their belief system.

Or do you mean that society needs to accomodate trans people as being in a meaningful way actually the opposite sex, to the degree that they should have a right to the protections, rights and language of the sex they in fact are not, the right to impose their personal projection about what "fits" onto everyone else and force them into identities they may not find authentic, to redefine everyone else in society and law, to remove in particular women's right to say no to any male because he is male, to remove even the language to speak of a purely female experience?

Because if that is what you mean, if you believe the only way trans people get inclusivity, dignity and safety is if they are allowed to reshape everyone else's inclusion, dignity and safety to fit their own beliefs, beliefs many people find not just wrong but actively sexist and regressive, I have a problem with your ideology and I utterly reject it being described as "inclusion, dignity and safety" when what it really is is dominance, denial and repression.

Let us be very clear, the moment you accept just one person as being meaningfully a man or a woman despite being of the opposite sex, you have just told every single human being on the planet that their identity as a man or a woman has changed to accomodate a mental quality of gender regardless of how those people may feel or see themselves.

And that is not inclusive or dignified, and in the case of women in particular, potentially unsafe.

Right. You do think being trans is an ideology. Thats the truth of the matter.

It’s like saying- I accept that being gay is a thing but only in the sense that gay believe they have feelings of what they believe is same sex attraction. Actually of course they are straight and what they are feeling isn’t sexual attraction at all. But I’m not saying being gay isn’t real, and I’m totally up for supporting dignity and inclusion for gay people, honest!!! We can do that without accepting they are same sex attracted!!! That’s just ideology!!! 😂😭

But homosexuality can be measured and tested, there are tests to confirm whether someone is homosexual. There is no test for gender. First you would have to have a workable, testable, measurable definition of gender. There is none apart from a set of sexist, outdated stereotypes.

A gay person is a gay person without requiring anything from anyone else in society. They don't need me to believe in same sex attraction to be same sex attracted, and their being same sex attracted has no impact on anyone other than the people in their dating pool.

A transperson needs other people in society to go along with their belief that they are the opposite sex. They want to access the words and spaces of the sex they are not, as part of their belief system which not everyone shares.

A transperson isn't equivalent to a gay person, they're more on the lines of a Jewish person wanting the whole world to keep kosher and write God as G_d. Now we accept a Jewish person doing that for themselves, but we do not accept that they can force others to do it. We do not allow them to take over the churches and take down the crucifixes and bin the new testament. That's not reasonable, or tolerant, or inclusive, and it doesn't recognise that others have different beliefs than Jews have.

It’s nothing like being gay. Being gay is about who people are attracted to sexually.

It doesn’t place any requirements on the rest of society to either redefine universal facts like the sex binary or accept that a person is really something that they are observably not.

We still haven’t got to the bottom of a) how somebody born male has any inkling of what it is to be female and b) if there is no material, fixed definition of woman as you appear to claim, what do these men think they are ‘transitioning’ to? And what do these men fundamentally think they are?

Circular definitions don’t count btw.

oh what utter tripe. Trans people don’t need anything from you except acceptance for who they are (in fact they’d really really like it if you would just leave them aline. Please). Exactly the same as gay people and any other “people” for that matter.

Ok. So transpeople don’t need anyone using their preferred pronouns, preferred name, and don’t need access to spaces designated for the oppposite sex? Gotcha. In that case they can crack on and do whatever makes them happy. TW will be happy using mens spaces and TM will be great using women’s spaces. Yay! Everyone is happy