GC White women comparing being transgender to someone white claiming to be black

[NewNameNigel]

Does anyone else find this incredibly offensive?
Race and sex are so incredibly different!

Very well said @pikkumyy77

Are you on glue? Nothing is being taken from women? Except the right to being free from males when they are vulnerable, such as when in prison, in recovery services from men, when sleeping, when undressed. Except the right to safe and fair competition in sport. Except the only definition that describes what a woman is? Except for plain and clear language about us and our healthcare?

And this isn’t a ‘white woman’ cause no matter how much you want to pretend it is. Writing women of colour out of this feminist fight for your own ends is pretty racist.

And GC women are fine with people living their own lives. We just don’t want people claiming to live OUR lives.

OP, do you understand that the most historically oppressed group on earth, right up until the present day, is WOMEN?

That they have been and are still oppressed by men on the basis of BIOLOGY? And that any man who claims to be the same as us is declaring that our BIOLOGY is meaningless, when it has, for millennia, been the axis of our oppression?

Do you understand how fucking offensive THAT is?

OP, I think the argument is trying to show the arbitrary ridiculousness of trans activists simultaneously holding a belief that race is fixed and immutable and its boundaries must be rigidly enforced and never transgressed, whereas sex is a construct that anyone can opt into at will.

Why don't you tell the white victim of Karen White, whom he raped so viciously she may never bear children, that nothing was done to her. And that he just wanted to live his life.

Why don't you do that?

Actually there are some biological differences. A child's ECG looks very different to an adults.

It gradually changes as the child ages, in white people it is 'resolved' ie a normal adult ECG when white people are 20, in black people it can be up to 10 years later.

When recording pulmonary function tests you have to record race because the normal ranges are different.

Some blood groups are only or mostly found in certain populations eg RzRz is not normally found outside native americans.

Menstrual cycles also vary.

How and why these differences occur is a matter of debate, our ancestors all started out in Africa but along the way variations have developed.

Most 'norms' used in medicine are those of white males.

I think the comparison has been made because it's about people falsely identifying with a disadvantaged group in order to claim access to rights and services set up in order to compensate/put right their societal disadvantages. And the added insult of claiming that the reason for the oppression (be it biological or societal) is completely unimportant, as if everything these groups have experienced is made up bollocks!
Yet they retain the ability to opt out when it gets too hard or doesn't suit, or when they've bled us dry.

Are you seriously suggesting that all women have been oppressed equally?
That your oppression as a white woman is in anyway akin to the current and historical oppression of black and indigenous women?

As well as being black I am also a women. I suffer from BOTH forms of oppression as well as that lovely extra bits you get for being both. I don't need to be lectured on how women are oppressed - I suffer it along with you.

What does this even mean in this context?

This is an absolutely disgusting act that's horrific in its own right. You don't need to appropriate racism in order to make a point about this.

Throwing out other people's trauma for shock value to make your point is a bit gross.

Isn't that kind of the point @NewNameNigel ? We know that white people claiming to be black wrong - that this takes resources they've no right to, denying them to the people they were put in place for.

Idk, but people claiming something they clearly aren't, puts me in kind of grief vampires.

Black women are only talked about when they are useful to other people

TRAs like to use black women as a reason to justify trans women being treated as women, as if the "black" makes them less than women who then need justifying into that category

Whilst GC women use people identifying as black as a comparator trans, because its a useful handy shorthand if you don't intend on actually doing anything about why society has made it a useful handy shorthand

Meanwhile on the feminism forum I've seen Muslim women being told to leave a chat about wearing hijabs because they wouldn't agree they were poor beleaguered brown women who needed rescuing from their culture/religion. And when black women and women of culture raise issues about racism within feminism they are told to pipe down, that there aren't any issues that don't impact white women equally, that they are "allowing themselves" to be used to distract from the "real issues" and effectively if they sit pretty and shut up eventually white feminists might get round to listen to their issues once they have finished their more important work.

How about instead of defaulting to the rather 2010ish "this is offensive", you start your argument with "I disagree with this".

Oh look, tone policing. How refreshing!

"Oppressor race".
As opposed to what? Slave race?

You say some abominable things OP.
What a bad day to be on Mumsnet. I wish I could wash my brains out.

Exactly this!

@NewNameNigel
Yes, all women have been oppressed equally.

The historically oppressed races. Weird that your mind went to slave. Why is that?

So why are black women so much more likely to die in childbirth in this country?

Why are black women paid less than white women?

Why are black women more likely to be murdered?

And more to the point. Why are you on the black mumsnetters section arguing that black women aren't oppressed due to their race?

Why? Because it would be equally offensive way of expressing myself.

I don't oppress anyone and don't belong to an "Oppressor race".

I've never thought about race in that way that is a really helpful comparison with being height etc - thank you for sharing this I will remember it

It’s so rude and out of order. I am so tired or being everyone’s rhetorical device.

every other minute, “this would never happen to black people” , “what if it was black people”

leave black people out of it thanks.

You're not responsible for what your ancestors did but if you can't see that white people have a history of oppressing black people which impacts the way we all live today then you are part of the problem.

Yes, exactly this.

OP, I do understand your concern about white people co-opting concerns around racism (I’m a brown woman and so find that stance infuriating in most contexts) but actually I think the comparison here is fair. I think it is as absurd to say you can change your sex as it would be to say you can change your race and it’s simply an example to highlight that as a society we wouldn’t ignore such an outlandish stance in other contexts.

Rachel Dolezal is a good example - she calls herself trans racial and took jobs and opportunities reserved for black people. Those opportunities were reserved for black people in an attempt to re-balance the disadvantage and oppression black people face and because having the experience of growing up black would enhance one’s ability to .perform in certain roles Trans women are men doing the same thing to women (taking women’s prizes, women’s roles etc) as Rachel Dolezal did to people of colour.

I don’t agree that I am “oppressed” because it implies some kind of concerted and deliberate action which doesn’t really apply in the way it used to when sex or race discrimination was legal. I also don’t really agree with your point because plenty of WoC are GC and the comparison is quite a helpful one for teasing out the issues.

@StickyStickMick you can be GC and black and still not think it's a valid comparison. I'm fairly GC. I'm not coming at this from a TRA perspective.