Following on from the TERF thread...

[CailinDana]

Trying to get my head straight on this. Surely the whole malarkey around transwomen wanting to be recognised as women even though they have penises will eventually actually help to break down the idea of gender?

What I mean is, if a person with a penis can be labelled a woman simply because they want to be labelled in that way, surely gender becomes meaningless as it tells you nothing meaningful about a person except perhaps the clothes they like to wear?

This is a half-formed thought, feel free to develop/challenge.

In fact, here is his latest column, Not All Menz, in which he discusses Elliott Rodgers, how women don't mean all men when they talk about male violence and men do not need to remind women that some men aren't like that, and mentions how homophobia is a consequence of misogyny (third letter down).

www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=19896960

And many posters on here would agree with that. Many posters on here would disagree with his stance on prostitution, but hopefully think that given the huge impact of the It Gets Better Campaign, it would be massively counter productive to single him out for constant criticism, no platform him or write him off entirely given his continuing important contribution to gay rights.

And this is why the TERF slur is important.

Radical feminists must be painted as ultra conservative/behind the times/non progressive/repressive/exclusionary of the oppressed/bigoted/discriminatory/politically incorrect.

It is a cunning slur designed to appeal to right on liberals in all that it implies of the non liberalism and the narrow mindedness of radicals.

You know, I used to pander to trans desires to be referred to by their chosen pronouns and sex designation. I did it out of kindness and a desire not to hurt. But I won't do it anymore because women's kindness is being exploited and manipulated. An inch given and miles taken. I refuse all of the delusion, every bit and I will no longer give in to any of it.

Supporting the notion that calling a man 'he' and 'misgendering' a person is a really oppressive and hateful thing to do is the first step down the trans cult rabbit hole. IMO it is a feminist act to not capitulate.

Transactivists who call women TERFs, fish, pussy, etc. can fuck right off with the idea that feminists referring to born men as a 'man' and 'he' are using oppressive slurs.

Oh and I wish they and their handmaidens would educate themselves as to what social oppression actually is.

Beachcomber, I would suggest that there are two reasons people use correct pronouns on here and talk about surgery in a neutral way - a. it is a matter of courtesy and b. comments that break these rules tend to get deleted. Given that your post of 13.10 had some really good points in it about the impact on feminism, it would be good if you could repost those parts should your post get deleted.

Sorry almondcakes but you've lost me.

Which bits of my post are deletable? I haven't addressed anyone on here with pronouns they don't want or called anyone on here a man or talked about anyone on here's surgery. My comments about neovaginas are general. If it is against MN talk guidelines to express the opinion that cutting off healthy body parts is mutilating and that men are men then I guess someone better report my post so that said opinion can be censored.

Which would rather make my point.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be controversial. It was probably an unhelpful post for me to make.

No worries - I just was surprised because I don't see what would be deletable about it but you may be right. Too bad if it gets deleted.

I think we are now in the fourth wave of feminism - the one where there is only radical feminism left as liberal feminism has been destroyed by a combination of third wavers, transgenderism, post-modernism, and liberal feminism's own liberalism.

Agree completely with this Beach. I still can't quite believe what has happened to mainstream feminism, and that there aren't more women who have a problem with its pro-porn, pro-prostitution, pro-gender-essentialist stance.

Liberal feminism has handed over the gold medal in the Oppression Olympics to men (many of them white).

It's surreal, isn't it? I suppose it is the logical outcome of the male-identified nature of liberal feminism, which has always defined women's liberation in terms of equality with men, implicitly conceding that women should strive to become more like men.

Catherine MacKinnon once wrote that liberal feminism is not feminism - it is liberalism applied to women. Well, liberalism only works for women to a very circumscribed extent. If you are talking about women claiming formal equality with men and the theoretical right to be a free agent, then liberalism applied to women is all that we need. If you want to uproot the ancient ideological and material structures of women's oppression, you need to go further, much further, than 'women and men should be equal'. You need to look at why we aren't equal, why almost every society that has ever existed has been built on male domination and female subordination.

The liberal subject is a fundamentally male subject: a free agent making his way in the world unencumbered by the threat of male violence or child-bearing - two controlling factors that have defined the lives of women in all societies throughout history. Women need a liberation movement that centres the female subject, which concedes that we do not become free just by saying that we all choose our choices, which recognises that our lives are fundamentally different from men's in several important respects, and that society needs to be reshaped according to those needs and interests. How can we do this if we concede that 'woman' is a meaningless concept that anyone can adopt?

that imo accounts for the popularity of pro porn , pro prostitution, pro gender essentialism pov's. It's much more accessible, much more applicable to the real world, the converse needs a deeper more theoretical analysis. not saying those povs are held by stupid people, of course not, i mean they are likely to be held by people who are not that deeply involved, ordinanary every day people, the wo/man on the street who doesn't wish ill on anyone.

its hard to have rl conversations on this if you come from a more radfem perspective.
look at kim's example about having f not m on her drivers license. a concrete everyday rl benefit compared to more abstract 'out-there' counter arguments

typing v bad but bfing (woman centred!) so please excuse

Some really great posts on here, thank you.

Why does such a small minority take up so much posts on here?

Like many others here, I didn't go out looking for transgender issues to be concerned about. If you are involved in feminism in any way, trans issues will find you. Also like many others, my first response was sympathy for people living difficult lives and being open to ways to make their lives easier. However, it became clear that there is no middle ground here, no compromise, nothing other than complete capitulation to the cult of trans is acceptable.

From an intellectual position, I cannot, cannot pretend to believe something that is so patently and obviously false on a material (not political) level. There is a biological reality to the existence of two sex classes that is not overcome by cultural influences nor the existence of a tiny number of people who are intersex. This suspension of reality has no parallel in any other social justice movement. Social justice for other groups has never depended on denying biological reality.

From a political position, I cannot accept genderism as it is counter to everything I believe as a feminism about constructed femininity imposed on the sex class of women. Genderism is founded in liberalism, individualism and post-modernism, none of which I agree with. Genderism is misogynistic and profoundly anti-feminist.

Why do I take up so many posts on here? Partly it's a reaction to the huge amount of silencing and shouting down that goes on in most other public space, especially liberal and liberal feminist spaces. As others have pointed out, it is often women who are enforcing this silence on other women. If we don't speak out, these transmaidens will frog-march us into accepting the destruction of our understanding of the reality of being a woman.

Beach / almond

I think there was a recent thread where MNHQ said they would delete posts if a transwoman is called a man or male pronouns are used. A number of posts in that thread were deleted.

MNHQ don't seem to be deleting posts that discuss this in general. If they did, it would kill our ability to talk about this.

The "transwomen are women" mantra (and our ability to discuss this) is absolutely at the heart of this issue. If you accept transwomen are women, everything else trans activists argue for makes sense - up to and including the cotton ceiling. Liberal feminists like Sarah Ditum, Gia, Glosswitch are seeing the consequences of this problem. While they are (or have been) willing to accept transwomen as women but with limits, this is not acceptable to transactivists. IMO, we need to frame the discussion more clearly by saying that transwomen are not women but some accommodations can be acceptable. Any waffling around the "transwomen are women" mantra just opens up the door to pointless arguments.

I think there was a recent thread where MNHQ said they would delete posts if a transwoman is called a man or male pronouns are used.

Thanks for the info Flora. Does that mean that I get deleted if a "misgender" an actual MNer (which I wouldn't do, I would just avoid pronouns) but not if I say " X the well known transactivist is male"?

Or can I get deleted for talking about a public figure and calling them a man but not deleted for saying in a general manner that IMO transwomen are male.

It's hard to keep up with the rules of what women are allowed and not allowed to say!

Buffy, I think one of the issues is that all 'facts' about material reality get lumped in together and all 'facts' about social constructions get lumped in together as if in each group all can be said with the same degree of certainty.

There is very little of an established evidence base for male and female brains or West African and European brains.

There is a huge and overwhelming body of evidence that a binary of biological sex exists. 99% of people do either have XX, ovaries and clitoris at birth all together or the male equivalents all together.

I don't think you can separate the importance of social constructs and material reality. Both social constructs and the materially real lead to outcomes that have consequences for social constructs and material realities. Power itself is both socially constructed and materially real.

Buffy that's interesting but I think the fact there are disputes over some biological facts doesn't mean there are disputes over every biological fact. Biological differences between races are really not the same as biological differences between men and women or whether a person born with a penis can be a woman.

While I agree that politically and socially constructed applications of facts are significant, I think the facts that are not in dispute need to be recognized.

Beach I'm fairly sure you are not allowed to "misgender" an actual MNer - I saw some posts deleted as PAs. I replied to Kim's question upthread about being a man and that wasn't deleted but maybe because it was clearly not intended as an attack and also was in answer to a question (or maybe nobody reported it).

Not sure about talking about another person. We are generally allowed to "PA" people in the public eye. I haven't seen any posts deleted for saying in general that transwomen are men.

I agree it's hard to keep up with the rules on what we can say.

Interestingly, there have been more open discussions on MN recently than used to be permitted. We have been able to have some very good discussions of the politics of genderism without being shouted down by calls of "transphobia". Much more so than is generally possible on mainstream forums. I'm grateful to MN that we are able to have these discussions even though I don't agree with every rule about what we can and can't say.

There is a significant body of evidence for human variation in skin pigmentation, likelihood of certain illnesses, facial features and so on that has a basis in geographical ancestry, but these fit very poorly with the social perception of who is a member of each 'race' as race is socially constructed with little reference to material reality.

Yes, if trans activism recognised the material reality of biological females and the social constructions around those people and the power dynamics that have social and material consequences for females, we would be in a very different conversation.

People can only comprehend material reality through social constructions, but social constructions that have no basis in engaging with material reality are at best useless and at worst a tragic disaster, because humans and the resources we need to exist are materially real.

Buffy, I don't think pretending to be something you're not has to be based in biological difference when it comes to race.

If I pretended to be a person who was Indian, it would be bizarre and ridiculous. It would be equally ridiculous if I pretended I was an Irish Catholic living in West Belfast, as they are also an ethnic minority group experiencing racism. There is of course, no genetic difference between the 'white' English and Irish. We are of the same genetic group. But there is an ethnic difference as a consequence of social constructions which have materially real consequences.

The same could be said of a USA citizen whose ancestors moved to the US hundreds of years ago and then claims to be 'Hispanic' in the sense that they are from South America, even though there are Hispanic South American people wholly of European descent.

And of course physical appearance is part of ethnicity for a lot of people, but it doesn't have to be. So it isn't really comparable to biological sex and gender.

Buffy, it is reasonable to argue that race is a social construct, given that it didn't even exist as a meaningful concept until Europeans invented it about 500 years ago, and DNA modelling shows that the notion of there being separate 'races' of humans is a very nebulous idea indeed, whatever the variations between us in skin, hair and eye colour.

It is not reasonable to argue that sex is a social construct, unless you want to claim that the means by which all species reproduce is simply an ideological construct that has been recently invented by humans. Are you going to argue that there are no male and female animals - that it is a human conceit to imagine we can say whether a dog is male or female?

Although both race and sex are indeed 'real' in a social sense, given the power structures that have been built up around them, the key difference between these two concepts is that there are no meaningful biological differences between various ethnic groups, whereas the biological differences between the sexes will always be meaningful. It does not help feminism to pretend that sex differences aren't real and can be argued away - indeed it leaves us with no ground to stand on when challenging women's oppression.

I tell you what, if there were a bunch of white people having cosmetic surgery and getting stuck into anti-racism activism and changing the very shape of that activism and the discourse around it, I bet there would be an upsurge in black activism and a huge amount of WTF? all round. It is a stark example of the distorted socialisation of women that the same hasn't happened here in greater numbers.

We need some robust feminist discussion on a national level. And international, given how much ideas develop and spread on the internet. If it's always What about the Menz? and What about the Tranz? it's game over. Discussion never gets anywhere - it's an MN thread with a troll on a global scale.