Anti-Transgendered thread in Chat

[countessmarkyabitch]

Started off as a vague question about what makes you feel like a woman, lots of people started mentioning transwomen, naturally. Has now turned into some posters stating that transwomen are just men and shouldn't be allowed use female things like toilets and rape crisis, pretty much anything.

I find this really offensive and have stopped engaging. My personal feminism encompasses women who were born in male bodies, and supports their struggle to be recognised as women. I also think they need the protection and help of feminists as a particularly at risk group.

Is this an unusual stance? Does anyone agree with me?

The white/ black analogy is just silly.

Why is it silly seriously? That's a genuine question.

Because a race isn't a 'feeling'. There are qualities associated to genders, and it is possible to feel more attune to the feelings of one gender.
It is not possible to feel like another race.
If you are going to argue that there are personality traits etc associated to a race... well that's not cool.

Hey, guess what? It's not cool, in exactly the same way, to assign feelings to a specific gender, either.

That's pretty much the whole point.

Do you know, ages I ago I suggested that things be redefined into men, women (transwomen) and non-people (the group previously known as women).

That seems to be more and more relevant. And happily more accurately reflects the position of the group formerly known as women in many groups and cultures around the world.

You are born into a sex.
You are assigned a gender.

You are born into a race.
You are not then assigned a skin colour.

Last time I checked there aren't personality traits associated with gender. Some people might believe there are, but they did once say the same thing about ethnicity, that was wrong too.

My 12 year old has just said, why can't people just wear what they want and behave how they like, without it having to be a male or female thing?

He's pretty much nailed the whole issue, there.

I just don't know where to put the belief that the entire population of human females are "just a feeling", intangible, in a way that race is not.

You are born into a sex.

If your sex is female, and you are an adult, you are a woman. When you are young, you are a girl.

This isn't all in our fucking imaginations.

Wasabi I agree with your daughter.
I've never said I'm happy that gender roles exist, only that they do, and that is what drives some people to identify with the other gender.

Oh right Pilchard because you've not felt it, it doesn't exist and shouldn't be believed.
Good one.

WTF

You have just said there is no such thing as women apart from in our heads.

Tell that to all the men raping females all over the world.

What's the matter with you?

Hubert - you are born with a vagina or a penis. You are then assigned a gender.

You are born with either white or black skin. You are then assigned a race, according to that skin and your heredity. Race isn't a fixed thing and you don't necessarily have to identify with it.

How do you know it's not possible to feel like another race?

Why is it not cool to say there are personality traits associated with race but it is cool to say there are personality traits associated with sex/gender?

Being a woman is not a feeling. How incredibly dismissive to think it is.

You know the reason people balk at a white person wanting to be, say, Afro-Caribbean? Because it makes no sense. If you're born white, and grow up white you can't suddenly dye your skin and become someone who had a different upbringing - you just can't. You might long to be part of Afro-Caribbean culture, you might imitate the accent, you might even go all out and have black skin, but you will never be part of that group.

Yet we accept that a man who was born a man, grew up as a man, can change his clothes and become someone else, part of a group with an entirely different experience of life. And not only that but entitled to the same rights and considerations as that group.

I have not said there are personality traits associated with gender.
I've said that society dictates that there are personality traits and expectations associated to genders. If you have good parents that don't believe in that nonsense you're lucky but it's fair to say that a lot of men are brought up being told that they must be strong, manly, never cry etc etc whatever.
Sooo, if someone grows up tormented because they don't fit this idealised gender they've been raised to be, I can see why they want to associate with the other one, because as they see it, they 'fit better' in the other one.
I have never said gender is all in our heads, please fuck off with putting words in my mouth. It's a restraint created by society over many many years that we need to do away with.

I agree that some men don't fit the "manly" mould. Feminism is very hot on this issue, and fights very strongly against the idea of specific gender traits that constrain both women and men.
But why does a man who isn't "manly" have to become a woman?

You said that race is tangible and male/female is a feeling.

Unless I have entirely misunderstood you.

The idea that sex is not real and gender is all there is, isn't a new idea though. It's one I find horribly disturbing.

I take on everything everyone has said about the race idea. I'm white and don't want to speak on behalf of anyone else.
I feel comfortable discussing issues of females because I am one, but not really about race. I think it would be wrong for me to pretend to understand that.

Sex is real, gender is real, but I don't think they're mutually exclusive.

Of course they're not mutually exclusive, no one has said that. In today's society, they're dependent upon one another such that one sex leads to one gender and the other leads to the other.