I can't get my head around the phrase "Transwomen are women".

[nikkinack]

Sorry for another thread on the topic, but I was looking at my local candidates and the only female candidate is for the Green party, and she has retweeted that phrase (with the addition "Transmen are men) a couple of times today.

It seems like doublethink to me, every time I try to unpick the statement I get all messed up in the process.

So, if transwomen are women, why call them transwomen? Surely just by defining them as transwomen you are saying they are different to women? Transwomen can't insist on women using the label cis and then lay claim to the standalone word 'woman'.

So transwomen are women, ciswomen are women. The word woman applies to people of either category, but they are still separate categories within the single word, which we can't describe. We are not the same, but to state 'Transwomen are women' is to insist that we are.

I don't know how anyone who makes this statement can square all of this. It hurts my head just trying to work out what they mean.

I am just a little sceptical about the number of tree-climbing banning going on. I'm assuming most posters were not born pre 1914. I honestly have never come across this or for that matter any one child, parent or toy shop assistant telling a girl she can't be a pirate or anything else
And wearing a dress is no bar to climbing trees.

Just to take one example at random, I have seen, in my DS's old primary, a mother pull her reception-age daughter from the climbing frame, with the words "stop that - you're not a boy".

Ditto in Primark, a small boy not allowed to choose dark purple sunglasses because they are "for girls". (Not even pink - deep purple!)

Just because you don't see it or haven't experienced it doesn't mean it doesn't happen, even in the 21st goddamn century.

So as a person who was born female I now have a label attached that says 'ciswoman'? Oh thanks for that, whoever thought of it. Who knew, that was exactly what I needed.

Does that mean that people who are born male but later become female are known as 'transgender women' and 'cismen'?

I don't like any sort of label, being on the autistic spectrum I very much dislike the term 'aspie' as well, and any attempt by anyone, including those who identify with that term, to define 'us' as a group.

Everyone is different - to me, the sex you are is simply a matter of your biological features. Nothing more, nothing to do with preferences or personality.

I do not see the point of the labels. It just seems like a stupid, divisive game made up by angry people to try and prove something.

To add to the argument about tree climbing, I didn't really enjoy this though my sister did, however I was interested in playing football at play time in primary school, and I suppose I was about 9 when I was joining in with the boys and was told off very badly by the dinner ladies for getting involved.

'It's for the boys', 'you'll get hurt', 'it's a rough game', 'stop being so naughty' - they were awful. I wasn't allowed to play, at all. I tried to protest but was made to feel like I had done something really terrible. So I gave up. This was in about 1982.

I also loved playing with dolls. Seriously, it's a no brainer. Kids are all different and all the same. All of my boys have enjoyed playing with dolls, pushchairs, etc. None of them was into cars.

And techgirl mentioned that there are male-bodied people in prisons already - the guards.

First of all, this is a relatively recent thing - 20 years? Before then it was all women prison officers in women's prisons, and there was then and are now plenty of people who think that male guards for women prisoners is a bad idea.

Second, although male guards with access to women prisoners is bad enough, being a guard is a different thing than being a prisoner. Guards don't sleep in the same locked rooms as the women prisoners. Guards don't use the same showers and loos as the women prisoners. Guards don't spend every minute of their waking life with the women prisoners. Guards have something to lose when they misbehave - their careers, their professional standing, their freedom - where prisoners don't.

There are prisoners who committed violent crimes as men, and then identified as women once they were convicted, and went to women's prisons. This hasn't gone well, eg in the case of Paris Green (convicted of murder after torturing an old man to death over a bag of chips), who was moved to a different women's prison after having sex (I say "having sex", but we don't know if it was consensual or not) with women prisoners.

Agreed archery - and I don't think there should be male prison guards in women's prisons anyway!

StillLostAtTheStation wrote - "isn't a lot of it just the same few people endlessly wittering on and backing each other up to the interest of probably almost no-one else?"

The content and outcome of short-term spats on twitter or in the blogosphere may seem irrelevant or a minority interest, but could the twitter arguments and blog postings be battles in a patriarchal war about and against women? A war against women that is much more about fighting (mostly radical) feminists than about helping transwomen. A war to continue patriarchal oppression of billions of non-trans women, using transwomen as both ammunition and shield. A war in which the winner will influence future legislation worldwide about all aspects of women's lives. It has already affected legislation in many countries, including the UK.

Whichever side of the argument a person wants to support, that's her business, but I hope each person will at least give serious consideration to the likelihood that, eventually, the impact will be felt much more widely. This won't just affect a few transwomen and feminist non-trans women. The outcome will probably significantly change how all non-trans women and all transwomen live their lives. What is more important than that?

I think the fights between trans activists and (mostly radical) feminists stem from the laws on equality that have been passed by various governments in the past 15 years. One of the reasons why radical feminists are protesting is because they hoped that equality legislation would improve rights for transwomen but not reduce rights for non-trans women. This has not always happened and some transwomen's rights are improving at the expense of non-trans women. (The position of non-trans men, at the top of the social hierarchy, is not affected by this legislation, and they have the privilege of heckling from the sidelines).

I think the reason these arguments are happening is because patriarchy hates non-trans women, particularly feminists. Patriarchy needs gender to survive and radical feminists want to abolish the social construction of gender. For centuries, we've had gender role, now it's about gender identity too, with transwomen being used by patriarchy to attack feminists. Patriarchy hates transwomen too, but for different reasons.

Patriarchy has given us a post-modern world where gender (identity) is said to be an innate feeling that trumps or even negates biology, a biology that has been used to oppress non-trans women for thousands of years. Abolishing biology will not liberate women from oppression, it will just remove evidence of that oppression.

applauds vesuvia

Vesuvia

What I take from Twitter spats ( have been following the outrage at Tim Lott's Guardian column) is that it's not the patriarchy that is demanding I uncritically accept trans-activist arguments about gender identity - it's young left wing men and women.

These spats are not just on twitter and facebook. They are impacting on some girls and women all over Britain.

Sandor - that blog is very interesting. It did remind me of a comment I heard on here several years ago (wish I could remember who said it): "right wing men want women to be the private property of individual men, left wing men want women to be the collective property of all men." (Should I say "NAMALT" at this point?)

I haven't come across any of this except in discussions on here. Most of the transactivists sound completely bonkers.

vesuvia sorry but there is so much in your post I don't agree with. Just thinking about the every day, run of the mill men in my life , gay and straight, if I showed them the utter nonsense being promulgated by transactivists they would react with a mixture of shock/laughter/disbelief and ultimately dismissal of it as nonsense. They would not be aligning themselves with these men.

From what I have seen from these online spats it is not patriarchy supporting this (mentally insert my very white, very straight, very conservative husband in that role- no, he'd be astonished) but as Ubik says left wingers - the "I'm more right on you no matter how ridiculous I sound " brigade.

Talking of patriarch Clarkson has been in the news again. Do you think he would agree with any of the guff about women with penises and men with vaginas?

Why then Kim do some reject other toilet arrangements? I have read case after case where organisation have been sued for offering an alternative single use toilet for a trans person to use, rather than a woman's toilet. If it was only about safety, then surely that would be an acceptable solution?

I'm with Kim on this. Imo the problem is that women's needs for safety aren't considered important. But it doesn't mean the issues aren't also genuine for the transwomen.

I thought the recent case involving a night club paying compensation was to a transman not being allowed to use the gents.

As for not using the ladies or the gents one thing I have found out from MN there are all sorts of valid reasons for using the reserved loo which do not require obvious disability. (severe IBS or dealing with incontinence pads where the greater privacy is appreciated for example) So no I wouldn't find it strange, it's none of my business.

I've been to a very trans-friendly conference where most of the toilets were re-designated "gender neutral", and used by everybody, except two out-of-the-way toilets kept as women-only and men-only. There were two Famous Activists there, both trans women involved in recent brouhahas, and they both chose to go conspicuously out of their way to use the women-only loos.

Kim if no one knew someone was trans, the issue wouldn't arise anyway. But if someone was openly trans, as some are, or it was obvious, no I wouldn't find it strange if they used another toilet.

And women might care Kim. But hardly anyone would object because it would be bound to lead to major issues for the woman complaining. Most would rightly think it is not worth it.

The issue is passing - no trans women who passes is going to be prevented from going into a women's toilet, because no one would have any idea she was trans.

The individuals at stake are therefore those trans women who don't pass. In those cases, they will be read as men by the cis women in the toilet, who will likely be made uncomfortable and/or frightened.

I assume that you pass kim, hence why no one seems to care.