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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

To think that women should not be referred to as menstruators and pregnant people?

380 replies

FRETGNIKCUF · 04/09/2016 07:34

*This is a thread about the impact trans activism is having on women. This is the beginning.

Don't read on if you're going to whine about another trans thread.*

Julian Vigo (@lubelleludotcom on Twitter) wrote the following.

There is a war on women, folks. The transgender lobby has gone down the rabbit hole by refusing to acknowledge that women's lives and bodies not only matter, but that they are real. Instead women's bodies have become the simulacra in an extended theatre of male entitlement (to be women while telling women to STFU) or they are rendered an extension of male subjectivity such that we now see hairy transmen's female bodies breastfeeding, the only form of female body hair that would ever be allowed in Time magazine.

And now for the latest: we are being called "menstruators" by the same right-wing discourse which seeks to remove the mention of woman from women's healthcare across the USA (ie. now many providers have been pressured to remove the term woman and write instead "pregnant person.") It is as if the last 100 years of women's rights had never occured.

The ironies are multiple. Here you have a group which claims its own marginalisation while working steadily to marginalise an already marginalised group, women. Then you have a group of female people who by virtue of the current transgender identity doxa necessitates "gender dysphoria," yet paradoxically adheres to—and even embraces—the real and symbolic thrust of much of what the female body actually is and produces, a complete opposition to gender dysphoria. Therein lies the greatest contradiction which, not surprisingly, once again holds women hostage: woman is symbolic for those who emulate her, woman is only acceptable inasmuch as she recognises males as females, and women are now relegated to "non-males" by political parties, as "pregnant humans" and "menstruators" by females who reject their bodies yet who hold out for the double-bind of gender in this theatre of cruelty where only a [sic] "man" can truly understood pregnancy, breastfeeding, and motherhood.

The only parallel I can think of is if the KKK were to insist that the Black Panthers stop calling themselves "black", demand that their white hoods be viewed as black, assert that only white people know what it is like to experience life as a black person, and then turn around and maintain that black people are just a group of entitled, bio-essentialist racists.

OP posts:
TwatbadgingCuntfuckery · 06/09/2016 22:57

The wording and labelling is also removing any possibility of being gay too. So there is that side to it as well :/

MissiAmphetamine · 07/09/2016 05:39

Am I also a breeder? A birther? A feeder? Do any of those sound dehumanising? I think they do. If a maternity org put out a tweet that read "breeders celebrate" over the announcement of good news, I bet pregnant women would feel pretty dehumanised.

Also. Am I a menstruator if I'm experiencing indefinite secondary amenorrhea due to birth control? Am I a menstruator if I'm pregnant? Am I a menstruator the 20 or so days of the month I'm not menstruating? Am I a menstruator if I am a pubescent girl expecting to start menstruating any time?

Menstruator is not only dehumanising, but it also doesn't make much sense as a descriptor, as women spend more time not menstruating than we do menstruating.

To change the term from "women" to "menstruators" just to cater to a fraction of a percentage of females who "feel male" is inappropriate and disrespectful toward women.

JudyCoolibar · 07/09/2016 06:17

No-one is proposing changing terminology to call women menstruators.

StealthPolarBear · 07/09/2016 06:38

Missi not to mention the huge number of women who have been through the menopause

thedogstinks · 07/09/2016 12:20

I suppose no one did propose anything. They just went ahead and did it.

ChocChocPorridge · 07/09/2016 13:02

It seems to me that the transmen who menstruate, already wanted to be erased from womanhood didn't they? Isn't that the point of being a transman?

In which case, why do they mind about being erased by using the word 'woman' to describe people who menstruate, which is an entirely female process.

In fact, if they are fine with menstruating and want to be included and talk about it, doesn't that make them sound like they might be comfortable with some aspects of their female body, and therefore not trans but cis (to use their terminology)

OlennasWimple · 07/09/2016 13:37

Interestingly, the Government guidance on Mat Leave and Mat Pay is pretty gender neutral already (I'm sure this is coincidence not design).

The word "maternity" leads to another thought, though: are transmen who give birth mothers or fathers? What about transwomen who have functioning penises that are used to impregnate a woman even after transition?

TwatbadgingCuntfuckery · 07/09/2016 13:41

I now have Brain ache.

Bambambini · 07/09/2016 13:56

I don't think anyone does have a plan or actually knows how to deal with this. It's just all being made up as they go in regard to laws, rights and recommendations. No one has a clue what to do.

CoteDAzur · 07/09/2016 18:10

"What about transwomen who have functioning penises that are used to impregnate a woman even after transition?"

There is no such thing. Even if a sort-of "functioning penis" can be fashioned out of flesh taken from elsewhere, it will never ejaculate speed because transmen are still female - I.e. If the sex that can make eggs, not sperm.

CoteDAzur · 07/09/2016 18:11

speed sperm. Although ejaculating speed would be fun, too.

OlennasWimple · 07/09/2016 18:14

I meant a MTT individual who has not undergone bottom surgery and isn't taking hormones, Cote. No reason why they couldn't father a child, as we used to be able to say

TwatbadgingCuntfuckery · 07/09/2016 18:16

Then they are, imo, men in dresses or men who just like to play at being the stereotype of women.

OlennasWimple · 07/09/2016 18:19

Yes, Twat - but would they describe themselves as a mother or father?

WinchesterWoman · 07/09/2016 21:38

They would say it's entirely up to them what they call themselves, if you disagree you're phobic, and assume the right to take offence at literal genocide if you put one step wrong in their imaginary world of eternally fluid semantics.

CoteDAzur · 07/09/2016 22:32

Sorry Olenna. I totally misunderstood you there.

OlennasWimple · 07/09/2016 22:56

It does raise the bizarre prospect of an individual saying that they are a man, giving birth, claiming maternity leave and pay entitlements, but insisting that they are the father, doesn't it?

IBelieveTheEarthIsFlat · 07/09/2016 23:20

It's all bizarre Wimple.

Illogical, irrational, insane bloody guff

OlennasWimple · 07/09/2016 23:25

I'm tempted to start a #ifmenweremothers Twitter thingy, see what responses it draws...

WinchesterWoman · 07/09/2016 23:28

Think I need to calm down , I'm getting cross ! Need to read about silly ashtrays Wine

WinchesterWoman · 07/09/2016 23:29

Ashtrays = hashtags. My tablet is so very old.

Cisoff · 08/09/2016 03:20

Olennas, I shit you not, I actually read a story about a happy couple expecting their naturally conceived baby the other week.

The birthing parent was 'he' (FtT) and the sperm provider was 'she' (MtT).

So, yes. A regular heterosexual couple expecting a baby...but not.

Prawnofthepatriarchy · 08/09/2016 10:38

I've just read the whole thread. Got to the end, read Winchester's post and thought "silly ashtrays? They sound fun."

Very disappointed to discover it was a typo. Silly ashtrays much more alluring than hashtags. Off to google some.

shins · 08/09/2016 23:05

I've been querying a national abortion rights campaign group (Ireland) about their recent adaptation of gender neutral terms -"pregnant people".."people who need abortions"..."not only women get pregnant" I made all the usual points about biology being central to women's oppression and the dangers of ignoring this. and it was some small consolation that I wasn't the only one. I said I didn't see men's health campaigns stating that "not only men get prostate cancer" and why are women being erased?
I was blocked from their FB page. FFS. I was campaigning for legal abortion before most of them were even born and they're treating me like some kind of conservative troll. They don't engage, just these borglike assertions that make no sense like "Gender is not a biological binary" and imply that an old codger like me doesn't understand this brave new world. It's depressing. Trans people have their own stuff to deal with, why do TRAs keep barging into women's spaces and causing divisions and distractions?

Prawnofthepatriarchy · 08/09/2016 23:46

Gender is not a biological binary? Wtf does that mean?

Ans: Nothing